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The same name traced across the biblical canon and the Second Temple texts, side by side.

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  • Cabbon A lowland town of Judah in the district that held Lachish and Eglon. It is not mentioned anywhere else and remains unidentified.
  • Cabul Named once, in 1 Kings, and nowhere else.
  • Cabul A town on the eastern border of Asher. Another Cabul, a district of twenty towns in Galilee, got the name later.
  • Caesar (Emperor living at the time of the New Testament) Not one man. Caesar is the New Testament's title for whoever was Roman emperor, Augustus when Jesus was born and Tiberius when he was crucified.
  • Caesar (Emperor living at the time of the New Testament) In Acts the title stands for the emperor of the day, the authority whose court the appeal in Acts 25 went to.
  • Caesar (Emperor living at the time of the New Testament) Luke puts names to the title: Augustus, under whom Jesus was born, and Tiberius after him.
  • Caesar (Emperor living at the time of the New Testament) A man from the New Testament, and Philippians is the only book that names him.
  • Caesarea Herod the Great built it as a Roman port on the Mediterranean coast, and it served as the administrative capital of Roman Judea. Cornelius the centurion lived there. Paul spent two years there in prison.
  • Caiaphas (High Priest living at the time of the New Testament) The high priest who presided over the council that condemned Jesus. Beforehand he argued it was better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to suffer, and John's Gospel reads those words as more than he knew.
  • Cain (Man living at the time before the Flood) Adam and Eve's firstborn, a farmer. God accepted his brother Abel's offering and not his, and Cain killed Abel out of jealousy. God marked him and sent him off to wander rather than putting him to death.
  • Cainan (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Two men in the genealogies. One descends from Seth several generations before Noah; the other is a son of Arphaxad in Luke's genealogy of Jesus, a name missing from the Genesis Hebrew text but present in the Greek.
  • Calah Nimrod is said to have built it in Assyria, along with Nineveh and Resen, and it is identified with Nimrud on the east bank of the Tigris south of Mosul.
  • Calcol (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) Known for his wisdom, and named with Ethan, Heman and Darda as wise men Solomon outdid.
  • Calcol (Man living before Israel's Monarchy) 1 Chronicles names him once, and he is a man from the years before the monarchy.
  • Caleb (Joshua's compatriot living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness and Conquest) One of the twelve spies Moses sent into Canaan. He and Joshua were the only two who came back telling Israel to trust God and take the land, and the rest of that generation paid for ignoring them with forty years in the wilderness.
  • Caleb (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Not the spy. This Caleb heads his own branch of the family lines in 1 Chronicles 2, with wives and sons listed at 2:18–19 and again from 2:42.
  • Caleb-ephrathah The Hebrew of 1 Chronicles 2:24 is hard, and some translations do not read Caleb-ephrathah as a single place at all. It turns up in connection with Hezron's clan and the district of Ephrathah near Bethlehem.
  • Camon (Kamon) Jair was buried here, the judge who led Israel for twenty-two years. Where it was is disputed: tradition puts it in Gilead east of the Jordan, or else near Mount Carmel.
  • Cana A village in Galilee, likely a few miles north of Nazareth. At a wedding there Jesus turned water into wine, his first recorded miracle. Nathanael came from Cana.
  • Canaan The land promised to Abraham and his descendants, roughly modern Israel and the land around it. The conquest under Joshua is that promise, centuries old by then, being kept.
  • Canaan (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) The person, not the land. In Genesis 9 he is the son on whom the curse falls, and the people of the land would trace back to him.
  • Canaanite They were the people living in the land promised to Israel. The biblical genealogy traces them to Canaan, son of Ham. The Old Testament repeatedly orders them driven out because of their idol worship and other practices.
  • Canaanite (Woman living at the time of the Patriarchs) Exodus names her once, and she is a woman from the patriarchs.
  • Canan (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A variant of Hanan, here one of the names in the family line at 1 Chronicles 8:38 and again at 9:44.
  • Canan (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A man from the divided-kingdom years, and 1 Chronicles is the only book that names him.
  • Canan (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A man from the divided-kingdom years. Jeremiah names him once.
  • Canan (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Ezra and Nehemiah name him twice, and he is a man from the exile and the return.
  • Canan (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) A name in the family lists, carried by a man named once.
  • Canan (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Nehemiah names him once, and he is a man from the exile and the return.
  • Canan (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) One of 9 men called Canan. This one is a man from the exile and the return, named once in Nehemiah.
  • Canan (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) A man from the exile and the return, and Nehemiah is the only book that names him.
  • Canan (Warrior living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A warrior from the divided-kingdom years. 1 Chronicles names him once.
  • Cananaean (Political group in the New Testament) Simon's byname in the lists of the Twelve, in Matthew 10:4 and Mark 3:18. Older translations render it Canaanite, but it has nothing to do with Canaan.
  • Candace (Title of a leader) A title the ruling queens of Kush carried, the way Egypt's kings were all Pharaoh. The official Philip met served one of them.
  • Canneh (Calneh) Ezekiel lists it once among Tyre's trading partners, with Haran and Eden, somewhere in upper Mesopotamia or northern Syria. It is generally taken as the same place as Calno or Calneh.
  • Capernaum Jesus left Nazareth and made this fishing town on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee his base, and it is called his own city. Several of his best known miracles and teachings happened there.
  • Caphtor (Crete) Where the Philistines came from before they settled on Canaan's coastal plain, generally taken to be Crete or somewhere near it in the Aegean.
  • Cappadocia A large province in eastern Asia Minor. Jews from there were in Jerusalem at Pentecost, and later Peter wrote to the scattered believers there among others.
  • Carcas (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) One of the seven eunuchs Ahasuerus sent to bring Queen Vashti before his guests, which she refused.
  • Carchemish A major city on the west bank of the Euphrates. For a long time it was a Hittite provincial capital, and later the seat of a Neo-Hittite kingdom of its own. Nebuchadnezzar crushed Pharaoh Necho's army there.
  • Careah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Johanan's father. Johanan was the commander who warned Gedaliah of the plot to kill him after Jerusalem fell, and Careah is named each time his son is.
  • Carmel Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal happened on this mountain ridge on Israel's Mediterranean coast. Fire came down from heaven when Elijah prayed, and Baal had nothing to answer with.
  • Carmelite Here it means someone from Carmel in Judah's hill country, not Mount Carmel in the north. Nabal was a Carmelite, the rich fool who insulted David, and so was his wife Abigail, who married David after Nabal died.
  • Carmi (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Reuben's son, whose family became one of the tribe's clans.
  • Carmi (Man living before Israel's Monarchy) Achan's father. Achan took plunder from Jericho that was devoted to God, and Israel lost its next battle because of it.
  • Carpus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Paul had left a cloak and some books or parchments with him at Troas, and asks Timothy to pick them up on the way.
  • Carshena (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) He was one of the seven top princes of Persia and Media, advisers with direct access to King Ahasuerus. They were consulted after Queen Vashti refused to appear. Nothing further is recorded about him.
  • Casiphia A place in Babylonia, apparently a centre of Jewish community life. None of the returning party were Levites, so Ezra sent messengers there to find Levites and temple servants for the journey to Jerusalem.
  • Casluhim (People, perhaps from Casluch) A people, not a person. They descend from Mizraim, the ancestor of Egypt, in the Table of Nations, and Genesis says the Philistines came from them.
  • Cedron (Kidron) The Kidron in Greek spelling, the brook and ravine between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. Jesus crossed it with his disciples on the night he was arrested.
  • Cencrea (Cenchreae) Corinth's eastern harbour on the Saronic Gulf, about seven miles from the city. Paul cut his hair there for a vow before he sailed, and the town had a church of its own.
  • Cephas (Apostle living at the time of the New Testament) Rock, in Aramaic. Jesus gave Simon the name, and Peter is the same word in Greek. Paul generally uses the Aramaic form in his letters.
  • Chaldean Originally a tribal people of southern Mesopotamia who went on to found the Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar II. Their armies destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 586 BC.
  • Chaldeans They started as one tribal group in southern Mesopotamia and ended up ruling the whole Babylonian empire. In the Old Testament the name came to mean Babylonians in general.
  • Chanaan (Canaan) The King James spelling of Canaan in Acts, where Stephen's speech looks back on the land promised to Abraham's descendants.
  • Charran (Haran) Haran, in the Greek form Stephen uses before the Sanhedrin. Abraham settled there with his father Terah after leaving Ur, and moved on to Canaan once Terah had died.
  • Chebar A river or canal in Babylonia. Jewish exiles like Ezekiel were settled near it after Jerusalem fell. By the Chebar Ezekiel saw his first vision of God's glory and the living creatures.
  • Chedorlaomer (King living at the time of the Patriarchs) An Elamite king. His coalition raided Sodom and carried off Lot along with the city's goods. Abraham got everything back in a surprise night attack.
  • Chefarhaamonai (Chephar-ammoni) The villages of the Ammonites, a town allotted to Benjamin. It is listed beside Ophni and Geba, never mentioned again, and its site is unknown.
  • Chelal (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Of the sons of Pahath-moab, he had married a foreign wife and agreed to divorce her under Ezra's reform.
  • Chelluh (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Another of Bani's men in the foreign-marriage list of Ezra 10, who agreed to divorce his wife in Ezra's covenant reform.
  • Chelub (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) 1 Chronicles names him once, and he is a man from the divided-kingdom years.
  • Chelub (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Shuhah's brother and Mehir's father, in the tribe of Judah.
  • Chelubai (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Hezron's son, also called Caleb, and the head of a branch of Judah's family tree in Chronicles. He is a different man from Caleb son of Jephunneh, the spy who went into Canaan with Joshua.
  • Chemosh (A male deity in the Old Testament) Moab's national god. Solomon built him a shrine to please one of his foreign wives, and that is among the reasons given for the enemies God raised against Solomon late in his reign.
  • Chenaanah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) His son Zedekiah was a false prophet who promised King Ahab victory and struck the true prophet Micaiah in the face for saying otherwise.
  • Chenaanah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) 1 Chronicles names him once, and he is a man from the divided-kingdom years.
  • Chenani (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) A Levite who stood on the stairs with others and cried out to the LORD in the great public confession of Nehemiah 9, after the Law had been read. Nothing further is recorded of him.
  • Chenaniah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) David put this Levite in charge of the music when the ark was brought up to Jerusalem, because he was good at it.
  • Chephirah With Gibeon, Beeroth and Kiriath-jearim, one of the four Hivite towns whose people tricked Joshua into a peace treaty by posing as travellers from a far country.
  • Cheran (Edomite living at the time of the Patriarchs) Dishon's son, from the Horite clans of Seir. The Horites lived in the region before Edom's kings arose and were later pushed out or absorbed.
  • Cherethims (A military group in the Old Testament) David's bodyguard, with the Pelethites, under Benaiah's command. They were tied closely to the Philistines and likely came from Crete.
  • Cherethims (People, perhaps from Chereth) The people themselves, close neighbours of the Philistines and likely from Crete. Ezekiel and Zephaniah both name them in oracles of judgment.
  • Cherith It was a ravine with a seasonal stream. Elijah hid there and ravens fed him in the early part of the three-year drought under King Ahab, and its exact location is uncertain.
  • Cherub A place in Babylonia, not the winged beings. With Tel-harsa and Addan it was one of the settlements some returning exiles came from who could not prove their descent.
  • Chesalon On Judah's northern border, on the slope of Mount Jearim. It is identified with the village of Kesla in the hill country west of Jerusalem.
  • Chesed (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Nahor's son, one of the descendants of Abraham's brother listed in Genesis 22:22. Some scholars connect the name with the Hebrew word for the Chaldeans, Kasdim.
