Edrei

Edrei was one of the two royal cities of Og, king of Bashan, and the place where his army met Israel in the second of the two battles against the Amorite kings east of the Jordan. The text names it alongside Ashtaroth as a city in which Og lived (Deuteronomy 1:4; Joshua 12:4; 13:12), and it is named with Salecah as a limit of Bashan (Deuteronomy 3:10). The site is identified with Daraa in southern Syria.

Biblical Account

After Israel defeated Sihon of Heshbon, the people turned and went up the road to Bashan, and Og came out against them with all his people to give battle at Edrei (Numbers 21:33). The Lord told Moses, "Do not fear him, for I have given him into your hand, and all his people, and his land" (Numbers 21:34). Israel struck down Og, his sons and his people until no survivor was left, and took possession of his land (Numbers 21:35; Deuteronomy 3:3). Moses recalled that sixty fortified cities fell in that campaign, "the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan," each walled with high walls, gates and bars (Deuteronomy 3:4-5). The territory taken from the two Amorite kings ran from the Valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon, and Bashan extended "as far as Salecah and Edrei" (Deuteronomy 3:8-10). Joshua's summary of the conquered kings calls Og "one of the remnant of the Rephaim, who lived at Ashtaroth and at Edrei" (Joshua 12:4), and in the allotment Ashtaroth and Edrei, "the cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan," went to the people of Machir the son of Manasseh (Joshua 13:31). A second, unrelated Edrei stood in Naphtali between Kedesh and En-hazor (Joshua 19:37); its site is not identified.

Geography and Identification

Edrei is placed by the text at the southern limit of Bashan, paired with Salecah at its eastern edge (Deuteronomy 3:10; compare Joshua 12:5, where Salecah alone marks the boundary). The identification with Daraa (older spellings Der'a, Der'at, Edre'at) is accepted across the standard references and can be rated probable to established. The town stands on the southern lip of the Wadi Zedi, a southern tributary of the Yarmuk, at an elevation of about 435 metres, roughly 90 kilometres south of Damascus, about 48 kilometres east of the Jordan and about 47 kilometres east of the Sea of Galilee. The Hebrew consonants are preserved in the later Greek name Adraa, used by Eusebius and by the Roman city that occupied the site, and in the Arabic Adra'at. A city written i-t-r-' appears as number 91 in the topographical list of Thutmose III at Karnak. Donald Redford's 1982 study read numbers 89 to 101 as a Bronze Age itinerary through Transjordan, which would place the entry at this Edrei, but the Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible attaches the same entry to the Edrei of Naphtali; the identification with Og's city is possible rather than established.

Archaeology

No systematic excavation of the biblical levels has been published, because the ancient tell lies under the modern town. Gottlieb Schumacher described the site in Across the Jordan (1886), and the Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible reports ruins going back to Early Bronze times. The best known feature is an extensive subterranean city cut into the basalt beneath the town, with streets, chambers, shops and cisterns; it has been only partly explored, and its rooms in their present form are generally dated to the Hellenistic or Roman period rather than to the age of Og. Roman Adraa became a city of the province of Arabia after AD 106, and the visible ruins and aqueduct belong to that later phase. Late Bronze occupation at the site therefore rests on the name, the biblical notices and unstratified finds, not on excavated levels.

Historical Context

The battle at Edrei falls in the fortieth year after the Exodus, shortly before Israel crossed the Jordan in 1406 BC. Together with the fall of Heshbon it gave Israel the whole plateau east of the Jordan from the Arnon to Hermon, the land later held by Reuben, Gad and the eastern half of Manasseh (Deuteronomy 3:12-13). Moses used the memory of Og's defeat to steady Joshua before the crossing (Deuteronomy 3:21-22), and the psalmists kept Edrei's king in Israel's confession of what the Lord had done: "Og, king of Bashan, for his steadfast love endures forever" (Psalm 136:20).