The Geography of the Wilderness

The Geography of the Wilderness

Numbers 33 records an itinerary of the Israelites’ travel in the wilderness from Egypt to the border of Canaan. James Hoffmeier has done convincing work from archaeology, geology, and ancient text and inscription evidence on the sites within Egypt. Many places the Israelites encounter once they cross from Egypt east into the Sinai Peninsula cannot be identified with a modern location. Some scholars identify the location of Kadesh using informed speculation based on correlation with a modern water source. In The Land of the Bible, Yonanan Aharoni says of the “twenty five stations between ‘the [Reed] Sea’ and Ezion-geber, it is impossible to identify even one with certainty…” 

Translation issues between English, Hebrew, and the Greek Septuagint are a source of confusion when referring to the sea the Israelites cross. “Yam Suph” in Hebrew Bibles, in English, it is alternately called the Sea of Reeds, Reed Sea, or Red Sea. It is also confusing to locate on a map because biblical descriptions appear to place it in locations surrounding the Sinai Peninsula, yielding, in my estimation, a large u-shaped body encompassing ancient brackish lakes on the Egyptian border with Sinai, the modern Gulf of Suez, and the modern Gulf of Aqaba.  

They departed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month;

The Israelites traveled from Rameses and camped in Sukkoth. 

They traveled from Sukkoth, and camped in Etham, which is on the edge of the desert. 

They traveled from Etham, and turned again to Pi Hahiroth, which is before Baal Zephon; and they camped before Migdal.[1] 

Original image: Google, SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Landsat / Copernicus

They traveled from Pi Hahiroth, and passed through the middle of the sea into the wilderness, and went three days’ journey in the wilderness of Etham, and camped in Marah. 

They traveled from Marah and came to Elim; in Elim there are twelve fountains of water and seventy palm trees, so they camped there. 

They traveled from Elim, and camped by the Red Sea. 

They traveled from the Red Sea and camped in the wilderness of Sin. 

They traveled from the wilderness of Sin and camped in Dophkah. 

And they traveled from Dophkah, and camped in Alush. 

They traveled from Alush and camped at Rephidim, where there was no water for the people to drink. 

They traveled from Rephidim and camped in the desert of Sinai.

 

They traveled from the desert of Sinai and camped at Kibroth Hattaavah. 

They traveled from Kibroth Hattaavah and camped at Hazeroth. 

They traveled from Hazeroth and camped in Rithmah. 

They traveled from Rithmah and camped at Rimmon Perez. 

They traveled from Rimmon Perez and camped in Libnah. 

They traveled from Libnah and camped at Rissah. 

They traveledfrom Rissah and camped in Kehelathah. 

They traveled from Kehelathah and camped at Mount Shepher. 

They traveled from Mount Shepher and camped in Haradah. 

They traveled from Haradah and camped in Makheloth. 

They traveled from Makheloth and camped at Tahath. 

They traveled from Tahathand camped at Terah. 

They traveled from Terah and camped in Mithcah. 

They traveled from Mithcah and camped in Hashmonah. 

They traveled from Hashmonah and camped in Moseroth. 

They traveled from Moseroth and camped in Bene Jaakan. 

They traveled from Bene Jaakan and camped at Hor Haggidgad. 

They traveled from Hor Haggidgad and camped in Jotbathah. 

They traveled from Jotbathah and camped in Abronah. 

They traveled from Abronah and camped at Ezion Geber. 

They traveled from Ezion Geber and camped in the wilderness of Zin, that is, Kadesh. 

Original image: Google, SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Landsat / Copernicus

They traveled from Kadesh and camped at Mount Hor at the edge of the land of Edom. 

They traveled from Mount Hor and camped in Zalmonah. 

They traveled from Zalmonah and camped in Punon. 

They traveled from Punon and camped in Oboth. 

They traveled from Oboth and camped in Iye Abarim, on the border of Moab. 

They traveled from Iim and camped in Dibon Gad. 

They traveled from Dibon Gad and camped in Almon Diblathaim. 

They traveled from Almon Diblathaim and camped in the mountains of Abarim before Nebo. 

They traveled from the mountains of Abarim and camped in the rift valley plains by Moab along the Jordan River across from Jericho. 

Original image: Google, SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Landsat / Copernicus

They camped by the Jordan, from Beth Jeshimoth as far as Abel Shittim in the rift valley plains of Moab.  

The Lord spoke to Moses in the rift valley plains of Moab along the Jordan, across from Jericho. 

Original image: Google, SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Landsat / Copernicus

We can pick up a recognizable location on the back side of the wilderness at Ezion Geber and follow a reasonably reliable path north along ancient highway routes to the border of Moab, through the hills east of the Jordan to a flat plain across the Jordan River from Jericho.  

So, where are Mount Sinai, Rephidim, Kadesh Barnea and other prominent places in the wilderness narrative? For now, we don’t have enough information to say with confidence. You can visit a traditional location for Mount Sinai in the southern Sinai Peninsula. There are wadis in modern Israel named Zin and Paran, named wildernesses in Numbers, but the names have a modern attachment to those wadis, not an ancient, durable association.  

The ambiguity and lack of reliable information tempts some without expertise to make unsupportable claims about the exodus and wilderness routes, but, if we desire to know what is true and reliable, we need to be willing to say, “I don’t know” until we have adequate, trustworthy evidence.

[1] Hoffmeier, James. The Exodus: Recent Archaeological and Geological Work in North Sinai.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKiCaab3jno&t=10s.

Israel in Egypt (Oxford University Press).

Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition (Oxford University Press).

Deuteronomy 20's Command to Destroy Canaanite Cities

Commands of Destruction

Deuteronomy 20 contains one of the most straightforward commands in the wilderness-conquest narrative from God to the Israelites to destroy Canaanites. It and its preceding chapters provide a similar (though expanded) series of instructions to those of Exodus 23. Laws for the humane treatment of the vulnerable precede an apparently ruthless command to destroy the peoples of Canaan. It emphasizes that the people who live in the cities the Israelites will settle must be killed without exception:

As for the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive. Instead you must utterly annihilate them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship their gods, causing you to sin against the Lord your God. (NET) 

We don’t have a catalog of the Canaanites’ infractions here, though some items are mentioned elsewhere. Exodus 23 communicates the importance of shunning the Canaanites’ gods and religious practices. Deuteronomy 7 similarly admonishes the Israelites to destroy images of gods and not to be tempted to participate in their religion. Deuteronomy 18 lists sacrifices of children in the fire, divination, reading omens, soothsaying, sorcery, spell casting, conjuring spirits, practicing the occult, and necromancy as the reason God will drive out the Canaanites. Psalm 106 recalls a similar list of Canaanite activities as a warning to the Israelites.

 

Fruitfulness and Protection

In Genesis 1, God blesses the people to “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the land and subdue it.” In Genesis 2, God charges the man to tend and keep / care for and maintain / cultivate and guard the garden. In the Eden garden-like Tabernacle and Temple, Levites function as guards, armed to protect its holiness (Numbers 1, 1 Chronicles 26). In each place, God meets with people and appoints them to cultivate and protect its fruitful holiness as part of their relationship with him.  

Matthew Lynch in his article An Old Testament Critique of Modern Violence[1] recognizes a link between human violence and the fruitfulness of the ground. Increasing violence ruins the land (Genesis 6, Numbers 35) ultimately necessitating a de-creation act such as the Flood to restore the land’s fruitfulness.  

In Judges 7, the account of Gideon’s raid on the Midianites, God first tells Gideon to thin the ranks of his small army based on self-identified fear and how they drink. Deuteronomy 20 similarly begins (and its initial passage ends) admonishing against fear, but its primary focus appears to be unrealized fruitfulness – a house not yet dedicated, a vineyard not yet yielding, an engagement not yet a marriage. Any man in these circumstances, like Gideon’s fearful men, is released from fighting. These laws appear to apply to the Israelites at a future time as they are already living in the land rather than ones currently living in tents without land of their own, expectantly waiting to enter Canaan.

 

Cities as Rebellion

In Genesis 4-11, cities result from and harbor seed of the serpent / anti-God activity. The righteous standard in the early chapters of Genesis includes being the image of God, mastering sin as it crouches at the door, and fruitfulness. In contrast, those who reject God make names for themselves and violently assault and kill, polluting the land. They consolidate in walled cities for their own protection and power rather than filling and cultivating the land. As late as Revelation 11, John compresses Sodom, Egypt, and Jerusalem into one representative rebellious city. Rebellion that leads to the founding of cities is a consistent feature of Torah narrative beginning in Genesis 4. Canaanite cities represent the same rebellious spirit that Egypt, Shechem, Sodom, Babel, and Cain’s city all do.  

 

Pattern of Judgment

Regarding earlier similar passages, we’ve discussed a pattern of judgment that includes God forming people in the wilderness, bringing them into a fruitful land for relationship, giving guidance for living in the land, people increasing rebellion until the project is no longer viable, God coming down and assessing, judgment via de-creation, and the preservation of a remnant to return to the land.  

In this Deuteronomy 20 iteration of the pattern, God goes before and is present in judgment. The Israelites act as God’s representatives, fulfilling his purpose. Because it is people rather than weather, “plagues,” or other natural forces delivering the judgment, many readers view this iteration of the judgment cycle differently than previous instances – as morally fraught, even as genocide. Arguably, the biblical authors/editors do not.  

