Zaretan or Zarethan (), also known as Zeredathah, is a city mentioned in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Hebrews The Hebrews (; ) were an ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic-speaking people. Historians mostly consider the Hebrews as synonymous with the Israelites, with the term "Hebrew" denoting an Israelite from the nomadic era, which pre ...

crossed the

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

(). In the books of Joshua (, KJV "Zaretan") and 1 Kings ( KJV "Zartanah", "Zarthan"), it is called Zarethan, but in 2 Chronicles it is called Zeredathah (, KJV). Zaredathah stood in the Jordan Valley.

Nelson Glueck Nelson Glueck (June 4, 1900 – February 12, 1971) was an American rabbi, professor, academic and archaeology, archaeologist. He served as president of Hebrew Union College from 1947 until his death, and his pioneering work in biblical archaeolo ...

looked for it on the east bank of the river, proposing , but some more recent authors place it on the

west bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, one theory identifying it with Tell el-Mazar, also spelled Mezar, in Wadi Far'a. Tell el-Mezar is at the site called in Arabic Qerawa, known from antiquity by the name Korea(i) (κορεα � or Koreous (Kορεους) and located at the foot of Mount Sartabe. According to

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Solomon's Temple Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple (), was a biblical Temple in Jerusalem believed to have existed between the 10th and 6th centuries Common Era, BCE. Its description is largely based on narratives in the Hebrew Bible, in which it ...

were made in the clay grounds between

Sukkot Sukkot, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles or Feast of Booths, is a Torah-commanded Jewish holiday celebrated for seven days, beginning on the 15th day of the month of Tishrei. It is one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals on which Israelite ...

and Zaretan. The old identification of the site of the miracle of the

Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

' crossing of the Jordan with the waters stopping their flow at the "

city of Adam The City of Adam (Hebrew ''adam ha-ir'') is a place which appears in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua , where it is described as standing "beside Zarethan" on the east bank of the Jordan. There, says the biblical text, the flow of the water was ...

beside Zaretan" was, according to the

Easton's Bible Dictionary The ''Illustrated Bible Dictionary'', better known as ''Easton's Bible Dictionary'', is a reference work on topics related to the Christian Bible, compiled by Matthew George Easton. The first edition was published in 1893, and a revised editio ...

(1893 and 1897), presumed to be near Succoth, where the

Jabbok The Zarqa River (, ''Nahr az-Zarqāʾ'', lit. "the River of the Blue ity) is the second largest tributary of the lower Jordan River, after the Yarmouk River. It is the third largest river in the region by annual discharge and its watershed enc ...

flows into the Jordan, about 30 miles upstream from the Israelite camp. There the priests stepped into the water, which then "stood and rose upon an heap", thus creating a 30-mile stretch of dry riverbed for the tribes to use for crossing over to the

Promised Land In the Abrahamic religions, the "Promised Land" ( ) refers to a swath of territory in the Levant that was bestowed upon Abraham and his descendants by God in Abrahamic religions, God. In the context of the Bible, these descendants are originally ...

(; compare ).

References

Bible verses

* Joshua 3:16
1 Kings 7:46
{{Coord, 32.0958, N, 35.4614, E, source:kolossus-plwiki, display=title Hebrew Bible cities Former populated places in Jordan