Genesis 21:33: A tree that takes fifty years, planted by a man who lives in a tent

"Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God." The same dot as the last map, and a different verse entirely. Two verses ago the name was made; here something is put in the ground. A tamarisk is a specific choice and the text names the species, which it hardly ever does. It is a desert tree — it will take salt, it will take drought, and it sends a taproot down to water no other tree on that ridge can reach — and it is slow. You do not plant a tamarisk for yourself. Abraham has spent a hundred years in a tent and has been told the country is his descendants' and not his; the one thing he plants is a tree that will be worth something in fifty years' time, at a well he has just had to buy the right to with seven lambs. And then he calls on the name of the LORD, El Olam — God Everlasting, or God of the age without end. Genesis gives God a new name at a handful of places and each one belongs to its ground: El Roi at Hagar's well in the wilderness, El Shaddai on the day of the covenant, El Elyon at Salem, and El Olam here at the well by the tree. This is a man who has just settled a border dispute planting something permanent and naming the God whose measure is not a lifetime. The frame is closer than the map before it, because this verse is about one spot rather than the country round it. It is also the last quiet page in the series. The next verse is "After these things God tested Abraham."