Anathoth

Anathoth is a town in the land of Benjamin, listed in Scripture among cities with pasture lands assigned to Levitical families and closely associated with priests, especially the prophet Jeremiah. The text says it was included among the cities from the tribe of Benjamin (1 Chronicles 6:60) and names it “Anathoth with its pasture lands” (Joshua 21:18). Geographically, the passages consistently place it in Benjamin, not Judah (Jeremiah 1:1; 32:8).

In narrative and prophecy, Anathoth appears as a priestly town with a troubled history. Solomon sends Abiathar the priest to his own fields at Anathoth (1 Kings 2:26). Jeremiah 1:1 identifies Jeremiah as one of the priests who were in Anathoth, and Jeremiah 32:7–8, 12 records his purchase of a field there. Yet Jeremiah 11:21–23 also records the men of Anathoth seeking his life and Yahweh’s judgment on them, so the town is both Jeremiah’s home base and a place of opposition to his prophetic ministry.

Linguistically, “Anathothite” and its variant “Antothite” are gentilic forms meaning a person from Anathoth, not a separate place or people. First Chronicles 11:28 names Abiezer the Anathothite among David’s mighty men, identifying him by his town of origin.

Christian traditions do not divide over the basic identification of Anathoth as a Benjaminite town; differences are interpretive. Some read the judgment on the men of Anathoth (Jeremiah 11:21–23) as a warning about rejecting God’s prophet, while others focus on Jeremiah’s field purchase (Jeremiah 32:7–12) as a sign of restoration hope. Those are readings of the episodes, not competing definitions of the place.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.