Abel-mizraim

Abel-mizraim is the name given to the threshing floor of Atad, a site beyond the Jordan where the Egyptians and Israelites mourned the death of Jacob during his funeral procession to Canaan.

The Naming of the Place

As the funeral cortege carrying Jacob's body passed through the region, the Canaanites took note of the intensity of the grief on display: "And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: therefore the name of it was called Abel-mizraim, which is beyond the Jordan" (Gen 50:11). The name Abel-mizraim — meaning meadow of Egypt or mourning of Egypt — was imposed by outside observers responding to the scale and solemnity of the lamentation, and it preserves the memory of that occasion in the geographical record.