Genesis 26:26: The king who sent him away comes fifty miles after him

"When Abimelech went to him from Gerar with Ahuzzath his adviser and Phicol the commander of his army," The direction of every journey in this chapter reverses in one sentence. Isaac went to Gerar because of famine, was told to leave because he had grown too great, was driven off two wells by Gerar's herdsmen and finally put twenty-five miles of desert between himself and the town. Now the king makes the trip himself, the whole fifty miles up to Beersheba, and brings his adviser and the commander of his army with him. The party is the tell of it. A king travelling with a general is a king who is not sure what he is walking into, and the sentence names the general — Phicol — with the same title Abraham's Abimelech's general carried a chapter earlier. Isaac's first question when they arrive is exactly the right one: why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you? What they have come to say is that they can see God is with him and they would like it in writing. The map draws the going and not the arriving, because that is what the verse is. Gerar is pinned — 628 of its 695 votes are for the mound at Tel Haror on the Nahal Gerar, and the map has stood on that pin since Genesis 26:1. Beersheba is where the road ends, and this verse does not name it; it is drawn as a label at the point the line reaches, the way Genesis 19:23 handles Sodom. The next verse names it by naming the town's men. Eight verses of this chapter have been about water nobody would share. The king rides out of the town those herdsmen came from, and what he wants is an oath.