  • Chesil A Negev town of Judah, likely the place Joshua 19:4 calls Bethul and 1 Chronicles 4:30 calls Bethuel.
  • Chesulloth Named once, in 1 Chronicles, and nowhere else.
  • Chesulloth Issachar's town on the slopes between Jezreel and Shunem. It is usually taken to be the same place as Chisloth-tabor on Zebulun's boundary, at modern Iksal near Mount Tabor, which would put the two tribal lines meeting at one town.
  • Chezib (Achzib) The town where Shelah, Judah's third son by his Canaanite wife, was born, generally taken as another name for Achzib in the Shephelah, though nobody has found the site.
  • Chidon (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) The threshing floor where Uzzah put his hand on the ark and died, on the road toward Jerusalem; 2 Samuel calls the same spot Nachon's threshing floor.
  • Chileab (David's son living at the time of United Monarchy) 1 Chronicles names him once, and he is a man from the united kingdom.
  • Chileab (David's son living at the time of United Monarchy) David's second son, by Abigail, born after Nabal died and David married her. Chronicles calls him Daniel. After the birth notice he never appears again, and since he plays no part in the fight over who would succeed David, he is generally thought to have died young.
  • Chilion (Man living before Israel's Monarchy) Naomi's son. He died in Moab with his father and his brother, and his widow was one of the two left with Naomi when the men were gone.
  • Chilmad Ezekiel lists it once among Tyre's trading partners, next to Sheba and Asshur. Some put it near Assyria. Others read the Hebrew as a phrase, not a place at all, and no location has been settled.
  • Chimham (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) The son of Barzillai, the old Gileadite who stood by David in Absalom's rebellion. David took Chimham back to Jerusalem as the reward. Property near Bethlehem seems to have carried his name for generations.
  • Chinnereth (Sea of Galilee) Before anyone called it Gennesaret or Tiberias, the lake was the Sea of Chinnereth, named for a fortified Canaanite city on its northwest shore. The town fell inside Naphtali's land. Under the plural Chinneroth it named the whole district, which Ben-hadad of Syria raided in Baasha's reign.
  • Chios A big Aegean island off Asia Minor, still called Chios, that Paul's ship sailed past on the way home from the third missionary journey.
  • Chisleu (Name of the 9th month) Ninth month, late November into December, also spelled Kislev and taken from the Babylonian calendar.
  • Chislon (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) The father of Elidad, the leader from the tribe of Benjamin picked to help divide Canaan, and nothing else is known of him.
  • Chisloth-tabor (Chesulloth) The name means the loins of Tabor, a point on Zebulun's boundary near the mountain. Usually placed at the village of Iksal, about two and a half miles west of Tabor, and it may be the town called Chesulloth a few verses on.
  • Chittim (Cyprus) Kittim was a son of Javan, and the name stretched to cover the islands and coasts of the eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus most of all. In prophecy it stands for far-off peoples who come by sea.
  • Chittim (People from Kittim) Named twice, in Genesis and 1 Chronicles, and nowhere else.
  • Chiun (A male deity in the Old Testament) A star god, likely the planet Saturn, whose image Amos says Israel carried in the wilderness. The Septuagint turned the name into Rephan, and that is the form Stephen quotes in Acts 7:43.
  • Chloe (Woman living at the time of the New Testament) Her people brought Paul word that the church at Corinth was splitting into factions, and nothing further is known about her.
  • Chorashan (Bor-ashan) After he rescued the Ziklag captives from the Amalekites, David sent gifts from the plunder to a string of towns, and this was one. It is generally identified with Ashan, a town of Simeon in the Negev of Judah.
  • Chorazin Jesus did many of his miracles in this Galilee town and then pronounced a woe on it, alongside Bethsaida and Capernaum, because it did not repent. It is identified with Khirbet Karazeh about two miles north of Capernaum, where a black basalt synagogue has been dug up.
  • Choseba (Achzib) One terse line in 1 Chronicles about men of Judah's line who had authority in Moab. It may be the same place as Achzib or Chezib, Shelah's birthplace, but the wording is too thin to be sure.
  • Christ (Man living at the time of the New Testament) A title, not a surname. It is the Greek for the Hebrew Messiah, the anointed one, and the New Testament gives it to Jesus of Nazareth as the king, priest and deliverer the Old Testament promised. His life and ministry are under Jesus.
  • Christian (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Outsiders at Antioch coined the word, possibly as mockery, for people who followed Christ. The believers called each other brethren, disciples and saints. It turns up only three times in the New Testament, the last in 1 Peter 4:16, which tells them not to be ashamed of suffering under that name.
  • Chub (Libya) A people named once in Ezekiel's oracle against Egypt, among the allies who would fall by the sword. Many suspect a copying slip for Lub, which would make it Libya. That reading is disputed.
  • Chun (Berothah) David took bronze from this city of Hadadezer, king of Zobah, and the bronze later went into Solomon's temple. 2 Samuel calls it Berothai. It probably lay somewhere in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon.
  • Chush (Cush) Cush as a land. It lay south of Egypt, roughly modern Sudan and Ethiopia, and the Old Testament keeps coming back to it as a distant, exotic country.
  • Chush (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Ham's eldest son, whose descendants are tied to the country south of Egypt that carries his name.
  • Chush (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) One of 3 men called Chush. This one is a man from the united kingdom, named once in Psalm.
  • Chushan-rishathayim (King living before Israel's Monarchy) God let this king of Aram-naharaim hold Israel down for eight years, the first foreign oppression in Judges. Othniel, Caleb's younger kinsman, beat him, and the land had forty years of peace. The name means something like doubly wicked Cushan, which may be a Hebrew jab rather than what he was really called.
  • Chuza (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Steward of Herod Antipas's household. He is mainly known through his wife Joanna, who had been healed by Jesus, put her own money toward him and the disciples, and was later among the women at the empty tomb.
  • Cilicia Paul was born in Tarsus, Cilicia's chief city, on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor. Cilician Jews had their own synagogue in Jerusalem and argued with Stephen there. The province was known for the goat's hair cloth used in tentmaking, which was Paul's trade.
  • Cis (Saul's father living at the time of United Monarchy) Kish, Saul's father, in the Greek form Paul uses once in his sermon at Pisidian Antioch.
  • Clauda (Cauda) Paul's ship got into the lee of this little island off Crete in the storm, long enough to haul in the boat and lash ropes round the hull. It is modern Gavdos, the southernmost point of Europe.
  • Claudia (Woman living at the time of the New Testament) Paul passes her greetings to Timothy from Rome, with those of Pudens, Linus and Eubulus. People have tried to match her with a Claudia in Martial's poems who married a Pudens, but the shared names are all that idea rests on.
  • Claudius (Emperor living at the time of the New Testament) The emperor who threw the Jews out of Rome, which is how Priscilla and Aquila came to Corinth and met Paul. A famine in his reign moved the church at Antioch to send help to the believers in Judea.
  • Clement (Man living at the time of the New Testament) At Philippi, Paul calls him a fellow labourer whose name is in the book of life. Later tradition sometimes made him Clement of Rome, but the New Testament gives no grounds for that beyond the name.
  • Cleopas (Man living at the time of the New Testament) One of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The risen Jesus walked with them and they did not know him until he broke the bread. Some make him the Clopas of John 19:25, which cannot be confirmed.
  • Cleophas (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Clopas, whose wife was one of the Marys standing at the cross. Many take him for the Cleopas of the Emmaus road, though Klopas and Kleopas may be two different names, one Aramaic, one Greek.
  • Cnidus Paul's ship struggled to get past this harbour city at the tip of the Cnidian peninsula, in Caria, with the wind against it, and then ran for Crete. Its temple of Aphrodite was famous, and the theatre and harbour works have been excavated.
  • Col-hozeh (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Nehemiah names him once, and he is a man from the exile and the return.
  • Col-hozeh (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) His son Shallun repaired the Fountain Gate and a stretch of wall in Nehemiah's rebuilding. He was of Judah, and a descendant named Baruch shows up among Jerusalem's returned residents.
  • Colosse (Colossae) Paul wrote Colossians to the church here, in Phrygia on the Lycus River near Laodicea and Hierapolis, without ever having visited. Epaphras, a local man, had brought the gospel. The mound is unexcavated, near modern Honaz in Turkey.
  • Conaniah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A Levite in charge of the tithes and offerings that came into the temple under Hezekiah's reforms.
  • Coniah (King living at the time of Divided Monarchy) The short form of Jehoiachin that Jeremiah uses, for the king of Judah carried off to Babylon. In that prophecy he is written down as childless, meaning none of his line would rule from David's throne.
  • Core (Aaron's adversary living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) The Greek form of Korah, the Levite who rose against Moses and Aaron and went down when the ground opened. Jude puts him beside Cain and Balaam as a warning about teachers who reject authority and chase gain.
  • Corinth Paul stayed eighteen months in this rich trading city on the isthmus, and the church he planted got two of his longest letters. He stood before the proconsul Gallio there, whose dated term helps fix Paul's timeline. An inscription found at Corinth names an Erastus who paid for a pavement, likely the city treasurer of Romans 16:23.
  • Corinthian Anyone from Corinth. Crispus, the synagogue ruler who believed with his household, is one Acts names, and Paul speaks straight to them as Corinthians in his second letter.
  • Cornelius (Man living at the time of the New Testament) A Roman centurion at Caesarea, devout, generous, and not a Jew. An angel told him to send for Peter while a vision got Peter ready to come. When the Holy Spirit fell on his household as it had at Pentecost, the Jerusalem church accepted that Gentiles did not have to become Jews first.
  • Cos A small island near Rhodes that Paul's ship passed heading back toward Jerusalem. In the first century it was a centre of Hellenistic culture and medicine, with a Jewish community of its own.
  • Cosam (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A name in Luke's genealogy of Jesus, son of Elmodam and father of Addi, and nothing more than that.
  • Cozbi (Woman living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Daughter of Zur, a Midianite chief. Phinehas the priest killed her and the Israelite Zimri together at Baal-peor, and the plague that came with it was remembered as a warning.
  • Creator A title for God, not a name. Peter uses it telling people who are suffering to hand themselves over and keep doing good.
  • Crescens (Man living at the time of the New Testament) By the time Paul wrote his last letter from prison, Crescens had gone to Galatia; tradition, not Scripture, has him founding churches in Gaul.
  • Cretan (Crete) People of Crete, the big island where Paul left Titus to set the churches in order and appoint elders.
  • Crete Paul left Titus here to organise the churches and appoint elders. His ship also put in at the island on the storm voyage to Rome.
  • Crispus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) He ran the synagogue at Corinth, believed under Paul's preaching, and was one of the few Corinthians Paul baptised himself.
  • Cushan In Habakkuk's poem the tents of Cushan tremble alongside Midian as the Lord approaches. Probably a Cushite group in northwest Arabia, not African Cush, and no relation to the king Cushan-rishathaim. Where exactly it lay is not established.
  • Cushi (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) The name means the Cushite, and at least two men carry it. One was the father of Shelemiah, whose son was sent to fetch Baruch after Jeremiah's scroll was burned. Another is in Zephaniah's family line, a few generations below Hezekiah.
  • Cushi (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Zephaniah names him once, and he is a man from the divided-kingdom years.
  • Cuth The Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom and moved people from this Babylonian city into Samaria, and they brought their god Nergal with them. It is identified with Tell Ibrahim northeast of Babylon. Later Jews used Cuthites, often as an insult, for Samaritans.
  • Cyprus The island Barnabas came from, where the first missionary journey started and the proconsul Sergius Paulus became an early convert.
  • Cyprus Named once, in Ezekiel, and nowhere else.
  • Cyrene Greek colonists founded it in North Africa around 630 BC, and its temple of Apollo and theatre still stand near Shahhat in Libya. Simon of Cyrene carried Jesus's cross. Cyrenian believers helped start the mixed church at Antioch, and Lucius of Cyrene taught there.
  • Cyrus (Emperor living at the time of Exile and Return) The Persian king who took Babylon and let the deported peoples, the Jews among them, go home and rebuild their temples. Isaiah calls him by name long before he was born, God's shepherd and anointed. The Cyrus Cylinder, found in Babylon in 1879, records the same policy.