God judges using various means across generations and locations. As he brings his people into the land, he does not de-create it as in earlier instances. Rather, he orders that the fruit trees be preserved (Deuteronomy 20) and allows Canaanites to continue to occupy parts of the land until the Israelites are ready to settle in them, so wild animals do not overtake it and make it an uninhabitable wilderness (Exodus 23). Contra earlier examples such as the Flood or the plagues on Egypt, his purpose here appears to be to gradually but decisively displace rebellious inhabitants with ones who will embrace relationship with him as he and they together maintain the fruitfulness of the land.  

In the pattern of judgment, God alone evaluates when and whether judgment is necessary, so this is not a passage well adapted for practical application in our own lives. There is no evidence this is a model for future religiously motivated action.

[1] Lynch, Matthew, An Old Testament Critique of Modern Violence, Violent Biblical Texts New Approaches (2024): 34-47.

Genesis 1-11 as Introduction and Paradigm

Some commentators read Genesis 1-11 as pre-history, of lesser importance than the narratives beginning with Abraham’s. In this article, I argue the passage is foundational, introducing ideas essential for interpreting of the stories that follow. Its set of ideas comprise a framework in which elements of following stories fit, or in some cases, intentionally diverge from, so that we may compare them to God’s purpose or the serpent’s rebellion.

Genesis 1-11 as Introduction and Paradigm

Revisiting Numbers’ bizarre trial in response to a jealous husband in light of Israel’s rebellion

In a recent interview, Old Testament and Semitics professor Dominick Hernandez points out that in the law of Moses, there is an equal penalty for unfaithfulness for men and women caught in the act (i.e. Leviticus 20:10).

Unlike men, if not caught in the act, women may still show signs of their unfaithfulness later if they become pregnant. For this reason, there is a logic to having a separate test for the woman’s unique circumstances. To many modern readers, that test, recorded in unusually extensive detail in Numbers 5:12-31, is one of the most bizarre and disturbing passages in the Bible:

‘If any man’s wife goes astray and behaves unfaithfully toward him, and a man goes to bed with her for sexual relations without her husband knowing it, and it is undetected that she has defiled herself since there was no witness against her, nor was she caught in the act— and if jealous feelings come over him and he becomes suspicious of his wife when she is defiled, or if jealous feelings come over him and he becomes suspicious of his wife, when she is not defiled— then the man must bring his wife to the priest, and he must bring the offering required for her, one-tenth of an ephah of barley meal; he must not pour olive oil on it or put frankincense on it because it is a grain offering of suspicion, a grain offering for remembering, for bringing iniquity to remembrance.

 “‘Then the priest will bring her near and have her stand before the Lord. The priest will then take holy water in a pottery jar, and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle, and put it into the water. Then the priest will have the woman stand before the Lord, and he will uncover the woman’s head and put the grain offering for remembering in her hands, which is the grain offering of suspicion. The priest will hold in his hand the bitter water that brings a curse. Then the priest will put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has gone to bed with you, and if you have not gone astray and become defiled while under your husband’s authority, may you be free from this bitter water that brings a curse. But if you have gone astray while under your husband’s authority, and if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has had sexual relations with you—” then the priest will put the woman under the oath of the curse and will say to her) “the Lord make you an attested curse among your people if the Lord makes your thigh fall away and your abdomen swell, and this water that causes the curse will go into your stomach and make your abdomen swell and your thigh rot.” Then the woman must say, “Amen, amen.” 

“‘Then the priest will write these curses on a scroll and then scrape them off into the bitter water. He will make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and the water that brings a curse will enter her to produce bitterness. The priest will take the grain offering of suspicion from the woman’s hand, wave the grain offering before the Lord, and bring it to the altar. Then the priest will take a handful of the grain offering as its memorial portion, burn it on the altar, and afterward make the woman drink the water. When he has made her drink the water, then if she has defiled herself and behaved unfaithfully toward her husband, the water that brings a curse will enter her to produce bitterness—her abdomen will swell, her thigh will fall away, and the woman will become a curse among her people. But if the woman has not defiled herself, and is clean, then she will be free of ill effects and will be able to bear children. 

“‘This is the law for cases of jealousy, when a wife, while under her husband’s authority, goes astray and defiles herself, or when jealous feelings come over a man and he becomes suspicious of his wife; then he must have the woman stand before the Lord, and the priest will carry out all this law upon her. Then the man will be free from iniquity, but that woman will bear the consequences of her iniquity.’” (NET)

The test answers a terrible question – “How do we resolve the problem of a jealous husband while preserving family and fertility in Israel?” It must address the psychology of the enraged, shamed, and heartbroken, while protecting the innocent and preventing intra-family and tribal rifts, even blood feuds.  

While deployed to Iraq and Kuwait, I lived and worked in large tents in the desert. Their wood floors needed to be swept constantly to remove the accumulated sand that wind infiltrated through every slit. For a people wandering in the Sinai desert, the ‘dirt’ on the floor of the Tabernacle was likely desert sand. Drinking water with a small amount of dirt, animal skin, and ink is not, by itself, harmful (especially for people living in tents in a desert, where small quantities of sand would unavoidably be part of everyone’s diet all the time). For the judgment of the guilty, God would have to supernaturally intervene to bring about destructive punishment. The default outcome is merely drinking some gritty, bad tasting water.  

In some ways, this trial resembles a modern polygraph (or ‘lie detector test’) in which an interviewer imposes a scenario designed to convince the interviewee that any false claims will certainly be identified. A skilled interviewer, using the psychological pressure generated in the trial, may be able to uncover information that would otherwise have remained hidden. It also serves to assure (however reliably) the parties involved of some resolution to an otherwise intractable question.

Given that a person’s suspicion cannot always be alleviated by another’s assertions, a trial administered by an authority figure provides a (more) reliable resolution.

 

Why is this bizarre ritual included in Numbers?

When we looked at Leviticus, we considered Mary Douglas’ proposal that its laws are organized within a narrative structure documenting the movement from Moses’ inability to enter the Tabernacle at the end of Exodus through incidents that took place in the vicinity of the Tabernacle’s entrance and the entrance to the Most Holy Place, so the reader and the people and priests in the story have the legal knowledge to move in to safely perform their respective roles for relationship with God. The arrangement of the laws is purposeful and related to the narrative that surrounds them. 

From Abraham until the wilderness wandering, God has been telling the Israelites they are his covenant people, his treasured possession, a family set aside for his purpose and for relationship with him, yet the legal instructions for this bizarre trial come at the beginning of a book that documents instances of Israelite unfaithfulness until God sentences a generation of them to exile and death in the wilderness because of their persistent, murderous rebellion (Numbers 14). Numbers 5’s strange instructions in response to a jealous husband provide foreshadowing and legal logic for jealous God’s response to his unfaithful covenant people. 

There is not much shared vocabulary between Numbers 5 and 14. The connection is neither firm nor explicit, yet like adultery, the people’s rebellion in Numbers 14 is a profound betrayal. They so thoroughly reject God’s purpose that they desire to return to slavery rather than enter the land God has promised them. They intend to kill the leaders God has appointed over them. God responds as he does in judgments throughout the Torah, by assessing death to the leaders of the rebellion and exile in the wilderness for the remaining people.

God’s Violence in the Conquest

In the early books of the Bible, it appears God responds to human corruption in a pattern across generations – he intervenes when pervasive violence imperils his continued relationship with people and land.

The conquest of Canaan stands out among stories of the Bible for God’s use of violence in a manner that appears to many to be unjust. In the article linked above, we saw how the pattern God follows is in many ways like some modern attempts to deal with violence or corruption. The stories portray God responding to cries for help, investigating, concluding that violence is present and demands a response, then imposing exile or death to preserve a remnant in the land with whom he will continue to interact. Modern response to violence often includes a report to police, an investigation, a trial, and, if a guilty verdict, “exile” from society in prison or, in extreme cases, the death penalty to remove the offender from society, so others may live in peace.

To connect the stories of the Bible to our own experience, it may be helpful to imagine a more specific modern response to a common violent scenario. During a domestic violence incident in which a man seriously injures a woman at their home with children present, police would respond to subdue, detain, and jail the man while he awaits trial in the justice system. Emergency medical services would take the woman to a hospital, where she would receive treatment that might itself be difficult – possibly surgery, a cast, physical therapy. And child protective services would remove the children from the home, possibly to stay in a group home or with a family they have never met.

Each participant in the above scenario experiences a bad outcome. The man is detained, separated from his family, and may spend years in prison. The woman is hospitalized away from her children and must endure rehabilitation. The children are (at least temporarily) removed from the only home they’ve known to stay with others. It cannot plausibly be argued that any of these outcomes is “good,” yet each may be the best available outcome given the man’s choice to engage in violence.

When we read the Bible’s description of thorough corruption in each of the judgment narratives, it becomes clear that God is not merely responding to a single assault, he is dealing with a pervasive, culture-wide embrace of corruption and violence. The impossibility (for us) of dealing with even a single family’s needs in a single violent incident ought to give us pause if we attempt to judge God in his judgment.

