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Beer Lahai Ro'i

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

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Name of a well in the desert south of Palestine on the road to Shur (Genesis 16:7 et seq. ), known as the stopping-place of Isaac (Genesis 24:62 , 25:11 ). According to the rather artificial and not at all lucid explanation of Genesis 16:13 et seq. , the name means "the well of him that liveth and seeth me." In order to find the true etymology of the word, Wellhausen ("Prolegomena," 4th ed., p. 330) proposes to read "leḥi," jawbone (compare Judges 15:17 et seq. ), which among the Arabs is a name given to any prominent crag and to interpret "ro'i" as the name of an animal. In Arabic such a place is found bearing the name "camel's jawbone." The spring lay between Kadesh and the otherwise unknown Bered ( Genesis 16:14 ). The Bedouins worship the spring in Muweilih, twelve miles to the northwest of Kadesh, as the well of Hagar. From this it would appear that the traditional well of Hagar, already mentioned by Eusebius, may be sought here but the exact site of the well, which is thus bound up with questions regarding Hagar's home, can not be fixed upon such testimony.