Abimelech and his army commander come to Abraham unasked, and their opening is an admission. 22"God is with you in all that you do." A foreign king would rather have an oath from this household than a fight with it. He asks for one plain thing, that Abraham not deal falsely with him or his descendants, and Abraham answers in three words. 24"I will swear."
This is the second time Abraham and this court have stood face to face. Last time, Abraham told a half-truth about Sarah and let a king walk into danger instead of trusting God to protect him if he told the truth. Now Abimelech asks only for an oath, and Abraham gives it plainly. Whatever fear drove the deception the first time, something in Abraham has settled since.
He also speaks up about an injury. Abraham reproved Abimelech about a well that Abimelech's servants had seized. He names the wrong instead of letting it slide under a broad handshake of peace. Abimelech's answer, 26"I do not know who has done this thing," sounds like a king unaware of what his men did in his name. So the two men settle it concretely. Abraham gives sheep and oxen, and 27"the two men made a covenant." Peace that moves from the general to the specific costs something, and this one is sealed with sheep and oxen.
Then Abraham sets seven ewe lambs apart, and when Abimelech asks what they mean, he explains. The lambs are 30"a witness for me that I dug this well." They are evidence planted in shared memory so that no one can later claim the well was never his. The place was called Beersheba, and the name holds the transaction inside it, the Hebrew for "swear" and for "seven" built from the same root, so that every time someone said the town's name, the oath was said again.
Abimelech leaves satisfied, and Abraham does something no one asked. 33"Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God." A tamarisk is slow to root, and planting it says he expects to be here long enough to watch it grow. The name he calls on is El Olam, and this is the first time it appears in Scripture, beside a tree that will outlast the treaty that occasioned it.
The passage ends with a quiet line. 34"Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines." Many days. Even a well-kept covenant between honest men runs out, as every human promise does. That limit seems to turn Abraham toward the one relationship in his life that has none. The God he names was God from everlasting to everlasting before the mountains were brought forth (Psalm 90:1-2).
That name reaches further than Abraham knew. Centuries later, to people proud to be Abraham's children, Jesus said Abraham had rejoiced to see his day. When they objected that he was not yet fifty, he answered, "before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:56-58). The Everlasting God Abraham named at Beersheba stood in a body Abraham's own line produced and claimed that eternity in the first person.
A treaty between two men lasted many days. The God who witnessed it lasts forever.
Prayer
Father, thank you that you are the Everlasting God, the same when everything we build runs its course, even the good agreements kept faithfully to the last day. Teach us Abraham's plain honesty, an "I will swear" that needs no hedge. When we have wronged someone, give us courage to make it right specifically. And when our days run out, turn our eyes to you, who were before Abraham and remain after us. In Jesus' name, amen.