Every time I think of Jerusalem, I can still smell the market: the spices, the incense, and the food being cooked on the streets. I remember standing at the Western Wall when the entire plaza was full, struggling to push through the crowd. Around me were Jews, Christians, and Muslims, Arabs and Israelis, and pilgrims from all over the world.
That mix of people is nothing new. For thousands of years, the world has passed through this small strip of land. Why? Why did God choose this land, of all places, for his people? I think by exploring the geography of the land, and especially its roads, we can begin to answer these questions and gain a deeper faith in the God of the Bible.
The Western Wall plaza, Jerusalem. Photo: Brian Ketchem.
Geography has an inherent conundrum: do the people shape the land, or does the land shape them? The simple answer to this question is both, but it is sometimes hard to figure out which element is having the larger influence. Perhaps nowhere is this question of influence more obvious than when discussing roads in antiquity. People chose roads based on the geography, but then those roads became part of the geography, influencing settlement and trade.
The Bible is full of geography. Place names and people groups are frequently mentioned in the text. What the casual reader might not understand, however, is that roads are also discussed at length. With a few exceptions, they are not mentioned by name, but their presence is understood by the relationship between the places.
Roads: What Are We Talking About?
The first thing that we need to address when looking at biblical roads is the term "roads." In our modern context, that word carries a significantly different connotation than it did in antiquity. There is even a large difference between the Roman concept of a road and what we are discussing in the land of Israel. There was no pavement, no guardrails, no mile markers, and no exit signs.
Perhaps a more accurate description of what we are talking about is the term "route." A road, although perhaps marked by a well-worn trail, was initially just the known route between two places. As these routes became more popular, technology got better, and development increased, the roads ultimately came to be more like what we understand today.
Before they were developed, however, most roads were labeled by their destination. For example, the road to Beth-horon went to Beth-horon (Joshua 10:10). Likewise, Hagar was found by a spring "on the way to Shur" (Genesis 16:7), and even one of the great international highways was called "the way of the land of the Philistines" because of where it led (Exodus 13:17).
The Biblical Roads
There are many unnamed lesser roads in the land, but there are two main north–south routes that are mentioned by name in the text.
Major roads of the biblical world: the International Coastal Highway, the King's Highway, the Ridge Route, and key secondary roads. Map: Brian Ketchem. Basemap: Natural Earth (public domain).
Primary Roads
The Transjordan Highway: "The King's Highway" (Numbers 20:17; 21:22)
Named twice in the Bible, the "King's Highway," also called the Transjordan Highway, was the major north–south route on the eastern side of the Jordan, in modern-day Jordan. It connected the Gulf of Aqaba in the south to Damascus in the north.
Prior to the conquest, the Israelites asked to pass through the land of Edom via the King's Highway. Edom refused and came out against them with an army, so Israel had to go around (Numbers 20:18–21). Israel made the same request of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who also refused and was defeated (Numbers 21:21–24). After the conquest, the northern stretch of this road would have been in the territory of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh.
The International Coastal Highway: "The Way of the Sea" or "The Way of the Land of the Philistines" (Exodus 13:17; Isaiah 9:1)
Mentioned by name in Exodus and Isaiah, the International Coastal Highway, which is also called "the Way of the Sea" or "the Way of the Land of the Philistines," was arguably the most important road in all of antiquity. It was the only land route between Africa and Asia, so traffic between Egypt and Mesopotamia had no alternative but to pass through the land. It connected the kingdom of Egypt to Damascus and on to Mesopotamia, following the coastline of the Levant in broad terms.
Through the Sharon Plain it ran inland along the foothills to avoid the coastal marshes and dunes, then crossed the Carmel ridge through a pass that opened at Megiddo. From there it crossed the Jezreel Valley, ran up the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, passed Hazor, and went on to Damascus.
In Exodus, God tells Moses not to lead the people that way, but rather through the wilderness (I am sure to the surprise of the rest of the Israelites!). The text gives the reason: "lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt" (Exodus 13:17).
