Aroer
Aroer is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Transjordan in modern-day Israel. Known today as Khirbet Udena. It appears across 2 verses in Scripture.
Biblical History
This Aroer, tentatively identified with Khirbet Udena near the Arnon, represents one of the lesser-attested sites bearing the name in the Old Testament. The name Aroer (meaning perhaps "ruins" or "juniper") was common in the Transjordanian region, applied to multiple settlements. This particular site appears to be associated with the Reubenite territory in the Transjordan. Numbers 32 describes how the tribes of Reuben and Gad built or rebuilt a series of Transjordanian towns, and several Aroer-named sites appear in the boundary and city lists of Joshua 13. The strategic importance of settlements named Aroer along the Arnon corridor is underscored by their repeated appearance in boundary descriptions: they marked the edge of Israelite territorial control facing Moab and Ammon. While the textual references to this specific Aroer are limited, its placement within the landscape of Transjordanian settlement reflects the broader Israelite effort to inhabit and hold the lands east of the Jordan following the conquest of Sihon and Og.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The identification of this Aroer with Khirbet Udena in the Transjordan remains tentative among scholars. The region east of the Dead Sea along the Arnon plateau has been surveyed but not systematically excavated at all proposed Aroer sites. Khirbet Udena sits in an area consistent with the geographic parameters of the biblical boundary texts, but surface surveys have yielded only limited ceramic evidence. The multiple biblical sites sharing the name Aroer in the Transjordan create ongoing identification challenges for archaeologists. The terrain is characterized by rolling plateau land above the Arnon canyon, and settlement evidence from the Iron Age period has been recovered in the broader region through archaeological survey.
Verse Appearances (2)
Josh
Judg
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- OpenBible.info (n.d.) Bible Geocoding. Available at: https://www.openbible.info/geo/. [CC BY 4.0]
- Bagnall, R. et al. (eds.) (n.d.) Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places. Available at: https://pleiades.stoa.org. [CC BY 3.0]
- Wikidata contributors (n.d.) Wikidata. Available at: https://www.wikidata.org. [CC0]
- Lawrence, D. et al. (2025) Villages to Empires: a settlement dataset for the Southern Levant. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15111732. [CC BY 4.0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]