Azmaveth
Azmaveth is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Judea in modern-day Israel. Known today as Hizma. It appears across 3 verses in Scripture.
Biblical History
Azmaveth was a small Benjaminite town north of Jerusalem whose residents returned from Babylonian exile among the first wave of repatriates following Cyrus's decree. Ezra 2:24 lists "the men of Azmaveth" among those who returned with Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah 7:28 similarly records forty-two of its inhabitants as part of the restored community. The town also appears in Nehemiah 12:29, where inhabitants of Azmaveth and neighboring villages participated in the joyful dedication of the rebuilt walls of Jerusalem. Though a modest settlement, Azmaveth illustrates the broader pattern of Judean village resettlement in the early Persian period, as communities dispersed by Nebuchadnezzar gradually reconstituted themselves in their ancestral territories. The personal name Azmaveth also occurs elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, as one of David's thirty mighty men (2 Sam. 23:31) and as the overseer of the royal treasuries (1 Chr. 27:25), suggesting the name carried prestige in the region of Benjamin. The town's proximity to Jerusalem gave its inhabitants ready access to the temple and its worship, binding them closely to the restored covenant community.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
Azmaveth is most commonly identified with the modern Palestinian village of Hizma (also written Khirbet Hizma), located approximately eight kilometers north of Jerusalem in the territory of Benjamin. Surface surveys have confirmed occupation from the Iron Age through the Byzantine period, consistent with the biblical references. The site has not been extensively excavated, but pottery finds from field surveys indicate settlement continuity in the general area from the Iron Age II period onward. The location accords well with the town's position in lists that organize Benjaminite settlements in geographic sequence relative to Jerusalem.
Verse Appearances (3)
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]