To hold God accountable for his actions in judgment of the pre-Flood peoples or those of Babel, Sodom, Egypt during the Israelites’ exodus, or the Canaanites during the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan, we would have to comprehend the interactions of innumerable violent people across generations and geography. Our domestic violence example reminds us of how unlikely it is that a “good’ outcome can be found in a single scenario. What options are available for dealing effectively with pervasive violence, for preserving a remnant who will not embrace corruption?

Either God is just and sovereign, in which case we cannot know enough to determine what actions are good, effective, and just on the scale he is operating in, or God does not have the attributes the biblical authors claim for him. If the latter, debating the ethics of the Conquest doesn’t matter very much; we can’t rely on the account anyway.

Believers can find some comfort in the knowledge that God acts consistently across many stories with a unified purpose – to rescue the vulnerable, to preserve relationship with people and land – while receiving on faith that God’s grasp of the extraordinarily complex web of interactions he’s judging transcends ours. We could never hope to fully understand it.

Judgment on the scale of a city or nation for actions spanning decades is beyond the capacity of humans to comprehend or assess. Concerning his choices of judgment, we can choose to trust God or not, but we can’t hope to effectively evaluate him.

edited on 6/3/2023

The Canaanite Conquest and a Pattern of Judgment

For modern readers, many of whom encounter God first through the Gospels, a war to expel the Canaanites and their gods from the land seems out of character, even abhorrent. Any effective treatment of Caleb’s story must recognize and respond to its apparent ethical problems while remaining rooted in what the biblical text gives us.

On our Resources page, we’ve included several recent books on the topic of violence in the Old Testament. My (Ben Thomas) experience in the military, law enforcement, and corporate and information security gives me a different context and viewpoint than many of the biblical scholars who write about it. I wanted to dig deeper than the earlier blog post here. Trevor Laurence gave me that opportunity at Cataclesia Forum.

I’ve started by considering what the patterns I find in the biblical text tell us about God’s intent and purpose. In future blog posts, as we progress through Caleb’s story in notes on biblical books, I hope to address specific incidents and stronger objections. For now, consider whether we can find God’s purpose in the judgment narratives of Genesis and Exodus:

The Canaanite Conquest and the Pattern of Judgment

On Biblical Scholarship and Warfare Narratives

Imagine a presentation by a Bible translator who has, over decades, successfully produced a new translation for a people group that did not previously have one in their own language. In the presentation, the translator describes the miraculous events God orchestrated, overcoming obstacles, shepherding the project to completion, and the rejoicing of the translators and the people receiving Bibles they could read for the first time. To God be the glory! – a moving recollection of events in which God rightly receives honor and credit for an awe-inspiring and truly worthy accomplishment. 

In this telling, God’s miraculous interventions overshadow the years of difficult daily work of the translators and native language experts, which every listener understands were necessary. The translators attended years of university training in diverse subjects including theology and biblical languages, interviewed with a ministry organization, trained for translation work and for life in the country they would live in, adapted to a new culture and lifestyle, developed relationships, navigated cultural differences and barriers, identified translation partners – experts in the new language who could advise them and approve their translation work – and worked with them for many years, shepherded their manuscript through the publishing process, oversaw the logistics of publishing and delivery, perhaps taught people to read.

Each of these steps required massive effort over a long period of time, yet we learn little about them in the translator’s presentation. Its focus is God’s miraculous, inspiring work.

 

Biblical Warfare

In Genesis 4-11, we find examples of men who acquire political power by founding cities, make famous names for themselves, and pollute the land with their violent oppression (Cain, Lamech, offspring of the sons of God/Nephilim, Nimrod). In Exodus, we meet a pharaoh who is an ultimate instance of this paradigm. In contrast, the paradigmatic Israelite warrior is one “with a different spirit who follow[s God] fully” (Numbers 14) who meditates constantly on the Torah (Joshua 1) and spends time in the presence of God (Exodus 33:11). In the battle accounts of Exodus - Joshua, God goes before the Israelites and drives out or militarily defeats the peoples in the land. Yet God also commands the Israelites to drive out and defeat those peoples. How should we interpret this apparent discrepancy?  

I submit that in Joshua, we are reading an account much like the Bible translator’s presentation. God did miraculous work on behalf of the Israelites, but a reasonable reader, especially one from a time close to that of the text’s writing and editing, will understand as we do when listening to the translator, that alongside God’s supernatural work, many people were doing natural, hard work of their own.

Biblical scholars who lack a military background (if accepting any degree of historicity of the battle accounts) may find it easy to overlook the complexity and difficulty of the Israelite armies’ activity, even to dismiss it as non-existent or irrelevant.

In the late Bronze Age, swords and other weapon components were cast bronze, consisting of copper and tin, which must be mined, refined, alloyed, poured into molds, and hand scraped and polished. The quantities necessary to equip an army would have been overwhelmingly costly in time and money. 

The Vulture Stele, which likely pre-dates Abraham by a couple of hundred years, portrays a military formation with shield-carrying men aligned shoulder to shoulder to maximize the effectiveness of their shields and consolidate their collective weight and power to overwhelm a less disciplined enemy. If armies in the region fought this way, the Israelite army likely did too when fighting outside cities. Archaeologist and former Israeli Army General Yigael Yadin, in The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands writes about the Conquest era, “The chronicles of war and many illustrated monuments show that in the imposing battles in open terrain, large military formations took part, well organized in the phalanx, charging each other in hand-to-hand combat.”[1] In The Military History of Ancient Israel, military historian Richard Gabriel suggests some Israelite soldiers specialized in this kind of heavy infantry warfare.[2] Maintaining an effective, ordered formation in the chaos of battle requires intensive drill over many iterations.

By Sting, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Walled cities appear to have been the primary targets of Israelite military action during the Conquest. Ramses II’s temple in Thebes includes a depiction of an Egyptian assault on a city at a time roughly contemporaneous with the Israelite Conquest of Canaan. In it, the Egyptians use swords, clubs, shields, and bow and arrow in the assault on the city. They scale the walls with a ladder. The sword, shield, and bow appear in the biblical accounts. Ladders rather than some form of siege engine or tunneling appear the best fit with Israelite capabilities and resources given the speed with which the Israelite armies, especially Judah, take cities in Joshua.

Scaling walls on ladders with archers as fire support while under defensive fires is certainly a skills intensive task, requiring extensive training and preparation with specialized equipment to be consistently successful as Joshua portrays the Judahite army.

By Unknown, published in 1879 - German lithography published in 1879, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Warfare spanning time and distance is a monumental task of strategy and tactics; logistics, manufacturing, and food production; navigation; individual and unit combat arms training; medicine; and numerous other disciplines performed under the threat of enslavement or death, even extermination.

 

God or the Israelites?

As God makes a covenant with the Israelite nation in Exodus, he expects them to act with him to fulfill his purpose. In Joshua, that purpose includes taking the land of Canaan, a fruitful land, where he will dwell with them. To achieve this goal, God goes before the Israelites to ensure their victory, but a perceptive reader will recognize the role the Israelites played and the natural work they invested in it.

[1] Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands Volume I (Jerusalem: International Publishing Company), 111-112.

[2]Richard Gabriel, The Military History of Ancient Israel (Westport: Praeger Publishers), 93.  

Father?

Is there anyone among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

Benlin Alexander, 2015

In the stories of the Old Testament, woven among examples of faith and failure, is a disturbing thread connecting some of the narrative’s most recognizable and influential figures, yet amidst sin’s stain, God’s character glimmers from an unexpected source.

 

Jacob

In Genesis 34, Jacob’s family arrives in the vicinity of a Canaanite town called Shechem. His daughter Dinah goes out to meet the young women and instead encounters the prince of the town, named Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite. Using language that echoes Eve’s taking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3), Shechem saw Dinah and took her, an assault by a powerful man on a foreign woman apparently isolated from her family protectors.

Unsatisfied by the initial taking, Shechem desires to keep her and asks his father to speak to Jacob about marriage. Perhaps wisely, Jacob waits to reply until his sons return from the field, yet when they do, he still does not speak. The sons take over the negotiation with intent to deceive. They usurp their father’s position, agree to the marriage on the condition all the men of Shechem be circumcised, then exploit the vulnerability resulting from the mass circumcision by mercilessly attacking the city, slaughtering the men, enslaving the women and children, and plundering the town’s material goods. Wronged by Shechem the man, they wrong Shechem the entire town, evoking the memory of (Genesis 6-11) pre and post-Flood strongmen who through violence consolidated power and acquired famous names.

Through it all, Jacob remains silent, speaking out only on his deathbed (Genesis 49), unwilling or unable to help his daughter.

 

Judah

Judah’s daughter-in-law Tamar loses her first husband, Judah’s oldest son, to tragedy and her second husband, Judah’s second son, to God’s discipline after he cruelly misuses her. She then languishes, abandoned because Judah fears losing his third son if he marries them as custom demands for the preservation of the firstborn’s line (Genesis 38). Tamar desires the marriage and to have children, likely because she has limited options for a family, economic security, and someone to care for her as she grows old. Denied and effectively abandoned by Judah for many years, she resorts to dressing as a prostitute and deceiving Judah into sleeping with her so she might become pregnant. When Judah discovers her pregnancy, he threatens to burn her for participating in prostitution until she confronts him with evidence he is the father, at which time Judah acknowledges her as more righteous than he because he had denied her marriage to his remaining son. Had Judah followed through on his threat, he would have killed his own unborn sons.

