Transjordan

Location

As on the ArtScroll Chumash maps, the route runs north through the desert east of Moab and crosses the Arnon into Sihon’s strip, which stretched from the Arnon north past Heshbon. Dibon-gad is probably Dhiban; Almon-diblathaim is unlocated. Heshbon is usually identified with Tell Ḥisbān near Madaba, though excavations found no Late Bronze Age city there; Edrei is Der‘a in southern Syria.

• Heshbonחֶשְׁבּוֹן — Tell Ḥisbān (identification debated)Disputed 31.80° N, 35.81° ECity of Sihon, king of the Amorites.

Proposed locations

• Tell JalulScholarly proposalAlternative candidate for Sihon’s Heshbon.
• Edrei (Der‘a)Scholarly proposalOg’s battlefield (probable).
• Dibon (Dhiban)Scholarly proposalThe station Dibon-gad, station 39 (Num. 33:45); the Mesha Stele was found here in 1868.
• Almon-diblathaim (?)Tradition · ArtScroll Chumash mapStation 40 (Num. 33:46), drawn north-east of Dibon. Position approximate; unlocated.

The journey

• Iye-abarim → across the Arnon → Dibon-gad≈ 80 km

  “In the wilderness which is in front of Moab, toward the sunrising” (Num. 21:11), crossing the upper Arnon into the strip Sihon had taken from Moab. Roughly 5–8 days at the pace of a people on the move. Route conjectural.

• Dibon-gad → Almon-diblathaim≈ 20 km

  Roughly 1–2 days at the pace of a people on the move. Route conjectural.

• Heshbon → Edrei≈ 100 km

  The campaign against Og of Bashan. Roughly 3–4 days on foot. Route conjectural.

Distances are estimates along plausible ancient corridors, not measured routes.

Biblical Narrative

Israel camps at the brook Zered and beyond the Arnon (21:12–13); Numbers 33 lists the camps as Dibon-gad and Almon-diblathaim (33:45–46). Sihon comes out to Jahaz and is defeated; Israel dwells in the cities of the Amorites (21:21–31). Og comes out to battle at Edrei; his iron bedstead, the text notes, could still be seen in Rabbah of the Ammonites (Deut. 3:11).

Geography

The Zered (Wadi al-Hasa) and the Arnon (Wadi al-Mujib) drop from the plateau to the Dead Sea in gorges hundreds of metres deep. They formed natural borders — the Zered between Edom and Moab, the Arnon “the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites” (21:13). Sihon had taken the land north of the Arnon from an earlier king of Moab (21:26), so Israel could camp there without entering Moab. ArtScroll’s map of this verse shades that strip, from the Arnon north past Heshbon to the old border between Moab and the Amorites. North of them lie the tableland (mishor) of Madaba and Heshbon, the hills of Gilead, and the basalt plateau of Bashan.

Historical Context

Numbers 21:27–30 quotes an old victory song over Heshbon, and 21:14 cites a lost “book of the Wars of the LORD” — windows onto earlier poetic sources. The Mesha Stele (c. 840 BCE) shows Israel and Moab contesting this plateau in the 9th century BCE.

Archaeology

Excavations at Tell Ḥisbān (from 1968, by Andrews University) found Iron Age and later remains but nothing from the Late Bronze Age — so either Sihon’s Heshbon lay elsewhere (Tell Jalul has been proposed), or the conquest traditions reflect later realities.

Identification

What the text says

The Zered (21:12); the Arnon, “the border of Moab” (21:13); Heshbon (21:25–26); Jahaz (21:23); Edrei (21:33); Dibon-gad and Almon-diblathaim (33:45–46).

Traditional identification

The ArtScroll Chumash map takes Israel north along the desert east of Moab (stations 38–40) and shows wars with Sihon in the land of the Amorite and with Og in Bashan; a second map shows the strip north of the Arnon that Sihon had captured from Moab, where Israel camped.

Scholarly proposals

Arnon = Wadi al-Mujib and Zered = Wadi al-Hasa (identified). Heshbon = Tell Ḥisbān (probable, but debated); Edrei = Der‘a (probable); Dibon-gad = Dhiban (probable). Jahaz is uncertain; Almon-diblathaim is often linked with the Beth-diblathaim of Jer. 48:22 and the Mesha Stele.

What remains uncertain

The Late Bronze Age horizon of the conquest stories is archaeologically unclear.