Ezion-geber

AI summary: Ezion-geber stands at the edge of Israel's usual land-focused story and opens it toward maritime trade. It first appears in the itinerary of Israel's wilderness travel, but its main significance comes in Kings and Chronicles, where Solomon builds ships there and reaches outward toward Ophir and long-distance commerce. Jehoshaphat's failed fleet shows the same port still mattered generations later, though not always successfully. The cross references present Ezion-geber as a Red Sea gateway where wilderness geography, royal trade, and economic ambition intersect.¹

The giant’s backbone (so called from the head of a mountain which runs out into the sea), an ancient city and harbour at the north-east end of the Elanitic branch of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Akabah, near Elath or Eloth (Num. 33:35; Deut. 2:8). Here Solomon built ships, “Tarshish ships,” like those trading from Tyre to Tarshish and the west, which traded with Ophir (1 Kings 9:26; 2 Chr. 8:17); and here also Jehoshaphat’s fleet was shipwrecked (1 Kings 22:48; 2 Chr. 20:36). It became a populous town, many of the Jews settling in it (2 Kings 16:6, “Elath”). It is supposed that anciently the north end of the gulf flowed further into the country than now, as far as ‘Ain el-Ghudyan, which is 10 miles up the dry bed of the Arabah, and that Ezion-geber may have been there. ³