Locating Beer-lahai-roi

See Targum Yerushalmi and Fragmentary Targum on Gen 16:14.

It is widely agreed that the Land of Gerar was located in the northwestern Negev, see: Y. Aharoni, ‘The Land of Gerar’, EI 13:108–111 (Hebrew); E.D. Oren ‘Gerar’, ABD 2:990. The city has to be identified in either Tel esh-Sheria or Tel Haror.

See Nahmanides on (Gen 24:62): "שהיה יצחק הולך תמיד אל המקום ההוא"

In general, a young woman who runs away from her husband goes to her parents’ house (see Judg. 19:2a). Moreover, Hagar was an Egyptian. Shur is either the Egyptian border or an area linked to it (1 Sam. 15:7, 27:8), see: D.R. Seely, ‘Shur, Wilderness of’, ABD 5, p. 1,230. The ‘Way of Shur’ thus, is the road to Egypt.

The road to Egypt excludes all roads whose primary direction is south-north or west–east. In other words, if Hagar goes to Eygpt the primary direction of the road should be north-south, or, at least, east-west and then north-south. That excludes the suggestion of Targum Yerushalmi and Fragmentary Targum to locate Bared in the area of Haluza (see note 1), as the road from Kadesh[-barnea] to Haluza leeds away from Egypt.

Kadesh is mentioned in Num 13:26; 20:1, 14-16, 22; 27:14; 33:36-37; Deut 1:46. Pseudo-Jonathan to Num 27:14 renders it as “ריקם,” while in all the other verses, and in all the otherTargumim, it appears in the uniform form: רקם (in both cases, pronounced “rekam“). See Israel Drazin, Targum Onkelos to Numbers (n.p.: Ktav, 1998); idem, Targum Onkelos to Deuteronomy (n.p.; Ktav, 1982); Ernest G. Clarke, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Numbers(ArBib 4; Edinburg: T & T Clark, 1994) idem, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Deuteronomy(ArBib 5; Edinburgh: T & T Clarke, 1998); Alejandro Diez-Macho, Neophyti 1: Targum Palestinese MS de la Biblioteca Vaticana, vol. 4: Numeros (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1974).

Josephus writes (Ant. 4:7:1, ed. LCL: trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, pp. 552-53): “the city which bears his name [of Rekem, king of Midian (Num 31:8) – DBGC] ranks highest in the land of the Arabs and to this day is called by the whole Arabian nation, after the name of its royal founder, Rekeme: it is the Petra of the Greeks”; see also 4:4:7. Josephus is followed by Eusebius, see: E. Klostermann, Eusebius Onomastikon der Biblischen Ortsnamen, Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1904, p. 36, l. 13, ‘’Αρχέμ – “Arcem”; R. Steven Notley and Zeev Safrai,Eusebius, Onomasticon: The Place Names of Divine Scripture (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2005), p. 39; Klostermann, p. 144, ll. 7-9, ‘Ρεχέμ – Reqem; Notley and Safrai, p. 136.

See: Mishnah Gittin 1:1-2; Nida 7:3.

Ancient Chinese documents mention Ta-ts’in as an important center for Chinese trade. See F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient (Leipsig and Munich, 1885), pp. 35–96. Some of them refer to Ta-ts’in as Li-kan/ Li-kien/ Li-ken/ Li-kin/ Li-chien. (p. 40, doc. E:1; 44 – F:1; 48 – I:1; 68 – P:5; 77 – Q:1; 92 – R:1. Based on the geographical datum in those documents Hirth surmised that Ta-ts’in refers to the Nabataen land (p. 172–173) and Li-Kan is the Chinese transliteration for Rekem that is Petra (p. 170, n. 1).

Petraios was buried in Gerasa, but the tomb apparently was insufficient for his relatives, who desired to commemorate him also in Petra, his city, that preserved its Semitic/Nabatean name Rekem. This is indicated by an inscription discovered in 1964 at the entrance to Petra: “This is the tomb of Petraios/ son of Threptos who lived honorably/ in Rekem and died/ in Gerasa and was buried there/ [in the tomb] that his son Taimu made for him”; see Jean Starcky, “Nouvelle Epitaphe Nabateenne,” RB 72 (1965): 95-97.

See B. MacDonald, “East of the Jordan,” Territories and Sites of the Hebrew Scriptures (ASOR 6), (Boston 2000), p. 68-69; Graham I. Davies, The Way of the Wilderness: A Geographical Study of the Wilderness Itineraries in the Old Testament (SOTSMS 5; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 16-18; Philip C. Hammond, “New Evidence for the 4th-Century A.D. Destruction of Petra,” BASOR 238 (1980): 65-67.

J – “And they turned back, and came to En-mishpat which is Kadesh” (Gen 14:7a); E – “Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom” (Num 20:14a); P – “And they journeyed from Kadesh” (Num 33:37a); D – “So you abode in Kadesh many days” (Deut 1:46a)

See D. Ben-Gad HaCohen, Kadesh in the Pentateuchal Narratives, Ph.D. Dissertation, Hebrew U. Jerusalem 2010, p. 112 (Hebrew)

To be clear, even during the period where Israelites dwelt in the Transjordan, this area would not have been part of Israel.

All three episodes belong to J.

In fact, this is how the German biblical scholar Hermann Gunkel, who is seen as originating form-criticism, understood J—not as an original author, but as an individual who compiled pre-existent oral tales. He expressed this view in the introduction to his commentary to Genesis, translated most recently into English as The Stories of Genesis(trans. John J. Scullion and William R. Scott; D&F Scott Pub, 1998).