Padan

Padan, meaning a plain or table-land, appears only once in Scripture (Genesis 48:7), where it serves as a shortened reference to the region of Padan-aram. Jacob uses it in recounting the death of his wife Rachel: Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath, having departed from Padan.

The name essentially designates the broad fertile plain of Mesopotamia — the upper region of the Euphrates valley in what is today northern Syria. It was the homeland of Abraham's family and the land to which he sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac. The full form, Padan-aram, appears far more commonly in the patriarchal narratives.