Bethany beyond the Jordan

“These things were done in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing” (John 1:28). There John answered the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (John 1:23), and the next day, seeing Jesus coming, he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Later, when the Jews sought to seize him, Jesus “went away again beyond the Jordan into the place where John was baptizing at first, and he stayed there.” “Many believed in him there” (John 10:40–42).

It lay east of the Jordan and is not the Bethany near Jerusalem, the village of Mary, Martha and Lazarus (John 11:1; John 11:18). Its exact site is not known. The KJV reads “Bethabara,” the reading of later manuscripts; the earliest manuscripts read “Bethany.” Some have identified it with the Beth-barah of Judges 7:24, but that is only a guess.