Desert of Paran
location mentioned in the Hebrew Bible
The Desert of Paran or Wilderness of Paran (also sometimes spelled Pharan or Faran; Biblical Hebrew: מִדְבַּר פָּארָן, romanized: Midbar Pa'ran), is a location mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. It is one of the places where the Israelites spent part of their 40 years of wandering after the Exodus, and was also a home to Ishmael, and a place of refuge for David.
In Islamic tradition, it has often been equated with an area near Mecca in the Hejaz.
In the Bible
El-paran, "on the edge of the wilderness", is first mentioned in Genesis 14, marking the boundary of the land occupied by the Horites at the time when they were defeated by Elamite king Chedorlaomer and his allies.
The Wilderness or Desert of Paran is also said to be the place where Hagar was sent into exile from Abraham's dwelling in Gerar. Hagar was the Egyptian servant girl of Abraham's wife Sarah/Sarai; at Sarah's suggestion, she became Abraham's concubine, and gave birth to a son, Ishmael. After Sarah herself had given birth to a son, Isaac, Ishmael was seen mocking Isaac, and so Sarah demanded that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away. They "departed, and strayed in the wilderness of Beer-sheba". As their initial supplies of food and drink were running out,God opened [Hagar's] eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink. And God was with the lad, and he grew; and he dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Desert of Paran” is location mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Desert, Paran and location, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q912861. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Desert of Paran” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.