Gerar

Gerar - meaning "lodging-place" - was a Philistine town and district in what is today south central Israel. Archaeological evidence points to the town having come into existence with the arrival of the Philistines at around 1200 BCE and having been little more than a village until 800-700 BCE.
Biblically, the town features in two of the three wife-sister narratives in Genesis. The Bible records that Abraham and Isaac each stayed at Gerar, near what became Beersheba, and that each passed his wife off as his sister, leading to complications involving Gerar's Philistine king, Abimelech. ( , and ) The Haggada identifies the two references to Abimelech as two separate people, the second being the first Abimelech's son, and that his original name was Benmelech["son of the King"], but he changed his name to his father's, which clearly evidences that the name means "my father is the king". Most estimates place the Biblical story to circa 2000 BCE.
The Biblical valley of Gerar () is probably the modern Wadi el-Jerdr.
Category:Hebrew Bible places
Category:Former settlements in south west Asia
Category:Depopulated settlements in the Land of Israel