Judah abandons his daughter-in-law, sexually uses her, threatens to kill her, and relents only when it becomes clear he is at fault.

 

Jephthah

The warrior judge Jephthah rashly promises God he will offer as a burnt offering the first thing that emerges from his house when he returns from defeating the Ammonites (Judges 11). When his daughter comes out dancing to celebrate his victory, he is devastated but insists he must honor his vow. She requests a period to mourn but accedes to his demand.

Jephthah apparently burns his daughter on the altar.

David

The story of David’s daughter Tamar unfurls slowly in layers of deceit (2 Samuel 13). Her half-brother Amnon desires her. He lies to their father, lies to family and servants, lies to and isolates her. Despite her desperate pleading, he brutally misuses then discards her, leaving her shamed and without recourse, her potential destroyed, her life ruined. Like Jacob’s sons, Tamar’s brother Absalom seeks murderous revenge. Like Dinah, Tamar disappears from the story.

Like Jacob, David says and does nothing.*

 

Each of these men is a leader in Israel, chosen by God to represent him to the nations, yet each catastrophically fails to care for the vulnerable in his own house.

 

God’s pattern of movement

Genesis 1 and 2 are each paradigmatic stories of God making an ordered land and placing people there to live in relationship with him. They and later Eden passages present a combined portrait of a well-watered mountain garden where God meets with people. In generation after generation, God takes his people on a similar journey:

In Genesis 1, from the formless and void to a land populated with plants, trees, and animals

In Genesis 2, from the empty ground where God forms man to the Eden garden

In Genesis 6-9, from the watery waste to Noah’s mountain vineyard

In Genesis 12, from a region of violent, powerful rulers to a fruitful land promised as an inheritance to Abram’s descendants

In Exodus, from the hostile spiritual desert of Egypt to God’s tangible presence on Sinai

In Numbers – Joshua, from the wilderness to the fruitful land of Canaan

 

From the earliest books of the Bible, God’s consistent work is evident, moving his people from the empty wilderness to a Garden of Eden-like place where he will provide for and be in relationship with them.

 

One leader imitates God’s pattern

Tucked away among stories of conquest, deceit, failure, and victory in the book of Joshua is another account of an Israelite leader and his daughter. We first meet Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite in Numbers 13 when he is sent out with Joshua and ten others on a leaders’ reconnaissance of the land of Canaan. In Numbers 14, when the leaders return, God himself identifies Caleb as one “with a different Spirit who followed me fully.” In the remaining short bursts of Caleb’s story we have, he stays true to God’s assessment, steadfast in obedience, comprehending and implementing God’s vision.

 

In Joshua 15, Caleb’s daughter Achsah is newly married to a future, righteous judge of Israel, Othniel. She boldly approaches her father, dissatisfied. Her inheritance is a wilderness. Unexpectedly, in this tiny passage, we find the faintest glimmer of hope among the Israelite leaders’ relationships with their daughters. The man who fully follows God imitates God’s character by adding to his daughter’s wilderness inheritance a new territory, a Garden of Eden-like fruitful land with double springs.

 

In Numbers 14, Caleb briefly stood alone as an advocate for God’s vision of bringing the Israelites into the land of Canaan, the land God intended as an inheritance for them, where he would dwell with them. In Joshua 15, Caleb stands alone among the stories of his fellow Israelite leaders and their daughters, not silent or powerless to act, but, as God consistently does, hearing her, recognizing her plight, and giving her a fruitful place to thrive.

*Thanks for this connection to Dr. Joanna Kline, whose Harvard PhD dissertation and upcoming book dwell extensively on parallels between David’s and Jacob’s families

The Ambiguous Genealogy of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite

The biblical books Numbers and Joshua tell us Caleb, a chief of the tribe of Judah, was the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite. 

There are at least three theories of his origins.

-In Genesis 15, God defines the land of Canaan to Abraham via its peoples including one called the Kenizzites. If descended from them, possibly Caleb’s wife or mother is Judahite or he is all Kenizzite but adopted into Judah from the among the “mixed multitude” of Exodus 12:38 and Numbers 11.

-Caleb has a couple of relatives named Kenaz (Joshua 15:17, Judges 1:13, 3:9-11, 1 Chronicles 4:13-15), so some posit that the designation “Kenizzite” refers to a clan within the tribe of Judah named after a Judahite ancestor called Kenaz. In this scenario, Caleb is all Israelite, all Judahite.  

-Esau’s descendants include a chief named Kenaz. It would take some chronological gymnastics to call him the father of the Kenizzite tribe above because God mentioned them to his grandfather’s grandfather years earlier, so this would be a different people group, one descended from Abraham via Esau, Canaan and the Hittites via his mother. 

 

Why does any of this matter? Patterns. Judah, through its generations, starting with the man himself, finds salvation and continues its line through foreigners. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba all marry into Judah and play key roles in the line of promise. Each of these foreign women appear to grasp God’s vision in ways his own people do not. Tamar’s and Ruth’s stories each hinge on a marriage tradition – when a man dies childless, his relative marries his widow, so his line may continue. 

If Caleb is of a Canaanite tribe, when God identifies him in Numbers 14 as an inheritor of the land, he stands for Judah and Canaanites, while Joshua stands for Ephraim. Through the two of them, Canaan, Judah, and Ephraim inherit the land. 

Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah – where he and Sara, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah are buried – from a Hittite. In Numbers, God promises Hebron (which includes Machpelah) to Caleb as an inheritance. If he is Hittite, Caleb unites Abraham’s and the Hittites’ lines in his inheritance. 

Caleb’s brother or uncle, depending on whose interpretation you accept, is named Kenaz, which arguably means “hunter.” Caleb means “dog.” The paired hunter and dog are ubiquitous in ancient imagery from kings to commoners. Kenaz’ son, also Caleb’s son-in-law, is named Othniel, “lion of God,” and is himself a righteous judge.

Hundreds of years later, a Calebite named Nabal, “fool,” dies. Like Tamar and Ruth, his widow Abigail marries a relative, a Judahite giant-killer who will lead from Hebron, the future king David. 

edited 8/3/2023

Exodus 23, God's Judgment, and the Ethics of the Conquest of Canaan

by Ben Thomas, March 2022

Our approach

In this project, we approach the stories of the Bible by giving them credit for what they purport to be, starting with the assumption that historical accounts describe historical events (albeit shaped by authorial/editorial intent), and remaining willing to say, “I don’t know.” In them, we find intentional, complex organization in the form of narrative threads, recurring themes, repeated word groups, and other literary devices that communicate information and cumulatively develop it, interpreting itself as we read forward and backward across patterns. As a result, we view Exodus 23, God’s direction to Israel to occupy Canaan, drive out its inhabitants, and destroy the monuments of the gods in the land, as part of a pattern that begins in Genesis 1. 

 

Breaking down Exodus 23

In Exodus 23, God tells Israel:

-I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. 

-My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites…and I will completely destroy them. 

-You shall not worship their gods…but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their sacred pillars in pieces. 

-I will send My terror ahead of you, and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. 

-I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites…

-I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you. -They shall not live in your land…

Many commentators have noted the tendency of ancient battle accounts to use hyperbole, claiming total destruction of a people they later fought against or made treaties with. Some biblical warfare accounts appear to do this as well, so hyperbole may take the razor edge off the harshness of God’s Exodus 23 statements. It remains inescapable though, that here and in following passages, God tells the Israelites to invade Canaan and kill or drive out its people. 

Scholarly views

Charlie Trimm‘s excellent book Destruction of the Canaanites considers scholarly approaches to this moral problem and the difficulties that accompany them. Our own interpretive stance sets aside those that assume the biblical accounts to be ahistorical or God to be dishonest, fickle, or ignorant. Within these constraints, the remaining scholarly claims Trimm cites tend to undermine the severity of the destruction by suggesting only adults were killed, only military strongholds were attacked, or even that physical fighting did not actually occur.

 

A judgment pattern

Exodus 23 begins what is arguably the 7th major judgment recorded in the biblical narrative. Using Genesis 1 as a template, there is a pattern evident in these judgment narratives beginning in Genesis 3. In it, God:

-hears cries of, sees oppressed people

-comes down

-assesses thorough corruption

-explains his actions

-is tangibly present in judgment

-imposes exile and/or death

-preserves a remnant

-gives the remnant new responsibilities (credit for this item to Charlie Trimm, shared in a private conversation) 

Not every item is obvious in every iteration, yet there is consistency in God’s response across the stories of the Fall, Cain’s murder of Abel, the Flood, Babel, Sodom, and the plagues on Egypt. Exodus 23 continues this pattern, though to see the Conquest’s elements clearly, we may need to draw on Genesis 15 and future Torah/Hexateuch passages. One instance might be explained away, but consistent action across generations suggests we are observing the character of God, one who sees and intervenes to overthrow oppressors and restore his people in a life-giving land. 

In contrast to scholarly approaches Trimm cites, this pattern undermines the idea that God’s orders regarding the Israelite occupation of Canaan are limited in scope or only affect military targets. There were no such restrictions in the Flood, the exile of Babel, Sodom’s destruction, or the plagues on Egypt. 

