Genesis 26:6: Four words, a long stay, and four mounds that might be the town

"So Isaac settled in Gerar." The shortest verse on this walk, and the whole of Isaac's obedience. He had been told not to go down to Egypt but to dwell in the land, without being told where; so he stops where the last verse had already brought him, and stays. The word the chapter uses next for how long is "a long time" — long enough to sow a crop, reap it, grow rich on it, and be resented for it. Because the verse gives nothing but the town, this page draws the town: the mound itself, at the scale the argument about it happens on. Gerar is the firmest identification in Genesis 26, and firm here means 628 of 695 votes for one tell out of four proposed. Tel Haror is the big one, twenty-odd acres on the north bank of the wadi. Tell esh-Sharia sits four miles east of it, Tell Jemmeh ten miles west toward the coast, Tell Tuweiyil well to the south. The three rivals are labelled on this map and not pinned, because the votes are not close and pretending otherwise would be its own kind of dishonesty. What settling means for a man with flocks is worth saying plainly, because it is the hinge of the chapter. It does not mean a house in the town. It means the town is the market, the king, and the water rights, and the household camps within reach of it — which is exactly why the next quarrel is about water and exactly why being asked to leave means moving a mile rather than a hundred. Genesis has run this scene before on this ground. Abraham sojourned in Gerar, told the same king the same half-truth about the same kind of wife, and left with livestock and silver. Isaac repeats it almost gesture for gesture, and is caught out not by a dream but by Abimelech looking out of a window.