(BA) Kikkar

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28 July 2022 - 11 September 2022

Kikkar is a Hebrew term that appears with two interesting meanings, among others, in the Hebrew Bible.

Weight

The one meaning is as a unit of weight, the talent, which if I recall correctly was somewhere in the range of seventy-five pounds in the biblical use.

Geographic Expression

In the other meaning it is a geographic expression. Gesenius identifies it, based on other uses of the word, as referring to a disc-shaped area of land, thus the roughly circle-shaped base of the Jordan Valley toward south end of the Jordan where it empties into the Dead Sea. On the other hand, DCH prefers the term "district", while HALOT gives "vicinity".

In the geographical term it appears first at the separation of Abram and Lot, in which Lot chooses the fertile kikkar (called "kikkar of the Jordan" in Gen 13:10,11, simply kikkar in 13:12). In Genesis 19 it reappears, when Lot is told to get out of the kikkar, and then God destroys it. The reference to "the kikkar of Jericho" in Deuteronomy 34:3 would seem to refer to the same area: despite the different phrasing, Zoar appears here as in the passage about Lot, and Jericho is located in the same area. In 2 Samuel 18:23, Ahimaaz runs "by way of the kikkar", and although there is a geographical difficulty here, one could take it as referring to the same kikkar "of the Jordan".^[1]

There is a reference in 1 Kings 7:46 to the "kikkar of the Jordan" as including a space between Succoth and Zarethan (Chronicles has "Zaredathah"), about which perhaps I will study more later.

Nehemiah 3:22 refers to some priests as "men of the kikkar", while Nehemiah 12:28 speaks of "the kikkar of the environs of Jerusalem".

That is it. I think the Nehemiah case proves that the word can be used for more than just the kikkar of the Jordan, although we could wish for a bit more information about just what a kikkar is, how large it is, what the boundaries of the kikkar of Jordan were, etc.