Beth-jeshimoth

Beth-jeshimoth ("house of the desolations") was a town on the northeast shore of the Dead Sea, on the plains of Moab opposite Jericho. It marks the final stop in the wilderness itinerary recorded in Numbers 33: "They set out from the mountains of Abarim and camped in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho; they camped by the Jordan from Beth-jeshimoth as far as Abel-shittim in the plains of Moab" (Numbers 33:48-49). It was here that Israel mustered before the Jordan crossing, that the Balaam story unfolded, and that the scandal at Baal-peor occurred. Beth-jeshimoth was allotted to the tribe of Reuben at the conquest (Joshua 12:3, 13:20), and later named in Ezekiel's oracle against Moab as one of three glorious frontier cities Moab would lose (Ezekiel 25:9). Identified with Tell el-Azeimeh on the northeast Dead Sea coast.