D

  • Dabareh (Daberath) Also called Daberath, on Zebulun's border near Mount Tabor, and later given to the Gershonite Levites. The Arab village of Deburiyeh at the western foot of Tabor still carries the name.
  • Dabbesheth One of the towns marking Zebulun's border; nothing else is recorded and the site has not been found.
  • Dagon (A male deity in the Old Testament) The Philistines set the captured ark in Dagon's temple at Ashdod. His statue was found face down before the ark, and the second time it had lost its head and hands.
  • Dalaiah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) He told King Jehoiakim not to burn Jeremiah's scroll, and the king burned it anyway.
  • Dalaiah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A man from the divided-kingdom years, and 1 Chronicles is the only book that names him.
  • Dalaiah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) One of 5 men called Dalaiah. This one is a man from the divided-kingdom years, named once in 1 Chronicles.
  • Dalaiah (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Named in the returnee lists of Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7, a family head from after the exile. It was a common name in that period, and the record gives this one nothing more.
  • Dalaiah (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) A man from the exile and the return. Nehemiah names him once.
  • Dalmanutha (Magadan) Mark says Jesus went there by boat after feeding the four thousand. Matthew's account of the same trip says Magdala, so the two names probably cover neighbouring ground. No site has been matched to it.
  • Dalmatia Titus had gone to Dalmatia by the time Paul wrote from his last imprisonment in Rome. It was the rough coast along the eastern Adriatic, part of the province of Illyricum, roughly modern Croatia and Montenegro. Rome had put down a big revolt there under Tiberius in AD 9.
  • Dalphon (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) The second of Haman's ten sons, killed by the Jews of Susa once his father's plot had failed.
  • Damaris (Woman living at the time of the New Testament) An Athenian woman who believed after Paul spoke at the Areopagus, one of the very few converts from that speech named at all. Dionysius the Areopagite is named in the same verse, and nothing ties the two together beyond that.
  • Damascene (Damascus) Paul uses the word for the people of Damascus when he tells how King Aretas's ethnarch had the city guarded to catch him, and he got out in a basket let down over the wall.
  • Damascus A city has stood here, on a fertile plain watered by the Barada northwest of Mount Hermon, since before the patriarchs. It was the Aramean capital that fought Israel through the ninth and eighth centuries BC. Saul was converted on the road into it, and the street called Straight was a real colonnaded street whose columns have been found.
  • Dan The tribe of Dan and the town it took. Squeezed in its first allotment near the Philistines, the tribe went north, captured Laish and renamed it Dan, Israel's northernmost town and the far end of from Dan to Beersheba. Jeroboam I put one of his golden calves there, and a stele from Tel Dan found in 1993 names the House of David.
  • Dan (Jacob's son living at the time of the Patriarchs) Jacob's son by Bilhah, Rachel's servant, and the ancestor of the tribe that carries his name.
  • Dan-jaan (Ijon) Joab's census party passed through here on the way round the land, somewhere near Dan by the sources of the Jordan. The name may just mean Dan in the forest, and some old translations read it that way, not as a separate place.
  • Daniel (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) One of 3 men called Daniel. This one is a man from the exile and the return, named twice in Ezra and Nehemiah.
  • Daniel (Prophet living at the time of Exile and Return) Carried off to Babylon as a young noble of Judah and renamed by his captors, he rose to high office under three empires without giving up his faith. That refusal got him a night in the lions' den. The visions he received run to the book's last chapter.
  • Dannah One of the towns in Judah's hill country south of Hebron. It is sometimes put near modern Idhna, southwest of Hebron, but that is not certain.
  • Dara (Man living before Israel's Monarchy) Probably the same man as Darda, a son of Zerah. He is one of the wise men, with Heman, Chalcol and Ethan, whose wisdom Solomon's outdid.
  • Darda (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) Solomon's wisdom is measured against four famous wise men, and he is one of them. The name turns up again among the sons of Zerah.
  • Darius Darius the Great, the Persian emperor in Ezra. Temple building in Jerusalem had stalled, and his decree let it start again. Ezra keeps the text of it.
  • Darius (Emperor living at the time of Exile and Return) A Persian king named once, in Nehemiah. Darius was a title several kings carried, and the verse leaves it there.
  • Darius (Ruler living at the time of Exile and Return) In Daniel he rules Babylon right after it falls, and he is the king who signed, without wanting to, the decree that put Daniel in the lions' den. Daniel calls him Darius the Mede.
  • Darkon (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) His descendants came back from Babylon with Zerubbabel among the servants of Solomon, a class of temple workers.
  • Dathan (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) He and Abiram joined Korah against Moses, and the ground opened under their tents and took them and their families.
  • David (King living at the time of United Monarchy) The shepherd from Bethlehem who killed Goliath and became Israel's second king, ruling the largest territory Israel ever held, which Solomon then inherited. Solomon was one of his sons. Nearly half the psalms carry his name, and the Tel Dan inscription, where an enemy king boasts over the house of David, put his dynasty outside the Bible as well.
  • Debir Othniel took this town in Judah's hill country and won Caleb's daughter Achsah as his wife for it. Debir is also the name of a Canaanite king Joshua defeated.
  • Debir (King living before Israel's Monarchy) Joshua names him once, and he is a king from the years before the monarchy.
  • Deborah (Judge living before Israel's Monarchy) Prophetess and the one woman among Israel's judges. She sat under a palm tree between Ramah and Bethel and Israel came to her for judgment. Barak would not go against Sisera without her, so she went and told him a woman would get the credit, and Jael killed Sisera in her own tent.
  • Deborah (Nurse living at the time of the Patriarchs) Rebekah's nurse, who went with her from Haran and stayed with the family for life. Genesis 35:8 records her death and burial under an oak below Bethel, which was named the oak of weeping.
  • Decapolis The name is Greek for ten cities, a loose league of Hellenistic towns mostly east and southeast of the Sea of Galilee, Gerasa and Philadelphia among them. Crowds from there followed Jesus. The man freed from Legion near Gerasa went round the whole Decapolis telling what had happened to him.
  • Dedan An Arabian trading people, known in the prophets for caravans and goods. Their ancestor Dedan was a son of Abraham through Keturah.
  • Dedan (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Genesis and 1 Chronicles name him twice, and he is a man from the patriarchs.
  • Dedan (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) One of 3 men called Dedan. This one is a man from the patriarchs, named twice in Genesis and 1 Chronicles.
  • Dedanim Isaiah pictures their caravans camping in the desert thickets, and Ezekiel has them supplying Tyre. They are generally placed at the oasis of al-Ula in northwest Arabia, where Dedanite and Lihyanite inscriptions confirm a real trading kingdom.
  • Dehavites (Word sometimes translated as a name) One of the peoples the Assyrians had settled in Samaria, who later wrote to the Persian king against rebuilding the temple. Where they came from is uncertain; some point east of the Caspian Sea.
  • Dekar (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) Father of Ben-Dekar, one of Solomon's twelve district officers, whose region took in Shaalbim and Beth-shemesh.
  • Delilah (Woman living before Israel's Monarchy) Samson loved her, and the Philistine rulers paid her well to find out where his strength came from. He lied three times and each answer failed. She kept at him until he told her about his uncut Nazirite hair, and she had it shaved while he slept.
  • Demas (Man living at the time of the New Testament) With Paul in his imprisonment, and then gone. Paul writes that Demas deserted him because he loved this present world.
  • Demetrius (Man living at the time of the New Testament) A silversmith in Ephesus who made shrines of Artemis. He saw Paul's preaching killing his trade and started a riot, and the crowd chanted for two hours before the city officials calmed it.
  • Derbe Paul and Barnabas fled here from Lystra after Paul was stoned, and Paul came back later. It was a small town in the Lycaonian highlands near modern Karaman, and the hometown of Gaius. An inscription found in 1956 at Kerti Höyük fixed the site.
  • Deuel (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) The father of Gad's tribal leader during the wilderness census, and that is all of him.
  • Diana (A female deity in the New Testament) The Latin name for Artemis, goddess of Ephesus. When silversmiths feared Paul was ruining the shrine trade, the city chanted for two hours that great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
  • Diblaim (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Gomer's father. Hosea married her at God's command as a picture of Israel's unfaithfulness, and nothing further is known of Diblaim.
  • Diblath (Riblah) Ezekiel's judgment runs from the wilderness to Diblah, meaning the whole length of the land. It is most likely a copyist's form of Riblah on the Orontes in Syria, the Babylonian headquarters where Zedekiah was blinded after watching his sons killed.
  • Dibon A Moabite city Israel took and rebuilt. King Mesha names it on the Moabite Stone as one of his own building projects.
  • Dibon Named once, in Nehemiah, and nowhere else.
  • Dibri (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) A Danite whose daughter Shelomith had a son by an Egyptian. The son was stoned for blasphemy in the wilderness, and the episode brought in the law on blasphemy in Leviticus.
  • Didymus (Apostle living at the time of the New Testament) Greek for twin, and John's byname for the apostle Thomas. John probably translates it because some readers knew Thomas by the nickname. No one says who the other twin was.
  • Diklah (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) A son of Joktan in the table of nations, more likely a tribal territory than one man. The name means palm grove, which points to a date-growing district of Arabia, but where is uncertain.
  • Dilean A town in the Shephelah of Judah, listed with Migdal-gad and Mizpeh, whose site has not been identified with confidence.
  • Dimnah Zebulun gave this town to the Merari clan of Levites. The list in 1 Chronicles calls it Rimmon, either a copying variant or a real change of name. Nobody knows where it stood.
  • Dimon (Dibon) Isaiah sees the waters of Dimon, east of the Dead Sea, turning to blood in his oracle against Moab. Many take it as another name for the waters of Dibon, the Moabite capital where Mesha's stone was found.
  • Dimonah A town in the far south of Judah, in the Negev, generally taken as the Dibon resettled after the exile in Nehemiah 11:25.
  • Dinah (Jacob's daughter living at the time of the Patriarchs) Jacob and Leah's only daughter. After Shechem raped her, Simeon and Levi made the men of his city agree to be circumcised and then killed them all while they were still recovering. On his deathbed Jacob condemned it as reckless cruelty.
  • Dinaite (Word sometimes translated as a name) They were among the peoples the Assyrians resettled in Samaria, and they signed the letter to Artaxerxes against rebuilding Jerusalem, which stopped the work for a time.
  • Dinhaban (Dinhabah) A place, not a person, and a variant spelling of Dinhabah, the capital of Bela son of Beor, first on Edom's list of early kings. It lay somewhere south and east of the Dead Sea; the site is unknown.
  • Dionysius (Man living at the time of the New Testament) A member of the Areopagus, the council of Athens, who believed after hearing Paul speak there.
  • Diotrephes (Man living at the time of the New Testament) John rebukes him for loving to be first. He would not welcome the travelling missionaries, spread malicious talk about John, and threw out the members who did welcome them.
  • Dishan (Edomite living at the time of the Patriarchs) Youngest of the sons of Seir, a Horite chief among Edom's earlier people.
  • Dishon (Edomite living at the time of the Patriarchs) One of the Horite chiefs who held Edom's land before Esau's descendants settled it.
  • Dishon (Edomite living at the time of the Patriarchs) Genesis names him once, and he is a man from the patriarchs.
  • Dizahab Place of gold, in the wilderness near where Moses gave his last addresses. Often identified with Dahab on the east coast of Sinai, which keeps the old name, though it cannot be proven.
  • Dodai (Warrior living at the time of United Monarchy) An Ahohite who led David's army division in the second month, one of twelve divisions that took turns. He may be the father of Eleazar, one of David's three chief warriors.
  • Dodanim (People, perhaps from Dodan) A seafaring people descended from Javan, not a single man. Chronicles spells the name Rodanim, which many connect to Rhodes or to the Dardanians of northwest Asia Minor.
  • Dodavah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A man of Mareshah. His son Eliezer rebuked Jehoshaphat for joining Ahaziah of Israel in a shipbuilding venture, and God destroyed the ships.
  • Dodo (Man living before Israel's Monarchy) One of 3 men called Dodo. This one is a man from the years before the monarchy, named once in Judges.
  • Dodo (Warrior living at the time of United Monarchy) 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles name him twice, and he is a warrior from the united kingdom.
  • Dodo (Warrior living at the time of United Monarchy) Father of one of David's mighty men, named only so that his son can be.
  • Doeg (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) Saul's chief herdsman, an Edomite, who told Saul that the priest Ahimelech had helped David. Saul's own men would not kill the priests of Nob. Doeg did it himself, eighty-five priests and the whole town with them.
  • Dophkah A wilderness camp in Sinai between the desert of Sin and Alush. The name is related to a word for smelting, and some connect it with the Egyptian turquoise and copper mines at Serabit el-Khadim.
  • Dor A royal Canaanite port on the coast south of Mount Carmel. Joshua beat its king, but its people were never fully driven out, and it later went into one of Solomon's districts. Excavation at Tel Dor traces the shift from Canaanite to Phoenician on that coast.
  • Dorcas (Woman living at the time of the New Testament) Tabitha in Aramaic, a woman at Joppa who made clothes for the widows. When she died the disciples sent for Peter and he raised her, and many in Joppa believed because of it.
  • Drusilla (Woman living at the time of the New Testament) The youngest daughter of Herod Agrippa I. Felix, governor of Judea, talked her into leaving her first husband, the king of Emesa, and she was sitting beside Felix when Paul spoke about righteousness, self-control and judgment to come. Josephus says she died in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, which some historians doubt.
  • Dumah Named once, in Isaiah, and nowhere else.
  • Dumah (Arabian living at the time of the Patriarchs) A son of Ishmael, and the Arabian tribe and region that came from him, usually tied to the oasis of Dumat al-Jandal.
  • Dura Nebuchadnezzar set up his golden image on this plain near Babylon, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to bow to it. The name probably comes from an Akkadian word for a walled enclosure, so it is more a kind of place than one spot, and no site has been fixed.

