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Jeremiah 49:12-17 The roots of Bozrah - Day 232

Hope you get a smile from this.

This is a kind of off-beat devotion.  You may have noticed that there are a number of towns in Connecticut with biblical names.  One of the is Bozrah, Salem's next door neighbor.

So why did people decide to name their town Bozrah?  Why celebrate the capital of Esau?

CWSB definition - The mountainous capital city of Edom. The name means “fortress.” It was where the major caravan highways of Edom ran (Gen. 36:33) and where early kings of Edom reigned. It lay south, southeast of the Salt Sea (Dead Sea). The prophets mention it in prophecies of judgment (Isa. 34:6; 63:1; Jer. 49:1, 13, 22; Amos 1:12).

So I Googled it and here is what I found according to Wikipedia

Bozrah is the name of a pastoral community mentioned several times in the Old Testament, sometimes with pleasing connotations, sometimes not. The town name may have resulted from the happy connotations connected with Micah chapter 2, verse 12: "I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, as the flock in the midst of their fold; they shall make a great noise by reason of the multitude of men."[2] In Hebrew, the name Bozrah signifies "an enclosure".[3]

According to a persistent legend, the name "Bozrah" was derived from another Biblical text, which came to someone's mind under the particular circumstances surrounding the community's petition to the Connecticut General Assembly for township status. Whether or not the story is true, the informal, early name "New Concord" was dropped when the town was incorporated.[2]

The community, according to the legend, really wanted to call itself "Bath" after the famous spa in England. The local man chosen to carry the parish's request to Hartford had a somewhat eccentric manner of dress, however, and when he appeared before the Legislature he was dressed in loud, parti-colored homespun so odd as to bring to the mind of one amused legislator the query of Isaiah 63:1: "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah?" Overcome by the humorous appropriateness of this verse, the Assembly decided to name the town "Bozrah" when it incorporated the place.[2]


I guess I am impressed that somebody in the legislature knew enough about the Bible to come up with this name.  But this was 1786.  I don't think anyone in the legislature today would come up with this.

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