Place
Zoan
- Terrain:
- City
- Verse mentions:
- 7
(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.
Appears in 7
- Numbers 13:22 And they ascended by the south, and came unto Hebron; where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)
- Psalms 78:12 Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
- Psalms 78:43 How he had wrought his signs in Egypt, and his wonders in the field of Zoan:
- Isaiah 19:11 Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish: how say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings?
- Isaiah 19:13 The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived; they have also seduced Egypt, even they that are the stay of the tribes thereof.
- Isaiah 30:4 For his princes were at Zoan, and his ambassadors came to Hanes.
- Ezekiel 30:14 And I will make Pathros desolate, and will set fire in Zoan, and will execute judgments in No.