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town or village
Succoth
- Today Tell Deir Alla
- Location disputed
History
Succoth, whose name means "booths", is usually identified with Tell Deir Alla, a mound in the Jordan Valley about 8 km east of the river and 1 km north of the Jabbok. The Jerusalem Talmud says that Succoth is Tar'ala, a name that seems to live on in Deir Alla, and Nelson Glueck adopted the identification. No inscription found on the site names it, and Henk Franken, who began the excavations, accepted only that the district was the valley of Succoth, not that the mound was the town; the identification is therefore not certain.
Leiden University began digging the mound in 1960, later jointly with Jordan's Department of Antiquities and Yarmouk University. The excavated layers run from about 1700 BC. Through the Late Bronze Age a large sanctuary stood on an artificial platform, and Egyptian objects show ties with Egypt down to the days of Queen Tausret, about 1200 BC. In 1967 fragments of plaster written in ink were found in a village destroyed by an earthquake about 800 BC: a text about Balaam son of Beor, a seer of the gods, the same name as the prophet of Numbers. At nearby Tell el-Hammeh iron was already being smelted in the tenth century BC.
After parting from Esau, Jacob "journeyed to Succoth, and built him an house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth." Joshua lists Succoth in the valley among the towns given to Gad, the rest of the kingdom of Sihon. When Gideon, pursuing the Midianite kings Zebah and Zalmunna, asked the men of Succoth for bread, its princes refused him; on his return he punished its elders with thorns of the wilderness. Solomon's bronze vessels were cast in the clay ground of the Jordan plain between Succoth and Zarthan, and a psalm says, "I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth."
Settlement on the mound went on, with breaks, until about 400 BC, in the Persian period. Josephus wrote that the place where Jacob stopped was still called Tents in his day, and Jerome noted that a city of that name still stood beyond the Jordan in the region of Scythopolis. A Roman and Late Roman settlement, with columns and polished marble, lay about 300 m east of the tell.
Scripture: Gen 33:16–17; Josh 13:24–27; Judg 8:4–9; Judg 8:13–16; 1 Kgs 7:45–46; 2 Chr 4:17; Ps 60:6; Num 22:5
Sources
- Jerusalem Talmud, Shevi'it 9:2 (Succoth is Tar'ala)
- Josephus, Antiquities 1.337
- Jerome, Hebrew Questions on Genesis, on Gen 33:17 (Latin quoted in E. Robinson, Later Biblical Researches, 1856, 311)
- The Deir Alla plaster text (KAI 312): J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij, Aramaic Texts from Deir 'Alla (1976)
- H. J. Franken, 'Deir 'Alla Re-visited', and M. M. Ibrahim and G. van der Kooij, 'The Archaeology of Deir 'Alla Phase IX', in J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij (eds.), The Balaam Text from Deir 'Alla Re-evaluated (1991) 3-15, 16-29
- E. Kaptijn, Life on the Watershed: Reconstructing Subsistence in a Steppe Region Using Archaeological Survey (2009) 25-26, 229-230, 401-402
Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.
Verses (10)
- Gen 33:17
- And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him an house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth.
- Josh 13:27
- And in the valley, Beth-aram, and Beth-nimrah, and Succoth, and Zaphon, the rest of the kingdom of Sihon king of Heshbon, Jordan and his border, even unto the edge of the sea of Chinnereth on the other side Jordan eastward.
- Judg 8:5
- And he said unto the men of Succoth, Give, I pray you, loaves of bread unto the people that follow me; for they be faint, and I am pursuing after Zebah and Zalmunna, kings of Midian.
- Judg 8:6
- And the princes of Succoth said, Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna now in thine hand, that we should give bread unto thine army?
- Judg 8:8
- And he went up thence to Penuel, and spake unto them likewise: and the men of Penuel answered him as the men of Succoth had answered him.
- Judg 8:14
- And caught a young man of the men of Succoth, and enquired of him: and he described unto him the princes of Succoth, and the elders thereof, even threescore and seventeen men.
- Judg 8:15
- And he came unto the men of Succoth, and said, Behold Zebah and Zalmunna, with whom ye did upbraid me, saying, Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna now in thine hand, that we should give bread unto thy men that are weary?
- Judg 8:16
- And he took the elders of the city, and thorns of the wilderness and briers, and with them he taught the men of Succoth.
- 1 Kgs 7:46
- In the plain of Jordan did the king cast them, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zarthan.
- 2 Chr 4:17
- In the plain of Jordan did the king cast them, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zeredathah.
King James Version