Jazer
Jazer is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Transjordan in modern-day Israel. Known today as Khirbet Jazzir. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
Jazer (also spelled Jaazer) appears in the Old Testament as a significant Amorite city in the Transjordan region. It is first mentioned during the Israelite conquest when Moses sent men to spy out Jazer, and they captured its surrounding settlements and drove out the Amorites who lived there (Numbers 21:32). The city and its pasturelands were allotted to the tribe of Gad, whose members requested territory east of the Jordan because of their large herds of livestock (Numbers 32:1, 35). Jazer was subsequently designated as a Levitical city from the territory of Gad (Joshua 21:39; 1 Chronicles 6:81). During David's reign, a census recorded notable men of valor at Jazer (1 Chronicles 26:31). In the prophetic literature, both Isaiah and Jeremiah include Jazer in their oracles against Moab, lamenting the destruction of its vineyards and the cessation of its harvest joy (Isaiah 16:8-9; Jeremiah 48:32). These references reveal Jazer as a prosperous agricultural center whose fate was caught up in the larger struggles between Israel, Ammon, and Moab for control of the Transjordanian plateau.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The precise identification of Jazer remains debated among scholars. Khirbet Jazzir, located near es-Salt in modern Jordan, is one candidate, while Khirbet es-Sara near Wadi Sir has also been proposed. Eusebius in his Onomasticon placed Jazer approximately 15 Roman miles west of Philadelphia (modern Amman) and 10 miles from Heshbon. Surface surveys of the proposed sites have yielded pottery from the Iron Age and later periods, but no definitive excavation has confirmed the identification. The region between Amman and es-Salt contains numerous ancient ruins consistent with the biblical description of a well-watered area suitable for grazing and viticulture. The ongoing uncertainty reflects the difficulty of identifying ancient Transjordanian sites where modern development has obscured earlier remains.
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]
- 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]