Waters of Merom

Waters of Merom is the place in Upper Galilee where Joshua broke the northern Canaanite coalition that Jabin, king of Hazor, had gathered against Israel (Joshua 11:5-7). The Hebrew phrase is me Merom, "the waters of Merom," and the name Merom itself probably means "height." The battle belongs to the northern campaign of the conquest, which OTIC places soon after 1406 BC, and it is the only Old Testament event tied to the site. What happened at Hazor afterward is told in the Conquest of Hazor entry.

Biblical Account

When Jabin heard of Israel's victories in the south he sent to Jobab king of Madon, to the kings of Shimron and Achshaph, and to the kings of the northern hill country, the Arabah south of Chinneroth, the lowland and Naphoth-dor, together with Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites and the Hivites below Mount Hermon in the land of Mizpah (Joshua 11:1-3). They came out "with very many horses and chariots" and camped together at the waters of Merom to fight Israel (Joshua 11:4-5). The Lord told Joshua not to fear, promising to give them over "tomorrow at this time," and commanded him to hamstring the horses and burn the chariots (Joshua 11:6). Joshua came upon them suddenly by the waters of Merom, and Israel chased the survivors northwest as far as Great Sidon and Misrephoth-maim and eastward to the Valley of Mizpeh (Joshua 11:7-8). Joshua then did as commanded with the horses and chariots before turning back to Hazor (Joshua 11:9-10). The list of defeated kings names Madon, Hazor, Shimron-meron and Achshaph in sequence (Joshua 12:19-20).

Geography and Identification

The site is debated among biblical archaeologists, and three proposals stand. The first, argued by Reland in 1714, equated the waters with Lake Huleh, the shallow lake that lay in the Hula Valley about 70 metres above sea level until it was drained between 1951 and 1958; it measured roughly 5 by 4 kilometres with a large papyrus marsh to its north. Most recent treatments reject it. The Hebrew uses mayim, "waters," not yam, "sea," the lake carried the separate name Semechonitis in Roman times, and a marsh hemmed in by mountains is an unlikely field for a chariot army. The second proposal places the waters at the springs of Meiron (Ein Meron) at the foot of Jebel Jarmaq, the highest mountain in Upper Galilee, about 6 kilometres west of Safed. The village preserves the name; excavations by Eric and Carol Meyers in the 1970s found chiefly Hellenistic and Roman remains, and in the 1950s Yohanan Aharoni, finding no suitable tell at the site, doubted any settlement there before the Roman period, though Bronze and Iron Age pottery recovered in soundings between 2000 and 2005 has since reopened the question. Aharoni instead proposed Tell el-Khirbeh, a large Canaanite tell south of the village of Marun er-Ras on the Israel-Lebanon border, where the name survives in Jebel Marun and a perennial spring rises at the foot of the mound. Meiron lies about 13 kilometres west-southwest of Hazor and Tell el-Khirbeh about 15 kilometres to its west-northwest as the crow flies, both in the hills rather than on the valley floor. Zvi Gal proposed a fourth candidate in 1988, the Horns of Hattin above the Sea of Chinnereth, well to the south of the other three.

Historical Context

Merom is attested outside the Bible as a town of Canaanite Galilee. It appears as m-r-m-i-m, number 85, in the topographical list of Thutmose III at Karnak, and Ramesses II's reliefs pair m-r-m with Beth-anath and Kanah, both Upper Galilee towns (Judges 1:33; Joshua 19:28). Tiglath-pileser III records the capture of Marum during his Galilee campaign of 733 to 732 BC, the same campaign in which he took Hazor (2 Kings 15:29). The town therefore existed before and long after Joshua, and the coalition's muster at its waters fits a known settlement with reliable water on the high ground between Hazor and the Phoenician coast, toward which Joshua later pursued the fugitives as far as Great Sidon (Joshua 11:8).

Archaeology

No excavation has yet exposed a Late Bronze Age battlefield, and none should be expected; the identification of the town rests on the survival of the name and on the size of the candidate mounds. Tell el-Khirbeh is known chiefly from survey, and its claim rests on the size of the mound, the spring at its foot and the survival of the name nearby. Meiron's excavated levels are chiefly Hellenistic and Roman, but W. F. Albright reported Late Bronze and Early Iron sherds on the slopes below the synagogue ruins, and Israel Antiquities Authority soundings between 2000 and 2005 produced Chalcolithic, Early Bronze, Iron Age and Persian pottery, so the site was occupied long before the Roman period even though no Late Bronze town has yet been exposed there. The identification is best rated probable for the general district of Upper Galilee and possible for any single site.

Theological Significance

The account records that the coalition was "in number like the sand that is on the seashore" (Joshua 11:4), that the Lord promised victory within a day, and that Joshua obeyed the command to disable the chariots rather than keep them (Joshua 11:6, 9). The narrator's summary follows: "Just as the Lord had commanded Moses his servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did" (Joshua 11:15).