Admah

Admah is one of the cities of the vale of Siddim, named in a fixed cluster with Sodom, Gomorrah, and Zeboiim. Its appearances in the UPDV trace a short arc — from a frontier-marker in the Table of Nations, to a kingdom drawn into the four-king/five-king campaign of Genesis 14, to a destruction-precedent invoked twice over against Israel by Moses and by Hosea.

A Border-Marker on the Canaanite Frontier

Admah is first named as a southern terminus of the Canaanite border in the Table of Nations: "And the border of the Canaanite was from Sidon, as you go toward Gerar, to Gaza; as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, to Lasha" (Gen 10:19). The verse traces two legs of the frontier — Sidon to Gaza along the Gerar approach, and a second leg fixed by the four Plain-cities (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim) running toward Lasha. Admah enters scripture, then, as a settled point on the southern edge of Canaanite territory, named alongside the cities with which it will share its later fate.

The Five Kings of the Plain

In the Chedorlaomer campaign, Admah is one of five Plain-cities whose kings are coalition partners against the four eastern kings: "they made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar)" (Gen 14:2). Shinab is named as Admah's king, and Admah takes its place in the five-king alliance. The same alignment carries into the deployment for battle: "And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar); and they set the battle in array against them in the valley of Siddim" (Gen 14:8). Admah's king marches out with the others, the Plain coalition forms up in Siddim, and the city's brief political existence is exhibited at this campaign as one of five.

Overthrown with Sodom and Gomorrah

Moses' covenant warning in Deuteronomy lifts the four Plain-cities together as the destruction-precedent set against Israel's land: "[and that] the whole land of it is brimstone, and salt, [and] a burning, [that] it is not sown, nor bears, nor any grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which [the Speech of] Yahweh overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath" (Deut 29:23). Admah is named in the same overthrow-bracket as Sodom and Gomorrah — brimstone, salt, a burning, ground that cannot be sown — and the agent of the overthrow is given as "[the Speech of] Yahweh," with the bracketed UPDV editorial-supply marking "the Speech of" as a reader-aid. Admah's destruction is presented here not as an event narrated separately but as a precedent already known and now invoked as a covenant-warning.

Hosea's Recoil-Question

The destruction-precedent re-surfaces in Hosea's oracle, where Admah and Zeboiim are paired in a divine recoil-question against Ephraim/Israel: "How shall I give you up, Ephraim? [How] shall I cast you off, Israel? How shall I make you as Admah? [How] shall I set you as Zeboiim? My heart is turned inside me, my compassions are kindled together" (Hos 11:8). The bracketed [How] markers are UPDV editorial-supplies. Admah and Zeboiim are taken up here as the destruction-class — neighbor-cities whose fate is the alternative on the table — and the divine speaker is exhibited as recoiling from administering that same fate to Ephraim, with the recoil grounded in a heart "turned inside" and compassions "kindled together." Admah's settled identity in this verse is the city whose overthrow furnishes the precedent the speaker draws back from.