Beer-lahai-roi

Beer-lahai-roi ("well of the Living One who sees me"), sometimes referred to as Lahairoi, was a well or spring in the wilderness on the road to Shur, south and west of Canaan toward Egypt. Its naming records one of the most theologically profound encounters in the patriarchal narratives: Hagar, the Egyptian servant of Sarah, had fled from her mistress's harshness when the angel of the LORD found her at the spring. After delivering the promise of a son and a command to return, the angel departed and Hagar said: "You are a God of seeing... Truly here I have seen him who looks after me" (Genesis 16:13–14). Her words gave the well its name — a memorial to divine care extended to the marginalized.

The well appears again in the lives of the patriarchs as a place of habitation and perhaps of prayer. When Rebekah first saw Isaac, he was coming from Beer-lahai-roi where he had gone to meditate in the field at evening (Genesis 24:62), and after Abraham's death, Isaac settled near the well (Genesis 25:11). These details connect Beer-lahai-roi to the founding of successive generations of the patriarchal line. Its precise location in the Negev wilderness remains unidentified, but its significance in Genesis lies in its testimony that God sees and provides for those whom human society has cast aside — a theme that runs through the entire arc of Hagar's story.