[2] Subsequently, the moshav was renamed Zanoah after the ancient biblical settlement in the Judean Lowlands, mentioned in the Book of Joshua (15:33-34).

[4] From 2004 to 2015, when it closed, Zanoah was also the home of Yeshivat Yesodei HaTorah, which offered a gap year program for international English-speaking students.

The ruins of Khurbet Zanuʻ which lie on a high hill south of the moshav are thought to be the ancient village of Zanoah,[6][7] mentioned in Egyptian letters, later part of the tribe of Judah (Joshua 15:34), and in the "Second Temple period ... reinhabited,"[8][9] as recorded in the Bible (Nehemiah 3:13).

Zanoah is mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah as one of the towns resettled by the Jewish exiles returning from the Babylonian captivity and who helped to construct the walls of Jerusalem during the reign of the Persian king, Artaxerxes I (Xerxes).

[16] According to the Mishnah, compiled in the 2nd-century CE (Munich MS., Menahot 83b),[17] the finest of the wheat used to grow in the valley adjacent to Zanoah, from whence it was taken for the Omer offering in the Temple.

Eusebius (3rd–4th century CE) mentions Zanoah in his Onomasticon as a village "within the borders of Eleutheropolis (Beit Gubrin) on the way to Ailia (Jerusalem)," and which was still inhabited in his day.