Mount Hermon
הַר חֶרְמוֹן
Where is Mount Hermon? At the north end of the Golan, about 70 km northeast of Tiberias. I mark it certain.
Joshua's conquest stopped at the foot of this mountain, and its snow still feeds the Jordan.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- Mount Hermon, at the north end of the Golan
- How sure
- Certain The name, the sources and the finds all agree.
- Other names
- Senir, Sirion, Baal-hermon, Jabal al-Shaykh, Har Chermon
- Location
- 33.3841° N, 35.8550° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
Only one mountain fits. The Bible makes Hermon the northern limit of the land Moses and Joshua took. East of the Jordan the conquest ran from the Arnon valley to Mount Hermon. West of it Joshua's victories reached Baal-gad, in the Lebanon valley at the foot of the mountain. Hermon is the great snow peak of the north, its summit about 2,800 meters high.
The Tanach even keeps its foreign names. The Sidonians called it Sirion and the Amorites called it Senir. In Arabic today it is Jabal al-Shaykh, the mountain of the sheikh.
The ancient world treated it as holy. Dozens of Roman-era temples ring the mountain. A ruined temple at the summit, Qasr Antar, is among the highest in the ancient world. That fits the name the Bible gives part of it, Baal-hermon.
Jewish memory tied Hermon to something older still. Genesis tells, in a few strange lines, how the "sons of G-d" took wives from the daughters of men before the Flood. The Book of Enoch, an ancient Jewish book that is not part of the Tanach, places that descent here. It says two hundred angels, the Watchers, came down on the summit of Hermon in the days of Jared and bound themselves there by an oath. It even reads the name that way: Hermon, from cherem, a vow sealed with a curse.
The water is what made the north green. The springs of the Jordan at Dan and Banias flow out from the base of Hermon. When the Psalmist wanted a picture of blessing, he reached for that water. Brothers living together in unity are like the dew of Hermon, falling on the mountains of Zion. Another psalm has Tabor and Hermon singing for joy at G-d's name.
Visiting today
The southern slopes lie in the Golan, with a ski site and lookouts reached through Majdal Shams and Neve Ativ. The summit sits on the border of Syria and Lebanon, and the area around it is a military zone.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
See Hermon on the interactive map →
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