Maarath

Maarath appears once in Scripture in Joshua's catalog of Judah's sixth hill country district: "And Maarath, and Beth-anoth, and Eltekon; six cities with their villages" (Joshua 15:59). The Septuagint preserves a longer reading naming eleven cities including Tekoa, Ephrathah, Bethlehem, Peor, Etam, and Kulom — possibly the original text that fell out of the Masoretic tradition during transmission. Maarath lay in the rugged interior highlands south of Bethlehem and east of Hebron, in the cluster of small farming settlements that filled the central Judean spine. The site is commonly identified with Khirbet Qufin north of Hebron.