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Location and Setting
- Located some sixty miles north of Jerusalem and thirteen miles north of the city of
Samaria, Dothan was situated on the southern side of a very fertile plain. It provided
excellent pasturage for flocks and good soil for agriculture. The Plain of Dothan lay
between the hills of Samaria and the Carmel Range to the northwest.
- A major road through this plain near Dothan connected the Transjordanian Highway of
Gilead with the International Coastal Highway. It passed through Beth-shan, the Valley of
Harod, and terminated at Gath (in Samaria, not Philistia) on the International Coastal
Highway.
- For travelers between Beth-shan and Egypt, the Plain of Dothan provided a relatively
flat access to the Plain of Sharon.
- Dothan was also linked with Tirzah by a southeastern route and with Shechem, about
fifteen miles to the south.
Historical and Biblical Significance
- When Joseph failed to find his brothers at Shechem, a man there directed him to Dothan,
where his eleven brothers had moved to pasture their flocks (Gen 37:14-17).
- It was at Dothan that Joseph’s brothers plotted to kill him. Reuben intervened,
with the result that they threw Joseph into a dry pit. He intended to rescue his brother
later and return him to their father, Jacob.
- The arrival of Ishmaelite and Midianite traders from Gilead offered the opportunity for
the others to be rid of their despised brother. Without Reuben’s knowledge, Judah
took the lead in selling Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. When
Reuben returned, he found that Joseph was on his way to Egypt with the
Ishmaelite-Midianite caravan (Gen 37:18-36).
- This event that occurred at Dothan was important historically and theologically. God was
beginning to fulfill His promise to Abraham, that He would make his descendants into a
great nation. This sequence of events at Dothan brought Joseph to Egypt, and later his
father Jacob and all his brothers. In Egypt, God would multiply Abraham’s descendants
from seventy to approximately two million. He would do this, not in the rugged hills of
Judah and Samaria, where the local tribes would have opposed their growth and where the
Israelites would have been drawn into worshipping pagan gods. Rather, God led them to the
fertile, remote land of Goshen in the Nile delta. It was in this ideal context that the
people would develop into a nation that He could bring back to possess the land of Canaan.
- Several hundred years later, the king of Aram (Syria) had been penetrating the Northern
Kingdom, following the route from Gilead down across the Jordan and up through the Valley
of Harod to attack Samaria, the capital. Frustrated because his battle plans seemed to be
known in advance, he sought the one who was responsible for providing this warning. When
Ben-hadad, the Syrian king, was told that Elisha was responsible and that he was at
Dothan, Ben-hadad sent his "chariots and a great army" there to encircle the
city at night. Subsequent events thwarted the campaign of the Syrians and brought much
glory to the God of Israel (2 Kgs 6:8-23).
Bibliography
- Bimson, John J., ed. Baker Encyclopedia of Bible Places. Leicester: Inter-Varsity
Press, 1995.
- Free, J.P. "Dothan" The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible.
Ed. Merrill C. Tenney. 5 vols. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1976.
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