Zeboiim
Zeboiim is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Judea in modern-day Israel. Known today as south of the Lisan. It appears across 5 verses in Scripture.
Biblical History
Zeboiim was one of the five cities of the plain — the Pentapolis — alongside Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Bela (Zoar), whose dramatic destruction is among the most well-known episodes in the Hebrew Bible. Genesis 10:19 includes Zeboiim in the original description of Canaanite territorial boundaries, establishing it as an ancient city of the region. The city joined the coalition of the five kings of the plain who rebelled against the Mesopotamian overlord Chedorlaomer in Genesis 14, triggering the military campaign that led to Lot's capture and Abraham's famous military rescue. The ultimate fate of Zeboiim came with the catastrophic destruction of the cities of the plain in Genesis 19, an event whose memory became a byword for divine judgment throughout the Hebrew Bible. Deuteronomy 29:23 invokes Zeboiim alongside Admah and Sodom as a warning to Israel against apostasy. The prophet Hosea uses the same image poignantly in Hosea 11:8, where God declares, "How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Zeboiim?" — indicating the depth of divine anguish over the prospect of judging his own people.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The precise location of Zeboiim and the other cities of the plain has been one of the most contested questions in biblical archaeology. The traditional identification places them at the southern end of the Dead Sea, south of the Lisan Peninsula — the area noted in the existing data. Surveys by Walter Rast and Thomas Schaub in the 1970s–1980s identified several Early Bronze Age sites on the southeastern Dead Sea plain (Bab edh Dhra, Numeira, and others) that have been proposed as candidates for the cities of the plain. Evidence of destruction layers and abandonment at these sites in the Early Bronze III–IV period has been linked to the Genesis narrative, though scholarly consensus on the precise identifications remains elusive.
Verse Appearances (5)
Sources: ISBE Encyclopedia · OpenBible Geocoding (CC BY) · Pleiades Gazetteer View all →