Bible Maps

The road before the call

Genesis 11:2–32

The story does not begin at the call. Terah takes the family out of Ur for Canaan and stops halfway, at Haran, and it is his son who finishes the road.

The call and the ridge

Genesis 12:1–9

Seventy-five years old, walking out of the town his father died in, and then four hundred miles south to the oak of Moreh. The camp between Bethel and Ai is the most precisely sited sentence in his life.

Travel to Egypt

Genesis 12:10–13:2

The hill country lives on rain and the Nile does not, so a famine sends him down to Egypt — and the only verse that walks the famine road backwards brings him up again.

The parting from Lot

Genesis 13:3–18

Back to the exact camp he left, and then the ground is too small for both of them. Lot looks east at the valley, takes it, and pitches as far as Sodom; Abram settles at the oaks of Mamre, and everything after this happens from there.

The campaign of the four kings

Genesis 14

A war that starts nine hundred miles away and ends with Abram's nephew carried off. Ten verses of it are on the map, because almost every verse of the chapter is a place being reached — the march down the Transjordan, the battle in the Valley of Siddim, the pursuit to Dan, and Melchizedek at Salem on the way home.

The covenant and Hagar

Genesis 15–17

A land grant with two borders on it, and a woman running for Egypt who is stopped at a spring on the road to Shur. The well she names is fixed between Kadesh and Bered, and the story comes back to it twice more.

The road to Sodom, and the plain destroyed

Genesis 18–19

The men set out from Mamre and look down toward the plain, Abraham walking them out. What follows is the single event the whole southern Dead Sea frame exists for, and the morning after it he stands on the same ridge and sees the smoke.

Journey to Gerar

Genesis 20

The whole of Abraham's move south in one sentence, with four places on it: away from the ridge, between Kadesh and Shur, and then sojourning in Gerar.

Beersheba and Moriah

Genesis 21–22

Hagar and Ishmael sent into the wilderness, a well and an oath that give Beersheba its name, and the three days' walk to a mountain named only once — the verse without which the whole episode is off the map.

The field and the grave

Genesis 23:1–25:11

Sarah dies at Hebron and Abraham buys a field to bury her in: the cave, the trees and every border of it, the only ground he ever owned. He is laid in it himself by Isaac and Ishmael together, and the story goes on without him.

Ishmael's line, and the birth of the twins

Genesis 25:12–34

Twelve princes by their villages and their encampments, settled from Havilah to Shur along the edge of Egypt — the other son's line closed off before the story narrows to this one. Then the twins, and a birthright sold for lentil stew in a tent.

The famine, and Gerar

Genesis 26:1–11

A famine besides the former famine, and the same hill country living on the same rain — but this time the road down to the Nile is shut: dwell in the land of which I shall tell you. Gerar is as far as he goes, and he tells Abimelech the same lie his father told there.

The wells

Genesis 26:12–25

Sent away for being too rich, he moves down the Valley of Gerar opening the wells the Philistines had filled in and giving them back the names his father gave them. Two are quarrelled over and named for the quarrel, Esek and Sitnah; the third is not, and is Rehoboth — room. Then he goes up to Beersheba, and builds the one altar of his life.

The oath at Beersheba

Genesis 26:26–33

Abimelech comes up from Gerar with his adviser and the commander of his army to swear a pact with the man he drove out. They eat, they exchange oaths at first light, and that same day the well comes in — Shibah, which is why the town is Beersheba.

The blessing taken

Genesis 26:34–27:45

The one stretch of his life that happens indoors. Two Hittite daughters-in-law make life bitter, his eyes go dim, and he blesses the wrong son in the dark. The only ground in the whole scene is in Rebekah's last sentence — flee to Laban my brother, in Haran — and it is five hundred miles and twenty years away.

Sending Jacob to Paddan-aram

Genesis 27:46–28:9

The flight is given a reason a father can bless: no wife from the Canaanite women. Isaac sends Jacob back up the road Rebekah came down, to Bethuel's house in Paddan-aram — and Esau, watching it, marries into Ishmael's line instead.

The death at Mamre, and the burial

Genesis 35:28–29

A hundred and eighty years, counted up in a sentence, and then the end of them at the oaks Abraham had pitched under. He dies old and full of days, and his two sons bury him together, as he and Ishmael had buried Abraham.

Not drawn yet. Read Genesis 35:28–29→

The flight, and the ladder at Bethel

Genesis 28:10–22

He leaves Beersheba with a staff and walks north. Where he stops is only “a certain place” until morning, when he sets the stone he slept on upright and pours oil on it: Bethel, though the town was Luz first. Everything he promises here he comes back and pays twenty years later.

Haran, Laban, and the twenty years

Genesis 29:1–31:16

The land of the people of the east, a well with a stone over its mouth, and Rachel coming to it. Almost nothing in these three chapters moves on the ground: two weddings, eleven sons and a daughter, three days' journey set between his flock and Laban's, and wages changed ten times — until the word comes to go home.

The flight from Laban, and the heap in Gilead

Genesis 31:17–55

Wives and children on camels, the Euphrates crossed, and his face set toward the hill country of Gilead. Laban takes three days to hear of it and seven to catch him, searches the tents and finds nothing, and the two of them pile stones instead — a heap with a name in each of their languages, and a border neither is to cross again.