In examples of judgment prior to God’s command to the Israelites to drive out the people of Canaan, God sees corruption and/or hears the cries of the oppressed. 

 When God sees and hears, he moves to investigate.

When God comes down, he assesses the state of things, whether there is sin that requires a response.

After God assesses, when he determines judgment is necessary, he tells us what he is going to do and why. 

God does not merely pronounce judgment; he is present in the midst of it. Even when he sends a proxy, the biblical language blurs the distinction between God and the proxy. 

In Genesis 1, God’s plan for humans is that they be fruitful and multiply, fill the land and subdue it. In contrast, God’s judgment takes the form of death and/or exile. Rather than new life and filling the land, judgment means expulsion and death. 

Despite the terrible, often pervasive nature of God’s judgment, he ensures that a remnant survives, eventually to return to the land and continue in relationship with him. 

In a private conversation with Charlie Trimm, he related that he sees God giving the remnant new responsibilities as an element in the pattern and that the responsibilities tend to correspond to the failures that led to judgment. The text thoroughly supports his argument. In later passages, the new responsibility is a covenant with God’s chosen people. 

What can we learn from the pattern?

In the garden, God’s desire is to be in relationship with man. His commands are that man be fruitful, multiply, and fill the land and freely eat of all the trees except the one that brings death. Yet, when man chooses differently, God’s desire too is denied. Though God desired humans’ life and fruitfulness in the land, he assesses exile and death because he will not tolerate their continued access to the tree of life once they have eaten of the knowledge of good and evil.

As we follow God’s reasoning through each of these judgment accounts, there is little evidence of bloodthirsty vengeance. As people act corruptly, God deals with the resulting consequences. He does not impose his ideal – to give people life and relationship with him in a fruitful land – but the pattern suggests that thorough corruption that threatens his relationship with humans will move him to action.

Where do Christians fit?

Christians are under Jesus’ new covenant, which recalls the old pattern in that Jesus’ blood was poured out (Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20), so that those who receive him could be the remnant brought into the new land he intends for us (John 14:1-6). 

Jesus made statements interpreted by many as advocating a form of pacifism (Matthew 5), yet in his conversations with Roman soldiers (Matthew 8:5-13, Luke 3:14, 7:2-10), who served as both military and law enforcement in Jesus’ world, he gives them advice and compliments them but never admonishes them to leave their roles. 

In Acts 10, God simultaneously communicates with the apostle Peter and Cornelius, a centurion, so that the first Gentile Peter tells about Jesus is a Roman soldier. Once again, God compliments Cornelius and never tells him to leave his profession. 

Paul admonishes the Roman church to pay taxes and recognize that the government legitimately carries the sword (Romans 13:1-7). 

In the words and actions of Jesus, Peter, and Paul, we find strong support for peacemaking and loving our enemies but also positive recognition of soldiers and the function they perform. 

Practical reality

In the modern world, nearly every nation has both internal police forces and defense forces against external threats. In democratic countries, there are legal processes for determining when the government should use its power to arrest criminals or to wage war that involve investigation of claims of illegitimate action, presentation of an evidence-based case, adjudication, and, if the case is found to be valid, an official response backed by police or military force. 

At the time of this writing, we are watching as Vladimir Putin’s army systematically destroys the country of Ukraine and the people of Ukraine cry for help. The aggressor is not dissuaded by words or economic sanction. If other countries militarily intervene, they might save Ukrainians but would kill Russians and potentially escalate the conflict. If they don’t, more Ukrainians will die. Every apparent option involves destruction of humans made in the image of God. There is no ’good’ choice. 

Dilemma

When we hear the cries of the people of Ukraine under brutal, sustained assault, what should we do? In the biblical accounts of judgment, we observe God with a similar dilemma. He does not always intervene, sometimes delaying for generations. God does not reflexively resort to violence, neither does he shy away from it once he assesses its necessity. Although we may not see it concisely expressed in Exodus 23, the pattern beginning early in Genesis shows God to be slow to anger, responsive to the cries of the oppressed, willing to assess and communicate his assessment, present and irresistible in authority and judgment, and committed to preserving a remnant in relationship with him.

The Geography of Jacob's Sons

Following his father Isaac’s death, it appears Jacob remained in the vicinity of Hebron and that we can assume his sons’ movements radiated out from that center. 

Jacob’s son Joseph takes the focus in the narrative. We meet him as a boy, a dreamer, favored by his father, reviled by his brothers. Jacob sends this favored son to check on his brothers near Shechem, presumably at the land Jacob had purchased. When Joseph arrives, they are not there. A man near Shechem advises him they have gone to Dothan.  

These details may suggest intensifying motives for Joseph’s brothers’ betrayal – why are they in another Canaanite town? They had destroyed Shechem, looted it, and enslaved its people. Is it still a ruin? Are they looking for entertainment and companionship in another town? Are they capitalizing on their reputation as successful warriors to oppress others? What does their father suspect is going on that moved him to send Joseph to check on them?  

At Dothan, Joseph finds them, but we have no record of a conversation with them. They take and imprison him in a cistern in the wilderness. After some debate that included the option of killing him, they determine to sell him as a slave to passing traders. The traders are called Ishmaelites, so they are cousins, all descendants of Abraham. We learned in Genesis 25 that Ishmael’s descendants settled across a broad band of territory from Shur near the border of Egypt, all the way to Asshur near the Tigris far to the northeast, however Ishmael himself stayed in the wilderness of Paran not far northwest of Midian. That the traders are also called Midianites is not explained in the text. Commentators have suggested various explanations to resolve the apparent conflict. Given their proximity, it seems reasonable that descendants of Ishmael migrated from Paran to Midian, intermarried, and settled there. The author’s use of both terms may be part of a narrative strategy in Joseph’s story – the number two is present throughout. 

The traders take Joseph to Egypt and sell him to Potiphar, a captain of Pharaoh’s guard. Presumably, Joseph lives in the capitol city. The story gives us few details about Egypt or the Egyptians, but we have some ideas from modern archaeology and scholarship where he might have been. 

The author abruptly abandons Joseph and returns to the vicinity of Hebron to consider Judah, who departs to live with a Canaanite friend and marry a Canaanite woman in the town of Kezib. After a series of tragedies resulting in the loss of his wife and sons, leaving only his youngest and Tamar, the widow of his older sons, Judah travels to Timnah. On the way, he encounters an apparent prostitute who later is revealed to be Tamar. She bears Judah’s twin sons Perez and Zerah.

What does geography tell us about Judah’s story? He left his father’s house, is a day’s walk away. He has his sheep sheared by specialists at a remote location, so he is likely wealthy at this point. He has no obvious heir to continue his family line and receive his accumulating wealth. It is a story in some ways reminiscent of Abraham’s, but in Judah’s case, it was sin that denied him an heir. Tamar, who was exiled to her father’s house – a bit of geography, though we don’t know where her father’s house was – meets Judah near Timnah and tempts him to impregnate her. In the end, Judah is convicted by her actions and gains heirs through her because of her bold decisions.  

We jump immediately back into Joseph’s story. He is now likely in the Egyptian capitol living in the house of a captain of Pharaoh’s guard. His geography hints at a pattern – in his father’s house, he was elevated, not working but checking on his brothers, then they threw him in a pit. With Potiphar, he was elevated, given charge over the house, then Potiphar threw him in prison, apparently also a pit. Finally, pharaoh elevates him, putting him charge of all Egypt, supervising the work of gathering food in preparation for a famine. Considering the size of ancient Egypt gives us an idea of Joseph’s assigned responsibility – there were roughly 500 miles of Nile River in ancient Egypt with farmland on either side. In the north, the Nile fans out into a massive delta of fertile farmland. The pharaoh put Joseph in charge of it all, to gather food, to store it, to distribute it, to buy up the people’s resources and land, and ultimately to buy the people themselves for the pharaoh, 500 miles of farmland and workers all acquired for the government of Egypt at Joseph’s direction. 

When, in Genesis 42, Joseph’s brothers travel down to Egypt to buy grain, they have a roughly 200 mile, 10 day journey across a desert waste. They make the journey three times, the final one with their father and his entire household, a permanent move into the land of Egypt. Abraham had traveled there and been expelled by the pharaoh. God forbade Isaac from traveling there. God had also, in Genesis 15, forewarned Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved in a foreign land for four hundred years. Undoubtedly these events would be foremost in Jacob’s mind as he traveled toward Egypt. On the way, in Beersheba, God spoke to him in a night vision and assured him that he would remain with Jacob going down to Egypt, that he would be reunited with Joseph, and that he would return. 

After arriving in Egypt, Joseph arranges for his father to meet the pharaoh, who honors Jacob and gives his family the land of Goshen to live and raise flocks in. Goshen appears to be a territory rather than a city, perhaps stretching from ~15 miles short of the sea down to the Wadi Tumilat in the vicinity of the city of Avaris where archaeologists have uncovered a structure that some commentators allege has striking correlations with Joseph’s story.

