Gibeon

Gibeon (gĭb`ēən), ancient town, 5 mi (8 km) NNW of Jerusalem. The Book of Joshua relates that its inhabitants established a treaty with the invading Israelites, resulting in their servitude to Israel. According to legend, the sun stood still in Gibeon while Israel battled the Amorites. Modern excavations there have discovered a water system, perhaps referred to in the Books of Second Samuel and Jeremiah. See Gibbar.

Bibliography

See studies by J. B. Pritchard (1962, 1964) and J. Blenkinsopp (1972).

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Gibeon

Ancient city of Canaan. It is located north of Jerusalem at modern Al-Jib in the West Bank. According to the Bible, its inhabitants made an alliance with the Israelite military leader Joshua during his conquest of Canaan but were instead made slaves. Excavations in 1956 by a U.S. expedition revealed that the site had been occupied during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages and in the latter part of the Late Bronze Age, just before Joshua's conquest of Canaan; the town then was a dependency of Jerusalem and was probably not fortified.