Inseparably connected with Hebron is Beersheba, which is less than forty miles to the south. The road thither is hilly, and the journey toilsome; but, on approaching the well that Abraham dug, the pasture-fields of the patriarchs stretch out before the eye in all their native beauty and richness. Covering an area half a mile in length and a quarter of a mile in breadth are fragments of pottery, remains of foundations, and traces of a stone wall, the date of which is unknown, called by Moses Beer-sheba, “Well of the Oath,” because of the covenant between Abraham and Abimelech, and by the Arabs Bîr es-Seb’a, “Well of the Seven,” because of the seven ewe-lambs the former gave the latter: the modern name corresponds with the Bible designation. Having a diameter of twelve and a half feet, and a depth of forty-four feet to the surface of the water, this well is excavated in the living rock, and contains an abundance of pure fresh water. Around this well what thrilling memories cluster! Departing from Hebron after the conflagration of Sodom, Abraham planted here a grove, whose fruit he gathered, and beneath whose shade he worshiped.[357] Here Isaac spent his happy youth, rejoicing in the smiles of honored parents, and here his father received the command to offer the child of promise as a burnt-offering.[358] After the demise of his mother, here Isaac received his bride Rebekah; and Beersheba became the scene of that sad episode in domestic life, the fraud of Jacob in obtaining Esau’s birthright.[359] Here, in manhood, those brothers were estranged by a mother’s folly, and from this ancestral abode Jacob fled to Haran.[360] After the lapse of seventy-five years he was here again, and offered sacrifices prior to his departure into Egypt, whence he was brought back with funeral honors such as only kings receive.[361] Threatened by the infatuated Jezebel, hither Elijah fled, and, sitting beneath the shade of a juniper-tree, requested for himself that he might die.[362] And here was the southern boundary of the Promised Land, whose uttermost limits, in the earlier history of the nation, were from “Dan to Beersheba.”