As Joseph’s power grows and he welcomes his family, geography helps us to understand his significance, the promises God has made, and Jacob’s blessing and inheritance for his children: 

“So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. Each of the Egyptians sold his field, for the famine was severe. So the land became Pharaoh’s. Joseph made all the people slaves from one end of Egypt’s border to the other end of it. But he did not purchase the land of the priests because the priests had an allotment from Pharaoh and they ate from their allotment that Pharaoh gave them.” (Genesis 47:20-22, NET)

 

“Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen, and they owned land there. They were fruitful and increased rapidly in number. “ (Genesis 47:27, NET)

 

“Jacob said to Joseph, ‘The Sovereign God appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. He said to me, “I am going to make you fruitful and will multiply you. I will make you into a group of nations, and I will give this land to your descendants as an everlasting possession.”’ 

‘Now, as for your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, they will be mine. Ephraim and Manasseh will be mine just as Reuben and Simeon are.  Any children that you father after them will be yours; they will be listed under the names of their brothers in their inheritance. But as for me, when I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died—to my sorrow—in the land of Canaan. It happened along the way, some distance from Ephrath. So I buried her there on the way to Ephrath’ (that is, Bethlehem).” (Genesis 48:3-7, NET)

 

“Then Israel said to Joseph, ‘I am about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you back to the land of your fathers. As one who is above your brothers, I give to you the mountain slope, which I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow.’” (Genesis 48:21-22 , NET)

When Jacob gives Joseph this piece of land, we learn for the first time that Jacob “took [it] from the Amorites with [his] sword and…bow.” The land is apparently in the vicinity of Shechem because Joseph is later buried there, and Shechem lies between mountain slopes. There is no mention earlier in the narrative of a conflict with the Amorites or that the Amorites are in that area. These details are puzzling and don’t seem to fit well in the narrative. In my experience, it is exactly this kind of detail that is worth meditating on and praying over – perhaps God will reveal a truth we haven’t perceived before. Regarding this passage, it hasn’t happened for me yet.

“…[Jacob] instructed them, “I am about to go to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite. It is the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought for a burial plot from Ephron the Hittite. There they buried Abraham and his wife Sarah; there they buried Isaac and his wife Rebekah; and there I buried Leah. The field and the cave in it were acquired from the sons of Heth.” (Genesis 49:29-32, NET)

 

“So Joseph went up to bury his father; all Pharaoh’s officials went with him—the senior courtiers of his household, all the senior officials of the land of Egypt, all Joseph’s household, his brothers, and his father’s household. But they left their little children and their flocks and herds in the land of Goshen. Chariots and horsemen also went up with him, so it was a very large entourage.

When they came to the threshing floor of Atad on the other side of the Jordan, they mourned there with very great and bitter sorrow. There Joseph observed a seven-day period of mourning for his father. When the Canaanites who lived in the land saw them mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said, “This is a very sad occasion for the Egyptians.” That is why its name was called Abel Mizraim, which is beyond the Jordan.

So the sons of Jacob did for him just as he had instructed them. His sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, near Mamre. This is the field Abraham purchased as a burial plot from Ephron the Hittite. After he buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, along with his brothers and all who had accompanied him to bury his father.” (Genesis 50:7-14, NET)

The details in this account are also strange. The funeral party is somehow on the other side of the Jordan River. A direct path from Egypt to Hebron, where Abraham’s tomb is, is nowhere near the Jordan. In order to arrive at the location described, it appears the funeral party must travel as much as 250 miles off of a direct ~200 mile route to Hebron, roughly doubling the distance. Why would they do this? It seems the most likely explanation is to reenact Jacob’s entry into the land from the east where he met angels and wrestled with God.

“Joseph lived in Egypt, along with his father’s family. Joseph lived 110 years. Joseph saw the descendants of Ephraim to the third generation. He also saw the children of Makir the son of Manasseh; they were given special inheritance rights by Joseph.

 Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am about to die. But God will surely come to you and lead you up from this land to the land he swore on oath to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath. He said, ‘God will surely come to you. Then you must carry my bones up from this place.’ So Joseph died at the age of 110. After they embalmed him, his body was placed in a coffin in Egypt.” (Genesis 50:22-26, NET)

The Geography of Jacob and Esau

Jacob and Esau’s birthplace is not obvious in the story. Context suggests Beersheba or its vicinity. Following Jacob’s ruse that fooled Isaac into giving the younger Jacob the firstborn blessing, which moved Esau to threaten to kill Jacob, his mother Rebekah advises him to flee to Haran, the city where her brother Laban lives. His father Isaac tells him to flee to the region of Paddan Aram. A city named Harran exists there today, presumably in roughly the same location. 

Jacob leaves Beersheba for Haran and rests in a place called Luz. While traveling toward the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, he sees in Canaan a dream vision reminiscent of the story of Babel, another city between the Euphrates and Tigris, where the people attempted to build to heaven. After seeing God at the top of a stairway to heaven, he renames the place Bethel. 

Jacob arrives in the “land of the eastern people” and finds men from Haran, who tell him of his relatives. Soon his cousin Rachel and then her father Laban arrive. Laban deceives Jacob the deceiver into marrying his two daughters. Although not exactly geography, it is worth nothing the role the dark tent plays in Jacob’s story. Jacob deceives his blind father there, Laban and his daughters later deceive Jacob in one, and Rebekah deceives Laban regarding his idols in her tent. Like Abraham and Isaac before him, God blesses Jacob in another’s land despite his deception. 

Jacob apparently lives in the vicinity of Haran, though we find he moves his herds and flocks to keep them separate from Laban’s and, presumably, as needed to find food, water, and shelter. After working seven years each for his wives and agreeing to manage Laban’s flocks for a time for a cut of their offspring, Jacob learns from God that he should “Return to the land of [his] fathers and to [his] relatives.” Realizing that Laban does not want him to leave, Jacob resorts to deception and flees toward Canaan. “He left with all he owned. He quickly crossed the Euphrates River and headed for the hill country of Gilead.” 

“Three days later Laban discovered Jacob had left. So he took his relatives with him and pursued Jacob for seven days. He caught up with him in the hill country of Gilead.” (Genesis 31:21-22, NET)

Jacob and Laban negotiate an agreement and build stone pillars to memorialize it at a place Jacob calls Galeed, meaning something like “witness pile” and Mizpah, meaning “watchtower.” Laban names it Jegar Sahadutha, “witness stones” in Aramaic. The pile of stones is apparently on the top of a mountain, where it can be seen and function as a watchtower. 

“So Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he exclaimed, “This is the camp of God!” So he named that place Mahanaim.” (Genesis 32:1-2, NET) Jacob is on his way to Bethel where God met him at the top of a stairway to heaven, with angels traveling up and down. Here, he discovers angels encamped on the ground. This is quite a statement to let pass without further comment, yet the author does, creating narrative tension – What is the significance of angels living in a particular place here on earth? What is their intent? What event will they participate in? 

Yet the story moves on – Jacob sends messengers to contact his brother about meeting for the first time in decades in the hope of reconciliation. Fearing Esau’s response, Jacob divides his family and sends them ahead of him across the Jabbok River, a tributary of the Jordan. He is alone on the far side of the river from Esau’s approaching men when he encounters a “man.” They wrestle, the man wounds his hip, but Jacob prevails and demands a blessing. The man’s response suggests his divinity. Jacob apparently has wrestled with God. Jacob names the place Peniel, meaning “face of God,” then crosses the Jabbok at Penuel. The slight difference in the names has unknown significance, though at least one commentator assesses the latter to mean “He turns to God” as a resolution to the conflict between Jacob and the God-man.

John Sailhamer, in his book Genesis Unbound, proposes the land between four rivers as a geographic approximation of future Israel and uses this incident along with Joshua’s encounter with an angel as he enters the Promised Land in Joshua 5 as support for his theory: when the people of God approach the land of promise from the east, they are met by an angel, just as angels were posted east of Eden to keep Adam and Eve from returning. Archaeologist Adam Zertal in his book A Nation Born proposes that structures he found in the vicinity of Jacob’s crossing of the Jabbok and Jordan into the land correlated with locations and purpose of the conquest-era Israelite Gigals, meaning that both Jacob and Joshua would have met an angel and crossed into the land at roughly the same location.

The Genesis description and the limits placed on a traveler by the geography help us to make a well-informed guess about the hills on which Jacob and his family’s actions took place. In the below images, we can see a narrow route through the mountains carved by the Jabbok River. Jacob apparently stayed on the north side of the river until he neared the Jordan, split his family into two camps, possibly on two hills across the river from each other in defensible positions with good visibility.

Jacob finally meets Esau, who is coming up from Edom in the south. Esau’s territory, Edom, will return to prominence in the biblical narrative during the Conquest and later in the Prophets. Once reconciled, Esau invites (pressures?) Jacob to travel with him to Edom. Jacob defers, dishonestly telling Esau he will meet him there in time, then travels northwest toward Shechem rather than south toward Edom.  

While there are later references to a Sukkoth in this area in Gideon’s story and some scholars have engaged in informed speculation about its location – on a hill north of the Jabbok, east of the Jordan – a precise location for Jacob’s Sukkoth is unlikely to be found because the temporary shelters its name refers to would likely leave no trace distinguishable from uncountable nomadic herders over the intervening millennia.  

“After he left Paddan Aram, Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem in the land of Canaan, and he camped near the city. Then he purchased the portion of the field where he had pitched his tent; he bought it from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for 100 pieces of money. There he set up an altar and called it ‘The God of Israel is God.’” (Genesis 33:18-20, NET)

This short passage contains significant hooks connecting it to stories past and future. 

