Pethahiah (Hastings' Dictionary)

1. The head of the nine- teenth (LXX eighteenth] priestly course, 1 Ch 9416 (B Φεταιά, A Αφεσσή). 2. A Levite who had mar- ried a foreign wife, Ezr 1033 (B Φαδαιά, A Φεθειά) ; introduced by a later hand in Neh 9° (LXX om.). 8. A Judahite officer, who ‘was at the king’s hand in all matters concerning the people,’ Neh 11% (B Παθαιά, A Φαθαιά). PETHOR (ins; B Φαθουρα, A Bad .—T home of Balaam (Nu 225, Dt 234 (9), seey Nw τὸ he ‘on the River’ (i.e. the Euphrates), and (Dt) “» belong to Aram-naharaim (cf. Nu 237), 1.6. the region between the Euphrates in its upper course (by and below Carchemish) and the Khabour, some 400 miles N.N.E. of Palestine. It is no doubt the Pitru, mentioned by Shalmaneser I. (B.C. 860-825): ‘I crossed the Euphrates, and took the city Ana-ASur-utir-asbat on the other side of the Euphrates, on the Sagur, which the Hittites call Pitru’ (KIB i. 133, 1. 37-40; cf. 163, 1. 36; 178, 1. 85-6); and the Pedru, named long before among his conquests by Thothmes 1m. (W. M. Miiller, As. wu. Eur. 291; RP, v. 38, No. 280). The Sagur is the modern Sajur, which flows into the Euphrates from the N.W. at a point about 60 miles N.E. of Aleppo: Pitru or Pethor, if ‘on’ both the Euphrates (Nu 225) and the Sajur, must thus have been on the W. bank of the former river at its junction with the Sajur, and therefore, speaking strictly, just beyond the W. border of Aram-naharaim (Dt 234).* It was, of course, much more neerly. N. of Moab than ‘east’ (Nu 237); but it must be remembered that the term ‘east’ is used broadly (see Gn 291, of Haran, in the same neighbourhood). For ‘mountains’ (id.) between the Sajur and the Euphrates, Dillm., refers pertinently to Sachau, Reise in Syr. u. itesep. 1883, pp. 159 ff., 165 ff. (ef. also the map). See, further, Schrader, KAT? 155f., Keilinschr. κι. Geschichts- Forsch. 220f.; Dillm. on Nu 22°; Sayce, HCM 274. S. R. DRIVER. PETHUEL (5xina; perhaps, by a copyist’s Eup: for by:ina Bethuel, so L [Βαθουήλ] and other VSS, Li Vulg. Phatuel). —The father of the prophet oel, JJ 1}.