Isaiah 9:1, quoted again in Matthew 4:15, is a passage ultimately talking about how Jesus would come to the Galilee of the Gentiles by the way of the sea. This was foreshadowing his ultimate residence in Capernaum, a town that had grown by the time of Jesus because of its position on the road. Matthew places a tax booth there (Matthew 9:1, 9), which fits a town on a trade route near the border between the territories of Herod Antipas and Philip.
Note: Some scholars read Isaiah's "way of the sea" as the name of a region rather than the road itself, but that discussion is beyond this study.
Secondary Roads
In addition to the main north–south trade routes that went through the land, there were a number of other roads that connected the interior of the country. These varied in size and use, but much like modern road systems, they ran between the more major roads.
Where these secondary roads intersected the major routes, settlement often occurred. For example, Beersheba was at the intersection of an east–west road that ultimately went to Gaza and a north–south route that went into the Judean hill country. These were strategic locations for both protection and trade. Many of these roads are mentioned in Scripture, both implicitly and explicitly.
The Geography of Roads
Now that we know a little bit more about what roads are mentioned in the Bible, we need to talk about why they are important and how they came to be. First, why are the roads where they are?
Terrain, Elevation, and Water
The location of roads depended heavily on the suitability of the terrain. There are several geographic features that make travel difficult, if not impossible. In the land of Israel, these are things such as marshland in the Hula Basin and in parts of the Jezreel Valley.
Large bodies of water or large rivers like the Jordan created barriers or defined crossing points. The large basalt field north of the Sea of Galilee made travel almost impossible, especially with horses or chariots. In addition to all of these things, the two most important factors for roads were elevation and water.
Elevation had a major impact on the location of a road. The interior territory of Israel has a lot of mountainous terrain. This is why the major arteries are on the periphery. The Transjordan and the coastal highway could both be described as relatively flat. This made for easy, fast travel.
What do you do, however, when you have to cross the elevated parts of the country? Just like today, you want to follow either a ridge or a valley, and you want to gain or lose as little elevation as possible. Instead of going perpendicular to the terrain, you want to follow its natural shape. This leads to roads that are appropriately described as ridge routes.
Wadi Qelt in the Judean Wilderness. Photo: Brian Ketchem.
There is, in a sense, another major road that runs from Beersheba north through Hebron, Jerusalem, and Bethel to Shechem. It was a well-defined route, but it was not as popular as the major highways because you had to cross the interior of the country.
This route follows the watershed ridge down the spine of the country. Some call this route the patriarchal ridge route, so named because Abraham took this route as he traveled north to south in the land of Canaan (Genesis 12:6–9; 13:18).
Water also had a major impact on travel. Not in the sense that it had to be navigated around (although it did), but more along the lines of provision. When traveling, you would need to account for where you could find water for yourself and your livestock.
This is what made Israel's far eastern boundary so daunting. It is not that people couldn't cross the desert, but more that they could not find water along the way. Again we see the example of Beersheba. People would travel that way because they knew there was a well there where they would find water (Genesis 21:25–31).
Water trough and well outside the city entrance at Beersheba. Photo: Doug Garner.
Opportunity and Vulnerability
The second consideration regarding the geography of roads is understanding what they represent. This idea can be summarized with two words: opportunity and vulnerability. These two words then relate to two other ideas: trade and protection. We will take each in turn.
First, roads represented opportunity, and this opportunity came in the form of trade. Trade does a number of things for a country. It allows for surplus goods to be turned into money, and it also provides an opportunity for money to be turned into non-native necessities. Places where trade occurred often had a number of defining characteristics. They were often more wealthy, being the places where money could be made. They were also often more technologically advanced, having access to the latest tools that were being traded.
Trade also had an impact culturally. Places adjacent to major roads were often more culturally diverse as people from other parts of the world came to do business. They also tended to be more immoral. Trade cities were entry points into the land for new religious ideas, and the large number of people also could lead to immoral professions such as prostitution.
We see this in Scripture. Baal worship entered Israel through Ahab's marriage to Jezebel, daughter of the king of the Sidonians, a center of Phoenician sea trade (1 Kings 16:31). In the New Testament, Corinth controlled the trade across its isthmus between two harbors, and Paul's letters show how much of the city's immorality had found its way into the church (1 Corinthians 5–6).
