Genesis 21:25-27

"And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of the well of water, which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away. And Abimelech said, I know not who hath done this thing: neither didst thou tell me, neither yet heard I of it, but today. And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech; and they two made a covenant."

This free exchange of the principal figures in the narrative resulted in a happy resolution of potential difficulty. A water well on the edge of the desert was the power of life and death in the hands of the persons controlling it. And that famous well at Beersheba is reported to be still in use after the passing of millenniums. There are many descriptions of it:

"The great well has an internal diameter at the mouth of 12 feet 6 inches, a circumference of 40 feet! The shaft is solid masonry of high quality to a great depth until it reaches rock, where a spring perpetually feeds it ... A second well, about 600 feet further south Isaiah 5 feet in diameter, but of equally good construction.[13] The digging of this well involved cutting through 16 feet of solid rock. It Isaiah 38 feet from the top to the surface of the water."[14]