Beth-haccerem

Biblical Text

Beth-haccerem appears twice in the Old Testament.

• Jeremiah 6:1: Warning that disaster is approaching from the north, the prophet Jeremiah calls on the children of Benjamin to flee from Jerusalem. He says, "blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in Beth-haccerem." Tekoa and Beth-haccerem appear side by side as places where signals are raised to warn of danger.
• Nehemiah 3:14: This passage records the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the return from exile. Malchiah the son of Rechab repaired the Dung Gate (the gate through which refuse was carried out of the city); he was "the ruler of part of Bethhaccerem."

Name and Background

Beth means "house," ha is the definite article, and kerem means "vineyard"; the name thus means "house of the vineyard." It suggests that the area lay in the hill country of Judah, where grapes were cultivated.

The Hebrew word rendered "sign of fire" in Jeremiah 6:1 refers to a signal raised on a high place, and some translations render it "beacon." This verse suggests that Beth-haccerem stood on elevated ground visible from a distance. The phrase "blow the trumpet in Tekoa" in the same verse is recognized as a wordplay, since in Hebrew the place name Tekoa and the verb "to blow" sound alike.

In Nehemiah 3, Beth-haccerem is the name of a "district" (an administrative division). It appears to have served as the center of an administrative district in Judah during the Persian period.

Proposed Locations

The exact location has not been determined. Sites proposed by scholars include the following:

• The archaeological site of Ramat Rachel, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem
• The village of Ein Karem (Ain Karim), west of Jerusalem
• The hill country near the Herodium

The church father Jerome is reported to have described the place as a village on a hill between Jerusalem and Tekoa. Some scholars also identify Beth-haccerem with "Karem," which appears in an addition to the list of Judahite towns in Joshua 15 in the Septuagint.

Biblical Significance

In Jeremiah 6, Beth-haccerem shows how imminent the judgment was, with the alarm spreading even to the southern hill country of Judah. This judgment is commonly understood as the Babylonian invasion that led to the Babylonian exile. In the book of Nehemiah, a leader from the same region takes part in rebuilding the ruined walls of Jerusalem. Read together, the two passages reveal a movement from judgment to restoration. The place name does not appear in the New Testament.

Interpretation and Debate

Among the proposed sites, Ein Karem has long been regarded by tradition as the hometown of John the Baptist, and it is therefore sometimes presented as the town where Zacharias and Elisabeth lived. Luke 1:39, however, describes the place only as "a city of Juda." The identification of Ein Karem as the hometown of John the Baptist is a later tradition, and the identification of Ein Karem with Beth-haccerem is only one of several views. This connection should therefore be distinguished from what the text itself states.