the Fourth Week of Advent
Click here to learn more!
Bible Dictionaries
Gezer
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or ("cut off," i.e. "isolated".) An old Canaanite city, whose king, Horam or Elam, helping Lachish, was slain with his people by Joshua (Joshua 10:33; Joshua 12:12). A landmark of Ephraim, between lower Beth-horon and the Mediterranean (Joshua 16:3), on the S.W. border (1 Chronicles 7:28). Now Tell el Djezir near Abou Shusheh (Ganneau). Allotted to the Kohathite Levites (Joshua 21:21; 1 Chronicles 6:67). At a short distance from Tel el Djezir, on the E. side, engraved on a horizontal rock, is a bilingual Greek and Hebrew inscription marking the limit of Gezer (Numbers 35:5) as a Levitical city with its portion without the city.
The inscription is at least as old as one century B.C.; also a second similar inscription exists on the N.W. Thus the sacred boundary was a square, having its four angles at the four cardinal points (Ganneau). The original inhabitants remained and paid tribute to Israel (Judges 1:29; 1 Kings 9:16-17). It must have been independent when Pharaoh slew the Canaanite inhabitants, burnt the city, and gave it a present to his daughter, Solomon's wife. Solomon rebuilt it. Gob is identified with it 1 Chronicles 20:4; compare 2 Samuel 21:18. It lay in the maritime plain, on the coast road to Egypt, an important post to fortify as it lay between Egypt and Jerusalem
It is the last point to which David pursued the Philistines (2 Samuel 5:25; 1 Chronicles 14:16). Being 50 miles distant from "the S. of Judah ... and the Kenites," it cannot be meant in 1 Samuel 27:8. (See GERZITES.) The inscription in the rock discovered by Ganneau, "the boundary of Gezer," verifies the conjecture that Abou Shusheh on the plain between Jaffa and Jerusalem is the site of Gezer The discovery of the limit outside the city probably defines "a sabbath day's journey."
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Gezer'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/g/gezer.html. 1949.