Mahanaim, Peniel, and meeting Esau

Genesis 32:1–33:17

Messengers sent ahead into Seir come back saying four hundred men are on the way, so he splits everything into two camps at the place he has just named for two camps. That night he sends them over the ford of the Jabbok and stays behind alone, and crosses at sunrise limping. Esau turns back south to Seir; Jacob turns aside to Succoth and builds a house and booths for his cattle.

Shechem, and back to Bethel

Genesis 33:18–35:15

He comes safely to Shechem and buys the field he is camped in — the second piece of ground the family owns — and then Dinah, and two of his sons with swords, make the place impossible to stay in. The foreign gods go under the terebinth, and he goes up at last to build the altar he vowed at Bethel, burying Rebekah's nurse under an oak below it.

Ephrath, Migdal Eder, and home to Mamre

Genesis 35:16–27

They journey on from Bethel and Rachel goes into labour with the road still to run, and is buried where she dies, on the way to Ephrath — a grave with a pillar on it that is still being pointed at when the chapter is written. Israel pitches beyond the tower of Eder, the twelve are counted, and the last stage of the road brings him to his father at Mamre — Kiriath-arba, that is Hebron — twenty years after he walked out of the land.

Esau's country, and Joseph sold

Genesis 36–37

The brothers separate for good, and for the same reason Abram and Lot did: the land cannot carry both households. Esau takes his to the hill country of Seir and becomes Edom, chief by chief and king by king; Jacob stays in the land of his father's sojournings, and sends Joseph out of the Valley of Hebron to Shechem, then to Dothan, where a caravan carrying gum and balm down to Egypt takes him off the map for twenty-two years.

The journeys for grain

Genesis 42–45

The famine reaches Canaan and he sends ten sons down to Egypt for food, keeping the youngest at home. They come back, eat it, and go down a second time with Benjamin — and come up out of Egypt with wagons, and word that the son he has mourned for twenty years is governing the country. Two round trips of two hundred and fifty miles, and he makes neither of them.

Down to Egypt

Genesis 46:1–47:12

He goes as far as Beersheba and stops to sacrifice, at the well his father dug and his grandfather swore at: it is the last place in the land he sees, and where he is told not to be afraid to leave it. Seventy people, in Pharaoh's own wagons, with Judah sent ahead to show the way into Goshen and Joseph's chariot coming up to meet them.

The blessing, the death, and the burial at Machpelah

Genesis 47:28–50:14

Seventeen years in Egypt, and then the oath: do not bury me here. He blesses Joseph's two sons with his hands crossed, names the cave at Machpelah where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Leah already lie, and dies. Egypt mourns him seventy days, and the whole court of Pharaoh goes up with the family to bury him — by a road that halts east of the Jordan, at a threshing floor the Canaanites rename Abel-mizraim for the size of the mourning on it.

Born by the Nile, and the flight to Midian

Exodus 2

A basket daubed with pitch among the reeds at the river's edge, and Pharaoh's daughter coming down to bathe. Grown up, he kills an Egyptian, is found out, and runs — out of Egypt altogether, to Midian, where he sits down by a well and meets the family he will belong to for the next forty years.

The bush at Horeb, and back to Egypt

Exodus 3–4

He takes Jethro's flock to the far side of the wilderness and comes to Horeb, the mountain of God, where a bush is burning and not burned up. He is sent back to the country he fled, his wife and sons on a donkey, and Aaron walks out into the wilderness and meets him at the same mountain.

Pharaoh, and the plagues on Egypt

Exodus 5–11

Bricks without straw, and then ten blows on one country. The ground is the point of several of them: the Nile turned to blood, the land of Goshen set apart where the flies and the hail do not come, and a west wind that lifts the locusts and drives them into the Red Sea.

The Passover, and out of Rameses

Exodus 12–13

The night of the Passover, and six hundred thousand men on foot from Rameses to Succoth. God does not take them by the short road through the Philistines' country, in case war turns them back; they go round by the wilderness toward the Red Sea, and camp at Etham on the edge of it.

The crossing of the sea

Exodus 14

Turned back to camp by the sea at Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon — three landmarks nobody has agreed on since — with Pharaoh's chariots behind them. The chapter has a map of its own, which draws every proposed crossing and the reading each one belongs to.

Marah, Elim, and Rephidim

Exodus 15–18

The song on the far shore, and then three days in the wilderness of Shur with no water, and bitter water at Marah when they find it. Twelve springs and seventy palms at Elim, bread from heaven in the wilderness of Sin, water from the rock at Rephidim and a battle with Amalek there, and Jethro coming to the camp at the mountain of God with Moses' wife and sons.

At Sinai

Exodus 19:1 – Numbers 10:10

Almost a year in one place. They camp before the mountain in the third month, Moses goes up into the cloud, and everything from the Ten Words to the last law of Leviticus and the census of Numbers is given at its foot. On the map it is one camp and one summit; nothing moves until the cloud lifts.

