Beth-togarmah
Beth-togarmah is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Asia Minor in modern-day Turkey. Known today as Armenia. It appears across 2 verses in Scripture.
Biblical History
Beth-togarmah, meaning "house of Togarmah," appears in two pivotal prophetic texts, both connecting it with distant trade and eschatological military conflict. In Ezekiel 27:14, Togarmah is described as a trading partner of Tyre, supplying "horses, war horses, and mules", luxury goods associated with the horse-breeding cultures of Anatolia. More dramatically, Ezekiel 38:6 identifies Beth-togarmah as part of the northern coalition that will join Gog of Magog in an end-times assault on Israel: "Beth-togarmah from the far north with all its troops." This eschatological role has made Beth-togarmah a subject of enduring theological interest, particularly in discussions of biblical prophecy concerning the nations. Togarmah appears in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10:3) as a grandson of Japheth through Gomer, linking the territory to the Indo-European peoples of the north. Ancient sources including Assyrian records associate Togarmah with the Til-garimmu region in eastern Anatolia, near the Taurus mountains. Later Jewish and Armenian tradition identified Togarmah as a legendary ancestor of the Armenian people, and this association has persisted in modern interpretive discussions of Ezekiel's prophecy.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
Beth-togarmah is most commonly identified with the ancient region of Til-garimmu (Tegarama in Hittite sources), located in eastern Anatolia near modern Gurun in south-central Turkey. Assyrian annals reference Til-garimmu as a significant city in the region of Tabal, on the border of Assyrian influence and the Anatolian plateau. Hittite tablets from the 2nd millennium BC mention Tegarama as a notable settlement. The identification with Armenia in later tradition reflects the broader association of Japhethite peoples with the Caucasus and Anatolian regions. Archaeological investigation of the region has been limited, but the Assyrian and Hittite textual evidence provides a stronger basis for locating Beth-togarmah than most other obscure biblical place-names.
Verse Appearances (2)
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]