Benjamin SuchardWho Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (III)
Alright. Gilead is a spectrum and Og of Bashan isn’t real, he can’t hurt you. Let’s talk about some of the specific places in Bashan. Here’s the map again.
Map by Wikimedia user Amitchell125.Kenath/Nobah
And Nobah went and seized Kenath and its surrounding villages. And he called it Nobah, after himself.
Num 32:42
Kenath is usually identified with Qanawat, in Jabal al-Druze (Roman Auranitis). That’s pretty far northeast, but the name checks out, and we don’t get any other information about Nobah or Kenath. So, OK. As this volcanic field is something of a refuge area, if Kenath/Nobah was really inhabited by Israelites (when?), I wonder whether we’re really dealing with an isolated conquest or maybe the last remnant of broader Israelite settlement in Bashan at some point.
Salchah
Generally identified as Salkhad, which fits as Salchah appears to indicate the easternmost point in Og’s kingdom. Fine.
Argob
Next: we’ve seen a few verses in Deuteronomy 3 that refer to the district of Argob in Bashan, most interestingly:
Jair, son of Manasseh took all the district of Argob, as far as the border (or: territory) of the Geshurites and the Maachatites. And he called them after himself, the Bashan, Havvoth-Jair (the villages of Jair), until this very day.
Deut 3:14
The only other reference is in Kings, in a list of King Solomon’s administrators and their districts:
Ben-Geber in Ramoth-Gilead: to him belonged the villages of Jair, son of Manasseh, which are in the Gilead; to him belonged the district of Argob, which is in the Bashan, sixty big towns, with wall and bronze bolt.
1 Kgs 4:13
Argob is commonly identified as the Lajat, Roman Trachonitis. This seems to be based on the translation as ṭrkwnʾ in Targumei Onqelos and Jonathan. But this seems unlikely to me for two reasons. First, it’s pretty far away; but then, so is Qanawat. But more importantly, the Lajat is a lava field that looks like this:
As Argob may come from a root that also yields a rare Hebrew word for ‘clod’, this is normally taken as a plus for the identification as this seems like a fittingly ‘rocky’ landscape. But it doesn’t look like a great place to maintain sixty big towns. Note the distinct lack of towns on the map of the Hauran, or on Google Maps, or on this 2011 CIA population density map:
Circled: the Lajat, mostly coded as 1 to 5 inhabitants per square kilometre.Where else could Argob be? Here’s what we know:
Geshur is somewhere in or near Aram; it’s the homeland of Absalom’s mother, one of David’s wives, who is confusingly also called Maacah. The region of Maacah seems to have been in the same general area; one clue is the place name Abel-Beth-Maacah, in the northwestern bit of the Galilee panhandle, close to Dan. Both names are usually associated with the Golan Heights, with most identifications placing Maacah in the north (and spilling over to the west) and Geshur in the south.
Whether we trust the Geshur and Maacah indication or not, I think the Golan Heights actually make for a much better Argob than the Lajat:
The other main candidate for Argob I would consider is the Nuqrah, Roman Batanea, the central and, I believe, most fertile part of Bashan. This is where Ashtaroth and Edrei were located and it probably beats the Golan on the sixty big towns front. It’s also adjacent to Gilead, Geshur, and maybe Maacah. As it’s less of a clearly circumscribed area, though, I guess I’d expect it to just be referred to as Bashan, or for Ashtaroth and Edrei to be mentioned more consistently with regards to Argob (as they are with regards to Bashan as Og’s kingdom). So my money is still on the Golan.
Havvoth-Jair
Jair is a son or descendant of Manasseh, who took a bunch of ḥawwōṯ and named them after himself. The details differ:
textJair, son of…number of townsregionNum 32:41Manasseh(not mentioned)Gilead?Deut 3:14Manasseh(not mentioned)BashanJosh 13:30(not mentioned)60? or total in Bashan?BashanJdg 10:3-4(a Gileadite)30Gilead1 Kgs 4:13Manasseh(not mentioned)Gilead1 Chron 2:22-23Segub, grandson of Machir, son of Manasseh23 (total together with Kenath and surroundings = 60)GileadDeut 3 and Josh 13 both conflate Havvoth-Jair with Bashan, the kingdom of Og, as a whole; Deut 3 additionally throws Argob into the mix. Based on the other early attestations (so excluding Chronicles, although it doesn’t contradict it), it seems that Havvoth-Jair was originally placed in Gilead. It’s been suggested that the Deuteronomist conflated it with Argob and Bashan as a whole based on the verse in 1 Kgs 4, maybe based on a copying or reading error: “to him belonged the villages of Jair, son of Manasseh, which are in the Gilead; to him belonged the district of Argob, which is in the Bashan, sixty big towns”. I don’t think we can localize Havvoth-Jair any better than that, other than that it probably wasn’t too far from Ramoth-Gilead either.
Overview
So it looks like we’ve got these Israelite towns and regions in Bashan:
- Kenath/Nobah: Qanawat, northeastern part of Jabal al-Druze (Num 32, 1 Chron 2)
- Argob: Golan Heights (1 Kgs 4, Deut 3)
- Bashan as a whole, the kingdom of Og, from the territory of the Maachatites and Geshurites (Golan, Hula Valley) to Salcha (Salkhad; Deut, Josh, some other references)
- Havvoth-Jair: originally in Gilead, “reassigned” to Bashan
What stands out again is the apparently secondary nature of the Og tradition and the northward shift of (tribes associated with) Gilead. Can we explain this? If I don’t lose interest, we’ll give it a shot in Part IV.
#Bible #Chronicles #Deuteronomy #Hebrew #Joshua #Kings #Numbers
Marek Pavliš 🇨🇿 🇪🇺
Global News Edmonton
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Rémi Eismann
