HOR (perhaps originally har, “mountain”). — A mountain (Num. 20:22, 23, 25, 27; 21:4; Deut. 32:50) of southern Palestine on the border with Edom, between Kadesh (v.) and Zalmonah, and a stopping place of the Exodus. It was designated by God for the death and burial of Aaron (v.), together with the investiture of his son Eleazar with the high priesthood. Hormah, where the herem (v.) was imposed against the Canaanite king of Arad, was to have been situated in its vicinity. After setting out from H., the grumbling Israelites were infested with “fiery” serpents, and Moses erected the bronze serpent (Num. 21).
The location of H. on Jabal Hārūn (Mount Aaron), 1,330 m high, halfway between the Dead Sea and ‘Aqabah, is the oldest (cf. Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Ind., IV, 4, 7; Eusebius, Onom., 176) and is attested by various itineraries, but it rests on the (very uncertain) identification of Kadesh with Petra. Others place it in el-Gebel (“the mountain”), an isolated mountain northeast of Beersheba. It seems more probable to locate it in a mountain of the Gebel Mađejrah, northeast of ‘Abdeh, since Mađejrah may correspond to Mōsērāfōth), the mountain where, according to Deut. 10:5, Aaron died. It is not far from Kadesh; moreover, 17 km from this locality, the Wādī Hārūnijeh flows (descending from Gebel el Hamrah, 785 m), echoing the name of Aaron.
In Num. 34:7–9, a Hār hā-hār is mentioned, which some translate as “the summit or the height of the mountain” (Vulg. “mons altissimus”). Others, however, find in it a second Mount H. It marked the northern boundary of the Promised Land (Mediterranean, H., Hamath, Sedada, Zephrona, Hazar, Enan). It is omitted in Ezek. 47:15–17. Its identification is highly disputed: Amanus (the Jerusalem Targum and pseudo-Jonathan), Lebanon (Szczepanski), Hīrbet Hūr or Hīrbet Hūrah east and west of the Nahr el-Qāsimijeh, Gebel eš-Šaqif (570 m; Reland, Van Kasteren, Legendre), Gebel ‘Akkār east of Tripoli (Abel).