From LA to New York and from Dan to Beersheba: A Quick Survey of the Cities in the Bible

“From New York to Los Angeles.” “Washington is at it again.” “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Most Americans know exactly what these expressions mean, because they know the character, reputation, geography, and history of these cities. Cities tend to become shorthand for bigger ideas, whether it’s the ironically named Philadelphia (“city of brotherly shove”), Nashville’s reputation as the center of the music industry, or Orlando as the hub of vacation destinations. This same thing often happens in the Bible, where cities become stand-ins for bigger ideas, yet sadly many believers miss this because, well, we don’t know those cities. 

Yet by carefully reading and studying the Bible, we can become familiar with some of the more frequently named cities. More than that, we can come to learn how people in Bible times would have thought about those cities, and we can better understand passages which assume their audience was as familiar with them as we would be with the difference between Chicago and Boston. In this brief post, we’re going to avoid doing a full study of the big dogs, cities like Babylon or Jerusalem. You could write a book on what the Bible teaches about those two cities, and so a few paragraphs in a blog post feels insufficient. Instead, we’re going to give a quick reference to some of the lesser known, yet important cities in the Bible. More than that, we’re going to think about how to think about the Bible’s various references to cities. 

 

Two quick notes before we get started. 1) There is an ongoing debate about how necessary outside resources are in understanding the Bible. Some argue that if you don’t get a good, strong feel for the original culture, political situation, and worldview of the ancient near east or Roman empire, you won’t really be able to understand your Bible. Others argue that such information is helpful, but in marginal cases where the modern reader would likely be confused anyway. Others argue that all you need is your Bible, history, culture, and worldview are irrelevant. My own take is that outside information can be helpful, although necessary only in the rarest of circumstances. This study will occasionally rely on information that cannot be strictly found in the Bible itself, although most of it will come directly from the Bible. When outside information is brought in, it won’t be through highly specialized technical studies over which there is scholarly debate. Rather, it will be basic information that any solid Bible study resource (including Google) will give you. 

2) With the exception of capital cities, all of the examples used  will be American. While most of this blog’s readership is American, my apologies nevertheless to international readers who might not be as familiar with American cities. There is simply no other way to go about writing a post describing how people think about cities they are familiar with except by using cities with which I am familiar. I do think the principles here can be easily picked up and helpfully applied to other national contexts.

So, what can we learn about cities in the Bible?

 

Capital Cities

For starters, it’s important to know capital cities. For example, if I said, “Washington and Moscow are at it again,” you would likely realize that I am talking about the nations of America and Russia having a diplomatic spat. If I said, “London is reeling from the most recent elections,” you would understand that I meant the government in the United Kingdom is trying to figure out how to move forward given unexpected or transformational results in their election. 

In the same way, if you want to read the Old Testament carefully, it’s helpful to know 1) who the major nations are and 2) the capital cities of some of those nations. Often the Bible will use the capital city to refer to the whole nation, a literary device that is called synecdoche (where a part of something stands in for the whole thing). For example, ask the typical Christian who Jonah preached against, and most of them will tell you Nineveh. Clarify you want to know which nation he preached against, and many of them will give you a blank stare. (Nineveh is the capital city of Assyria, so Jonah was called to preach against the nation of Assyria.) Knowing this can help the biblical reader connect what was going on in Jonah to other passages that talk about Assyria.

Here are some other capital cities that it’s good to be aware of when you read your Bible, because often these city names are a stand in for the country itself. 

Jerusalem, capital of Israel (before the nation split) and Judah (after the nation split)

Samaria, primary capital of Israel after the nation split 

Damascus, capital of Syria/Aram 

Nineveh, capital of Assyria

Babylon, capital of Babylon (this one is fairly easy to remember)

Tyre and Sidon, chief cities in Phoenicia

Knowing these cities will help you know what nations are being talked about, especially in the prophets. For example, when you study Isaiah 7 and the prophecy of the virgin birth, it helps to know that when the text says that Samaria and Damascus are coming after Judah, that means the nations of Israel and Syria are in league and attacking after the southern kingdom of Judah.

