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TEKOA, TEKOITES*
City about six miles (9.7 kilometers) southeast of Bethlehem on the edge of the Judean desert, and its residents. Tekoa may also be the name of a person, the son of Ashur of Judah’s tribe; “father” could mean founder or leader of Tekoa (1 Chr 2:24; 4:5). Tekoa does not appear on the list of cities given to Judah (Jos 15). In an oracle predicting the siege of Judah, Jeremiah (Jer 6:1) makes a pun with the phrase “Sound the trumpet in Tekoa.” The Hebrew word for “sound” is spelled with the same consonants (but not vowels) as Tekoa.
Tekoa is located on the high ground between two watersheds, both of which flow eastward to the Dead Sea. The southern slopes climb off to the upper reaches of the Nahal Arugot, which eventually comes out at En-gedi. The northern slopes are drained by the Nahal Darga. The ridge between them is the Ascent (or Pass) of Ziz (2 Chr 20:16). Because Tekoa lies between the desert and the town on the marginal land just east of the main north-south watershed, the area around it came to be known as the desert of Tekoa (2 Chr 20:20), a part of the larger desert of Judea. Tekoa marks the border where farming gives way to herding, explaining why Amos, a native of Tekoa, had two dimensions to his preprophetic career: a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees (Am 1:1; 7:14).