Places of the Bible
The places
The ground the history happens on. Gardens, rivers, mountains, cities and the one city still to come.
At dusk, travellers and a woman leading a laden donkey walk out of a walled hill town's stone gate toward a wide valley.The first world
- EdenA garden with a river, two named trees, and one instruction.Genesis 2 to 4
- The land of NodA country named for wandering, east of the garden, where the first city was built.Genesis 4
- The mountains of AraratThe first solid ground in a world that had none, and the place where the waiting started.Genesis 8 to 9
- BabelA plain, a brick, and a tower built so that a name would not be scattered.Genesis 10 to 11
The promise
- Ur of the ChaldeansThe city the account starts by leaving, described in six verses and never revisited.Genesis 11
- HaranThe waypoint that twice became a home, and twice had to be left again.Genesis 11 to 12 · Genesis 29 to 30
- CanaanPromised to a man who never owned a field in it except the one he bought to bury his wife.Genesis 12 to 13 · Genesis 15 · Genesis 17
- ShechemThe first place the promise was spoken aloud in the land, and the first place the family disgraced itself in it.Genesis 12 · Genesis 33 to 34
- BethelA man sleeping on a stone in open country woke up and said God was here and he had not known it.Genesis 28 · Genesis 35
- Hebron and MachpelahThe only ground in Canaan the family ever actually owned, bought at full price for a grave.Genesis 13 · Genesis 23 · Genesis 49
- Sodom and GomorrahTwo cities on good land, argued over by one man who got the number down to ten and still lost.Genesis 18 to 19
- BeershebaA well in the dry south that two generations had to dig, argue over, and swear about twice.Genesis 21 · Genesis 26
- Mount MoriahThree days’ walk to a hill whose name was only given at the end of the journey.Genesis 22
- PenielA ford, a night, a wrestling match nobody wins, and a man who walks away with a new name and a limp.Genesis 32
Egypt and the wilderness
- EgyptThe refuge that became the furnace, and the country Scripture never stops using as a measurement.Exodus 1 · Exodus 12
- GoshenGiven because shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians, and kept because of it.Genesis 46 to 47 · Exodus 8 · Exodus 9
- The Red SeaThey were led to a dead end on purpose, and the dead end is the point.Exodus 14 to 15
- Marah and ElimThree days after the song they found water they could not drink, and a day later more wells than they had people to use them.Exodus 15
- Mount SinaiA mountain nobody was allowed to touch, where a nation was given a constitution and broke it inside forty days.Exodus 19 to 20 · Exodus 24 · Exodus 32 to 34
- Kadesh-barneaEleven days from the mountain to the border, and thirty-eight years from the border to anywhere.Numbers 13 to 14 · Numbers 20 · Deuteronomy 1
- The wilderness of ParanThe open country between the mountain and the border, crossed in the order the cloud decided.Numbers 10 · Numbers 12 to 13
- Mount NeboThe one place in Scripture where a man is shown everything he worked for and told he will not have it.Deuteronomy 32 · Deuteronomy 34
The land
- The JordanA river crossed three times in Scripture, and every crossing is a change of office.Joshua 3 to 4 · 2 Kings 2 · Matthew 3
- JerichoThe first city in the land, taken by a plan that involved no fighting until the seventh day.Joshua 2 · Joshua 6 · Luke 19
- AiA small town that beat a nation, because of something buried under a tent thirty miles away.Joshua 7 to 8
- Mount Ebal and Mount GerizimTwo hills facing each other across a valley, used once as a room with the acoustics built in.Deuteronomy 27 · Joshua 8
- GilgalThe first camp inside the land, where the name means rolling and everything that happens there is about what is taken away.Joshua 4 to 5 · 1 Samuel 11 · 1 Samuel 15
- ShilohThe tabernacle stood here for three centuries, and the prophets kept using the town as a warning.Joshua 18 · Judges 21 · 1 Samuel 1 to 4
- GibeonA city that survived by lying convincingly, and the treaty it got by fraud was honoured anyway.Joshua 9 to 10 · 2 Samuel 2 · 1 Kings 3
- Mount CarmelA contest with rules both sides agreed to, and one of them had four hundred and fifty men.1 Kings 18
- MegiddoA pass that armies cannot avoid, which is why it collects battles and eventually a name for the last one.Judges 5 · 2 Kings 23
- JezreelA king wanted a vegetable garden, and the whole dynasty ended on the piece of ground he took for it.1 Kings 21 · 2 Kings 9
- SamariaA capital bought for two talents of silver, and the last thing recorded about it is a list of who was moved in.1 Kings 16 · 2 Kings 6 to 7 · 2 Kings 17
The kingdom
- BethlehemA town small enough that the prophet who named it had to say so.Ruth 1 · 1 Samuel 16 · Micah 5 · Matthew 2 · Luke 2
- RamahSamuel’s home town, where the elders came to ask for a king and got a warning instead.1 Samuel 7 · 1 Samuel 8 · 1 Samuel 25 · Jeremiah 31