E

F

G

  • Gaal (Man living before Israel's Monarchy) He talked the people of Shechem into rising against Abimelech. When Abimelech brought his forces against the city, Gaal was beaten and driven out.
  • Gaash Joshua was buried near this hill in Ephraim, close to Timnath-heres.
  • Gaba (Geba) Another English spelling of Geba, a Levitical city in Benjamin by the pass of Michmash. Jonathan raided a Philistine garrison there, and later it marked the line between the northern and southern kingdoms.
  • Gaba (Gibeah) Named once, in Judges, and nowhere else.
  • Gaba (Gibeon) Named once, in 2 Samuel, and nowhere else.
  • Gaba (Maareh-geba) Judges names him once, and nothing else is recorded.
  • Gabbai (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Nehemiah's census of Jerusalem after the exile lists him as head of a family of Benjamin, and nothing else is recorded about him.
  • Gabbatha An Aramaic word, raised place, for the paved platform outside Pilate's headquarters where he sat in judgment and sentenced Jesus. John gives the Greek too, lithostroton, a stone pavement. Some put it at a courtyard in the Antonia Fortress, but whether that pavement is old enough is disputed.
  • Gabriel (An angel) Daniel meets him first, explaining the visions of coming empires. In Luke he announces two births, John's to Zechariah and Jesus's to Mary, and tells Zechariah he is the one who stands in the presence of God. He is one of only two angels the Bible names.
  • Gad (Jacob's son living at the time of the Patriarchs) Jacob's seventh son, born to Leah's servant Zilpah. His tribe asked for good pasture east of the Jordan and got it. The condition was that Gad's fighting men still crossed over and helped the other tribes take their land first.
  • Gad (Prophet living at the time of United Monarchy) A prophet of the united monarchy, and nothing to do with Jacob's son. He first turns up in 1 Samuel 22:5, comes back in 2 Samuel 24, and Chronicles names him again.
  • Gadarene Matthew sets the healing here, in the country around Gadara, one of the Decapolis cities east of the Sea of Galilee, where the spirits went into a herd of pigs. Other manuscripts and the parallels read Gerasene or Gergesene. Gadara itself is Umm Qais in Jordan now, with its Roman ruins dug out.
  • Gaddi (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Manasseh's man among the twelve spies Moses sent into Canaan.
  • Gaddiel (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Zebulun sent him as its spy into Canaan. After the report that scared Israel off the land, his name never comes up again, the same as every spy except Caleb and Joshua.
  • Gadi (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Only ever named as the father of Menahem, who killed Shallum, took the throne of Israel and ruled brutally.
  • Gaham (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) One of the sons Nahor, Abraham's brother, had by his concubine Reumah. Nothing further is recorded.
  • Gahar (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) They came back from Babylon with Zerubbabel, the descendants of Gahar, one of the families of temple servants called the Nethinim.
  • Gaius (Man living at the time of the New Testament) This Gaius was Paul's host when Romans was written, and one of the few Paul baptised himself in Corinth. The name was common, and at least three men carry it across Paul's circle, so which references belong to the same man is hard to say.
  • Gaius (Man living at the time of the New Testament) A man from the New Testament, and 3 John is the only book that names him.
  • Gaius (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Acts names him once, and he is a man from the New Testament.
  • Gaius (Man living at the time of the New Testament) One of 4 men called Gaius. This one is a man from the New Testament, named once in Acts.
  • Galal (Levite living at the time of Exile and Return) A Levite among those who settled back in Jerusalem after the exile, listed in Chronicles and Nehemiah.
  • Galal (Levite living at the time of Exile and Return) 1 Chronicles names him once, and he is a Levite from the exile and the return.
  • Galatia Gaulish tribes from Europe settled this part of central Asia Minor in the third century BC, and Rome made it a province in 25 BC. Paul wrote one of his sharpest letters to its churches, against teachers who wanted Gentile believers circumcised.
  • Galatian It means someone from Galatia. Paul uses it once, sharply, in Galatians 3:1, to the churches turning from grace toward circumcision.
  • Galeed (Ramoth-gilead) Not a person but a heap of stones. Jacob and Laban piled it up to seal their covenant. Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha in Aramaic, and Jacob's Hebrew name for it means heap of witness.
  • Galilee Jesus grew up here and did most of his public work around the Sea of Galilee. Judeans thought the north provincial and mixed, which is the edge on Nathanael's question about whether anything good could come out of Nazareth.
  • Gallim Michal was given to Palti of Gallim after Saul took her away from David. Isaiah lists the town, in Benjamin north of Jerusalem, among the places panicking as the Assyrian army comes on.
  • Gallio (Man living at the time of the New Testament) The proconsul of Achaia threw out the case the Jews of Corinth brought against Paul, calling it an internal religious quarrel and no business of his court. An inscription from Delphi naming Gallio dates the scene closely enough to anchor the chronology of Paul's whole ministry.
  • Gamaliel (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) He turns up five times in Numbers, always in the wilderness lists of tribal leaders, and he is not the Pharisee who taught Paul.
  • Gamaliel (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Acts names him twice, and he is a man from the New Testament.
  • Gammadims (Gamad) Soldiers in the towers of Tyre, beside the men of Arvad, in Ezekiel's oracle. Who they were is debated: a place called Gammad, or just a word for brave warriors.
  • Gamul (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) The twenty-second of the twenty-four priestly divisions David set up for the temple went by his name.
  • Gareb Named once, in Jeremiah, and nowhere else.
  • Gareb (Warrior living at the time of United Monarchy) One of David's mighty warriors. There is also a hill near Jerusalem called Gareb, in Jeremiah, which is a different thing entirely.
  • Garmite (People, perhaps descended from the area of Garem) The word is tied to Keilah in Judah's genealogy, 1 Chronicles 4:19, and what it means is uncertain. The text never explains it.
  • Gatam (Edomite living at the time of the Patriarchs) Esau's grandson through Eliphaz, and one of the chiefs of Edom, the dukes of the old translations, heading a clan and otherwise only a name in the lists.
  • Gath Goliath's hometown, one of the five Philistine cities. The captured ark brought disaster on it, David later hid there with King Achish while running from Saul, and in the end David took it. Most identify it with Tell es-Safi, where a potsherd turned up carrying two names related to Goliath.
  • Gath-kephr (Gath-hepher) Jonah was born here, in Zebulun's territory, though the town is better known as Gath-hepher. Local tradition puts his tomb in the village of Mashhad by a hill called Nebi Yunus, near Nazareth.
  • Gath-rimmon In Dan's territory, and given to the Kohathite Levites. A second Gath-rimmon shows up in the Manasseh list, but 1 Chronicles 6:70 has Bileam there instead, which looks like a copying slip rather than two towns with one name.
  • Gath-rimmon (Ibleam) Named once, in Joshua, and nowhere else.
  • Gaza Samson pulled down the temple of Dagon here, and Philip met the Ethiopian official on the desert road toward it. It was one of the five Philistine cities, assigned to Judah and never fully held, and Egyptian records already name it in the second millennium BC.
  • Gazathite A man of Gaza. Judges uses it for the men who waited at the gate to kill Samson, and he carried the gate off.
  • Gazer (Gezer) The same city as Gezer. Pharaoh took it and gave it to his daughter when she married Solomon, and Solomon fortified it along with Hazor and Megiddo. The Gezer Calendar, a little tablet of farming seasons in early Hebrew script, was found there.
  • Gazez Two men in one verse. One is Caleb's son by his concubine Ephah, the other is a son of Haran, Ephah's son, and so the first one's nephew. Some think the second is a scribe repeating himself, but the text as it stands has two.
  • Gazzam (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Temple servants, the Nethinim, who came home from Babylon with Zerubbabel, counted under his name. Nothing further is known of him.
  • Gebal Byblos, to the Greeks, a Phoenician port north of Beirut. Ezekiel says its craftsmen caulked the ships of Tyre. The ruins gave up the Ahiram sarcophagus, carrying one of the earliest examples of the Phoenician alphabet.
  • Geber (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) Among Solomon's twelve district governors, each feeding the court for a month, two entries carry this name. The son of Geber was at Ramoth-gilead, and Geber son of Uri had Gilead itself, the old lands of Sihon and Og. Whether that is one man or two is unclear.
  • Gebim A village just north of Jerusalem, and the name probably means cisterns. Isaiah pictures its people running as an invading army closes on the city.
  • Gedaliah (Governor living at the time of Divided Monarchy) After Jerusalem fell, Babylon made him governor of Judah over the poor left in the land, and he told them to settle down and submit. Ishmael, of the royal line, murdered him within months, and the rest fled to Egypt in spite of Jeremiah telling them not to go.
  • Gedaliah (Levite living at the time of United Monarchy) 1 Chronicles names him twice, and he is a Levite from the united kingdom.
  • Gedaliah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A man from the divided-kingdom years, and Jeremiah is the only book that names him.
  • Gedaliah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A man from the divided-kingdom years. Zephaniah names him once.
  • Gedaliah (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) One of 5 men called Gedaliah. This one is a man from the exile and the return, named once in Ezra.
  • Gedeon (Judge living before Israel's Monarchy) The Greek form of Gideon, who beat the Midianites with three hundred men. Hebrews 11:32 has no room to tell his story and just names him with Barak, Samson and Jephthah.
  • Geder (Gedor) Joshua beat its king. Whether it is the same place as Gedor or Gederah is possible, not certain.
  • Gederah It sat in the Shephelah, Judah's lowland, and Chronicles names potters of Judah's line who lived there and worked for the king.
  • Gederathite (Gederah) Josabad was one, a Benjaminite warrior who joined David at Ziklag while Saul was still hunting him.
  • Gederite (Gederah) Baal-hanan, who looked after David's olive and sycamore trees in the lowlands, is called this because he came from Geder or Gederah.
  • Gederoth The Philistines took it in the reign of Ahaz, while Judah was worn down by war with Israel and Syria. It was a Shephelah town, and the name means sheepfolds.
  • Gederothaim Listed right after Gederah in Joshua 15:36. The ending can mean two, so some read it as the two Gederahs rather than a town of its own, and if it was separate nobody has found where.
  • Gedor A town in the hill country of Judah between Jerusalem and Hebron, whose founders Chronicles traces through Hur and Ephrathah. The same name belongs to another place and to a man in Saul's family.
  • Gedor 1 Chronicles names him once, and nothing else is recorded.
  • Gedor (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) 1 Chronicles names him twice, and he is a man from the united kingdom.
  • Gehazi (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Elisha's servant. When Elisha turned down Naaman's payment, Gehazi ran after the general and lied his way into silver and clothes, and Elisha, who knew without being there, gave him Naaman's leprosy for good.
  • Geliloth (Gilgal) On Benjamin's border, near the Jordan. It is generally taken as another name for the Gilgal of Joshua 15:7, though which Gilgal is uncertain, since the name just means circles.
  • Gemalli (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Ammiel's father, and Ammiel was Dan's spy; Numbers 13:12 is the only place Gemalli appears.
  • Gemariah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A royal scribe, and Baruch read Jeremiah's scroll aloud from his chamber; later his son tried and failed to stop King Jehoiakim burning it.
  • Gemariah (Priest living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Jeremiah names him once, and he is a priest from the divided-kingdom years.
  • Gennesaret The fertile plain on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, and by extension the lake itself, which the Old Testament calls Chinnereth. Josephus said almost every kind of tree and crop grew there most of the year. In 1986 a first-century fishing boat came out of the mud near Kibbutz Ginosar on that shore.
  • Gentile (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Anyone who is not Jewish. The Greek word behind it means nation or people, and Paul's gospel turns on Gentiles being grafted into God's covenant people without first becoming Jews, the position defended at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15.
  • Genubath (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) He was born to the Edomite prince Hadad and the sister of Tahpenes, Pharaoh's wife, and grew up in Pharaoh's own house with the royal children.
  • Gera (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) The name ran in the Benjamite tribe. This Gera is in Genesis 46:21 and in 1 Chronicles 8:5, and Judges 3:15 makes a Gera the father of Ehud, the left-handed judge.
  • Gera (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) One of 4 men called Gera. This one is a man from the wilderness years, named once in 1 Chronicles.
  • Gera (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) He is only ever named as Shimei's father, and Shimei is the Benjamite who cursed David during Absalom's rebellion.
  • Gera (Man living before Israel's Monarchy) A man from the years before the monarchy, and 1 Chronicles is the only book that names him.
  • Gerar Abraham and Isaac both stayed in this Philistine town in the Negev under a king called Abimelech, and both passed their wives off as sisters out of fear. Isaac reaped a hundredfold there and dug out his father's wells again until quarrels over water moved him on toward Beersheba. Tel Haror is a leading candidate for the site.
