בֵּית הָֽעֲרָבָה

From the study of Joshua 18:22

Range of meaning

A compound place name: beit ('house, household, settlement, sanctuary of') plus ha-ʿaravah ('the Arabah'). On its own, ʿaravah (H6160) can mean any dry steppe or desert plain (Isaiah 35:1). With the article it usually means the Jordan rift valley, from the Sea of Galilee down past the Dead Sea (called 'the Sea of the Arabah') to the Gulf of Aqaba.

Against the English

English versions transliterate it as 'Beth-arabah', which is correct for a proper name. The cost is that the reader loses the picture the Hebrew gives at once: a town on the hot, low valley floor, as opposed to hill towns like Bethel in the same verse.

Used elsewhere in the period

Joshua 15:6 puts Beth-arabah on Judah's northern border, and Joshua 15:61 lists it among Judah's wilderness towns. In Joshua 18:18 the Hebrew has the boundary pass 'the slope opposite the Arabah', but the Greek Septuagint reads 'Baitharaba' there, i.e. Beth-arabah, which many scholars think is the original reading. The site is often placed at ʿAin el-Gharabeh, southeast of Jericho near the Jordan, but that is not certain.