Pethor

Pethor was the home town of the diviner Balaam son of Beor whom Balak king of Moab hired to come and curse Israel (Numbers 22:5, Deuteronomy 23:4). The text locates it "by the river," meaning the Euphrates, "in the land of the sons of his people" — most likely the same Pitru known from the annals of Shalmaneser III of Assyria as a town on the Euphrates near Carchemish. Balaam was a famously respected pagan diviner whose reputation reached as far as Moab, so Balak sent messengers with the diviner's fee on the long journey from the plains of Moab north and east across the desert to fetch him. The text's precise geographical detail — naming Pethor on the Euphrates — gives the Balaam narrative an unusually specific historical and geographical anchor for a pagan-prophet story. Most scholars place Pethor at modern Tell Ahmar (ancient Til-Barsip) on the east bank of the Euphrates just south of Carchemish.