("leopard", or "clear water".)
        1. Numbers 32:3; Numbers 32:36, a city in "the land of Jazer and of Gilead." (See BETHNIMRAH.) Now Nimrun; E. of Jordan, E.N.E. from Jericho. The name is from leopards infesting the thick wood between the inner and outer banks of the Jordan, which overflows at times into that intermediate space and drives the wild beast out of its lair (Jeremiah 49:19; Jeremiah 50:44). In Isaiah 15:6 "the waters of Nimrim shall be desolate ... there is no green thing"; even the city Nimrah, whose name means "limpid waters," which came down from the mountains of Gilead near Jordan, is without water, so that herbage is gone (Jeremiah 48:34), i.e. "the well watered pastures of Nimrah shall be desolate."
        2. Another Nimrah is in Moab, near the wady Beni Hammed, E. of the Dead Sea near its southern end, Khirbet en (ruins of) Nemeireh.
        3. The plural, NIMRIM, thus would comprise both the N. of Gad and the N. of Moab. Bethnimra is perhaps Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing (John 1:28); for the pure water of Bethnimra, its situation in the center of "the region round about Jordan," and its accessibleness from "Jerusalem and Judaea" all accord. Tradition makes it the scene of Israel's "passage" over Jordan; this would cause Bethabara ("house of passage") to be substituted for Bethnimra.(See BETHNIMRA; BETHABARA.) The Septuagint has Bethanabra, a link between the two names. Bethbara is distinct (Judges 7:24). frontBETHBARA.)