Iye Abarim
עִיֵּי הָעֲבָרִים
Where was biblical Iye Abarim? No one knows for sure. The map marks the best proposal: the desert edge near Wadi al-Hasa, in Jordan, about 100 km east of Beersheba.
In the fortieth year, turned away from Edom, Israel trudged north along the desert fringe and camped here on Moab's border. From Iye Abarim they moved on to the Zered, the last stretch before the plains of Moab.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- The desert edge near Wadi al-Hasa, in Jordan (unlocated)
- How sure
- Unknown No one has found it. The map marks the best proposal.
- Other names
- Ije-abarim, Iye-abarim, Iyye ha-Abarim, Iyim, Iim, Aie, Achelgai
- Location
- 30.9560° N, 35.7795° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
Nobody knows the exact spot. The name means something like "the ruins of the crossings." Onkelos renders it "the fords of the crossings," and Rashi reads the crossings as the pass travelers took toward Mount Nebo.
Numbers gives only clues, but they point one way. The camp came after Oboth. It lay in the wilderness facing Moab on the east, and on Moab's border. The next camp was in the Zered valley, Moab's southern border. So the search belongs on the desert edge, outside Moab's farmland, just south of the Zered.
The map follows the leading proposal, el-Medeiyineh, at a ford of the Zered on the desert edge. Eusebius, in the 4th century, placed it in the east, facing Areopolis, the Moabite capital of his day. Both point to the desert fringe. Still, no surviving name and no inscription fixes the camp, so the exact spot is still unknown.
There is a rival. The 6th-century mosaic map in Madaba marks a village called Aia near Kerak, and a ruin there, Khirbet 'Ay, still carries the name. But that sits in Moab's heartland, and Israel went around Moab, not through it.
Visiting today
No site has been identified. The Wadi al-Hasa canyon can be seen from the King's Highway or the Desert Highway.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
See Iye Abarim on the interactive map →
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Get the print + free ebookNearby places
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