Valley of Salt

Valley of Salt (Hebrew Ge Melah, "valley of salt") is the battlefield where Israel twice defeated Edom. Samuel, Kings and Chronicles and the title of Psalm 60 all use the name without describing the place, and no ancient site preserves it, so its location rests either on the salt flats south of the Dead Sea or on a valley of the same meaning east of Beersheba. This identification is debated among biblical archaeologists.

Biblical Account

The first battle belongs to the wars of David, who reigned about 1010 to 970 BC. 2 Samuel 8:13 says David "made a name for himself when he returned from striking down 18,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt", after which he put garrisons throughout Edom and the Edomites became his servants (2 Samuel 8:14). The parallel in 1 Chronicles 18:12 credits Abishai the son of Zeruiah with the 18,000, and the title of Psalm 60 names Joab, who "on his return struck down twelve thousand of Edom in the Valley of Salt" while David was engaged with Aram Naharaim and Aram Zobah. The Hebrew of 2 Samuel 8:13 reads "Aram" where Chronicles reads "Edom"; the letters resh and dalet are easily confused, the Septuagint reads Edom, and the valley lies on the Edomite frontier, so commentators either read Edom outright or, with Keil and Delitzsch, restore the words "and he smote Edom" as dropped by a copyist. The three attributions are usually reconciled by taking the king's name for a campaign his generals fought; the two figures are read either as a total of which Joab's 12,000 were a part, as differing reckonings of one engagement, or as two battles in the same valley.

The second battle fell in the reign of Amaziah of Judah (796 to 767 BC). He "struck down ten thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt and took Sela by storm, and called it Joktheel" (2 Kings 14:7). 2 Chronicles 25:11 to 12 adds that Amaziah led his people to the valley himself, that 10,000 men of Seir fell in the battle, and that another 10,000 captives were taken to the top of a rock and thrown down. Psalm 60 opens "O God, you have rejected us, broken our defenses" (Psalm 60:1), so the psalm's title attaches the Edomite victory to a moment of felt reversal.

Geography and Identification

Two candidates hold the field. The older view, argued by Edward Robinson in the nineteenth century and followed by Keil and Delitzsch, Ellicott and the Cambridge Bible, places the valley in the plain at the southern end of the Dead Sea, the salt marsh known in Arabic as es Sebkha, at the head of the Arabah Valley beside the salt ridge of Jebel Usdum. The name fits, the ground lies on the road from Judah into Edom, and a Judahite army marching on Sela would pass this way. The objection, raised by E. W. G. Masterman in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, is that the Sebkha is soft, salt impregnated mud that no army would choose for battle, and that it may have lain under the lake in antiquity.

The alternative, which Masterman preferred, is Wadi el Milh, "valley of salt", one of the three wadis that meet at Beersheba, running east below Tell el Milh (Tel Malhata) toward the Arad valley in the Negev. The Arabic name matches the Hebrew, the wadi marks a natural southern frontier of Judah, and it is ground on which a Judahite force coming south and an Edomite force coming up from the southeast could meet. Against it, the Arabic name may be recent, since the name of Tell el Milh is thought to reflect the later salt trade from the Dead Sea, and it puts the battle inside Judah rather than on the way to Edom. Smith's Bible Dictionary recorded a third, less specific suggestion that the valley lay nearer Petra, and judged that what little the narrative implies favours it. The choice depends partly on where Sela is placed, itself an open question, with es Sela near Buseirah now widely preferred over older identifications at Petra or at a crag above the ascent of Akrabbim.

Archaeology

The Sebkha is a saline mudflat, and nothing found there bears on the question. Tel Malhata, on Wadi el Milh, was excavated over nine seasons between 1967 and 2000 and shows occupation from the Middle Bronze Age to the Byzantine period; its Iron Age levels yielded Edomite pottery, including a bowl on astragal feet whose only parallel comes from Buseirah in Edom, evidence that Edomite material culture reached this stretch of the Negev in the late monarchy. The site is generally identified with biblical Moladah, though Hormah has also been proposed, and not with any place named in the Valley of Salt narratives. The identification of the valley is possible for either candidate and established for neither.

Theological Significance

The two victories frame Edom's subjection to the house of David: begun with David's garrisons (2 Samuel 8:14), lost under Jehoram when Edom set up its own king (2 Kings 8:20 to 22), and partly recovered by Amaziah. Psalm 60 closes with the prayer "With God we shall do valiantly; it is he who will tread down our foes" (Psalm 60:12), placing the Valley of Salt among the works of the Lord who "gave victory to David wherever he went" (2 Samuel 8:14).