  • Gergesene They lived east of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus sent a legion of demons out of a tormented man and into a herd of pigs that ran into the water and drowned. The same people are also called Gadarenes.
  • Gerizim Opposite Mount Ebal, near Shechem. Six tribes stood on Gerizim to speak the blessings while six on Ebal spoke the curses, as Moses had ordered and Joshua carried out. The Samaritans later built a temple on top as a rival to Jerusalem, which is what the Samaritan woman is asking Jesus about in John 4:20.
  • Gershom These verses are the census ones, Genesis 46:11, Exodus 6:16 and Numbers 3 and 4, where his family is counted and given its share of the tabernacle work. The note filed with them describes Moses's firstborn, born in Midian and named for a stranger there, who is a different man.
  • Gershon (Levite living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Levi's eldest son. His descendants carried the tabernacle's coverings, curtains and hangings by cart through the wilderness. Exodus 2:22 and 18:3 carry the same name but belong to a different man.
  • Geshan (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Caleb's line, through his son Jahdai, in the genealogy of Judah.
  • Geshem (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) An Arab official. With Sanballat and Tobiah he mocked Nehemiah and tried to stop the walls of Jerusalem going back up.
  • Geshur It was a small Aramean kingdom northeast of Galilee, and Absalom ran there after murdering his brother Amnon and stayed three years under his grandfather the king.
  • Geshuri David married Maacah, daughter of Talmai, the king of Geshur, and so these people were Absalom's family on his mother's side. Their small Aramean kingdom lay east of the Sea of Galilee.
  • Gether (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) A son of Aram in Genesis 10:23, most likely standing for an Aramean clan rather than one ancestor, and no later trace of it has been found.
  • Gethsemane An olive grove at the foot of the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem, where Jesus often went with his disciples and where he prayed in anguish the night he was arrested. The garden has been honoured roughly there since at least the fourth century. The olive trees standing now date to the medieval period.
  • Geuel (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Machi's son, the spy for Gad when Moses sent twelve men into Canaan.
  • Gezrites (People, perhaps from Girzit) David raided them from Ziklag along with the Geshurites and Amalekites. Most read the name as Girzites, an otherwise unknown desert tribe in the Negev toward Egypt, and not the people of Gezer.
  • Giah It exists in the record only to locate the hill of Ammah, where Joab gave up chasing Abner in the war between the houses of David and Saul. Its site has never been identified.
  • Gibbar (Gibeon) The family came back from Babylon with Zerubbabel, ninety-five of them. Nehemiah 7:25 gives the name as Gibeon.
  • Gibbethon In Dan's territory and assigned to the Kohath family, but the Philistines held it most of the time. Nadab was besieging it when his officer Baasha killed him and took the throne. A generation later Elah went the same way while his army was at the same city again.
  • Gibeah (Woman or town of the time of Divided Monarchy) Not Saul's Gibeah in Benjamin. This one is a Judahite settlement in 1 Chronicles 2:49, founded by a descendant of Caleb, and nothing more is recorded about it.
  • Gibeathite (Gibeah) Benjaminite archers and slingers from Gibeah, Saul's own town, who went over to David at Ziklag while he was still an outlaw.
  • Gibeon They tricked Joshua into a treaty by dressing as travellers from far away, the Hivites of this city northwest of Jerusalem, and so they lived but served at Israel's sanctuary. The tabernacle stood at Gibeon for years, and Solomon had his dream there. At el-Jib dozens of jar handles stamped with the name have settled where it was.
  • Gibeonite Saul broke the old treaty and killed some of them. Under David a famine followed, and it ended only when seven of Saul's descendants were handed over to the Gibeonites for execution.
  • Giddalti (Levite living at the time of Divided Monarchy) One of Heman's sons, and Heman was a Levite musician in David's court. Giddalti led one of the twenty-four divisions of temple musicians.
  • Giddel (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Head of a family of temple servants, the Nethinim, in the lists of exiles coming home.
  • Giddel (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Head of a family among the temple servants, and separately among Solomon's servants, both counted in the return lists.
  • Gideon (Judge living before Israel's Monarchy) An angel found him threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding it from the Midianites, and called him a mighty man of valour. Gideon asked for the fleece to be wet and then dry before he believed it. God cut his army from thirty-two thousand to three hundred, and they took the Midianite camp at night with torches, trumpets and empty jars.
  • Gideoni (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Abidan was Benjamin's leader in the wilderness census, and Gideoni is only ever named as his father.
  • Gidom Judges 20:45 names it once, as a point on the road where the retreating Benjamite army was cut down. It lay somewhere between Gibeah and the rock of Rimmon, and nobody knows exactly where.
  • Gihon Two waters carry the name. One is a river out of Eden that circles Cush and has never been matched to a known river. The other is Jerusalem's only natural spring, in the Kidron Valley, which Hezekiah ran underground into the city before Sennacherib's siege, and the tunnel can still be walked.
  • Gilalai (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) In the procession at the dedication of Nehemiah's walls he was one of the priests' sons playing instruments. Nothing further is recorded about him.
  • Gilboa Saul died on these hills above the Jezreel Valley. The Philistines broke his army, three of his sons fell, Jonathan among them, and Saul, badly wounded, took his own life. David's lament curses Gilboa never to have dew or rain.
  • Gilead Hill country east of the Jordan, split by the Jabbok between Og in the north and Sihon in the south before the conquest. Gad, Reuben and half of Manasseh got it, and its rough ground made it a refuge for Jacob running from Laban and David running from Absalom. Jeremiah's question about balm in Gilead comes from its trade in balm and spices.
  • Gilead (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A man from the divided-kingdom years, and 1 Chronicles is the only book that names him.
  • Gilead (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) The man, not the region. Numbers 26 and Joshua 17 put him in Manasseh's family, and Chronicles lists him there again.
  • Gilead (Man living before Israel's Monarchy) One of 4 men called Gilead. This one is a man from the years before the monarchy, named twice in Judges.
  • Gileadite Someone from Gilead, east of the Jordan, or of the clan named after Machir's son. Jephthah is the best known, the judge who beat the Ammonites and made the rash vow about his daughter.
  • Gilgal Israel's first camp after crossing the Jordan. The people were circumcised there and kept their first Passover in the land, and later Samuel judged at Gilgal and Saul was confirmed as king there.
  • Gilgal Named once, in 2 Kings, and nowhere else.
  • Giloh Ahithophel came from Giloh, in Judah's hill country southwest of Hebron. When Absalom took Hushai's advice over his, he went home to Giloh and hanged himself.
  • Gilonite (Giloh) It is what Ahithophel is called, since he came from Giloh. He was David's trusted counsellor, then Absalom's, and he hanged himself when his advice was turned down.
  • Gimzo The Philistines took it and its villages in the reign of Ahaz. It was a lowland town known for sycamores, and the name survives in Jimzu, a village southeast of Lydda.
  • Ginath (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) He is named as Tibni's father, and for four years Tibni's supporters fought Omri for the throne of Israel until Omri won.
  • Ginnetho (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) A priest who came back from Babylon with Zerubbabel, and his family is one of the priestly houses Nehemiah lists.
  • Girgashite (People, perhaps from Girgas) Descended from Canaan in Genesis 10, and one of the peoples on the list Israel was to drive out. Where exactly they lived is unclear, though they are generally placed in the central hill country.
  • Gispa (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) With Ziha he was over the Nethinim, the temple servants living on the hill of Ophel after the return. Nothing more is known of him.
  • Gittaim The people of Beeroth fled to Gittaim, probably a Benjamin town, and after the exile Benjaminite families settled it again.
  • Gittite (Gath) A man from Gath. Obed-edom the Gittite kept the ark in his house before David brought it up to Jerusalem, and Ittai the Gittite brought his foreign troops to David's side when Absalom rebelled.
  • Gittith (A musical term) Three psalms carry it in their heading. It may be a tune, an instrument or a style, and the name points at Gath.
  • Gizonite (People, perhaps from Gizon) Hashem, whose sons were among David's mighty men, came from Gizoh, a place in Judah's hill country otherwise unknown. In 2 Samuel 23:32 the same family is listed as Jashen.
  • Goath (Goah) The hill Gareb to Goath is how far Jeremiah's measuring line runs for the rebuilt city, and where Goath was is unknown.
  • Gob (Gezer) Two fights with Philistine champions happened here. Sibbecai killed Saph, and Elhanan killed a brother of Goliath. Chronicles calls the place Gezer, and whether that is a copying difference or a nearby site is unclear.
  • God (The Deity) The Bible never argues that he exists; it assumes it, and Psalm 14:1 calls the man who denies it a fool. The Hebrew is El, from a word meaning strong, or Eloah, far more often in the plural Elohim. The personal name is the four Hebrew letters YHWH, printed LORD in small capitals in most English Bibles; Jehovah is a later hybrid of those letters with the vowels of another word.
  • Gog Ezekiel's enemy from the land of Magog, leading a huge coalition against restored Israel, and God himself destroys him. Revelation uses the name again for the nations gathered in a last rebellion.
  • Gog (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) 1 Chronicles names him once, and he is a man from the wilderness years.
  • Golan One of the three cities of refuge east of the Jordan, in Bashan, where someone who had killed by accident could run from revenge. It went to the Gershonite Levites and later gave its name to the region, which is why there are Golan Heights today. The exact site is not known.
  • Golgotha The name is Aramaic for place of a skull, Calvary in Latin, where Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem's walls. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Garden Tomb both have their advocates, and neither can be confirmed.
  • Goliath (Giant living at the time of United Monarchy) The Philistine champion from Gath whom the young David killed in the valley of Elah. The traditional Hebrew text makes him over nine feet, while the Dead Sea Scrolls and the earliest Greek give about six foot nine. One later passage credits Elhanan, and Chronicles makes Elhanan's man Goliath's brother.
  • Gomer (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Genesis 10 makes him a son of Japheth, and the name stands for his descendants too, which is how Ezekiel 38:6 can list Gomer as a nation. Hosea's wife has the same name and is a different person.
  • Gomer (Woman living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Hosea names her once, and she is a woman from the divided-kingdom years.
  • Gomorrah Destroyed with Sodom for its wickedness, and the two became shorthand for a people ripe for judgment, from Moses through Jesus and the apostles. No remains have been confirmed. It is generally placed near the southern basin of the Dead Sea.
  • Gomorrha (Gomorrah) The Greek spelling, used in the New Testament. Jesus says it will go easier for Sodom and Gomorrha than for a town that turns his messengers away, and Peter and Jude both point to it as proof that God punishes the ungodly.
  • Goshen Joseph settled Jacob and the family here, in the eastern Nile delta, and Israel lived and multiplied there until the exodus. Pithom and Rameses were inside it, and it is generally identified with the Wadi Tumilat.
  • Goshen Not the Goshen in Egypt but a stretch of Canaan's south that Joshua took, along with a town of the same name in the hill country.
  • Gozan When Assyria took the northern kingdom, it resettled Israelite captives in this region of northern Mesopotamia.
  • Grecian (Javan) Greek-speaking Jews, as against Hebrew-speaking ones. They complained that their widows were losing out in the daily food, and that is how Stephen and six others came to be appointed.
  • Grecian (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Joel names him once, and he is a man from the patriarchs.
  • Greece (Javan) Paul spent three months here near the end of his third journey. The Old Testament calls the region and its people Javan. Athens, Corinth and Philippi were Greek cities where Paul planted churches.
  • Greek (A language) Here it means the language, not the people. It is one of the three on the sign Pilate had nailed above Jesus.
  • Greek (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Used of a woman. Mark calls the Syrophoenician mother who begged Jesus to heal her daughter a Greek, meaning a Gentile, not Greek by birth. The honourable Greek women at Berea who believed Paul get the same word.
  • Gudgodah (Hor-haggidgad) A wilderness stop in Deuteronomy 10:7, just after Moserah where Aaron died. Numbers 33 calls it Hor-haggidgad, and its place in Sinai has not been found.
  • Guni (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) 1 Chronicles names him once, and he is a man from the divided-kingdom years.
  • Guni (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) One of Naphtali's sons, and a clan of the tribe came from him.
  • Gunites (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) The clan from Guni, Naphtali's son. They were counted in the census of Numbers 26 on the plains of Moab, before Israel crossed into Canaan.
  • Gur Jehu's servants caught King Ahaziah of Judah on the ascent of Gur, near Ibleam, as he ran, and wounded him fatally.
  • Gur-baal God helped King Uzziah beat the people of Gur-baal, along with the Philistines and the Meunites. The name means sojourn of Baal, so it was probably an Arabian settlement where Baal was worshipped, and nobody knows where.

