Arabah

AI summary: The Arabah is significant because it names a broad geographic depression rather than a single city or town. In biblical usage it helps describe movement, boundaries, and landscape, especially in relation to the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, and the southern extension toward the Gulf of Aqaba. Because it forms a long natural corridor, it appears in passages that depend on spatial orientation and territorial definition. The cross references present the Arabah as one of the Bible's key landscape terms for the great valley running through the land's eastern side.¹

Plain, in the Revised Version of 2 Kings 14:25; Josh. 3:16; 8:14; 2 Sam. 2:29; 4:7 (in all these passages the A.V. has “plain”); Amos 6:14 (A.V. “wilderness”). This word is found in the Authorized Version only in Josh. 18:18. It denotes the hollow depression through which the Jordan flows from the Lake of Galilee to the Dead Sea. It is now called by the Arabs el-Ghor. But the Ghor is sometimes spoken of as extending 10 miles south of the Dead Sea, and thence to the Gulf of Akabah on the Red Sea is called the Wady el-Arabah. ³