What is…
Hobah

Meaning: hiding place

This is a place to the north of Damascus in Syria, to which Abraham pursued Chedorlaomer and his confederates after they took his nephew Lot as a slave (Genesis 14:15). The rescue was successful.

This place is mentioned only this one time in Scripture, and its exact location remains uncertain.

Scholars and older geographers have suggested several sites, all north or northwest of Damascus in present-day Syria:

• Ḥoba (aka Hoba or Choba) (most frequently cited). A spring and former settlement roughly 50–60 miles (80–97 km) north or northwest of Damascus, on or near the old road toward Palmyra (Tadmor) or Homs, Syria. The name is similar, and a spring would have been a logical stopping point for a fleeing army or a pursuing force. This identification goes back to 19th-century scholars such as Wetzstein and Keil & Delitzsch.

• Jobar (Jawbar). A village immediately north of Damascus. Local Jewish tradition in Damascus long associated it with Hobah; a synagogue there was dedicated to Elijah.

• Abila of Coelesyria (modern Souq Wadi Barada), about 12 miles northwest of Damascus, proposed by the 18th-century biblical scholar Antoine Augustin Calmet (aka Dom Augustin Calmet).

• The land of Upu / Api / Ubi. This regional name appears in Egyptian Execration Texts and the Amarna letters (14th century BC) for the territory around and northwest of Damascus toward the Beqaa Valley. Some scholars think “Hobah” may be a Hebrew form or later echo of that older regional name.

• A minority view treats “Hobah” as a possible textual or literary variant of Zobah, the later Aramean kingdom north of Damascus mentioned in 2 Samuel 8, because the names are similar and both are linked to Damascus. The Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran actually reads “Helbon” (a known village near Damascus famous for wine) instead of Hobah.

None of these identifications has been confirmed by excavation. Hobah was probably a small settlement, spring, or district rather than a major city, so the absence of a clear archaeological “hit” is not surprising.