From Sinai to the wilderness of Paran

Numbers 10:11–12:16

The cloud lifts and the camp moves for the first time in a year, three days' journey out from the mountain. The stops on the way are named for what went wrong at them — Taberah for the fire, Kibroth-hattaavah for the graves of the craving — and at Hazeroth Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses before the camp comes into the wilderness of Paran.

The spies, and the refusal at Kadesh

Numbers 13–14

Twelve men sent up from Paran spy out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, come to Hebron, and cut a cluster of grapes at Eshcol that takes two of them to carry. Ten say the land cannot be taken. The people believe them, are sentenced to forty years in the wilderness, go up anyway the next morning, and are chased back as far as Hormah.

Meribah, Edom's refusal, and Mount Hor

Numbers 20

Thirty-eight years on, the same camp at Kadesh. Miriam dies and is buried there; Moses strikes the rock at Meribah instead of speaking to it, and is told he will not bring the people in. Edom refuses them the King's Highway, and at Mount Hor, on the border of Edom, Aaron dies on the summit.

Around Edom to the plains of Moab

Numbers 21:1–22:1

The long way round: south toward the Red Sea to get past Edom, the bronze serpent, and then a string of camps — Oboth, Iye-abarim, the Zered, over the Arnon, Beer, and on to the top of Pisgah. Sihon comes out to fight at Jahaz and loses everything from the Arnon to the Jabbok, Og is beaten at Edrei, and the camp comes down to the plains of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho.

Balaam, and Baal-peor

Numbers 22:2–25:18

The king of Moab sends to the Euphrates for a prophet to curse the camp below him, and takes Balaam from one height to the next — Bamoth-baal, the top of Pisgah, the top of Peor — looking for a place the curse will work from. It never does. What the prophet could not do the camp does to itself at Shittim, with the daughters of Moab and the Baal of Peor.

The land east of the Jordan

Numbers 26–36

A new census on the plains of Moab, a new generation, and the first land Israel holds. Reuben and Gad look at Jazer and Gilead and see cattle country, and Moses gives them the kingdoms of Sihon and Og on condition that they cross and fight with the rest. Numbers 33 lists every stage of the forty years, and Numbers 34 draws the borders of the land still to be entered.

The last words, beyond the Jordan

Deuteronomy 1–33

Deuteronomy happens in one place: Moses speaking to all Israel beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, retelling the road from Horeb — eleven days' walk to Kadesh-barnea that took them forty years — and giving the law again to the people who will have to keep it without him. It ends with a blessing for each tribe.

Mount Nebo, and the grave no one knows

Deuteronomy 34

He climbs from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah and is shown the whole land, north to Dan, west to the sea, south to the Negeb and Zoar. He dies there, a hundred and twenty years old with his eye undimmed, and is buried in a valley opposite Beth-peor — and no one knows the place of his burial to this day.

Down to Moab, and three graves

Ruth 1:1–5

In the days when the judges ruled, Elimelech takes Naomi and their two sons across the Jordan to Moab for bread. He dies there; the sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, and in ten years they are dead too.

The road back to Bethlehem

Ruth 1:6–22

Naomi hears there is bread in Judah again and sets out with both daughters-in-law. On the road she sends them back; Orpah goes, and Ruth will not — where you go I will go. The two of them walk into Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

The field of Boaz

Ruth 2

Ruth gleans behind the reapers and happens on the field of Boaz, a relative of Elimelech. He comes out from the town, asks who she is, and tells her to glean nowhere else. The threshing floor and the town gate that settle the rest of the book are never named, so the story's map ends here.

Paul's first missionary journey

Acts 13–14

The church at Antioch fasts, lays hands on Barnabas and Saul, and lets them go. They take Cyprus end to end, cross to the mainland at Perga — where John Mark leaves them, for a reason Luke never gives — and climb a hundred miles inland onto the Galatian plateau. Four towns, a stoning at Lystra, and then the same four towns walked again in reverse to appoint elders in the churches they had just been driven out of.

Paul's second missionary journey

Acts 15:36–18:22

Paul and Barnabas fall out over John Mark and leave Antioch separately. Paul goes overland with Silas, picks up Timothy at Lystra, and then finds the roads closed to him one after another — Asia forbidden, Bithynia refused — until he runs out of land at Troas and a man of Macedonia stands in a vision. Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens and Corinth all belong to this journey, and so does the one firm date in Paul's travels.

Paul's third missionary journey

Acts 18:23–21:16

The long stay. Paul spends the better part of three years at Ephesus, until the silversmiths riot over what the preaching is doing to the trade in shrines; then Macedonia, three winter months in Greece, and the run home down the coast port by port — Assos, Mitylene, Chios, Samos, Miletus, Cos, Rhodes, Patara — to Tyre, Caesarea, and an arrest in Jerusalem.

Paul's journey to Rome

Acts 27–28

Not a mission. Paul had appealed to Caesar, and this is what the appeal cost him: Caesarea to Rome under guard, on three ships. A north-easter holds the second of them for fourteen nights and puts it on a beach nobody aboard recognises, and it takes the next chapter to say the island was Malta. Three months later a third ship works north to Puteoli, and Rome is a road from there.