Moreover, the northern situation of the cities alone agrees with the
geography of Genesis. When the Babylonian invaders had turned northwards
after smiting the Amalekites of the desert south of the Dead Sea, they
did not fall in with the forces of the king of Sodom and his allies
until they had first passed "the Amorites that dwelt in Hazezon-tamar."
Hazezon-tamar, as we learn from the Second Book of Chronicles (xx. 2),
was the later En-gedi, "the Spring of the Kid," and En-gedi lay on the
western shore of the Dead Sea midway between its northern and southern
extremities.

In the warm, soft valley of the Jordan, accordingly, where a
sub-tropical vegetation springs luxuriantly out of the fertile ground
and the river plunges into the Dead Sea as into a tomb, the nations of
Ammon and Moab were born. It was a fitting spot, in close proximity as
it was to the countries which thereafter bore their names. From the
mountain above Zoar, Lot could look across to the blue hills of Moab and
the distant plateau of Ammon.

Meanwhile Abraham had quitted Mamre and again turned his steps towards
the south. This time it was at Gerar, between the sanctuary of
Kadesh-barnea and Shur the "wall" of Egypt that he sojourned. Kadesh has
been found again in our own days by the united efforts of Dr. John
Rowlands and Dr. Clay Trumbull in the shelter of a block of mountains
which rise to the south of the desert of Beer-sheba. The spring of clear
and abundant water which gushes forth in their midst was the
En-Mishpat--"the spring where judgments were pronounced"--of early
times, and is still called 'Ain-Qadis, "the spring of Kadesh." Gerar is
the modern Umm el-Jerar, now desolate and barren, all that remains of
its past being a lofty mound of rubbish and a mass of potsherds. It lies
a few hours only to the south of Gaza.

Here Isaac was born and circumcised, and here Ishmael and Hagar were
cast forth into the wilderness and went to dwell in the desert of Paran.
The territory of Gerar extended to Beer-sheba, "the well of the oath,"
where Abraham's servants digged a well, and Abimelech, king of Gerar,
confirmed his possession of it by an oath. It may be that one of the two
wells which still exist at Wadi es-Seba', with the stones that line
their mouths deeply indented by the ropes of the water-drawers, is the
very one around which the herdsmen of Abraham and Abimelech wrangled
with each other. The wells of the desert go back to a great antiquity