Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
: Yarmut (יַרְמוּת), was the name of two cities in the land of Canaan.Lemche (2010), p 160
The Douai-Rheims version of the Bible has an alternative spelling, Jaramoth.
Jarmuth near Beit Shemesh
Jarmuth was an
Amorite
The Amorites (; sux, 𒈥𒌅, MAR.TU; Akkadian: 𒀀𒈬𒊒𒌝 or 𒋾𒀉𒉡𒌝/𒊎 ; he, אֱמוֹרִי, 'Ĕmōrī; grc, Ἀμορραῖοι) were an ancient Northwest Semitic-speaking people from the Levant who also occupied lar ...
city in
Canaan
Canaan (; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; he, כְּנַעַן – , in pausa – ; grc-bib, Χανααν – ;The current scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus T ...
at the time of the
Israelite
The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan.
The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stel ...
settlement recorded in the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach" '' Piram, was one of five kings who formed an alliance to attack Gibeon in response to Gibeon making a treaty with the Israelites led by
Joshua
Joshua () or Yehoshua ( ''Yəhōšuaʿ'', Tiberian: ''Yŏhōšuaʿ,'' lit. 'Yahweh is salvation') ''Yēšūaʿ''; syr, ܝܫܘܥ ܒܪ ܢܘܢ ''Yəšūʿ bar Nōn''; el, Ἰησοῦς, ar , يُوشَعُ ٱبْنُ نُونٍ '' Yūšaʿ ...
, who had recently massacred all civilian inhabitants of the nearby cities of
Jericho
Jericho ( ; ar, أريحا ; he, יְרִיחוֹ ) is a Palestinian city in the West Bank. It is located in the Jordan Valley, with the Jordan River to the east and Jerusalem to the west. It is the administrative seat of the Jericho ...
Book of Joshua
The Book of Joshua ( he, סֵפֶר יְהוֹשֻׁעַ ', Tiberian: ''Sēp̄er Yŏhōšūaʿ'') is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Isra ...
, Chapters ). This Jarmuth is commonly identified with a modern site variously called Tel Yarmuth in Hebrew, Tel Jarmuth, or Khirbet el-Yarmûk in Arabic (grid position 147124
PAL
Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...
). The site is located on the south of
Beit Shemesh
Beit Shemesh ( he, בֵּית שֶׁמֶשׁ ) is a city located approximately west of Jerusalem in Israel's Jerusalem District, with a population of in .
History Tel Beit Shemesh
The small archaeological tell northeast of the modern city w ...
, near
Bayt Nattif
Bayt Nattif or Beit Nattif ( ar, بيت نتّيف, and alternatively) was a Palestinian Arab village, located some 20 kilometers (straight line distance) southwest of Jerusalem, midway on the ancient Roman road between Beit Guvrin and Jerusal ...
, and is now a
National Park
A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual ...
. The Park spans over an area of 267
dunams
A dunam (Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount o ...
(nearly 66 acres).
Jarmuth in Issachar
Another Jarmuth became a
Levitical city
In the Hebrew Bible, the Levitical cities were 48 cities in ancient Israel set aside for the tribe of Levi, who were not allocated their own territorial land when the Israelites entered the Promised Land.
Numbers 35:1-8 relates God's command to ...
given to the
Gershonite The Gershonites were one of the four main divisions among the Levites in Biblical times. The Bible claims that the Gershonites were all descended from the eponymous '' Gershon'' a son of Levi (not to be confused with Moses' son Gershom), although s ...
s within the territory of the
Tribe of Issachar
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Issachar () was one of the twelve tribes of Israel and one of the ten lost tribes. In Jewish tradition, the descendants of Issachar were seen as being dominated by religious scholars and influential in ...
, according to . Jarmuth is not mentioned in the parallel list of Levitical cities in
1 Chronicles 6
1 Chronicles 6 is the sixth chapter of the Books of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible or the First Book of Chronicles in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is compiled from older sources by an unknown person or group, designated by m ...
), but Ramoth is mentioned in its place (). The site of the Issacharian Jarmuth is not yet known, but it is identified by some with the site of Kawkab el-Hawa, which if correct might also correspond to
Second Temple period
The Second Temple period in Jewish history lasted approximately 600 years (516 BCE - 70 CE), during which the Second Temple existed. It started with the return to Zion and the construction of the Second Temple, while it ended with the First Je ...
Agrippina.Negev & Gibson (2001), Yarmut (a), p. 545.