Location and Economy

Bozrah was located in the sandstone hills approximately 20 miles (32 kilometers) southeast of the Dead Sea in the heart of what was once the territory of Edom. Now a tell situated in the modern village of Buseirah in Jordan, ancient Bozrah was a microcosm of the larger Edomite territory—representing the inaccessibility of the area due to rugged sandstone hills, sheer walls, and ravines. Bozrah was protected by steep ravines on three sides, and it was this naturally guarded position that probably contributed to its name, which in Hebrew means “inaccessible” or “enclosed” (from the Hebrew word בצר, btsr). In the introduction to its indictment against Edom, the book of Obadiah notes that the Edomites lived “in the clefts of the rock” and had their dwelling “in the heights,” and thus could say in their hearts, “Who will bring me down to the ground?” (Obad 3 NRSV; compare Jer 49:16). The prophet may have had the city of Bozrah in mind.

Bozrah was situated 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) west of the international trade route between Mesopotamia and Egypt—the King’s Highway (Num 20:17; 21:22). This route ran the length of ancient Transjordan, from Bozrah in the south to Damascus in the north, and was well known because it was on this road that aromatics from Arabia and spices from the Far East were transported all over the known world (Aharoni, Land of the Bible, 54). The Edomite economy was based in part on the spice trade, given the rugged nature of the surrounding territory, which did not readily allow for agriculture or animal husbandry (though both were possible on a small scale; see Isa 34:6). Edom also depended on the mining and export of copper from the region of Feinan—southwest of Bozrah (Baly, Geography of the Bible, 233–40; Levy, “Reassessing the Chronology of Biblical Edom,” 865–79; Levy and Najjar, “Edom and Copper,” 24–35, 70; “Some Thoughts on Khirbet en-Nahas,” 3–17; compare Finkelstein, “Khirbet en-Nahas,” 119–25).