Zanoah
Zanoah is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Judea in modern-day Israel. Known today as Khirbet Beit Amra. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
A second city named Zanoah appears in the Old Testament distinct from its Shephelah namesake, located further south in the hill country of Judah. This Zanoah is listed in Joshua 15:56 among the hill-country settlements within Judah's tribal territory, placing it in the rugged highlands south of Hebron. Its proposed identification with Khirbet Beit Amra positions it near the southern Judean hills, in a region characterized by rocky terrain and dependent on seasonal rainfall. The hill-country Zanoah appears in a geographical list alongside towns such as Jezreel and Jokdeam, all of which formed part of the administrative infrastructure of the Judean highlands during the monarchic period. While this Zanoah does not appear in major narrative episodes, its inclusion in the tribal allotment lists of Joshua reflects the careful record-keeping of the Israelite settlement traditions, which sought to document every town and village as part of Israel's claim to the promised land. The southern Judean hills in which it sits were also the traditional homeland of figures such as Caleb and his descendants, giving the region a particular significance in the memory of Israel's conquest narratives.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
Khirbet Beit Amra, the proposed identification for the hill-country Zanoah, lies in the southern Judean highlands south of Hebron, near the modern city of Yatta. The region has been the subject of archaeological surveys that have documented numerous Iron Age sites reflecting the dense settlement of the Judean hill country during the monarchic period. Surface pottery from sites in this general area spans the Iron Age I and II periods, consistent with the Joshua allotment texts. No dedicated excavation at Khirbet Beit Amra has been conducted, and the identification remains provisional, based primarily on the topographical logic of the Joshua boundary descriptions.
Verse Appearances (1)
Josh
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]