Bible Synapse
Tel Arad fortress and shrine
Site · 9th–6th century BC · Assyria and Babylon · also called Tel Arad, Arad fortress, Arad temple
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- 9th–6th century BC (the Judahite fortresses)
- Found
- Tel Arad, northern Negev, Israel, 1962. Excavated from 1962, the fortress mound by Yohanan Aharoni and the Early Bronze Age lower city by Ruth Amiran. Both are now part of Tel Arad National Park.
- Now
- At the site (Tel Arad National Park)
- Passages
- 2 Kings 18:4, 2 Kings 23:8
What it is
A hilltop fortress on the edge of the Negev that guarded Judah’s southern border, with six building phases between the 9th century BC and its destruction by the Babylonians around 586 BC. A reservoir about 10 metres deep was cut into the rock beneath it. Inside the fort stood a small temple whose innermost room held two stone incense altars and standing stones; residue analysis has found frankincense on the larger altar and cannabis on the smaller.
How it connects to the Bible
The temple shows YHWH being worshipped at a royal shrine in a frontier fort far from Jerusalem, the kind of local sanctuary that Kings calls the “high places”: Hezekiah removed them (2 Kings 18:4) and Josiah defiled them throughout Judah (2 Kings 23:8). Hebrew ostraca found in the fortress name the place Arad.
What scholars debate
When the temple was built and abandoned, and whether its end had anything to do with the reforms of Hezekiah or Josiah, are debated. The site has no Late Bronze Age remains, so most scholars do not identify it with the Canaanite Arad of Numbers 21:1.