- The Valley of ElahTwo armies on two hills with a valley between them, and for forty days nothing happened in it.1 Samuel 17
- Mount GilboaWhere the first king of Israel died with three of his sons, and the man who had most to gain wrote the lament.1 Samuel 31 · 2 Samuel 1
- JerusalemTaken late, chosen deliberately, and the book that ends with it burning is not the last word about it.2 Samuel 5 · 1 Kings 8 · 2 Kings 25 · Luke 19
- Zion and the City of DavidA hilltop fort that became a word for everything, and the word kept moving uphill.2 Samuel 5 · 1 Kings 8 · Psalms 48 · Psalms 132
- The Mount of OlivesThe ridge people leave the city by when things go wrong, and the ridge they are told to watch.2 Samuel 15 · Zechariah 14 · Luke 22 · Acts 1
- En-gediA spring in a desert, full of caves, where the man being hunted got close enough to cut cloth.1 Samuel 24
- DamascusThe oldest continuously inhabited city in the account, and twice the road to it changes somebody completely.2 Kings 5 · Acts 9
Exile
- NinevehTwo prophets were sent to the same city and got opposite results, and the second one is why the first one sulked.Jonah 3 to 4 · Nahum 1 to 3 · 2 Kings 19
- Joppa and TarshishThe port a prophet bought a ticket at, and the direction he bought it in.Jonah 1 · Acts 9 · Acts 10
- BabylonStarted as a tower, ended as a word, and in between it was an address people were told to buy houses at.2 Kings 24 to 25 · Daniel 1 to 5 · Jeremiah 29 · Revelation 17 to 18
- The river ChebarA canal in Babylon where a priest who could not reach a temple was shown one that had wheels.Ezekiel 1 · Ezekiel 3 · Ezekiel 10
- The valley of dry bonesHe was walked around it first, so that he would know how dry they were before he was asked the question.Ezekiel 37
- SusaA winter palace where a decree could not be revoked, so a second one had to be written beside it.Esther 1 to 9 · Nehemiah 1 · Daniel 8
The gospels
- NazarethA town too small to appear in the Old Testament, and the one place in the gospels where he could do no mighty work.Luke 1 · Luke 2 · Luke 4 · Matthew 2
- CapernaumMatthew calls it his own city, and it is also the town he pronounced the heaviest sentence on.Mark 1 to 2 · Matthew 8 · Matthew 9 · John 6
- The Sea of GalileeA lake small enough to cross in a night and deep enough below sea level to make its own weather.Mark 4 to 5 · Matthew 14 · Luke 5 · John 21
- CanaTwo signs happen in this village and both of them are done at a distance from the people they help.John 2 · John 4
- BethanyTwo miles from Jerusalem, which is close enough for the mourners to have come out and close enough for the news to get back.John 11 · John 12 · Luke 10 · Mark 14
- The Judean wildernessTwenty miles of rock between Jerusalem and the Jordan, and the last place anyone would have gone to hear a sermon.Matthew 3 to 4 · Mark 1 · Luke 3
- Caesarea PhilippiHe asked the question in the one town in the country built around a shrine to another god.Matthew 16 · Mark 8
- The mount of transfigurationAn unnamed high mountain, and the only place in the gospels where the Father interrupts.Matthew 17 · Mark 9 · Luke 9 · 2 Peter 1
- GethsemaneThe name means oil press, and the garden was chosen by the man who betrayed him because he knew the habit.Matthew 26 · Mark 14 · Luke 22 · John 18
- GolgothaA place of execution beside a road, chosen because passers by would read the sign.Matthew 27 · Mark 15 · Luke 23 · John 19
- EmmausSeven miles of walking in the wrong direction, and the whole Old Testament explained on the way.Luke 24
The church and the end
- AntiochThe third city of the empire, where the first mixed congregation happened by accident and got a nickname for it.Acts 11 · Acts 13 · Acts 15 · Galatians 2
- AthensHe was waiting for his colleagues to catch up, and the sightseeing made him angry.Acts 17
- CorinthA port on a four mile neck of land with a harbour on each side, and the most difficult congregation in the New Testament.Acts 18 · 1 Corinthians 1 · 1 Corinthians 13 · 1 Corinthians 15 · 2 Corinthians 12
- EphesusA temple town where the gospel was resisted for commercial reasons, stated out loud by the man organising the riot.Acts 19 · Acts 20 · Ephesians 6 · Revelation 2
- PhilippiA Roman colony in Macedonia where the first three converts were a businesswoman, a slave girl and a prison officer.Acts 16 · Philippians 2 · Philippians 4
- RomeHe wanted to go for years, and the way he finally arrived was at government expense, under guard.Acts 28 · Romans 1 · Romans 8 · 2 Timothy 4
- PatmosA small island used for exile, and the return address on the last book of the Bible.Revelation 1
- The seven churches of AsiaNot a list. A postal route, in the order a courier leaving the coast would actually ride it.Revelation 2 to 3
- The New JerusalemThe only city in the book that is measured, and the measurement is a cube.Revelation 21 to 22
