Pethor or Petor is identified in the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;["Tanach"](_blank)
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...
as the home of the prophet (or diviner)
Balaam
Balaam (; , Standard ''Bīlʿam'' Tiberian ''Bīlʿām'') is a diviner in the Torah ( Pentateuch) whose story begins in Chapter 22 of the Book of Numbers (). Ancient references to Balaam consider him a non-Israelite, a prophet, and the son o ...
, near to the
Euphrates River (literally, the River).
According to the
Book of Numbers
The book of Numbers (from Greek Ἀριθμοί, ''Arithmoi''; he, בְּמִדְבַּר, ''Bəmīḏbar'', "In the desert f) is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. The book has a long and c ...
,
Balak, the king of
Moab, sent messengers to Pethor to meet with Balaam in order to elicit a curse upon 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 Stele o ...
people who had left
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
and were approaching Moab to occupy the land. Balaam required the messengers to stay overnight in Pethor and to await his response until the next morning. In
Deuteronomy, Baalam is described as "Balaam the son of
Beor from Pethor of
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
" (literally, Aram Naharaim).
Earlier research speculated that it was the same place as
Pitru, a town mentioned in ancient
Assyria
Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...
n records.
[Hogarth, D. G. (David George), 1915, ''The Ancient East'']
p.30
/ref>
More recently, Pethor has been identified by Shea with the modern Deir Alla
Deir Alla (Arabic: دير علا) is the site of an ancient Near Eastern town in Balqa Governorate, Jordan. The Deir Alla Inscription, datable to ca. 840–760 BCE, was found here.
On 20 August 2010, it recorded a scorching temperature of 51 ...
,Deir Alla Inscription The Deir 'Alla Inscription (or Bal'am Son of Be'or Inscription), known as KAI 312, was discovered during a 1967 excavation in Deir 'Alla, Jordan. It is currently at the Jordan Archaeological Museum. It is written in a peculiar Northwest Semitic di ...
, which mentions Pethor and Balaam son of Beor. Since Deir Alla is located just east of the Jordan River rather than close to the Euphrates River, Shea speculates that the reference in Numbers 22:5 to "the River", a phrase later used in the Hebrew Bible for the Euphrates River, might have been used to refer to the Jordan River, and that the reference to Aram in Deuteronomy 23:4 is actually a scribal error for Adam, with Naharaim being a later scribal addition.
References
Hebrew Bible places
{{Bible-stub