Places of the Bible
The places
The ground the story happens on. Gardens, rivers, mountains, cities and the one city still to come.
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 story 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
