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54. Who named Beersheba? Gen 21:31 vs. Gen 26:33

I’m beginning to find it fascinating the way someone was able to find “contradictions” in scripture, without actually reading scripture. It’s either a keyword search gone horribly awry, or some very deliberate deception.

Genesis 21:31
Therefore he [Abraham] called that place Beersheba, because the two of them swore an oath there.

Genesis 26:33
So he [Issac] called it Shebah. Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.

Isaac is Abraham’s son. Abraham and Issac were nomads. By Genesis 26, Abraham is dead, and Issac (and his people) have returned to land that Abraham used to live in. Genesis is mostly chronological.

Our answer is pretty clearly stated about a page up in Genesis 26.

Verse 18 tells us, 

“Then Issac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father, Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the same names which his father had given them.”

He re-dug some other wells first, and verse 23 tells us,

“Then he went up from there to Beersheba.”

It had a name to Abraham’s family before they re-dug the well, because they knew what Abraham had named it. The name fell out of use when Abraham and his nomadic nation moved out, because his enemies weren’t going to honor any name that he had designated, and because they filled in the well anyway.

When Isaac’s servants re-opened the well, and found water, Isaac named it Shibah. Strong’s Concordance tell us that “Shibah” (#7655, שִׁבְעָה) in Hebrew means, “a well in Beersheba.”

[Short Answer: Abraham]