place
Shur
שׁוּר
Shur was a wilderness area between Canaan and Egypt, mentioned in connection with Hagar (Gen. 16:7), Abraham (Gen. 20:1; 25:18), the Israelites' wanderings (Exod. 15:22), and Saul's battles (1Sam. 15:7; 27:8).
- verses
- 6
- first named
- Genesis 16:7
- last named
- 1 Samuel 27:8
- feature
- region
- coordinates
- 30.49°N · 32.96°E
Ar Ruwaysat (OpenBible)
Scholarship offers 3 identifications for this place. The leading one is shown; the others are recorded in the gazetteer.
Description
Shur in the text
Shur is a wilderness region located between Canaan and Egypt, often mentioned in the context of travels and events in the patriarchal narratives and the early history of Israel. It first appears in the story of Hagar, who fled from Sarah and encountered the angel of the Lord near a spring on the way to Shur (Gen. 16:7). Later, Abraham settled between Kadesh and Shur, sojourning in Gerar (Gen. 20:1). The descendants of Ishmael, Abraham's son with Hagar, are described as dwelling from Havilah to Shur, east of Egypt (Gen. 25:18).
During the Exodus, after crossing the Red Sea, the Israelites went three days into the wilderness of Shur before reaching Marah, where God miraculously provided drinkable water (Exod. 15:22). In the time of King Saul, he defeated the Amalekites from Havilah to Shur, which is east of Egypt (1Sam. 15:7). Later, when David was fleeing from Saul, he and his men raided the Geshurites, Girzites, and Amalekites, who inhabited the land from Telam as far as Shur and Egypt (1Sam. 27:8).
The exact boundaries of the wilderness of Shur are not specified in the Bible, but it appears to have been a desert region stretching from the eastern border of Egypt toward Canaan. Its location along the route between these two regions made it a significant area for travel, trade, and military campaigns in biblical times.
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 Shur 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.
6 verses across 3 of 66 books; 63 write the name nowhere. Named in Genesis (3), Exodus (1) and 1 Samuel (2).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 6, across 3 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.
- Genesis 16Shur was along the road beside the desert spring where the angel of the LORD found Hagar.
- Genesis 20Shur lay beside the place where Abraham settled before staying in Gerar.
- Genesis 25Shur lies near the border of Egypt along the way toward Asshur, marking one end of where Ishmael’s descendants settle.
- Exodus 15The Desert of Shur received Israel for three waterless days after Moses led them from the Red Sea.
- 1 Samuel 15Shur marked the eastern extent of Saul’s strike against the Amalekites.
Sources