Hazer-hatticon
Hazer-hatticon is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Syria in modern-day Syria. Known today as Al Qaryatayn. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
Hazer-hatticon, meaning "the middle enclosure" or "middle court," appears only once in the Old Testament, in Ezekiel's visionary description of the ideal northern boundary of restored Israel. In Ezekiel 47:16, the prophet traces the northern boundary through a series of named locations including Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim, and Hazer-hatticon, which is described as lying on the border of Hauran. This placement positions Hazer-hatticon in the Syrian interior, northeast of Damascus, in the region where the territories of Hamath and Hauran converge. Ezekiel's boundary vision is eschatological and idealized, drawing on ancient geographical memory to project a restored Israel that encompasses its fullest extent of the divine promise. The use of precise place names, including obscure ones like Hazer-hatticon, lends geographical specificity and credibility to the vision, grounding the prophetic promise in real landscape rather than vague generality. The identification of this site with the Syrian interior reflects the expansive scope of Ezekiel's hope for restoration, envisioning a reconstituted people of God inhabiting a land whose boundaries reach from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates and from the northern Syrian frontier to the Wadi of Egypt, embracing the full territory promised in the Abrahamic covenant.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
Hazer-hatticon's identification with Al Qaryatayn in the Syrian interior east of Homs is proposed largely on geographical grounds, correlating the site's position between known locations mentioned in Ezekiel 47. Al Qaryatayn sits in an oasis in the Syrian Desert with ancient roots, serving as a waystation on routes connecting the Euphrates region with the Mediterranean coast and Damascus. The area has seen limited systematic archaeological excavation, though ancient remains are attested. The broader Syrian interior has yielded Bronze and Iron Age evidence of scattered settlements along water sources and trade routes. Without specific epigraphic confirmation, the identification of Hazer-hatticon with any particular site in this region remains a reasonable scholarly hypothesis rather than an established conclusion.
Verse Appearances (1)
Ezek
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]