A desert ; especially (with the article prefix) the (generally) sterile valley of the Jordan and its continuation to the Red Sea
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The Hebrew noun arabah names an arid plain, steppe, or desert region. In many passages it refers more specifically to the Arabah, the low rift region associated with the Jordan, the Salt Sea, routes southward, and the plains near Jericho and Moab.
Reader summary
Full entry for עֲרָבָה (H6160) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun arabah names an arid plain, steppe, or desert region. In many passages it refers more specifically to the Arabah, the low rift region associated with the Jordan, the Salt Sea, routes southward, and the plains near Jericho and Moab.
The BSB source-word alignment has 60 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the Arabah (8), of the Arabah (7), on the plains (7), in the Arabah (6), in the plains (5).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Numbers 22:1. Its strongest book concentrations include Joshua (13), Deuteronomy (10), Jeremiah (9), Numbers (9).
The Hebrew noun arabah names an arid plain, steppe, or desert region. In many passages it refers more specifically to the Arabah, the low rift region associated with the Jordan, the Salt Sea, routes southward, and the plains near Jericho and Moab. Other passages use the noun more generally for dry or sparsely inhabited land. Scripture can describe travel, encampment, borders, pursuit, danger, animal habitat, drought, and prophetic renewal in this terrain.
The word itself is geographic and ecological; it does not make dry land morally evil or fertile land morally faithful. When prophets picture the desert blossoming or receiving water, the surrounding oracle supplies the promise and its recipients. The noun must not be used to turn an ancient place-name into an automatic modern territorial entitlement, nor to blame people who endure drought, displacement, or insecure land.
Psalm 68:4 has a contextually unusual BSB rendering, on the clouds, which should be acknowledged without replacing the dominant desert-plain and Arabah identity established by the governed lexical source and wider witness set.
Arabah identifies a desert plain or the specific Jordan rift region, appearing in travel, boundary, battle, habitat, judgment, and renewal settings whose contexts govern every theological inference.
These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel in the wilderness east of the Jordan—in the Arabah opposite Suph—between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab.
Deuteronomy locates Moses and Israel in the Arabah east of the Jordan, using the noun as a concrete regional setting for covenant instruction.
They did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and pits, a land of drought and darkness, a land where no one travels and no one lives?’
Jeremiah recalls the Lord leading Israel through deserts, pits, drought, and darkness, emphasizing both severe terrain and sustaining guidance.
The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; the desert will rejoice and blossom like a rose.
Isaiah personifies the desert rejoicing and blossoming within an oracle of divine restoration, not as a general formula for every dry landscape.
A voice of one calling: “Prepare the way for the Lord in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert.
A voice calls for the Lord's way to be prepared in the wilderness and a highway made in the desert within Isaiah's comfort proclamation.
And he said to me, “This water flows out to the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah. When it empties into the Dead Sea, the water there becomes fresh.
Ezekiel's temple vision sends life-giving water down into the Arabah and toward the Dead Sea, where the narrated transformation occurs.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Arid wilderness or valley, especially the Jordan rift—place of Israel's wilderness wandering and testing.
Arid wilderness or valley, especially the Jordan rift—place of Israel's wilderness wandering and testing.
a desert; especially (with the article prefix) the (generally) sterile valley of the Jordan and its continuation to the Red Sea BDB: desert-plain Usage: Arabah, champaign, desert, evening, heaven, plain, wilderness. See also 1026.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
עֲרָבָה is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Arabah keeps biblical theology rooted in actual terrain. Israel listens, travels, camps, crosses, fights, mourns, and receives instruction in plains and desert regions that can be mapped within the narrative world. The same noun also evokes dry habitat, scarcity, danger, and places that appear resistant to cultivation. Prophetic texts can announce that such land will rejoice, bloom, receive a highway, or be reached by life-giving water.
Those promises are powerful because the terrain is genuinely arid, but the noun does not create the promise by itself. The oracle identifies what God will do and why. Faithful teaching therefore resists treating every difficult season as a wilderness code or every improvement as proof of spiritual success. It also refuses to move directly from ancient geography to present ownership claims without the legal, historical, ethical, and covenant reasoning those questions require.
Arabah can help readers notice embodied travel, environmental vulnerability, and divine renewal while honoring communities who live with drought, displacement, contested land, or fragile access to water.
Isa.35.1
Arabah is a feminine Hebrew noun used both for arid plain or steppe and, often with a definite or geographic setting, for the Arabah region along the Jordan rift. English renderings include Arabah, desert, plains, wilderness, and wasteland. Psalm 68:4 is contextually rendered on the clouds in the BSB and should not control the dominant lexical range.
The Gospels apply Isaiah's wilderness-highway proclamation to John the Baptist's ministry, while Revelation presents life-giving water in a final-city vision. These canonical connections develop preparation and renewal, but they do not erase the older passages' geography or make every desert reference messianic.