One other person, place or group in the registry answers to the name Midian. Every Midian in the Bible
place · also Midianite · Midianite woman
Midian
מִדְיָןΜαδιάν
- verses
- 59
- first named
- Genesis 36:35
- last named
- Acts 7:29
- feature
- region
Description
Midian in the text
Midian was a nation descended from Abraham through his wife Keturah (Genesis 25:2). The Midianites lived in the desert regions of the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in the area east of the Gulf of Aqaba. Moses fled to Midian after killing an Egyptian and married Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro, a Midianite priest (Exodus 2:15-22). Jethro later visited Moses and offered him wise counsel (Exodus 18:1-27).
During the time of the judges, the Midianites, along with the Amalekites and other eastern peoples, oppressed Israel for seven years (Judges 6:1-6). God raised up Gideon to deliver Israel from the Midianites (Judges 6:11-24). Gideon, with a small army of 300 men, defeated the Midianites and their allies, who were "as numerous as locusts" (Judges 7-8).
The Midianites were involved in the incident at Peor, where Israelite men were enticed into sexual immorality and idolatry (Numbers 25:1-18). As a result, God commanded Moses to take vengeance on the Midianites (Numbers 25:17-18; 31:1-54).
In later biblical history, the Midianites are mentioned as traders who bought Joseph from his brothers and sold him into slavery in Egypt (Genesis 37:28, 36). The prophet Isaiah refers to the defeat of Midian as a symbol of God's power to deliver his people (Isaiah 9:4; 10:26). The Midianites are also mentioned in the genealogy of Edom (Genesis 36:35; 1Ch.1.46) and in a psalm calling for God's judgment on Israel's enemies (Psalm 83:9).
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
The pattern
Where Midian is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
59 verses across 11 of 66 books; 55 write the name nowhere. Named in Genesis (3), Exodus (5), Numbers (13), Joshua (1), Judges (29), 1 Kings (1), 1 Chronicles (1), Psalms (1), Isaiah (3), Habakkuk (1) and Acts (1).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 59, across 11 books. The name is written 64 times in them.
Onward
Where this page goes
Not the direct relations above — these are one hop further out, ranked so that a rare shared connection outweighs a common one. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
What happened here
Atlas's reading of each chapter this place appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
- Exodus 2Midian receives Moses as a fugitive beside a well, where he helps water a priest’s flock.
- Exodus 3Midian was where Moses shepherded Jethro’s flock before reaching Horeb.
- Numbers 31Midian is attacked, its males are killed, and its cities and encampments are burned.
- Judges 8Midian's remaining army was routed, its kings were killed, and its power was subdued before Israel.
- Psalms 83Midian is recalled as the earlier enemy against whom God acted.
- Isaiah 9Midian is recalled as the setting of the day when the oppressor's burden was shattered.
- Isaiah 60Midian supplies young camels for the great procession.
- Habakkuk 3The curtains of Midian trembled.
Sources