The isthmus at Corinth. Photo: Brian Ketchem.
Second, roads represented vulnerability. As mentioned above (and probably a more insidious problem), they left the people vulnerable to new ideas and religions. This, however, was often not on the minds of the people like the threat of invasion was. Roads were the easiest way to move troops, and the larger the road, the larger an invading army could be. This is seen time and time again in Scripture. It explains why the people struggled to take the land all the way to the coast. It also explains why armies took the routes they did.
Think about towns such as Megiddo. Why was this city so important? It was because it was on the major international route, and if you controlled it, you could control the flow of people through virtually the entire land. This is why Solomon fortified it, along with Hazor and Gezer (1 Kings 9:15), and why King Josiah died there trying to stop Pharaoh Neco's army as it marched north to the Euphrates (2 Kings 23:29).
The people who lived on the international highways were in a position of great opportunity, but they were also in the place of most vulnerability, having no natural defense when an invading army came into the land.
Although more could be said about the roads, let's move on to how roads impact the story of Scripture.
The city gate at Hazor. Photo: Doug Garner.
Deeper Understanding
Here are three places where understanding the roads helps us understand the text better.
Opportunity
Why did God choose to put Israel in the land of Canaan? Scripture describes it as a land flowing with milk and honey, rich in crops and pasture (Deuteronomy 8:7–9). But the land had another kind of wealth, and it has to do with the roads. The two international routes that we have already discussed did not just connect places inside of the land; they were virtually the only land routes between three continents. If you wanted to travel overland between Asia and Africa, or Europe and Africa, you had very few options except traveling through the land of Israel.
What this meant was that Israel was in the primary location in all of the world to take advantage of international trade. They could have been immensely wealthy and had an opportunity to control the most valuable land in the whole world. All the goods of the world passed through this land, and they did so on the roads.
We see a glimpse of this under Solomon, whose income included revenue from the merchants and traders (1 Kings 10:15), and who brokered horses and chariots between Egypt and the kings of the Hittites and Syria (1 Kings 10:28–29).
Vulnerability
As we learn from Spider-Man, "with great power comes great responsibility." Well, so does opportunity come with vulnerability. Although the Israelites were positioned perfectly for economic opportunity, they were placed in a land of extreme vulnerability. The interior routes were mostly protected by the terrain, but the periphery of the country was left without defense. What can that tell us about God? For Israel, it was an invitation to trust him.
Deuteronomy speaks at length about how God wants a nation that will put their full trust in him. God was to be their king. When the people later demanded a king "like all the nations," God told Samuel, "they have rejected me from being king over them" (1 Samuel 8:5–7).
Deuteronomy allows for a king but limits him: he must not acquire many horses or send the people back to Egypt to get them (Deuteronomy 17:16). Israel could have an army, but it was not to build its security on horses and chariots (Deuteronomy 20:1; Joshua 11:6; Isaiah 31:1). They were not to be like the nations. With God as their king and their military deliberately limited, where was their protection? It was in God and his promises.
In this way, the land was a testing ground of faith. The people's security needed to come from something they could not see, although God proved himself faithful time and time again. Judges is a story, in part, about the failure of Israel to take the land. Specifically, the places that they were not able to take and hold were the exact places where vulnerability was the highest.
Judah could not drive out the people of the plain "because they had chariots of iron" (Judges 1:19), and Manasseh failed to take Beth-shean, Taanach, Dor, Ibleam, and Megiddo (Judges 1:27), towns that guarded the major roads. The Philistines occupied the coastal lands, and the Amorites pressed the tribe of Dan back into the hill country (Judges 1:34). Dan never secured the allotment God had given them and eventually migrated north, taking the city of Laish and renaming it Dan (Judges 18; Joshua 19:47).
The kings that ultimately came to rule followed a similar path. The ones who trusted were delivered and succeeded. The ones who doubted lost territory and brought ruin upon themselves and the nation.
