Rehoboth

re-ho'-both, re-ho'-both (rehobhoth, "broad places"; Euruchoria): One of the wells dug by Isaac (Ge 26:22). It is probably the Rubuta of the Tell el-Amarna Letters (Petrie, numbers 256, 260; see also The Expository Times, XI, 239 (Konig), 377 (Sayce)), and it is almost certainly identical with the ruin Ruchaibeh, 8 hours Southwest of Beersheba. Robinson (BR, I, 196-97) describes the ruins of the ancient city as thickly covering a "level tract of 10 to 12 acres in extent"; "many of the dwellings had each its cistern, cut in the solid rock"; "once this must have been a city of not less than 12,000 or 15,000 inhabitants. Now it is a perfect field of ruins, a scene of unutterable desolation, across which the passing stranger can with difficulty find his way." Huntington (Palestine and Its Transformation, 124) describes considerable remains of a suburban population extending both to the North and to the South of this once important place.

E. W. G. Masterman