1. E. (Heb. Ḥamāh) was a city of Syria, situated on the Orontes, whose history is intertwined with that of the Arameans. It appears in the Bible as the capital of the Ḥamāthites, allied with TOLOMAI II king of Damascus and ACHAB king of Israel against SALMANASSAR III, but in the end it was reduced to an Assyrian province by SARGON II and its inhabitants were led away as colonists to Samaria (II Reg. 17:24; 18:34; 19:13). Thereafter the history of the region of E. (I Mach. 12:25) merges with that of Syria in general. Under the Seleucids the capital received the name of Epiphania in honor of ANTIOCHUS IV Epiphanes. The ancient name survives in modern Hama, on the Orontes, a city of 60,000 inhabitants and of great commerce. Excavations in 1931 brought to light many pages of its ancient history.
2. The expression “pass of E.” (Vulg. introitus E.; Heb. Ibbih? Hamath) in the Old Testament marks the northern boundary of the Promised Land (Num. 13:21; 34:8; Jos. 13:5; I Reg. 8:65; Ez. 47:16; 48:1). It most probably refers to the entrance of the pass between Mount Hermon and Lebanon, which formed the natural route “to go to E.” (Ibbih? Hamath). Texts that require the proximity of Rehob and Laish-Dan (Num. 13:22; Judg. 18:28) do not aim at a fixed and determined point, but place the boundary south of the Beqā (= Coele-Syria) and north of Merg̀Ajjūn.
The recent conjecture that in Ibbih? one sees a proper name surviving in ‘Ajjūn Lebweh, 38 km south of Riblah, lacks support from biblical texts.
3. A locality in the tribe of Naphtali (Jos. 19:35), Heb. Hammath, now Hammath south of Tiberias, where there is a curative hot-spring spa already extolled by Flavius Josephus (Ant. Jud., XVIII, 2, 3; Bell. Jud., IV, 1, 3). In 1931 an ancient synagogue was discovered there.