A careful reader will notice the city is named Shechem and so is the son of its ruler. We have seen this before in the narrative, first with Cain in Genesis 4:17. It’s an indicator of a worldly ruler attempting to make a name for himself and his family, a thread that runs from Cain through Lamech, Nimrod, and Babel. This is a place in rebellion against God. 

Jacob purchases land near Shechem for 100 pieces of money, an event recalled in Joshua 24:32, when Joseph’s bones, having been disinterred from Egypt during the Exodus, are finally laid to rest on his father’s land during the Conquest. Jacob will send Joseph to find his brothers near Shechem, presumably on this land he owns. The young Joseph will be forcibly removed from this land, then returned here long after his death. In contrast to the pagan ruler, Jacob builds an altar and names it “The God of Israel is God.” Although he includes himself in the name (he too is apparently at least a little vain) his focus is on God; he is claiming pagan territory in God’s name. The one previous story of land purchase in Canaan was Abraham’s purchase of land near Hebron on which he would bury Sarah and later be buried himself.  

The textual hints about the nature of Shechem pan out, and we find that Shechem, like Lamech and the sons of God before him, is a sexual abuser. Abraham rescued Lot when he was kidnapped, so also do Jacob’s sons rescue their sister Dinah. Unlike Abraham who refused to benefit materially from the rescue and was blessed by Melchizedek as approved by God, Jacob’s sons pillage and destroy Shechem and were cursed by Jacob and apparently the surrounding peoples so that Jacob’s family must flee in fear of retribution. God supernaturally protects them as they travel toward Bethel, where Jacob first saw God as he fled his own consequences of theft as a young man. At Bethel, Jacob builds an altar and names it El Bethel, reaffirming his commitment to God and claim of the land for God.  

Rachel, the favored wife whose life is marked by weeping and the threat of death, goes into labor and, after bearing a son Benjamin, dies near Ephrath, later known as Bethlehem. After burying her, Jacob moves on to a place called Migdal Eder, likely a high place in the vicinity of Bethlehem with a watchtower for guarding flocks of sheep. Its location is not known. Here, his son Reuben betrays him by sleeping with his concubine/wife Bilhah.  

Jacob then moves on to Mamre near Kiriath Arba, also known as Hebron, where his father Isaac dies. Jacob and Esau bury him in the cave containing Abraham, Sarah, and his wife Rebekah’s remains.

Here, the text makes a departure from Jacob’s narrative as it did with Isaac’s to focus on the other son not in the line of promise. By giving us the geography of Esau and his descendants, it prepares us to receive future narratives throughout the Hebrew Bible. Esau and his descendants marry into the surrounding cultures – Hittites, Hivites, Ishmaelites, and apparently Horites. They live in Seir, a mountainous region southeast of the modern Dead Sea, which became known as Edom, another name for Esau. Esau’s apparent descendants the Amalekites later live to the west near the border of Egypt, perhaps ranging across Sinai and Seir as raiders. 

Jacob’s further movements correlate well with those of some of his sons, so we will consider the end of his life in the next post, The Geography of Jacob’s Sons.

The Geography of Isaac and Ishmael

The account of Isaac’s birth does not mention a location. Context suggests somewhere in the vicinity of Gerar and Beersheba. 

When Ishmael laughs at Isaac, the child named “laughter,” Abraham exiles Hagar and Ishmael to wander in the wilderness of Beersheba. Ishmael later lives in the wilderness of Paran (which we will again see during the Israelites’ wilderness wandering following the Exodus) and marries a wife from Egypt.

Abraham negotiates with Abimelech of Gerar for wells in Beersheba. It is apparently from there that God calls Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on a mountain in Moriah. Assuming this is the same Mount Moriah Solomon builds his temple on (2 Chronicles 3:1), it is in the vicinity of Melchizedek’s Salem.  

The following accounts are sparse and focus on Abraham, so we do not have certainty about Isaac’s whereabouts. Interestingly, after the sacrifice of the ram rather than Isaac on Mount Moriah, we learn that Abraham returned with his servants to Beersheba but nothing about where Isaac went. When Abraham buys the field and cave of Machpelah and buries Isaac’s mother Sarah, the account is silent about Isaac.

We next hear of Isaac and his location when Abraham sends a servant to find a wife for him. He is mourning his mother in the wilderness near Beer Lahai Roi, where Hagar realized God saw her. Though unclear on their meeting place, it seems most reasonable to receive Genesis 24:62 to mean that Isaac came to Hebron (though Beersheba is also a strong candidate) from Beer Lahai Roi to meet Rebekah, while Rebekah came from Aram Naharaim. It appears that Isaac travels from just inside the Genesis 15:18 southwestern border of the land - “the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…’” (ESV) – while Rebekah travels from just outside its northern border. They approach one another, traversing the whole length of the land to meet and become one. 

Rebekah and her son Jacob’s stories spend significant time north of the Euphrates River with Abraham’s extended family. Rebekah lives in a region called Aram Naharaim and the city of Nahor, Abraham’s brother. Isaac later tells Jacob to flee to Paddan Aram, where Rebekah’s family lives. The distinction between the regions of Aram Naharaim and Paddan Aram is unclear if there is one at all. The fact that Abraham left from Haran and his grandson Jacob flees there suggests that the extended family remained in the same region and that the use of different names may emphasize their different meanings or the region’s name in two languages rather than two distinct locations. Paddan Aram means “Plain of Aram” in Aramaic and Aram Naharaim means “Aram between Two Rivers.” Rebekah’s brother is called “Laban the Aramean,” so the repeated use of Aram and Aramean likely gives intentional weight to Abraham’s family’s background as Arameans.

God tells Rebekah that her twin sons Jacob and Esau are two nations, but we do not learn the location of their birth.  

During a famine, Isaac travels to Gerar where God forbids him from going to Egypt for help and tells him instead to rely on God’s provision. After an episode recalling Abraham’s in which he lies about and uses his wife in attempt to gain favor with Abimelech, like Abraham, God blesses Isaac despite his bad behavior. He becomes an annoyance to the people in the land because of his success and the resources all his cattle are consuming, so he moves progressively farther from Gerar until he and Abimelech can resolve the conflict, allowing him to settle peacefully at Beersheba.

The account of Isaac’s sons’ birth does not mention a location. Jacob’s ruse to steal the blessing Isaac intended for Esau likely took place at Beersheba because Jacob flees from there to meet Rebekah’s family. At this point, the focus shifts to Jacob’s story. Isaac and Rebekah’s experience is a mystery. Jacob returns to Isaac in Mamre outside the city of Kiriath Arba also known as Hebron. Jacob and Esau bury him there with Rebekah in the cave where his father and mother are buried. 

Regarding Ishmael’s family, Genesis 25 tells us “His descendants settled from Havilah to Shur, which runs next to Egypt all the way to Asshur.” Interestingly, these boundaries are similar to those given to Abraham for Canaan. They reach from the northern Sinai peninsula to the vicinity of Nineveh in the northeast, between the Tigris and Euphrates. The location of Havilah is not known. Ishmael’s descendants’ territory stretches from a little west of Abraham’s promised land toward Egypt in Shur to the vicinity of the Tigris River, northeast of the apparent north border of the promised land - from Shur to Asshur. In Genesis 16 and 17, God says to Abraham that Ishmael will live away from his brothers and “I will indeed bless him, make him fruitful, and give him a multitude of descendants. He will become the father of twelve princes; I will make him into a great nation.” (Genesis 17:20, NET) The scope of his descendants’ territory is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Ishmael’s father.

The locations in Isaac’s story tell a subtle story of their own. Early in his life, he lives with Abraham, but following his near-sacrifice on Mount Moriah, he disappears from Abraham’s story until after his mother Sarah’s death. We next find him near Beer Lahai Roi, where Hagar fled with Ishmael after Sarah ordered them away from her family. Was he seeking God in the wilderness after nearly being sacrificed? Was he running away from his family as Hagar did? Was he in a kind of exile that prefigures future events? It’s difficult to know. Much of Isaac’s story is an enigma. We know with specificity where he was nearly sacrificed and later that he re-opened his father’s wells after the Philistines filled them in, finally settling at Beersheba. When his son Jacob returns, years after fleeing his Esau’s wrath, Isaac is in Kiriath Arba, and his wife is not mentioned. Finally, Jacob and Esau bury him in the cave of Machpelah with his mother and father.

The Geography of Abraham

After God scatters and disinherits the rebellious people of Babel in Shinar (between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), he purposes to start a new nation with one who will remain faithful to him, Abram. God calls Abram’s family out of Ur to live in and inherit the land of Canaan. (Genesis 10-11)

There is more than one ancient city in the vicinity of the Tigris and Euphrates named Ur, so scholars debate about which one Genesis refers to. One candidate lies along the Euphrates in the southeast as it approaches the Persian Gulf. Extensive archaeological excavations have revealed a large city with canals, residential and government buildings, and a well-preserved ziggurat. Another, more recently identified candidate lies close to modern Harran, which may make it the most likely of the possibilities.

Any time we put an ancient name on a map, we invite controversy. These are drawn from multiple sources, many of which can be found in our Resources page. All Bible quotations taken and edited for size from NET.

