Beth-anath

Beth-anath (meaning: house of response or temple of Anath) was one of the fenced cities in the tribal territory of Naphtali in northern Canaan. Its name suggests it may have been a cultic site dedicated to Anath, the Canaanite goddess of war and hunting who was frequently paired with Baal in the Ugaritic texts. The city was assigned to Naphtali but the tribe failed to drive out the Canaanite inhabitants, who continued to live there as a tributary population within Israel.

The site is tentatively identified with Ainata, a village approximately six miles west of Kedesh in Upper Galilee, though the identification is not certain. Beth-anath appears in the tribal allotment lists of Joshua 19 and in Judges 1's account of the incomplete conquest. The persistence of Canaanite populations in cities like Beth-anath, despite their assignment to Israelite tribes, became a recurring source of religious syncretism and the fulfillment of the prophetic warnings about the dangers of coexistence with Canaan's inhabitants.