Understanding the Meaning of Adummiym in Hebrew

אֲדֻמִּים (Adummiym) names “a pass in Palestine,” appearing in Joshua’s boundary descriptions where the border is traced in relation to an ascent associated with this pass. In both contexts, it functions as a fixed geographic reference point that helps locate the line of inheritance.

Occurrences

Joshua 15:7 — “The border went up to Debir from the valley of Achor, and so northward, looking toward Gilgal, that faces the ascent of Adummim, which is on the south side of the river. The border passed along to the waters of En Shemesh, and ended at En Rogel.”

Here Adummiym appears within the phrase “the ascent of Adummim,” presented as a known rise or approach that the border “faces” while moving “northward.” The wording anchors the boundary line by orienting it toward a particular climb connected with this pass, and by placing that ascent “on the south side of the river.” In the verse’s sequence of waypoints—“Debir,” “the valley of Achor,” “Gilgal,” “the waters of En Shemesh,” “En Rogel”—Adummiym functions as one of the intermediate spatial cues that makes the border’s course traceable: the line does not merely go north, but goes north with a defined outlook toward a marked ascent, then continues to named waters and endpoints. The pass is not described for its terrain beyond being an “ascent,” but it is treated as a decisive point of reference for the border’s direction and adjacency (“south side of the river”).

Joshua 18:17 — “It extended northward, went out at En Shemesh, and went out to Geliloth, which is opposite the ascent of Adummim. It went down to the stone of Bohan the son of Reuben.”

In this boundary notice, Adummiym again appears as “the ascent of Adummim,” but the relationship is framed differently: Geliloth is located “opposite” the ascent. The border is narrated through movement verbs—“extended,” “went out,” “went out,” “went down”—so Adummiym contributes a fixed landmark that allows the reader to place Geliloth by contrast across from the ascent associated with the pass. The boundary then “went down to the stone of Bohan the son of Reuben,” a further marker that indicates a shift in elevation or direction after the point opposite the ascent. In this verse, the ascent of Adummiym is not the next stop on the line but a reference point used to define another site’s position (“opposite”), showing how the pass served as a prominent geographic feature for locating nearby boundary points.

Sense and Usage

As a proper place-name for “a pass in Palestine,” Adummiym is used concretely and topographically: it is associated with an “ascent,” a term that highlights the pass as a route marked by rising ground. In both passages, the pass is not introduced with narrative explanation, suggesting it was recognized sufficiently to function in administrative and legal boundary language. The border descriptions depend on such well-known features—valleys, riversides, springs (“waters”), and stones—to present a line that can be followed from point to point, and Adummiym plays its role by supplying a named pass that orients the reader within that chain of landmarks.

The two verses show complementary ways a pass can serve boundary definition. In Joshua 15:7, the border moves “northward” while “looking toward” a known ascent; the ascent thus helps set the direction and the border’s orientation within the landscape, especially with the added clarification that it lies “on the south side of the river.” In Joshua 18:17, the ascent stands as the counterpart to another location (“Geliloth, which is opposite the ascent of Adummim”), so the pass provides a point of reference for relative position rather than the border’s immediate direction. Across both, the pass is not treated as a destination for settlement or an interior city but as a landmark embedded in the boundary’s geometry—something a survey-like description can point to in order to communicate where the line runs.

The consistent pairing of Adummiym with “ascent” also illustrates how place-names in boundary lists can be attached to a particular feature of the route through them. A pass is naturally associated with travel through a constrained or elevated corridor, and the phrasing in these verses keeps attention on that route-character (“ascent”) without expanding into other details. The text’s concern is not the pass’s appearance, size, or strategic value, but its usefulness for fixing a border in relation to recognizable terrain and neighboring markers like En Shemesh, En Rogel, and the stone of Bohan.

Imagery

Although the boundary notices are procedural in tone, the repeated phrase “the ascent of Adummim” gives a vivid geographical image: a named climb in the landscape that people could face toward, stand opposite, and trace a border by. Alongside “the south side of the river,” “waters,” and a named stone, Adummiym evokes the kind of natural pass where the land rises and the route is defined by the terrain itself, making it an apt anchor for lines drawn across inherited ground.

Sources: Lexical data from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and the Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon. Occurrence data from the Westminster Leningrad Codex with STEPBible reference data (CC BY). Scripture quotations from the World English Bible (public domain).