The Mysterious Silver Hoard from Eshtemoa

Twelve miles south of Hebron (the city associated with the patriarch Abraham) lies an Arab village named es-Samoa. As is well known, modern Arab place names often preserve in a variant form an ancient place name that attached to the same spot thousands of years earlier. Es-Samoa is an excellent example of this phenomenon. Philologically, it represents a transformation into Arabic of the ancient name Eshtemoa, a town known to us from the Bible.

Geographically, the Biblical Eshtemoa fits the location of es-Samoa and thus supports the equation es-Samoa = Eshtemoa. In Joshua 15:50, Eshtemoa is listed among the towns in the hill country of Judah. In Joshua 21:39 and in a parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 6:42, we are told that Eshtemoa was a Levitical city of refuge, near Hebron, given to the sons of Aaron:

“To the descendants of Aaron the priest they assigned Hebron, the city of refuge for murderers, together with its pastures … [and] Eshtemoa and its pastures” (Joshua 21:39).

Similarly in Chronicles: