Habor

Habor is the Mesopotamian river named as a place of Israelite exile. The northern kingdom's deportation under Assyria is given the same locator three times: Halah, the Habor, the river of Gozan, and the cities of the Medes. The Chronicler adds that the Reubenites, Gadites, and half-tribe of Manasseh were carried to the same general region.

The Deportation of Samaria

The fall-of-Samaria narrative places Habor among the resettlement sites: "In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes" (2Ki 17:6). The locator-string — Halah / Habor / Gozan / Medes — is the cluster the rest of the deportation-notices reuse.

The Hezekiah Synchronism

The locator recurs in the synchronism that opens Hezekiah's reign and looks back to the Samaria deportation: "And the king of Assyria carried Israel away to Assyria, and put them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes" (2Ki 18:11). The wording matches 17:6 nearly verbatim and fixes Habor in the same cluster.

The Trans-Jordan Tribes

The Chronicler reaches further back to the trans-Jordan tribes' deportation: "And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river of Gozan, to this day" (1Ch 5:26). The Chronicler's list parses Habor and "the river of Gozan" as separate locator-items (the two Kings passages bind them as one — "the Habor, the river of Gozan"); the cluster is broadened by the addition of Hara, and the closing tag "to this day" marks the deportation as still in effect at the Chronicler's writing.