Bible Meaning: Field, a plateau, table land of Aram
Strong's Concordance #H6307
In the King James Old Testament, the area known as Padanaram is also spelled Padan in Genesis 48:7. Other Biblical translations reference it as Padan Aram or Paddan-aram.
Padanaram was a region in ancient Syria that included the city of Haran. Abraham, after he had lived in Ur for seventy years, relocates with his entire family to Haran. Although Abraham and Sarah, along with Lot and his wife, leave Haran five years later for Canaan, Abraham's brother Nahor and his family decide to stay.
Years later, Abraham sends a trusted servant to the city of Nahor (possibly the same as Haran) in Padanaram to find a wife for Isaac among their relatives (Genesis 24). God leads the servant to Rebekah, Laban's sister, who agrees to journey to Canaan and marry Isaac.
Fleeing Wrath
Jacob, after he had stolen Esau's blessing from their father Isaac, is urged by his mother Rebekah to escape to Haran (Genesis 27:42 - 45). Haran is where his uncle Laban, the son of Abraham's brother Nahor (Genesis 29:4 - 5), lives.
Before Jacob leaves Canaan, however, Rebekah deceives Isaac into sending him to the Padanaram area to find a wife among their relatives (27:46 - 28:5). This deception allows Jacob to flee the wrath of Esau with his father's approval and blessing!
Jacob makes the long journey and finally finds Laban. He ultimately ends up working fourteen years for his uncle in order to marry his daughters Leah and Rachel (Genesis 29).
Important Verses
Genesis 25:20
And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian.
Genesis 28:1 - 2, 6
And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.
Arise, go to Padanaram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father: and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother . . .
When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to Padanaram, to take him a wife from thence: and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan . . .
Genesis 31:17 - 18
Then Jacob rose up, and set his sons and his wives upon camels; and he carried away all his cattle, and all his goods which he had gotten, the cattle of his getting, which he had gotten in Padanaram, for to go to Isaac his father in the land of Canaan.
Genesis 35:9 - 10
And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padanaram, and blessed him. And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel.
Genesis 35:22, 26 - 27
Now the sons of Jacob were twelve . . . And the sons of Zilpah, Leah's handmaid: Gad, and Asher: these are the sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Padanaram. And Jacob came unto Isaac his father unto Mamre, unto the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned.
Genesis 46:15
These be the sons of Leah (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Isaachar, Zebulun), which she bare unto Jacob in Padanaram, with his daughter Dinah: all the souls of his sons and his daughters were thirty and three.