Zorah () or Tzorah (), was a biblical town in the Judaean Foothills. It has been identified with the former village of Sar'a, now often referred to as Tel Tzora.

Location

Zorah was situated on the crest of a hill overlooking the valley of Sorek. It lies at an elevation of about above sea-level. It is located 23 kilometers west of

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

near Nahal Sorek.

History

Zorah was mentioned together with Ajalon in the Amarna letters as a city attacked by the Apiru. Zorah has been identified with the biblical Zoreah (), and is the birthplace of

Samson SAMSON (Software for Adaptive Modeling and Simulation Of Nanosystems) is a computer software platform for molecular design being developed bOneAngstromand previously by the NANO-D group at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science an ...

. states: :"there was a certain man from Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah". Samson's grave is recorded as being near there (), and which the historian

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

says was in a village called Sarasat. In , Zorah is mentioned in the allotment of the

Tribe of Judah According to the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Judah (, ''Shevet Yehudah'') was one of the twelve Tribes of Israel, named after Judah (son of Jacob), Judah, the son of Jacob. Judah was one of the tribes to take its place in Canaan, occupying it ...

, on the border with the

Tribe of Dan The Tribe of Dan (, "Judge") was one of the twelve tribes of Israel, according to the Torah. According to the Hebrew Bible, the tribe initially settled in the hill lands bordering Tribe of Ephraim, Ephraim and Tribe of Benjamin, Benjamin on the ...

. It was most likely the Danites who occupied Zorah. According to the Book of Chronicles, it was fortified by

Rehoboam Rehoboam (; , , ; , ; ) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the first monarch of the Kingdom of Judah after the split of the united Kingdom of Israel. He was a son of and the successor to Solomon and a grandson of David. In the account of I Ki ...

().

The

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

village Sar'a was located in the presumed location of the ancient town. It was depopulated during the

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...

. Conder and Kitchener, describing the site in 1881, said that, with the exception of the olive groves to the north of the village, the low hill on which the village lies is "bare and white," a place now planted with a pine forest by the Jewish National Fund.

Kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...

Tzora is now located nearby, at the foot of Zorah mountain, on its southern side.

Archaeology

Caves, tombs, cisterns and a winepress were discovered at Tel Tzora. Two winepresses were carved into the rock, one of which was paved with mosaic. A rock-hewn altar was found just below the tell. It has been nicknamed "Manoah's Altar", after Samson's father.

References

External links

* Surah (Zorah) in Survey of Western Palestine, Map 17
IAA

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Zorah Hebrew Bible cities Former populated places in West Asia Archaeological sites in Israel