Valley of Jericho
Valley of Jericho is a location mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Judea in modern-day Israel. Known today as Tell es Sultan. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
The Valley of Jericho is referenced in Deuteronomy 34:3 as part of the panoramic view God showed Moses from the summit of Mount Nebo just before his death. From this vantage point, Moses surveyed the entire promised land he would not himself enter: from Gilead to Dan, from Naphtali to Ephraim and Manasseh, and south to Judah as far as the Mediterranean, including the Valley of Jericho, called "the city of palm trees." This moment carries profound theological weight: Moses, who had led Israel for forty years through the wilderness, was permitted to see but not to enter the inheritance God had promised. The Valley of Jericho itself, a fertile oasis in the Jordan Rift Valley fed by powerful springs, was one of the most agriculturally productive areas in Canaan. Its abundant date palms gave rise to the designation "city of palm trees." The city of Jericho within this valley would soon become Israel's first conquest under Joshua, making the valley a liminal space between wilderness wandering and covenant fulfillment. The desolation of Nebo's perspective contrasts poignantly with the lushness of the valley Moses could see but not reach.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The Valley of Jericho encompasses the region surrounding ancient Jericho in the lower Jordan Valley, centered on Tell es-Sultan, which represents one of the most extensively excavated sites in the world. Excavations by Charles Warren, Ernst Sellin, John Garstang, and Kathleen Kenyon through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries established Jericho as among the oldest continuously occupied urban sites known, with Neolithic remains dating to approximately 9000 BC. The site's natural springs, especially Ain es-Sultan, made it a perennial oasis. Kenyon's work in the 1950s significantly refined the stratigraphy and moderated earlier claims about Joshua-era destruction layers, sparking ongoing scholarly debate about the archaeology of the conquest period.
Verse Appearances (1)
Deut
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]