Genesis 21:31: The verse that puts the name on the map, and says what it is made of

"Therefore that place was called Beersheba, because there both of them swore an oath." This is a naming verse, and naming verses are the ones a map has the most business drawing: a place that has been "there" for seventeen verses becomes a name here, and the sentence tells you what the name is made of. Beersheba is be'er and sheva — the well, and seven or the oath, which in Hebrew are the same root. Both readings are in the passage. Abraham has just set seven ewe lambs apart from the flock and made Abimelech accept them as witness that he dug the well; and the two of them swear. The name holds the well, the seven lambs and the oath at once, and the verse does not choose between them either. What the quarrel was about is water, which is what quarrels in this country are about. Abimelech's servants had seized a well Abraham's men had dug, and Abimelech says he has only just heard of it. The settlement is a covenant sworn at the wellhead, and the town that grows there carries it in its name for three thousand years — it is still Be'er Sheva on the road signs. The one thing the sources argue about is which ground it is. 382 of its 544 votes are for the tell at Tel Be'er Sheva, where two wadis meet and where a well was in fact dug through twenty-odd metres of rock at the gate; 162 are for the wells at Bir es-Seba, three miles west under the modern city. The map pins the tell, which is where the weight of the votes is, and the three miles between the two are not a disagreement about what happened — they are a disagreement about which of two waterholes in the same wadi system the story is standing at. Abraham lives here for the rest of the chapter, sets out from here for Moriah, and comes back here afterwards. It is the last address he has before Hebron.