Thus they made a covenant at Beersheba: then Abimelech rose up, and Phichol the chief captain of his host, and they returned into the land of the Philistines.
Thus they made a covenant at Beer-sheba. A large town rose in later times on that spot, which is well known as the southern boundary point of Palestine. It is now called Bir es-Seba, and is situated in Wady es-Seba, which Robinson ('Biblical Researches') describes as 'a wide watercourse, or bed of a torrent running
W.S.W. toward Wady Essuny.'
And they returned into the land of the Philistines - i:e., from Beer-sheba into their own country; not, it must be remembered, what was afterward posessed by the Philistine nation-the Shephelah, or lowlands, the extensive fertile plain on the coast of the Mediterranean-but the kingdom of Gerar, as described above.