Tophel

תֹּפֶל

Where was biblical Tophel? At Tafila (At-Tafila), in Jordan, about 90 km southeast of Beersheba. I mark it debated. The case for the main rival site is below.

Tafila, with its fort on the hilltop
Tafila, with its fort on the hilltop · Photo: Uri Juda, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Moses opened his farewell speeches to Israel by naming places from the forty years in the wilderness, and Tophel is one of them.

By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker

Site today
At-Tafila, in Jordan
How sure
Debated Two or more serious candidates.
Other names
Tofel, Tafilah, Tafila, Tafileh
Location
30.8337° N, 35.6161° E (Google Maps)
Tophel on the hand-drawn Map of Biblical Israel
Tophel on our hand-drawn Map of Biblical Israel. Get the full map as a print →

How we know where it was

Tophel appears only once in the Bible, in the first verse of Deuteronomy. Moses speaks "between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth and Di-zahab." The verse gives a list of names but no direction and no distance.

The map follows the common identification with at-Tafila, a town in northern Edom on the edge of the plateau, overlooking the Aravah. The same verse names the Aravah, and that is part of the case. The rest is the sound of the name, Tophel and Tafila.

That is thin evidence. No inscription supports it. The Arabic name begins with an emphatic t, a heavier sound that does not normally match the Hebrew tav. Similar names can be coincidence. Debated is the right word.

Onkelos and Rashi read the verse in a different way altogether. For them the list is not a map but a set of gentle rebukes, each name hinting at a sin from the wilderness years. The Sifrei teaches the same. Tophel hints at Israel's complaint that the manna was bland, tafel. Read that way, Tophel was never a place on the ground at all.

Visiting today

At-Tafila is a working Jordanian town with an old castle. No remains from the biblical period have been identified there.

Read it in the Bible

Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.

See Tophel on the interactive map →

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Nearby places

Sources and further reading