Genesis 21: 14 refers to the “Wilderness of Beersheba”, and Genesis 21: 21
refers to the “Wilderness of Paran”. In my view, those are two different
names for the same wilderness.
No satisfactory linguistic analysis of P)RN/“Paran” has been done, because
analysts think that the logical linguistic meaning of P)RN cannot fit what
chapter 21 of Genesis is talking about. But it does! As we will see in
this post, MDBR P)RN logically means “dense forest”, and that is exactly the
place where Hagar gets lost and has YHWH point out a well to her, where
Ishmael grows up to be an archer, and where Esau in the next generation bags
big
game for his doting father Isaac. We will see in this post that
historically there was indeed a very “dense forest” near Beersheba, if we know
which
Beersheba the Biblical text is talking about here.
P)RH means “foliage of a tree”, per Ezekiel 17: 6. Accordingly, one would
expect P)RN at Genesis 21: 21 to mean “place where there is abundant tree
foliage”. Based on linguistics, MDBR P)RN should logically be a “dense
forest”. On that linguistic analysis, the “Wilderness of Paran” at Genesis 21:
21, where Ishmael grows up after being exiled at age 9½ regular years by
his father Abraham, should be a heavily forested area where few people lived.
Are there indications in the text that we are dealing here with a dense
forest, rather than with a desert-like area? It would make sense for Hagar to
get lost in a dense forest. We are told that Hagar can find no water to
drink, but that YHWH then points out a nearby well. It makes sense that Hagar
would fail to see a nearby well in a forest, because such a well could easily
be hidden behind a tree in a forest, needing to be pointed out to Hagar by
YHWH. Genesis 21: 19. In desert-like terrain, however, it’s hard to see
how Hagar could fail to see a nearby well. The presence of a well in a forest
would mean that some humans were living there. If Hagar and Ishmael were
helped out by a small number of people living in a dense forest, then it
would make sense that Ishmael was taught to make a bow and arrows and to hunt.
The text tells us Ishmael became an “archer” at Genesis 21: 20, and the
best place to hunt for a living would be in a dense forest. The text seems to
imply that Hagar and Ishmael stayed in that dense forest for some years,
while Ishmael was a young man, surviving by Ishmael’s ability to hunt big game
for eating. Only years later, when Ishmael is old enough to marry, does
Hagar obtain a wife from Egypt for Ishmael [who is probably similar to Hagar as
a young servant coming out of Egypt], and then Ishmael and his descendants
at that point take up a nomadic life ranging far and wide, with Ishmael
giving up the forest of his youth. Though the text does not take the time to
spell out all of the above details, all of the foregoing can easily be
implied. Everything makes sense if and only if the Wilderness of Paran/the
Wilderness of Beersheba is a very large, dense forest.
Was there in fact a dense forest, with few human inhabitants, near
Beersheba? Beersheba is mentioned at Genesis 21: 14, with the other
description of
this wilderness being the “Wilderness of Beersheba”. [Beersheba is also
mentioned again at Genesis 21: 31.] It’s hard to believe there would be good
hunting near the famous Beersheba in the Negev, since the surroundings are
desert-like. It’s also hard to see how Hagar could fail to see a nearby well
in that type of environment. And of course, P)RN in that case could not
come from P)RH, meaning “foliage of a tree”.
But note how everything makes perfect sense if the Beersheba in chapter 21
of Genesis is Beersheba of Galilee. In all of Galilee, there was only one
place in the Late Bronze Age where there was a huge forest, with almost no
human population: the southwest corner of Upper Galilee and the northwest
corner of Lower Galilee, being just southwest of Beersheba of Galilee. There
were no towns there in the Late Bronze Age. Rather, it was dense forest.
The o-n-l-y place in Galilee in which this section of chapter 21 of Genesis
would make sense is immediately southwest of Beersheba of Galilee, and
Beersheba is mentioned so very prominently here. Genesis 20: 1 tells us that
Abraham had moved to GRR, and GRR is historically attested as being the Late
Bronze Age word for “Galilee”. Abraham is still in GRR/Galilee when he
exiles Hagar and Ishmael, and then announces that the new well his men have dug
shall be called “Beersheba”. That’s Beersheba of Galilee, not Beersheba in
the Negev. [We later find out in chapter 26 of Genesis that Abraham had in
fact dug a series of four wells, spaced a day’s journey or so apart, ending
at Beersheba. That pattern of a series of wells exactly describes northwest
Upper Galilee and Beersheba of Galilee. By contrast, there is no series of
wells anywhere close to Beersheba of the Negev, which is world-famous
precisely because it has the only wells in the area.]
Esau is likewise said to be a great hunter, a few verses after Beersheba
has been mentioned. Genesis 26: 33; 27: 5. In the Late Bronze Age, the very
best place to hunt for CYD/big game [like deer, wild boars, etc.] in all of
Canaan was the dense forest in the southwest corner of Upper Galilee,
immediately southwest of Beersheba of Galilee. After moving to GRR [Galilee]
in
chapter 26 of Genesis, Esau in chapter 27 of Genesis hunted big game in the
same dense forest as had Ishmael in the previous generation: in southwest
Upper Galilee and northwest Lower Galilee, just southwest of Beersheba of
Galilee.
Unlike in the Early Bronze Age and in the Iron Age, in the Late Bronze Age
most of Upper Galilee was lightly populated [having a much smaller
population than Lower Galilee at that time]. As such, Upper Galilee was an
attractive place for the tent-dwelling Patriarchs to sojourn. And one place,
though
only one place, in and near Upper Galilee had virtually no population at all
in the Late Bronze Age: the dense forest immediately southwest of
Beersheba of Galilee.
If we focus on the topography of Late Bronze Age Canaan, we can figure out
what P)RN means regarding Ishmael’s “Wilderness of Paran”. It means a very
dense forest [just southwest of Beersheba of Galilee], where one could get
lost, where one could miss seeing a nearby well, and in particular where the
hunting for big game was super-terrific.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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