("sandy soil".) An old city of Canaan. Joshua conquered its king (Joshua 12:21). It was afterward assigned to Manasseh (1 Chronicles 7:29), and became a Levitical city (1 Chronicles 17:11-12; 1 Chronicles 21:25). Israel failed to drive out its aboriginal occupants (Judges 1:27), The scene of Barak's victory was not Taanach or Megiddo, but Mount Tabor, near the sources of the Kishon, three miles W. of Mount Tabor (el Mujahiyeh, "the spring head"): Judges 4:7-14. Barak had all the advantage of a rush down the hill upon the foe in the plain, as Napoleon had in his battle of Mount Tabor; had the battle been in Taanach he would have had to come the whole width of the plain to attack from low ground the foe on the spurs of the hills far away from the main bed of the Kishon.
"In Taanach" (Judges 5:19) must be a general name for the district of which Taanach is the capital; or else must be translated "sandy soil," which abounds all over the plain. "The waters of Megiddo" in Judges 5:19 are those of the stream Jalud, supplied from springs round Mejedda, a ruin near Beisan (Bethsheart). (Palestine Exploration Quarterly Statement, January 1877, p. 13-20.) Taanach and Megiddo (1 Kings 4:12) were the chief towns of the fertile tract which forms the western part of the great Esdraelon valley. Now Ta'annuk, a small village with ruins on a flat tell, an hour and a quarter S.E. of Megiddo.