Zaanaim, Zaanannim or Bezaanaim is a place name applied to one or two locations in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...

. According to Serge Frolov (2013), its location "cannot be determined with any degree of certainty." Zaanaim means "wanderings", "the unloading of tents", the location was probably so called from the fact of nomads in tents encamping amid the cities and villages of that region. According to Joshua 19:33, the border of the tribe of

Naftali According to the Book of Genesis, Naphtali (; ) was the last of the two sons of Jacob and Bilhah (Jacob's sixth son). He was the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Naphtali. Some biblical commentators have suggested that the name ''Naphtali'' ma ...

passed by the "oak in Zaanannim" (''Revised Version''). According to Judges 4:11, Heber the Kenite's tent, in which

Jael Jael or Yael ( he, יָעֵל ''Yāʿēl'') is the name of the heroine who delivered Israel from the army of King Jabin of Canaan in the Book of Judges of the Hebrew Bible. After Barak demurred at the behest of the prophetess Deborah, God turned ...

killed Sisera, was "as far as the oak in Zaanannim" (''Revised Version''). Where the

Revised Version The Revised Version (RV) or English Revised Version (ERV) of the Bible is a late 19th-century British revision of the King James Version. It was the first and remains the only officially authorised and recognised revision of the King James Versio ...

reads "oak," the

King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...

reads "plain." According to Cheyne and Black, an acceptable alternative reading for "oak" in these passages is "terebinth". Where the ''Revised Version'' has "in Zaanannim" above, the Hebrew text reads ''bṣʿnnym.'' It has been, however, suggested by some that, following the

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond th ...

For the Septuagint's reading (''Besemiin'' or ''Besenanim''), see the ''New English Translation of the Septuagint'' at Joshua (Iesous) 19:3

and the

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cente ...

, the letter "b", which in

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 ...

means "in," should be taken as a part of the word following, and the phrase would then be "unto the oak of Bitzanaim," a place which has been identified with the ruins of Bessum, about half-way between

Tiberias Tiberias ( ; he, טְבֶרְיָה, ; ar, طبريا, Ṭabariyyā) is an Israeli city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it has been considered since the 16th century one of Judaism's Fo ...

and Mount Tabor.

References

* ''The plain of Zaanaim'' in Encyclopaedia Biblica * ''The oak in Zaanaim'' in Encyclopaedia Biblica {{eastons, Zaanaim Hebrew Bible places