Genesis 11 - Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. Haran died in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans…

Terah took his son Abram…and…set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. When they came to Haran, they settled there.

Although the route Abram takes into the land is not specified, the locations he first visits suggest his grandson Jacob later follows in Abram’s footsteps, so we borrow from Jacob’s story and the locations of ancient roads to fill in Abram’s detail.

Genesis 12 - Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot… entered the land of Canaan.

Abram traveled through the land as far as the oak tree of Moreh at Shechem.

Abram moves south through the land, stopping at locations that will reappear throughout Israel’s national history. In each place he builds an altar to the Lord near trees, water, or a view of lush vegetation, recalling Eden, where God met with man.

Genesis 12 - Then he moved from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.

Abram continually journeyed by stages down to the Negev.

There was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt

Pharaoh gave his men orders about Abram, and so they expelled him

Abram’s journey to Egypt in a famine prefigures his descendants leaving the land God promised as their inheritance for a foreign land. He meets a foreign woman (the Egyptian Hagar’s name literally means “the foreigner”) who he eventually has a relationship with. Disaster follows. All of these elements return in future stories.

Genesis 13 - Abram went up from Egypt into the Negev

…he journeyed from place to place from the Negev as far as Bethel. He returned to the place where he had pitched his tent at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai.

After his expulsion from Egypt by its ruler, who here fits the pattern of the seed of the serpent, an enemy of God, Abram returns to Bethel, the “house of God".

He and Lot agree to part ways because their flocks are in competition with each other for scarce resources. They view the Jordan River valley from a high place near Bethel. Lot moves down into the valley in the vicinity of the city of Sodom. There are five named cities near Sodom, sometimes called the cities of the plain. Scholars differ on the location of Sodom, some arguing it is to the south of the Dead Sea, others to the north. The northern location makes the most sense with this story, though later ones may cause you to reconsider.

Genesis 13 - Lot looked up and saw the whole region of the Jordan. He noticed that all of it was well watered…like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, all the way to Zoar. Lot chose for himself the whole region of the Jordan and traveled toward the east.

After they part, God tells Abram to walk through the land, for he will give it to Abram. Abram travels down to stay near the city of Hebron. As he is living there, a coalition of kings from the vicinity of the Euphrates River sets out on a military campaign to punish treaty violators among peoples to Abram’s east including Sodom, where Lot lives.

Many of the names of the clans the coalition seeks to punish occur only two places in the Bible: here in Genesis 14 and in Deuteronomy 2, where Moses associates them with the powerful, tall Anakites who, in that time, live in Hebron. Deuteronomy appears to group all these peoples under the name Rephaites or Rephaim. As with many of the seed of the serpent figures in the biblical narrative, we do not have a lot of specific detail about them. We are left with the sense though that they are powerful, evil enemies of God’s people. Abram’s and Lot’s descendants drive them out of their lands and settle there.

Interestingly, the path the coalition of kings takes is roughly the same though in the opposite direction of the path the Israelites, Abram’s descendants, will take in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua as they approach the land of Canaan to occupy it as their inheritance promised through Abram. In Numbers 21, the Israelites encounter Og of Bashan, who Joshua 13 tells us was among the last of the Rephaim, in the same area that the five kings fight the Rephaim in Abram’s day. They also fight the Amorites, the people Abram lives with in Hebron. In Deuteronomy, the Rephaim are enemies, yet here in Genesis, Abram is loosely allied with them.

Genesis 14 - At that time Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Kedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations went to war against Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). These last five kings joined forces in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea)…Kedorlaomer and the kings who were his allies came and defeated the Rephaites in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzites in Ham, the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in their hill country of Seir, as far as El Paran, which is near the desert. Then they attacked En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh) again, and they conquered all the territory of the Amalekites, as well as the Amorites who were living in Hazezon Tamar.

Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) went out and prepared for battle. In the Valley of Siddim they met Kedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of nations, Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar. Four kings fought against five. Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits. When the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, they fell into them, but some survivors fled to the hills.

Lot’s city Sodom loses the battle, and the coalition of kings takes him captive. We suddenly learn that Abram has a small army of trained men. They chase down the coalition and rescue the captives.

Genesis 14 - …Now Abram was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, the brother of Eshcol and Aner…When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive, he mobilized his 318 trained men who had been born in his household, and he pursued the invaders as far as Dan. …He chased them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus.

After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer…the king of Sodom went out to meet Abram in the Valley of Shaveh (known as the King’s Valley). Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine.

At the city of Salem, there is a priest-king who serves God, Melchizedek. He comes out to meet Abram, to bless him, and to assure him that God was with him in his rescue of the captives. Abram is now a regional power, recognized by the kings of surrounding cities.

Genesis 15 - the Lord made a covenant with Abram: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”

The “river of Egypt” makes several appearances in the Bible as a border of Israel. There is a long seasonal stream, today called Wadi al-Arish, in the northeast Sinai peninsula, which may be the best candidate. At times, it is not clear whether this stream or the Nile River is the more accurate interpretation, and it may be that the biblical authors sometimes intentionally leave the issue ambiguous in prophetic language to suggest more than one idea at once. In an earlier post on the geography of Genesis 1-11, we saw that Genesis 2 associates the river that flows through Cush (which could be received as the Nile River) and the Euphrates River with Eden. Here, the river of Egypt and the Euphrates are borders of the land God is promising Abram as an inheritance.

In the image below, the white area in the lower left/southwest that leads from the mountains to the sea is the Wadi al-Arish, thought by some scholars to be the river of Egypt.

Genesis 16 - The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring of water in the wilderness—the spring that is along the road to Shur….the well was called Beer Lahai Roi. (It is located between Kadesh and Bered.)

When Abram’s wife Sarai decided she no longer wanted to wait for God to give them the son he had promised them, she told Abram to try to have one with her servant Hagar, an Egyptian. When Sarai mistreats her, there are cultural and geographical ideas in play. Hagar appears to flee with her son (and Abram’s) to the edge of the territory God is promising Abram’s descendants back toward Egypt where she is from. God sees and talks with her, and she returns for now to Hebron and Abram’s family.

At Hebron, God meets with Abram, gives him the name Abraham, promises him a son with Sarai-now named Sarah, and tells Abraham that he is going down to judge Sodom, one of the cities of the plain we have seen above. Though there are several proposed sites, the location of Sodom is not known, so I have not attempted to show the locations in the destruction of Sodom and Lot’s escape.

After Isaac is born, Sarah orders Abraham to exile Hagar and their son Ishmael. Abraham complies, and she once again travels to the wilderness on the edge of the border of the promise to Abraham and Egypt. Ishmael eventually settles in Paran to the southeast.

Genesis 20 - Abraham journeyed from there to the Negev region and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While he lived as a temporary resident in Gerar

…Abimelech said, “Look, my land is before you; live wherever you please.”

Genesis 21 - Hagar…went wandering aimlessly through the wilderness of Beer Sheba.

…Ishmael…lived in the wilderness of Paran. His mother found a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

[Abraham and Abimelech] made a treaty at Beer Sheba; then Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer Sheba…So Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for quite some time.

Abraham deals with the king of Gerar as he had with the pharaoh of Egypt, however Abimelech responds righteously, putting Abraham to shame. He lets Abraham stay in his territory because he sees that God blesses Abraham.

Abraham receives a shocking command from God and travels to Mount Moriah with Isaac to fulfill it. Mount Moriah is apparently in the immediate vicinity of Melchizedek’s Salem, where God blessed Abraham after a successful hostage rescue of Lot and the people of Sodom. Now God asks Abraham to sacrifice his own son there. Abraham complies, apparently understanding that it is a test and that God will provide.

Genesis 22 - …after these things God tested Abraham...“Take your son—your only son, whom you love, Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah!”

On the third day Abraham caught sight of the place in the distance.

Abraham returned to his servants, and they set out together for Beer Sheba where Abraham

stayed.

After the averted sacrifice episode, we learn that Abraham and his servants return to Beersheba, but Isaac is not mentioned.

Sarah dies, and Abraham negotiates the purchase of a cave and field in the vicinity of Hebron, so he can own the land where he buries her.

When Abraham dies, Ishmael and Isaac also bury him there.

The Geography of Genesis 1 - 11

In Genesis, geography links stories that are distant from each other in the text and can aid in understanding characters’ difficulties, motives, state of mind, and relationships with God and other people. Even topographical details like deserts, mountains, and rivers make significant contributions to the Genesis narratives.

In his book Genesis Unbound, John Sailhamer proposes an unusual but surprisingly compelling view of the four rivers in Genesis 2 – they define the territory in which the events of Genesis take place, perhaps even the approximate boundaries of a future Israel. 

Genesis names the Tigris and Euphrates. Sailhamer proposes that the river that flows through Cush is the Nile (whose headwaters are in the ancient land of Cush, modern Ethiopia and Sudan) and points out that the only other major river in view in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) is the Jordan. 

With the exception of Noah’s post-flood experience, all the action in named places in the Torah happens in territory bounded by these rivers.

Following the flood, the ark lands on “one of the mountains of Ararat,” presumably in the modern region of the same name. Noah's descendants build cities along the Tigris and Euphrates.

Genesis 10 defines Canaan as parts of modern day Lebanon and Israel, preparing us for God's call of Abram in the coming chapters.