H

I

J

K

  • Kabzeel The far south of Judah's land, out by the border with Edom. Benaiah came from there, one of David's best-known warriors and later head of his bodyguard. After the exile it seems to have been lived in again as Jekabzeel.
  • Kadesh Kadesh-barnea, Israel's main camp in the wilderness of Zin. Moses sent the twelve spies from there, Miriam died there, and there he struck the rock and lost his way into Canaan. It is usually identified with Ain el-Qudeis or Ain el-Qudeirat, where a fortress of the Israelite period has been dug up.
  • Kadesh Named once, in Joshua, and nowhere else.
  • Kadeshbarnea An oasis in the wilderness of Zin, on Canaan's southern edge, where Israel camped for much of the wandering years. The spies went out from here, and the people's fear at their report got that whole generation sentenced to die in the desert. Later it marked the southern boundary of the land.
  • Kadmiel (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) A Levite who led worship and helped oversee the rebuilding when the exiles came back, under Zerubbabel and later under Nehemiah.
  • Kadmonites (People, perhaps from Kadmon) "Easterners." God named them among the peoples in the land when he promised it to Abram. They never turn up again, and nobody knows who they were.
  • Kallai (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) He was a priest in Joiakim's time, head of the family of Sallai, in a list of priestly family heads.
  • Kanah The name means reedy, and this one is a stream on the border between Ephraim and Manasseh, running from the hill country to the Mediterranean. Another Kanah, a town up in Asher, is a separate place.
  • Kanah (Cana) Named once, in Joshua, and nowhere else.
  • Karkaa On Judah's southern boundary, between Adar and Azmon in the wilderness of Zin. Its exact site is unknown.
  • Karkor Desert country east of the Jordan, past Succoth and Penuel. Gideon caught the Midianite kings Zebah and Zalmunna there and broke what was left of their army, ending seven years in which Israel had hidden in mountain caves.
  • Kartah (Kitron) Zebulun's town given to the Levites of Merari's clan, and probably the Kattath of the earlier boundary list.
  • Kartan In Naphtali, given to the Gershonite clan. Chronicles calls the same town Kirjathaim, "double city," which is probably the full name behind the short one.
  • Kattath (Kitron) It was a town allotted to Zebulun. It may be Kitron, one of the places where Zebulun never drove out the Canaanites, though nobody is sure of the site.
  • Kedar (Arabian living at the time of the Patriarchs) Ishmael's son, and the father of a desert tribe known for dark tents and good archers. Poets use Kedar for far-off wilderness living, and the Song of Solomon uses it for dark beauty.
  • Kedemah (Arabian living at the time of the Patriarchs) He was the youngest of Ishmael's twelve sons, and his name means "eastward," which suits sons who settled east of Canaan. Nothing else is recorded about him individually.
  • Kedemoth A town in Reuben's land, given to the Merarite Levites. Moses sent messengers from its wilderness to Sihon, king of the Amorites, asking to pass through, and Sihon's refusal led to war.
  • Kedesh A city of refuge in Galilee, one of six where someone who had killed by accident could run and be safe. Barak came from there, the commander Deborah called up.
  • Kehelathah A stop on the wilderness march, between Rissah and Mount Shepher. The name is related to the Hebrew word for assembly, and the site cannot be found today.
  • Keilah David saved this walled town from a Philistine raid while Saul was hunting him. Then he learned they would have handed him over if Saul came, and he moved on into the wilderness of Ziph.
  • Kelaiah (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) A man from the exile and the return. Ezra names him once.
  • Kelaiah (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) He was a Levite who had married a foreign wife and agreed under Ezra to send her away. He is also called Kelita, and is probably the Kelita who helped people understand the reading of the law.
  • Kelita (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) The law was read out in public, and he was one of the Levites who explained it to the people. He also signed the covenant renewal under Nehemiah.
  • Kemuel (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) One of 3 men called Kemuel. This one is a man from the divided-kingdom years, named once in 1 Chronicles.
  • Kemuel (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) A tribal leader of Ephraim, appointed to help divide the land under Joshua.
  • Kemuel (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Nahor's son, and so Abraham's nephew.
  • Kenath In Bashan, east of the Jordan, taken when Israel moved in and renamed Nobah after the man who took it. It is generally identified with Qanawat on the slopes of Jebel Hauran, where Roman ruins still stand, a theatre among them.
  • Kenath Named once, in Judges, and nowhere else.
  • Kenaz (Edomite living at the time of the Patriarchs) One of Edom's clan chiefs, in Genesis 36 and again in Chronicles. The Kenizzites are counted among the Edomite clans.
  • Kenaz (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) One of 3 men called Kenaz. This one is a man from the divided-kingdom years, named once in 1 Chronicles.
  • Kenaz (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Caleb's younger brother, and father of Othniel, Israel's first judge.
  • Kenezite (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Caleb, one of the two spies who stayed faithful, is called a Kenizzite. The clan came from Kenaz and was tied to Edom in Genesis, then folded into Judah.
  • Kenezite (People, perhaps from Keniz) Named once, in Genesis, and nowhere else.
  • Kenite They were a wandering clan close to Midian, outside the twelve tribes but mostly friendly to Israel. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, was a Kenite priest, and Jael, Heber the Kenite's wife, killed Sisera.
  • Keren-happuch (Woman living at the time of the Patriarchs) Job's youngest daughter, born after God restored him. Her name means "horn of eye paint." She and her sisters got an inheritance alongside their brothers, which was unusual.
  • Kerioth Named once, in Joshua, and nowhere else.
  • Kerioth (Kiriathaim) God's judgment on Moab, in Jeremiah and Amos, names this Moabite city. Judas Iscariot's name may mean "man of Kerioth."
  • Keros (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Ancestor of a family of temple servants, the Nethinim, who came back from Babylon with Zerubbabel.
  • Keturah (Woman living at the time of the Patriarchs) The wife Abraham took after Sarah died. Her six sons became Arabian and Midianite peoples, and Abraham sent them away with gifts so Isaac would stand alone as heir.
  • Kezia (Woman living at the time of the Patriarchs) The second of Job's three daughters, born after God restored him, and given an inheritance with her brothers.
  • Keziz Emek-keziz in full Hebrew, a town in Benjamin's eastern district by the Jordan valley, listed with Jericho and Beth-hoglah. No one knows exactly where it was.
  • Kibroth-hattaavah "The graves of craving." The people were sick of manna and demanded meat, and God sent quails in a huge flock. A plague broke out while they ate, and the dead were buried where they fell, so the camp was named for what they had wanted. Moses brought it up again years later when he listed the times they had provoked God.
  • Kibzaim A Levitical town in Ephraim, given to the Kohathites, which Chronicles calls Jokmeam.
  • Kidron The valley along Jerusalem's east side, between the city and the Mount of Olives. Reforming kings dumped smashed idols and temple rubbish into it, and Jesus crossed it with his disciples on the way to Gethsemane the night he was arrested.
  • Kinah Far south in Judah, near the border with Edom, in the dry country below Beersheba.
  • Kir Amos says God brought the Arameans from Kir the way he brought Israel out of Egypt, and he warns that Damascus will be sent back there. Tiglath-pileser III did exactly that in 732 BC, and his own annals record it. Isaiah's Kir, set beside Elam in a scene of soldiers arming, may or may not be the same place.
  • Kir Named once, in Isaiah, and nowhere else.
  • Kir-haraseth (Kir of Moab) Moab's fortress capital, modern Kerak in Jordan. When Mesha of Moab rebelled after Ahab died, Israel, Judah and Edom besieged him there, and he sacrificed his own son on the wall, which ended the siege. His own account of the revolt survives on the Moabite Stone, found in 1868.
  • Kiriathaim It started out as a town of Reuben's and ended up in Moab, on Jeremiah's list of the cities God's judgment would fall on.
  • Kiriathaim Named once, in 1 Chronicles, and nowhere else.
  • Kirjath (Kiriath-jearim) Kirjath-jearim, also called Baalah, a Gibeonite town on the line between Judah and Benjamin. The ark sat there twenty years after the Philistines gave it back, until David brought it up to Jerusalem. The prophet Uriah, whom Jehoiakim had killed, came from there.
  • Kirjath-arba (Hebron) "Arba's city," Hebron's older name, after a great man among the Anakim. Sarah died there and Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah close by to bury her. Joshua gave it to Caleb for the faithful report he brought back as a spy.
  • Kirjath-huzoth (Kiriath-huzoth) Balak, king of Moab, met Balaam in this town, "city of streets," after sending to the Euphrates to have him curse Israel. It lay near the high places where Balaam later looked down on the camp.
  • Kirjath-sannah (Debir) Another name for Debir, also called Kirjath-sepher, a royal Canaanite city in the hills southwest of Hebron. Caleb promised his daughter Achsah to whoever took it, and his nephew Othniel did.
  • Kirjathbaal (Kiriath-jearim) They also called Kirjath-jearim by this name, and Baalah, a boundary town between Judah and Benjamin and one of the Gibeonite towns. The ark stayed there about twenty years before David brought it up to Jerusalem.
  • Kish (Levite living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) He is a Levite, not Saul's father. His sons married their cousins because their uncle died with only daughters, and the temple rota in Chronicles counts his family.
  • Kish (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) One of 4 men called Kish. This one is a man from the divided-kingdom years, named once in 2 Chronicles.
  • Kish (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) A man from the exile and the return, and Esther is the only book that names him.
  • Kish (Saul's father living at the time of United Monarchy) Saul's father, a Benjamite of some standing. He lost his donkeys, sent Saul to find them, and the search ended with Samuel anointing Saul as Israel's first king.
  • Kishi (Levite living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Kishi, or Kushaiah, was the Merarite Levite whose son Ethan was one of the three chief musicians David put to serve before the ark.
  • Kishion A town in Issachar given to the Gershonite Levites, spelled Kishon in the second list, its exact site unknown.
  • Kishion 1 Chronicles names him once, and nothing else is recorded.
  • Kishon It is a winter stream that drains the Jezreel Valley into the Mediterranean below Mount Carmel, and it floods fast. It swept away Sisera's chariots when Deborah and Barak fought the Canaanites, and in its valley Elijah had the prophets of Baal killed after the contest on Carmel.
  • Kithlish (Chitlish) In the Judean lowlands, listed with Lahmam and Gederoth. It has traditionally been placed near Jelameh, though the identification is not firmly established.
  • Kitron Zebulun never drove out the Canaanites of this town, so they stayed on as forced labour, and Joshua 19:15 probably lists it as Kattath.
  • Koa Ezekiel names Koa once, with Shoa and Pekod, among the peoples coming with Babylon against Jerusalem. Many scholars take it to be Gutium, a land east of the Tigris that turns up in Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian records.
  • Kohath (Levi's son living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Levi's second son. His descendants had the holiest work in the tabernacle, carrying the ark and the sacred furniture on poles, and even they would die if they touched those things.
  • Kohathites (Levi's son living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) One of the three Levitical divisions, descended from Kohath. They carried the holiest furnishings, the ark among them, on poles and not in a cart, and 2 Samuel 6 shows what happened when that rule was broken. They camped south of the tabernacle. Moses, Aaron and Samuel were all Kohathites.
  • Kolaiah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Jeremiah names him once, and he is a man from the divided-kingdom years.
  • Kolaiah (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Benjamite ancestor of one of the exiles who came back and settled in Jerusalem. He is a different man from the Kolaiah whose son Ahab was a false prophet in Babylon.
  • Korah (Aaron's adversary living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) A Levite who led a revolt against Moses and Aaron, with more than two hundred fifty leading Israelites behind him, all saying the whole community was holy and Moses had no special claim. The ground opened and took Korah and his family alive, and fire burned up the rest. Israel complained about it the very next day.
  • Korah (Edomite living at the time of the Patriarchs) An Edomite chief in Genesis 36 and Chronicles, with nothing to do with the Levite who rebelled.
  • Korah (Edomite living at the time of the Patriarchs) One of 4 men called Korah. This one is a man from the patriarchs, named once in Genesis.
  • Korah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A man from the divided-kingdom years, and 1 Chronicles is the only book that names him.
  • Kore (Levite living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) There was a family of temple gatekeepers who traced themselves to him, and Chronicles names him at the head of their line.
  • Kore (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) 2 Chronicles names him once, and he is a man from the divided-kingdom years.
  • Koz (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Ancestor of a priestly family that came back from exile and could not prove its descent, and until that was settled they were kept out of the priesthood.
  • Kushaiah (Levite living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Ethan's father, a Merarite Levite, and Ethan sang among the musicians David appointed for bringing the ark up to Jerusalem. The other genealogy calls him Kishi.

