Uz
Excerpt
The homeland of Job (Job 1:1). Two traditions exist concerning the location of Uz: Edom in the southeast and Syria in the northeast. Neither tradition is completely persuasive, and the evidence concerning the location cannot be reconciled.
Among the arguments for the Edomite location, the personal name Uz appears in Edomite genealogies (Gen. 36:28 = 1 Chr. 1:42), and personal names in the book of Job probably are Edomite in origin (cf. Job 2:11). The personal name Uz is linked with Buz (Gen. 22:21), which also appears as a place name associated with Edom (Jer. 25:23). The LXX appendix to Job describes Uz as bordering on Idumea and Arabia (Jer. 42:17b). Also, Uz is poetically parallel to “daughter Edom” at Lam. 4:21.
Other arguments place Uz in Aram (Syria), near Damascus or S of Damascus in the Hauran. The person Uz is a descendant of Aram (Gen. 10:23; 1 Chr. 1:17) and the oldest son of Abraham’s Aramean brother, Nahor (Gen. 22:21). According to Josephus Ouses (Uz), the son of Aram, founded Damascus and Trachonitis. Byzantine and Arab traditions place Job’s homeland in the Hauran. More
MacNicoll, Patricia A. “Uz.” Ed. David Noel Freedman, Allen C. Myers, and Astrid B. Beck. Eerdmans dictionary of the Bible 2000: 1349. Print.
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