place
Gerar
גְּרָר
Gerar, a Philistine city, was the location of Abraham and Isaac's encounters with Abimelech and the site of a battle during King Asa's reign.
- verses
- 10
- first named
- Genesis 10:19
- last named
- 2 Chronicles 14:14
- feature
- settlement
- coordinates
- 31.38°N · 34.61°E
Tel Haror (OpenBible)
Scholarship offers 4 identifications for this place. The leading one is shown; the others are recorded in the gazetteer.
Description
Gerar in the text
Gerar was an ancient city mentioned in the Bible's earliest geographical descriptions, marking the border of Canaanite territory (Genesis 10:19). It was located in the region between Kadesh and Shur, in what would become the southern part of Philistine territory.
The city features prominently in patriarchal narratives. Abraham sojourned there, where its king Abimelech ruled. During this stay, Abraham presented Sarah as his sister, leading to a diplomatic incident with Abimelech (Genesis 20:1-2). Later, Isaac also dwelt in Gerar during a famine, repeating his father's pattern by claiming Rebekah was his sister (Genesis 26:1,6).
Gerar possessed valuable agricultural land and water resources. Isaac sowed crops there and received a hundredfold return. The area was known for its wells, which became sources of conflict between Isaac's herdsmen and those of Gerar (Genesis 26:17,20). Despite these tensions, the king of Gerar ultimately sought a peace treaty with Isaac (Genesis 26:26).
Several centuries later, King Asa of Judah pursued defeated enemies to Gerar in a major military campaign. His forces captured the city and plundered all the surrounding towns, which were noted to contain much spoil (2Ch.14.13-14).
Probably corresponds to Tell Abu Hureira (Tel Haror) in the northern Negev of modern Israel, though some scholars suggest Tel Gerar as an alternative location.
Gerar was a significant city spanning from patriarchal times through the period of the divided monarchy, notable for both its agricultural resources and strategic importance.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
The pattern
Where Gerar is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
10 verses across 2 of 66 books; 64 write the name nowhere. Named in Genesis (8) and 2 Chronicles (2).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 10, across 2 books.
Onward
Where this page goes
Nothing in the graph stands one hop from this entity yet. These are the best-connected entities of the same type, so the page still ends somewhere. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
What happened here
Atlas's reading of each chapter this place appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources