Aroer in the Negev
עֲרֹעֵר
Where was biblical Aroer in the Negev? At Tel Aroer, by Route 80 southeast of Beersheba. I mark it very likely.
David came back from the Amalekite raid with more spoil than his men could use, and he sent a share to the elders of Aroer. The towns of the south had sheltered him in his outlaw years, and he paid them back.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- Tel Aroer, by Route 80 southeast of Beersheba
- How sure
- Very likely Strong evidence, with no serious rival.
- Other names
- Aroer of Judah, Ararah, Khirbet 'Ar'arah, Tel Aroer, Tel Ar'ara
- Location
- 31.1521° N, 34.9790° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
The text gives one clue, and it is a good one. Aroer appears in David's list of gift towns alongside Yatir, Eshtemoa and Ramoth-negeb, towns of southern Judah. This tel sits in the basin between Beersheba and Arad, right where that list belongs.
Then the name. The Arabic name of the ruin is Khirbet 'Ar'arah, and the Bedouin town next door is Ar'arat an-Naqab, Ar'ara of the Negev. That is Aroer with hardly a letter lost. Many scholars also read the town "Adadah" in Judah's Negev list as a copying slip for Ararah. That is a correction to the text, though, not evidence.
Excavators found a fortified Judean town of the 8th to 6th centuries BCE. Judean pottery lay beside painted Edomite ware and finds linked to South Arabia. This was a caravan town on the incense route, on Judah's southern frontier, where the traders came up out of the desert.
There is one gap. Excavators found no town from David's own time on the tel. So the earliest Aroer may have stood nearby, or the name may have covered the wider area. The name and the location still make this a very strong identification.
Visiting today
Tel Aroer is an unreconstructed mound beside Route 80 near Aroer Junction. You can see low walls of the Iron Age town and a later fort, with little signage.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
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- Sheba (Tel Be’er Sheva) 17 km northwest
- Arad 20 km northeast
- Beersheba (Be'er Sheva) 20 km northwest
- Jattir 23 km north
- Anim 24 km north
- Eshtemoa 29 km north