Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah – Part 46

Part 1

According to the Book of Numbers, the thirty-seventh Station of the Exodus was a place called Oboth:

And they departed from Punon, and pitched in Oboth. And they departed from Oboth, and pitched in Ijeabarim, in the border of Moab. (Numbers 33:43-44)

Unlike Punon, mention of Oboth is not restricted to the Catalogue of Stations in Numbers 33. Oboth is also mentioned in the main Exodus narrative, in Numbers 21:

And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. And the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in Oboth. And they journeyed from Oboth, and pitched at Ijeabarim, in the wilderness which is before Moab, toward the sunrising. (Numbers 21:9-11)

Oboth is a Hebrew word, meaning water-bags:

Oboth (Orr 2177)

Alternative translations include water-skins and hollow passes:

Oboth (McClintock & Strong 283)

In James Strong’s Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, Oboth is Number 88, the plural of Number 178. It is possibly derived from Number 1:

Strong’s 88, 178, 1

Identity

In the previous article in this series, we identified Punon with Wadi Feynan and the nearby archaeological site of Khirbet Faynan. If we assume that the average pace of the Israelites was about 24-32 km per day (Hoffmeier 120) and that they were travelling north along the Arabah, then Oboth must be sought somewhere in the vicinity of ‘Ain el Jarbāna or ‘Ain Dibā‘a:

Oboth

Some scholars have identified Oboth with another spring, ‘Ain el-Weibeh:

The site of Oboth is unknown. Many have identified it with ‘Ain el-Weibeh south of the Dead Sea and west of Punon (= Feinan), although this identification is uncertain. (Ashley 409)

This makes no sense to me. The Israelites were travelling north from Punon, not west (Miller 581). ‘Ain el-Weibeh has also been identified with Kadesh Barnea (Wilson 210).

The Legends of the Jews

In Louis Ginzberg’s The Legends of the Jews, the Israelites pass through Oboth and Iye-abarim after departing from Punon and before crossing the Arnon. The Arnon was a river in Transjordan that flowed into the Dead Sea. It is generally identified today with Wadi Mujib:

The murmurs of the people, on account of which God sent upon them the serpents, took place in Zalmonah, a place where grew only thorns and thistles. Thence they wandered on to Punon, where God’s punishment overtook them. In the following two stations also, in Oboth and Iye-abarim, they continued their hostile actions against God, who for this reason was full of wrath against them, and did not look upon them again with favor until they reached Arnon. (Ginzberg 337)

Numbers 21 places another station—Zared—between Ijeabarim and Arnon:

And they journeyed from Oboth, and pitched at Ijeabarim, in the wilderness which is before Moab, toward the sunrising. From thence they removed, and pitched in the valley of Zared. From thence they removed, and pitched on the other side of Arnon, which is in the wilderness that cometh out of the coasts of the Amorites: for Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites. (Numbers 21:11-13)

Biblical Tamar Park

Tamar

The Biblical Tamar Park is an Israeli archaeological site in an oasis in the Arabah. Discovered in the 1980s, and covering an area of about 22 hectares next to Highway 90, it comprises a fortress—Hatzevah Fortress—which dates back, it is thought, to the Solomonic Period. A kibbutz was established here in 1967 with the name Ir Ovot, which means City of Oboth. This name reflects the belief that the Biblical Oboth was located somewhere in this region.

In my opinion, Tamar Park is too far to the west to be the actual location of Oboth, and the archaeological remains do not date back to the time of the Exodus.

Hatzevah Fortress

Bozrah

About 15 km northeast of Khirbet Faynan (Punon) lay the ancient Edomite “capital” of Bozrah—generally identified with the modern Jordanian town of Buseira. Could there be a connection between the toponyms Bozrah and Oboth? Might these have been one and the same place?

I have hitherto assumed that the Israelites journeyed north from Punon, along the lowlying Arabah, but perhaps they proceeded in a northeasterly direction, up into the cooler highlands. In historical times, the so-called King’s Highway, which ran from Heliopolis in Egypt to Resafa in Syria, followed this line (Aharoni 55). In future articles in this series, we will see that there are very good reasons for believing that the Israelites did indeed leave the lowlying Arabah and ascend into the eastern uplands—referred to as the Land of Seir in Genesis 36:30—though where they did this is unknown.

But what of Bozrah? The name means enclosure (Strong’s 1224) and comes from a primitive root meaning to be isolated or inaccessible by height or fortification. When the site was excavated by Crystal-Margaret Bennett in the 1970s, she discovered a major Edomite settlement dating back to the Iron Age II—ie 1000-586 BCE in the conventional chronology, or significantly later than the time of the Exodus:

Busayra was settled from the late eighth century to c. 300/200 BC, with some reuse, perhaps for agricultural purposes, in the Nabataean and Roman periods. It is ideally located on an easily defended, high spur among rich arable lands, providing secure opportunities for agriculture and pastoralism and maximizing proximity to the copper mines of Faynan and to the crossing of the Wadi Arabah used by the Arabian incense trade. Piotr Bienkowski concludes that Busayra was not a capital of a nation state, as it is often described, but the administrative and religious centre of the supratribal authority of the heterarchical state of Edom, recognized and treated as kings by the Assyrians. (Bienkowski Abstract)

So Bozrah probably did not exist at the time of the Exodus. Nevertheless, if the Israelites proceeded in a northeasterly direction from Punon, their next encampment may have been in the vicinity of the future site of Bozrah (Kitchen 194).

Bozrah

Conclusion

The location of Oboth remains uncertain. As a working hypothesis, I will place it somewhere in the Arabah in the vicinity of ‘Ain el Jarbāna or ‘Ain Dibā‘a, while leaving open the possibility that it lay to the east of the Arabah, in the hilly uplands of the Land of Seir.

To be continued ...

References

Yohanan Aharoni, A F Rainey (translator & editor, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia (1979)
Timothy R Ashley, The Book of Numbers, William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids MI (1993)
Piotr Bienkowski, Busayra: Excavations by Crystal M Bennett 1971-1980, British Academy Monographs in Archaeology, Number 13, Oxford University Press, New York (2002)
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Volume 3, Translated from the German by Paul Radin, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia (1911)
James K Hoffmeier, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2005)
Kenneth A Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids MI (2003)
John McClintock, James Strong, Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Volume 7, Harper & Brothers, New York (1883)
J Maxwell Miller, The Israelite Journey through (around) Moab and Moabite Toponymy, Journal of Biblical Literature, Volume 108, Number 4 (Winter, 1989), pp 577-595, The Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, GA (1989)
James Orr (General Editor), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume 4, The Howard-Severance Company, Chicago (1915)
James Strong, Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, in The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Eaton & Mains, New York (1890)
Charles William Wilson (editor), Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt, Volume 3, J S Virtue & Co, Limited, London (1881)

Image Credits

Oboth: University of Texas Libraries, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, Jerusalem D Survey, Great Britain War Office and Air Ministry (1960), Public Domain