Hormah

Hormah (meaning devoted to destruction or consecrated to God by a vow of destruction) was a city in the Negev whose name commemorated an act of holy war. Numbers 21:1–3 records that when the Canaanite king of Arad attacked Israel during the wilderness period, Israel vowed to utterly destroy (ḥāram) his cities if God delivered them, and when victory came the place was named Hormah to memorialize the fulfillment of that vow.

An earlier, less successful encounter also connects to Hormah: Numbers 14:45 and Deuteronomy 1:44 record that when the first generation of Israelites presumptuously attempted to enter Canaan after their faithless response to the spies' report, they were routed by the Amalekites and Canaanites all the way to Hormah—a humiliating reversal that underscored the consequence of disobedience. Hormah was later assigned to Judah and then to Simeon (Joshua 15:30; 19:4), and David distributed spoils to its inhabitants (1 Samuel 30:30). The modern identification is debated between Tel Masos and Tel Halif in the northern Negev.