Place · City
Zoan
Named in 7 verses across 4 books, first in Numbers 13:22.
In the Bible
All 7 verses, in Bible order. Text from the Berean Standard Bible; verse numbers follow the KJV.
Numbers
- Numbers 13:22
They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, dwelled. It had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.
Psalms
- Psalms 78:12
He worked wonders before their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.
- Psalms 78:43
when He performed His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the fields of Zoan.
Isaiah
- Isaiah 19:11
The princes of Zoan are mere fools; Pharaoh’s wise counselors give senseless advice. How can you say to Pharaoh, “I am one of the wise, a son of eastern kings”?
- Isaiah 19:13
The princes of Zoan have become fools; the princes of Memphis are deceived. The cornerstones of her tribes have led Egypt astray.
- Isaiah 30:4
For though their princes are at Zoan and their envoys have arrived in Hanes,
Ezekiel
- Ezekiel 30:14
I will lay waste Pathros, set fire to Zoan, and execute judgment on Thebes.
Dictionary
From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), as attached to this record by Theographic. Its geography and “modern” descriptions date from the 1890s. Easton wrote in 1897, and some of his views are now debated.
Read Easton’s entry
(Old Egypt. Sant= “stronghold,” the modern San). A city on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, called by the Greeks Tanis. It was built seven years after Hebron in Palestine (Num. 13:22). This great and important city was the capital of the Hyksos, or Shepherd kings, who ruled Egypt for more than 500 years. It was the frontier town of Goshen. Here Pharaoh was holding his court at the time of his various interviews with Moses and Aaron. “No trace of Zoan exists; Tanis was built over it, and city after city has been built over the ruins of that” (Harper, Bible and Modern Discovery). Extensive mounds of ruins, the wreck of the ancient city, now mark its site (Isa. 19:11, 13; 30:4; Ezek. 30:14). “The whole constitutes one of the grandest and oldest ruins in the world.”
This city was also called “the Field of Zoan” (Ps. 78:12, 43) and “the Town of Rameses” (q.v.), because the oppressor rebuilt and embellished it, probably by the forced labour of the Hebrews, and made it his northern capital.