Godssecret's Weblog

Anathoth is the name of one of the Levitical cities given to “the children of Aaron” in the tribe of Benjamin (Joshua 21:13–18). It is one of the cities of refuge, in the tribe of Benjamin ( Joshua 21:18 ). The town was named after an Israelite as seen in 1 Chronicles (1 Chr 7:8), and in Nehemiah (Neh 10:19). Anathoth is  the native place of Abiezer the Anetothite, one of King David’s “thirty” (2 Samuel 23:27) and of Jehu, another of his mighty men (1 Chr 12:3). King Solomon banished Abiathar the Priest to Anathoth, “unto thine own fields”. It is the birth-place of Jeremiah .  In Jeremiah 32:6, there it says that God told the prophet Jeremiah to purchase land in Anathoth from his cousin, Hanamel of Anathoth. .In spite of a hopeless situation of the impending exile of the Jewish people. Jeremiah forewarned the Judeans of the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah as well as the Babylonian captivity. But he also predicted that the people would return to the land of Judah. There was a vivid lesson to the people of Judah that God would return His people from the Babylonian captivity. Jeremiah had publicly proclaimed to the people of Judah that God would restore them to the land after 70 years of captivity in Babylon. Jeremiah’s faith in the promise of God was shown by buying the field at Anathoth, a city already destroyed by the Babylonians. Jeremiah was literally putting his money where his mouth was!

Anathoth is perhaps best known as the home town of the prophet Jeremiah (Jer 1:1; 29:27; 32:7-9). He delivers a prophecy of tribulation by the sword against the residents of Anathoth, who were plotting against him (Jer 11:21-23). It suffered greatly from the army of Sennacherib, and only 128 men returned to it from the Exile ( Nehemiah 7:27 ; Ezra 2:23 ).  Anathoth suffered greatly from the army of Nebuchadnezzar, and only 128 men returned to it from the Babylonian exile (Neh 7:27; Ezra 2:23). It lay about 3 miles north of Jerusalem.  Anathoth is about 3 miles north of Jerusalem. Anathoth  is between the city of Michmash and Jerusalem  Anathoth is a very Beautiful Nature area that commands a spacious outlook over the uplands to the North, and especially to the Southeast, over the Jordan valley toward the Dead Sea and the mountains of Moab. There is nothing to shelter it from the withering power of the winds from the eastern deserts (Jeremiah 4:11; 18:17. In Anathoth are the remains of ancient walls and strong foundations, and quarries that still supply Jerusalem with building stones.

It is always the archaeologist’s dream to find inscriptional material, such as a seal,  clay tablet, papyrus, scroll, or even just graffiti on a wall. In Israel, an inscription is a rare find. In the summer of 2005, the Jerusalem Post reported the discovery of a tenth-century wall in the City of David in Jerusalem by Dr. Eilat Mazar. One of her area supervisors also discovered a bulla (a dried lump of clay with a seal impression on it) of an individual named ‘Jerucal ben [son of] Shelemiah ben [son of] Shevi.’ The name of this person appears in Jeremiah 37:3 and 38:1. This seal impression adds a detail that the Bible does not mention: the name of his grandfather, Shevi (Lefkovits 2005:13; Mazar 2007:67-69).