L

  • Laadah (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Shelah's line, Judah's son, and the father of the clan at Mareshah.
  • Laadan (Levite living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) One of the founders of the Gershonite Levite families in Chronicles, though a man of Ephraim has the name too.
  • Laadan (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) 1 Chronicles names him once, and he is a man from the wilderness years.
  • Laban Named once, in Deuteronomy, and nowhere else.
  • Laban (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Rebekah's brother and Jacob's uncle, and then his father-in-law twice, after he slipped Leah in where Rachel should have been and got fourteen years of work out of him. He kept changing Jacob's wages as the flocks grew. Jacob finally slipped away with his family, and the two parted under a covenant, not with a fight.
  • Lachish A heavily fortified Canaanite royal city in Judah's lowlands. Joshua took it, Rehoboam rebuilt it into one of Judah's strongest fortresses, and in 701 BC Sennacherib's Assyrians took it again. Assyria carved the siege on wall reliefs now in the British Museum. The ruins at Tell ed-Duweir also gave up the Lachish Letters, written during Babylon's last siege, just before Jerusalem fell.
  • Lael (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Eliasaph's father, named only to say whose son the leader of the Gershonite Levites in the wilderness was.
  • Lahad (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) One of Jahath's sons, in Judah's line through Shobal. Nothing else is recorded of him.
  • Lahmam Listed with Kithlish and Gederoth in the lowland district of Judah, at a site nobody has identified.
  • Lahmi (Giant living at the time of United Monarchy) Goliath's brother, killed by Elhanan son of Jair in a fight between David's men and the Philistines.
  • Laish (Dan) Peaceful, cut off, and Canaanite. The tribe of Dan, having failed to settle the land it was given, took the city and renamed it Dan.
  • Laish (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel name him twice, and he is a man from the united kingdom.
  • Lakum (Lakkum) On Naphtali's border, listed with Adami and Jabneel, and never mentioned again.
  • Lamech (Man living at the time before the Flood) Noah's father, from Seth's line. He named his son Noah in the hope that the boy would bring relief from farming the cursed ground. Luke's genealogy keeps him as one link in the chain.
  • Lamech (Man living at the time before the Flood) He was Cain's descendant. He boasted to his two wives that he had killed a young man just for wounding him. Cain's violence came down to him and got worse.
  • Laodicea A rich banking and cloth city in the Lycus Valley. It had no water of its own and piped it in from the hot springs at Hierapolis and the cold springs at Colossae, so it arrived lukewarm, and Revelation's "neither cold nor hot" plays on that. Its church gets the sharpest rebuke of the seven.
  • Laodicean Someone from Laodicea, and Paul tells the Colossians to swap letters with the Laodicean church.
  • Lappidoth (Woman living before Israel's Monarchy) Deborah's husband, and Scripture says nothing more about him. The name means "torches", and some older readers took it as a word about Deborah herself. The plain reading makes it his name.
  • Lasea On Crete's south coast, near the harbour called Fair Havens where Paul's ship took shelter. Its ruins were found again in the nineteenth century a few miles east of Fair Havens, just where Luke's account puts it.
  • Lasha The eastern corner of Canaan in the Table of Nations, with Sidon at the north. Jewish tradition put it at Callirhoe, the hot springs on the east shore of the Dead Sea where Herod the Great is said to have gone in his last illness.
  • Lasharon "Belonging to Sharon." Joshua beat a king of Lasharon, but most of these verses are about the Sharon plain, the rich coast between Joppa and Mount Carmel, with royal pasture and some of Gad living there. Its beauty became a byword, "the rose of Sharon," and Isaiah pictures it blooming again.
  • Latin (A language) Rome's official language, and one of the three on the sign above the cross.
  • Lazarus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) The beggar in Jesus's parable, covered in sores at a rich man's gate and wanting scraps from his table. After death he is comforted and the rich man is not. He is the only character in any of the parables with a name.
  • Lazarus (Mary's brother living at the time of the New Testament) Mary and Martha's brother in Bethany, and a close friend of Jesus. He had been four days in the tomb when Jesus raised him, the last miracle in John's Gospel and the one that made the authorities decide to finish Jesus off.
  • Leah (Woman living at the time of the Patriarchs) Jacob's first wife, given to him by her father Laban in place of Rachel, and Jacob only found out in the morning. He never loved her the way he loved Rachel. Genesis says God gave her children because she was unloved, and she bore six of the twelve sons, Judah among them.
  • Lebana (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Ancestor of a family of temple servants, the Nethinim, who came back from Babylon with Zerubbabel.
  • Lebanon Two mountain ridges along the coast, Lebanon proper to the west and the Anti-Lebanon rising to Mount Hermon, with the Beqaa Valley between. Solomon's temple and palace were built of its cedar, cut and floated south under a deal with Hiram of Tyre. Israel was promised it and never took all of it.
  • Lebaoth "Lionesses." One of Judah's southernmost towns, by the Edom border, and probably the same as Beth-lebaoth, which went to Simeon.
  • Lebonah Judges 21:19 uses it to say where Shiloh was, on the road between Bethel and Shechem, when the men of Benjamin grabbed wives from the girls dancing at the festival. It is generally identified with Lubban, south of Nablus, which still keeps the name.
  • Lecah (Man or town at the time of Divided Monarchy) Named once among the descendants of Shelah, Judah's son by Bath-shua, and probably a clan or the town it founded. Nothing further is known of it.
  • Lehabim (People from Lehab) A people descended from Mizraim, the ancestor of Egypt, in the Table of Nations. The name is widely tied to the Lebu of Egyptian inscriptions, ancestors of the Libyans on the coast west of Egypt.
  • Lehi "Jawbone." The Philistines gathered here to take Samson, and he broke his ropes and killed a thousand of them with a donkey's jawbone. Afterwards, parched, he called on God, and a spring opened in a hollow there.
  • Lemuel (King living at the time of United Monarchy) Proverbs 31 opens with what his mother taught him, to stay off wine and stand up for the poor and needy. Which kingdom he ruled nobody knows. Later Jewish tradition sometimes made him Solomon under another name, but that cannot be confirmed.
  • Leshem (Dan) An older form of Laish, the Canaanite city Dan took and renamed after leaving its assigned land on the coast. Tel Dan, the site, produced the Tel Dan Stele, where an Aramean king boasts of beating the "house of David," the earliest mention of David's dynasty outside the Bible.
  • Letushim (People, perhaps from Letush) A tribe, not a person. They were one of three groups from Dedan, Abraham's grandson through Keturah, with Asshurim and Leummim, and who they were in history is uncertain.
  • Leummim (People, perhaps from Leumm) The word means "peoples." It names a group of Arabian tribes from Dedan, Abraham's grandson through Keturah, listed with Asshurim and Letushim.
  • Levi (Apostle living at the time of the New Testament) The tax collector better known as Matthew. One verse after Jesus called him from his booth, Levi threw a big dinner for him, full of tax collectors and other outcasts, and the Pharisees complained.
  • Levi (Jacob's son living at the time of the Patriarchs) Jacob's third son. He and Simeon massacred the men of Shechem after their sister Dinah was raped, and Jacob cursed them both for it on his deathbed. Even so, Levi's descendants became Israel's priestly tribe, given service at the tabernacle instead of land, partly for their zeal against the golden calf at Sinai.
  • Levi (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) This is Matthew the tax collector. Mark and Luke call him Levi when they tell the story of his calling.
  • Levi (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) A Levi in Luke's genealogy, and not Levi the tax collector.
  • Leviite (Jacob's son living at the time of the Patriarchs) An old spelling of Levite, found in a few manuscripts and translations for the tribe of Levi.
  • Levite (Jacob's son living at the time of the Patriarchs) They belonged to the tribe of Levi and served at the tabernacle and later the temple, helping the priests, who came from Aaron's branch of the same tribe. Their work was religious, so they got no tribal land, only forty eight towns among the other tribes and the tithes of Israel. Over time they carried and guarded the holy things, sang, kept the gates, and taught the law.
  • Levitical (Jacob's son living at the time of the Patriarchs) Not a person. The word describes the hereditary priesthood from Levi, and Hebrews 7:11 uses it to argue that this priesthood could never make anything perfect, since Scripture speaks of another priest "after the order of Melchizedek."
