Genesis 21:32-34

"So they made a covenant at Beersheba: and Abimelech rose up, and Phicol the captain of his host, and they returned into the land of the Philistines. And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and called there on the name of Jehovah, the Everlasting God. And Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines many days."

"And they returned into the land of the Philistines ..." Some would make this deny that Beersheba was also in the land of the Philistines, but the very fact of Abimelech's servants having taken Abraham's well by violence is proof enough that the place was considered Philistine territory. Moreover, it will be noted that Abraham continued to live there, where it is called in the very next verse, "the land of the Philistines." A study of the whole chapter reveals that Hagar was not very far from where she had started when she was in the wilderness of Beersheba.

"And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree ..." Speiser's opinion that such a tree "ties the worship of Jehovah to the symbolism of a sacred tree,"[16] is unsupported by anything, either in the Bible, or out of it. It would be just as reasonable to assume that when Sam Houston planted a bois d'arc tree in Arkansas that it tied the worship of Jehovah to that!

ADDENDUM

God's great mercy and blessing were poured out upon Ishmael and his posterity, despite the fact of their not being members of the covenant. Nevertheless, God loved them, as indeed he loved the whole world, "So that he gave his only begotten Son." We wish to close this chapter with a paragraph from a homily by F. Hastings:

"God cares for those outside the pale of the Church, even as for those within. Those without have not taken up their privileges, nor do they see how Christ loves them. They are suffering great loss, and are in danger of even greater losses; but God loves them, cares for them, and pities them. `He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.'"

God pitied the people of Nineveh and sent them a warning; he healed Naaman; he sent Elijah to dwell with the woman of Sarepta, thus honoring her; he brought Nebuchadnezzar to his right mind by a judicial affliction; Jesus praised the Syrophoenician woman, and the centurions of the Roman garrison in Capernaum - all these things were loving mercies poured out beyond the boundaries of the Covenant! Oh, how much more widely flows the channel of Divine love and mercy than many are inclined to think!

Whoever, whatever, wherever any man is, let him remember that God loves him.[17]