A Light to the Nations
Abraham is given three promises when God makes his covenant with him. He will be given a land, a nation, and an offspring. Especially in this last promise, that of the offspring, God says that all of the nations of the earth shall be blessed (Genesis 12:3; 22:18). This is clearly spelled out in the New Testament as referring to Jesus, through whom we all receive the opportunity for salvation. Sometimes reading with our Christian lens causes us to stop here and not think about any other meaning.
I want to be clear that Christ is the primary meaning of this passage, but I want to consider for a second that there was another role that Israel was supposed to play. Did God leave the world to its own devices in the time between Abraham and Jesus, or was there something that stood in that gap? What we see is that the nation of Israel was supposed to fulfill another role.
Israel was supposed to be the harbinger of the Messiah, but they were also to represent God's goodness in their own context. To borrow from Isaiah, they were to be a "light to the nations" (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6), or from the language of the promise, they were to be a "blessing to the nations."
Think about all the ways in which they were to do this. They were to worship one God; they were to look after the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. They were to practice justice and sexual morality. The nation of Israel was supposed to represent what God wanted to see from all people.
What does that have to do with roads? Well, where would you position a group of people if you wanted their culture to influence the world? You would put them at a crossroads, literally. We have already looked at how roads were bringers of culture and ideas.
What should have happened was that as other cultures moved through the land, they should have been influenced by a culture that had God at its center. They should have found love, grace, and blessing and been encouraged to seek God. Instead, what happened? Israel allowed the godless cultures to affect their own. Instead of letting their light radiate out, they allowed it to be dimmed by the allure of wealth and immorality.
Faith Lessons
With all of that in mind, I want to give two practical faith lessons that have to do with this study.
Can we take advantage of God's blessings by stepping out in faith?
This question has broad application to almost all areas of our lives. It is generally true that God blesses those who trust in him. We will likely have many opportunities in our life to take advantage of those blessings, but they could also leave us vulnerable.
What does it mean to live by faith? Living by faith means leaving the vulnerabilities to God. He has promised us protection, strength, and provision. We may not be comfortable, but we will be secure. Of course this doesn't apply to recklessness or unwise actions, but consider the following specific examples where this might apply.
- You have an opportunity to be an elder, but you are worried about the impacts it will have on your life.
- Your local church community has an opportunity to expand, but it might mean some financial burden on your members.
- You can lead a Bible study at work, but it might leave you open to criticism or being passed up for a promotion.
I am sure you can think of more, or perhaps many more. To borrow from Esther, perhaps you have been placed here "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14). Can you step out in faith and take advantage of God's blessing?
Are we influencing or being influenced?
As mentioned above, Israel was in a perfect position to be a place where God's light radiated through the world, but instead they allowed their light to be dimmed by the influence of their world. The application of this certainly doesn't take too much imagination. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, "You are the light of the world … let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 5:14–16).
We are conduits for God's glory. People should be able to look at our life and give glory to God. Are we doing that? Here are some more specific questions.
- Would I describe myself as an influencer or a follower?
- If I don't influence others, does that mean I am being influenced by them?
- How do people see the glory of God reflected in me?
What is interesting about this idea is that culture is no longer shared on the road. Actually, it is quite the opposite: when we are on the road, we are often in the car, where we don't speak to anyone. Culture is currently being exchanged online through our phones and in our daily interactions with people. Am I pressing the advantage God has given me, or am I letting these things dim my light?
Conclusion
The subject of ancient roads may not be something that you have ever considered. It is something, however, that lies just underneath the surface of Scripture.
As I think back to my time in Jerusalem, standing at one of the modern crossroads of faith in our time, I am reminded of how much work there is to do. God chose the land for a reason, and perhaps he has also blessed me so that I can be a light to the world.
Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).
This article was written by Brian Ketchem using his own research, personal knowledge, study, travel in the land of the Bible, and wisdom from practical classroom instruction. AI tools assisted with research and the map and were consulted in drafting, organization, grammar, syntax, and spelling. All content, including every source and Scripture reference, was reviewed, verified, and edited by the author. Learn how we use AI.
