Beth-meon
Beth-meon is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Transjordan in modern-day Israel. Known today as Ma‘in. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
Beth-meon, also known as Baal-meon and Beth-baal-meon, was a town in Transjordan that appears in the context of Israelite territorial allotment and later prophetic judgment. Originally assigned to the tribe of Reuben (Numbers 32:38; Joshua 13:17), the site was rebuilt by the Reubenites as part of Israel's consolidation of the Transjordanian plateau. The place-name's connection to Baal worship, reflected in the fuller form "Baal-meon", indicates the town had earlier been a Canaanite or Moabite cultic center. The prophet Ezekiel includes Beth-meon among the Moabite towns destined for divine judgment (Ezekiel 25:9), and Jeremiah similarly denounces it (Jeremiah 48:23), suggesting that by the late monarchy and exilic periods the territory had reverted to Moabite control. This mirrors a broader pattern in which Reubenite settlements east of the Dead Sea were gradually retaken by Moab as Israel's political power waned. The Mesha Stele, the famous 9th-century BC Moabite inscription, also mentions Baal-meon, providing rare extrabiblical corroboration for the town's existence and its contested possession between Israel and Moab.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
Beth-meon is firmly identified with modern Ma'in, located on the Transjordanian plateau east of the Dead Sea in present-day Jordan. The Mesha Stele, discovered at Dhiban in 1868, explicitly mentions Baal-meon as a place where Moabite king Mesha conducted building works, providing strong extrabiblical confirmation of the site. The region around Ma'in shows evidence of occupation spanning the Iron Age through Byzantine periods. The hot springs of Ma'in nearby, known in antiquity, likely made the area a desirable settlement location. No full-scale stratigraphic excavation of the ancient tell has been published, though surface finds are consistent with Iron Age II occupation, and the modern toponym preserves the ancient name with clarity.
Verse Appearances (1)
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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]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]