the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Encyclopedias
Gibeah
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Gib´eah. There were several places of this name, which, as before remarked [GEBA], is the feminine form of the word Gibeah, and signifies a hill. Without doubt all the places so named were situated upon hills.
1. Gibeah of Benjamin is historically the most important of the places bearing this name. It is often mentioned in Scripture. It was the scene of that abominable transaction which involved in its consequences almost the entire extirpation of the tribe of Benjamin (, sq.). It was the birth-place of Saul, and continued to be his residence after he became king (;;;; ); and here was the scene of Jonathan's romantic exploit against the Philistines (1 Samuel 14). It was doubtless on account of this its intimate connection with Saul, that the Gibeonites hanged up here his seven descendants (). Jerome speaks of Gibeah as, in his time, level with the ground, and since then it does not appear to have been visited by travelers till recently. Dr. Robinson, who made many valuable observations in this neighborhood, detected Gibeah in the small and half-ruined village of Jeba, which lies upon a low, conical, or rather round eminence, on the broad ridge which shelves down towards the Jordan valley, and spreads out below the village in a fine sloping plain. The views of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, and of the Eastern mountains, are here very extensive. Among the ruins some large hewn stones, indicating antiquity, are occasionally seen. This place is about five miles north by east from Jerusalem.
2. Gibeah in the mountains of Judah (). which, under the name of Gabaatha, Eusebius and Jerome place twelve Roman miles from Eleutheropolis, and state that the grave of the prophet Habakkuk was there to be seen. Dr. Robinson identifies it with the village of Jebah, which stands upon an isolated hill, in the midst of Wady-el-Musurr, about ten miles south-west of Jerusalem.
3. Gibeah in Mount Ephraim, called Gibeah of Phineas, where the high-priest Eleazar, son of Aaron, was buried by his son Phineas (). Dr. Robinson finds it in a narrow valley called Wady-el-Jib, the Geeb of Maundrell, lying just midway on the road between Jerusalem and Shechem.
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Gibeah'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/g/gibeah.html.