 

Location, Location, Location

Sometimes the physical location of the city matters. For example, in the Bible we read about going from Dan to Beer-sheba (Judges 20:1, 1 Sameul 3:20; 2 Samuel 3:10, etc.), which is the northernmost city in Israel (Dan) and the southernmost city in Israel (Beer-sheba). It was a way of referring to the entire nation, much like we might say “from New York to LA.” Knowing that Dan was the northernmost city also becomes important, when, for example, Jeroboam sets up his golden calves. The stated reason for this change from worship at the temple to worship at the shrines of these idols was that it was “too much” for Israel to go up to Jerusalem (1 Kings 12:28-29). So he set up two idol shrines, one in the northern reaches of his territory (Dan) and one near the southern border (Bethel). Jeroboam pitched his new religion as a religion of convenience. “Don’t go all the way up to Jerusalem, we’ve got a location near you!”

As a quick aside, although it sounds weird to us that Jeroboam would talk about “going up” when those in the north traveled south to Jerusalem, this is the standard way of talking about Jerusalem in the Bible. That’s because of the high altitude of Jerusalem, you literally walk “up” to go to the city. 

 

Quite the Reputation

Cities tend to develop reputations. In America, when people talk about Las Vegas, they think of “sin city.” When you hear, “remember the Alamo!” we think of bravery in the face of sure defeat. When someone mentions Jonestown, we think of people being so deceived that they will do anything a crazy psycho suggests. Similarly, in the Bible, cities can often develop reputations. By studying the background that the Bible gives us, we can often get a sense of what the original authors would have thought or felt when certain key cities are named. 

Sometimes the reputation of a biblical city is so firmly entrenched it’s still commonly known today, like Sodom and Gomorrah. Sometimes all we know about the reputation of the city must be inferred from the Bible itself. Nathaniel apparently had a pretty rotten view of Nazareth “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). While we don’t necessarily know all the reasons for this, we could certainly imagine someone from New York saying, “Can any good thing come out of New Jersey?” Similarly, Hosea references something bad that happened in Gilead, although we don’t necessarily know what it is (Hosea 6:8; 12:11). Based on Hosea’s comments alone, we get a sense that at the time he was writing the city was associated with crime and violence, much like we might think of a city like Chicago. 

 

At other times, however, we can study a city and figure out exactly what the author of Scripture is pointing back to. Earlier in Hosea, the prophet made a big deal about the name Jezreel, naming his first child Jezreel as a symbol of God’s punishment on the current dynasty. If you study the background of this city, you will see that Jezreel was a city famous for bloodshed, beginning with righteous Naboth being slaughtered because he rightly refused to sell his family inheritance to the king (1 Kings 21). God was so infuriated by this injustice that on this basis He declared the end of Ahab’s dynasty. In a stroke of poetic justice, it would later be in Jezreel that Jehu would slaughter the descendants of Ahab in his violent coup (2 Kings 9). 

So, when Hosea says that God is bringing the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, he means that the violent, bloody city will continue to live up to its reputation for yet another generation (Hosea 1:4). But God then does a twist on the name Jezreel, and like the other names, “Lo-Ruhama” (no mercy) and “Lo-Ammi” (not my people), God redeems the name Jezreel. God says he will plant the people in the land (the meaning of the name Jezreel in Hebrew is “God plants”) and that they will grow up out of it (Hosea 1:11; 2:21-23). The city known for violence and bloodshed will become known as the place where God blesses and replants His people after their exile. 

This same tracing of meaning can be done with other cities as well. For example, following the trajectory of the city Bethel can be both fascinating and quite sad. Jeremiah will point people back to the city of Shiloh in his important temple sermon as a warning of what happens when people think that God’s presence is a good luck charm to let them get away with evil (Jeremiah 7:12). As we hinted at in the beginning, a study of Babylon and Jerusalem would be a long but worthwhile study. 

 

This brief survey of cities in the Bible is by no means exhaustive, but my goal is that it be enough to whet your appetite. Knowing the biblical and at times the historical background to cities can help make the point of the Scriptural authors sharper and clearer and help us better understand what the Bible teaches. But hopefully not so much that we become arrogant and think we have it all figured out, you know, like those Athenians on Mars Hill.