Genesis 21:31
Therefore that place was called Bersabee: because there both of them did swear.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Idcirco vocatus est locus ille Bersabee : quia ibi uterque juravit.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- διὰ τοῦτο ἐπωνόμασεν τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ τόπου ἐκείνου Φρέαρ ὁρκισμοῦ, ὅτι ἐκεῖ ὤμοσαν ἀμφότεροι.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- עַל כֵּ֗ן קָרָ֛א לַמָּק֥וֹם הַה֖וּא בְּאֵ֣ר שָׁ֑בַע כִּ֛י שָׁ֥ם נִשְׁבְּע֖וּ שְׁנֵיהֶֽם
Haydock's commentary
Bersabee. That is, the well of oath; (Challoner) or "the well of the seven;" meaning the seven ewe-lambs set apart. (Menochius)
This precaution of Abraham, in giving seven lambs as a testimony that the well was dug by him, was not without reason. See chap. xxvi. 15. (Calmet)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Oceanus
6. Let me now fulfil the promise I made a little while ago and with all the skill of a rhetorician sing the praises of water and of baptism. In the beginning the earth was without form and void, there was no dazzling sun or pale moon, there were no glittering stars. There was nothing but matter inorganic and invisible, and even this was lost in abysmal depths and shrouded in a distorting gloom. The Spirit of God above moved, as a charioteer, over the face of the waters, and produced from them the infant world, a type of the Christian child that is drawn from the laver of baptism. A firmament is constructed between heaven and earth, and to this is allotted the name heaven, in the Hebrew Shamayim or ‘what comes out of the waters,’, and the waters which are above the heavens are parted from the others to the praise of God. …