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Bible Dictionaries
Hormah
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or Joshua (Joshua 12:14) struck its king. In ancient times, Zephath (Judges 1:17). Capital of a Canaanite tribe in S. Palestine. Taken by Judah and Simeon (Judges 1:17). Judah appropriated it (Joshua 15:30; 1 Samuel 26:30). But Simeon's territory was so blended with that of Judah that elsewhere it is enumerated among Simeon's towns (1 Chronicles 4:30). In Numbers 14:45 it is called Hormah by anticipation. After Israel's unbelief, consequent on the spies' report, and subsequent presumptuous advance toward Canaan, in defiance of the Lord who no longer would go with them since they had refused to go when He invited them, the Amalekites from the hill "smote them and discomfited them even unto Hormah" Then followed the wandering in the wilderness for 38 years.
Then they came again to Hormah (Numbers 21:3), i.e. the place under the ban (Leviticus 27:28-29), devoted to destruction. "Zephath" is compared with es Safah on the S.E. frontier of Canaan, the pass by which Israel probably ascended from the Et Tih desert and the Arabah. Rowlands however identifies it with Sebatah where are extensive ruins, and near is a ruined fortress El Meshrifeh, the presumed site of the "watchtower." The site suggested in the Speaker's Commentary is some miles E. of Sebatah, namely, Rakhmah, an anagram of Hormah, the more permanent name. Israel marching N.N.W. from the Arabah, past Rakhmah or Hormah, would come to the wide plain, es Sir, the "Seir" of Deuteronomy 1:44.
Twenty miles' further march would have brought them to Arad royal city (Numbers 21:1); but before they could reach it the king drove them back to Hormah Numbers 15-19 belong to the dreary period of the 38 years' wandering after a year spent at Sinai; Numbers 20 presents them at the same point they started from 38 years before, Kadesh, in the 40th year; Numbers 21 introduces Arad assailing Israel and taking prisoners, then defeated by Israel in answer to prayer, and Hormah utterly destroyed. Israel not wishing to remain there marched S.E.
The Canaanites reoccupied the place and restored it under the old name Zephath. Not until northern Canaan was subdued did Israel reach it again in the extreme S., and Joshua conquered the king. Finally under the judges Judah and Simeon consummated the ban of Moses and his contemporaries on it, so that henceforth its name was permanently Hormah. This sets aside the objection to Numbers 14:45 and Numbers 21:3 as if these passages were post-Mosaic because of Judges 1:17.
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Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Hormah'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/h/hormah.html. 1949.
