Etam
Etam is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Judea in modern-day Israel. Known today as Khirbet el Khokh. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
A third Etam appears as a town within the tribal territory of Simeon, listed in 1 Chronicles 4:32 among five villages associated with the Simeonite clan: "Their villages were Etam, Ain, Rimmon, Tochen and Ashan, five towns." The Simeonite clans settled in the Negev region south of Judah, in an area later absorbed into the territory of Judah as Simeon's distinct tribal identity faded during the monarchic period. The listing of Etam among these Simeonite towns places it in the arid transitional zone between the Judean highlands and the Negev desert, a landscape suited to pastoralism and seasonal agriculture. The Simeonite Etam should be distinguished from both the rock of Etam associated with Samson and the fortified Etam near Bethlehem. This Simeonite settlement appears in a genealogical register that reflects an early administrative accounting of the southern tribal territories, providing a snapshot of settlement patterns in the Negev during the period of the judges or early monarchy.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The Simeonite Etam listed in 1 Chronicles 4:32 is tentatively identified with Khirbet el-Khokh or with another site in the northern Negev, though its precise location remains uncertain. The Simeonite towns listed alongside it in Chronicles, Ain, Rimmon, Tochen, and Ashan, are generally placed in the Beersheba basin and surrounding highlands, suggesting this Etam was in the same general region. Archaeological surveys of the northern Negev have documented dense Iron Age I settlement indicating a pastoral-agricultural population consistent with the Simeonite tribal presence. The region around Beersheba has been extensively excavated, revealing administrative centers and domestic occupation from the same period in which these Chronicles genealogies were compiled.
Verse Appearances (1)
1Chr
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]