  • Libertine (Group of Jews in the New Testament) Members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen in Jerusalem, Jews once enslaved in Rome and later set free, possibly taken there after Pompey conquered Judea in 63 BC. Some of them argued with Stephen and helped bring the false charges that got him killed.
  • Libnah A royal Canaanite city near Lachish that Joshua took and gave to the Levites in Judah. It held out against Sennacherib's Assyrians. Hamutal, Josiah's wife and mother of two of Judah's last kings, came from there.
  • Libnah Named twice, in Numbers, and nowhere else.
  • Libni (Levite living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Gershon's son, Levi's grandson, and the head of one of the Levitical clans.
  • Libni (Levite living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) 1 Chronicles names him once, and he is a Levite from the wilderness years.
  • Libnites (Levite living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Libni's clan, Levites from Gershon's line, who looked after the coverings and hangings of the tabernacle on the march.
  • Libya North Africa west of Egypt, with Cyrene its main city in the Greco-Roman period. People from Libya were in Jerusalem at Pentecost.
  • Likhi (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Shemidah's son, of Manasseh, and a family head in that tribe.
  • Linus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Paul passes on his greeting to Timothy from Rome. Irenaeus records a tradition that he was the first bishop of Rome after Peter and Paul, though the New Testament says nothing about any office he held.
  • Lo-ammi (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) "Not my people." God told Hosea to give his second son by Gomer that name, to say Israel's northern kingdom was being cast off. Later in the book it is turned round, and those called "not my people" are to be called sons of the living God. Paul reads that reversal as the Gentiles coming in.
  • Lo-debar A town where, in 2 Samuel 9, a lame son of the old royal house is found living in another man's home. Amos plays on its name, which sounds like "nothing."
  • Lo-ruhamah (Woman living at the time of Divided Monarchy) "Not pitied." Hosea's daughter carried the name as a sign that God would stop showing mercy to the northern kingdom, and when Hosea 2:23 turns it to "loved," Paul hears in it the Gentiles brought in.
  • Lod They called it Lydda in New Testament Greek. Over seven hundred people came back from exile to this town of Benjamin, on the plain along the road from Jerusalem to Joppa. Modern Lod, by Tel Aviv's airport, keeps the name.
  • Lois (Woman living at the time of the New Testament) Timothy's grandmother. Paul says the faith he sees in Timothy lived first in her and then in her daughter Eunice.
  • Lot (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Abraham's nephew, who came with him from Ur. When their herdsmen started fighting and they split, Lot took the green Jordan valley and ended up living by Sodom. Angels dragged him out before it burned, and his wife looked back and became a pillar of salt. Afterwards his two daughters got him drunk and had sons by him, the fathers of Moab and Ammon.
  • Lotan (Edomite living at the time of the Patriarchs) He was a Horite chief whose sister Timna made him Esau's brother-in-law, and his people were living in Edom's land before Edom.
  • Lucas (Man living at the time of the New Testament) The Latin form of Luke, Paul's travelling companion and doctor. Early tradition gives him the Gospel of Luke and Acts, which would make him the one Gentile writer in the New Testament.
  • Lucius (Man living at the time of the New Testament) One of the prophets and teachers in the church at Antioch, from Cyrene, there when the Holy Spirit set Barnabas and Saul apart. Paul sends greetings from a Lucius he calls his kinsman in Romans 16:21, and whether that is the same man is uncertain.
  • Lud (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Shem's son. His people are usually taken to be the Lydians of Asia Minor. Some later passages may mean a people in Africa instead.
  • Luhith In Isaiah and Jeremiah, refugees climb the road up to Luhith in Moab weeping. It was somewhere between Zoar and Horonaim, exactly where is unknown.
  • Luz Named once, in Judges, and nowhere else.
  • Luz (Bethel) It was the old Canaanite name of Bethel, where Jacob dreamed of the stairway to heaven, and it hung on in a nearby town after Bethel was renamed.
  • Lycaonia Inland Asia Minor, between Cappadocia and Galatia, with Iconium, Lystra and Derbe in it. Paul and Barnabas preached through it on the first journey. The crowd at Lystra shouted in "the speech of Lycaonia" when they took the two for Hermes and Zeus, and an inscription found near Lystra shows those two gods really were worshipped together there.
  • Lycia Mountains and coast in southwest Asia Minor, across from Rhodes. Paul's ships put in at its ports, Patara and Myra.
  • Lydda (Lod) About nine miles southeast of Joppa on the coastal plain. Peter healed a paralysed man named Aeneas there, and many in the plain of Sharon turned to the Lord. Today it is Lod, where Ben Gurion Airport is.
  • Lydia (Woman living at the time of the New Testament) She sold purple cloth, came from Thyatira, and lived in Philippi when Paul arrived. She already worshipped God, and after hearing Paul by the river she and her household were baptised, apparently the first converts in Europe. Then she put Paul and his companions up in her house.
  • Lysanias (Tetrarch of Abilene living at the time of the New Testament) Tetrarch of Abilene, on the eastern slope of the Anti-Lebanon near Damascus, and one of the rulers Luke uses to date his story. Josephus confirms the tetrarchy was real.
  • Lysias (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Claudius Lysias, the Roman tribune over the garrison at the Antonia Fortress. He pulled Paul out of a mob in the temple and then sent him under armed guard to Felix in Caesarea with a letter about the case.
  • Lysias (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Acts names him once, and he is a man from the New Testament.
  • Lystra A Roman colony in the wild hills of Lycaonia, and Timothy's hometown. Paul healed a man lame from birth there and the crowd tried to sacrifice to him and Barnabas as Hermes and Zeus. Then Paul's opponents turned the same crowd, and they stoned him and left him for dead.

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  • Taanach A Canaanite royal city on the southwest edge of the Jezreel Valley, near Megiddo. Joshua beat its king, the town went to the Levites of Kohath, and its Canaanites were never driven out. Deborah's song puts a battle there by the waters of Megiddo.
  • Taanach Named once, in 1 Chronicles, and nowhere else.
  • Taanath-shiloh A point on Ephraim's southern border, named once in Joshua 16:6. The name seems to mean approach to Shiloh, and it is commonly identified with the ruin of Ta'na southeast of Shechem.
  • Tabaoth (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) His family came back from Babylon with Zerubbabel among the temple servants, the Nethinim.
  • Tabbath When Gideon's three hundred broke the Midianite camp, the army ran toward Tabbath, near the Jordan south of Beth-shean.
  • Tabeal (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Two men share the name. Isaiah 7:6 makes one the father of the man Syria and Israel meant to put on Judah's throne instead of Ahaz, and Ezra 4:7 has the other, an official in Samaria who wrote to Artaxerxes against the walls.
  • Taberah The name means burning. Israel complained in the wilderness, fire from the Lord broke out on the edge of the camp, and it died down when Moses prayed.
  • Tabitha (Woman living at the time of the New Testament) A disciple at Joppa, known for doing good and giving to the poor. She died, the believers sent for Peter, and he raised her. Luke gives both her Aramaic name and the Greek one, Dorcas, and both mean gazelle.
  • Tabor A dome-shaped mountain rising out of the Jezreel Valley, on the line between Zebulun and Issachar. Deborah sent Barak there to gather Israel before the battle with Sisera. The psalmist sets it beside Hermon, and Hosea and Jeremiah both name it in oracles of judgment.
  • Tabrimmon (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) King of Aram at Damascus and father of Ben-hadad, the king Asa paid with temple treasure to turn on Baasha of Israel.
  • Tachmonite (People, perhaps from Hachmon or Tahchemon) It is Jashobeam's family name, and he was chief of David's three mightiest warriors. 2 Samuel 23:8 credits him with eight hundred men killed at one time. Chronicles spells it Hachmonite.
  • Tadmor It was Solomon's city out in the desert northeast of Damascus, on the caravan routes, and the Greeks and Romans knew it as Palmyra.
  • Tahan (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) 1 Chronicles names him once, and he is a man from the divided-kingdom years.
  • Tahan (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) From him came the Tahanites, one of Ephraim's clans in the census of Numbers 26. Chronicles puts him as Telah's son rather than Ephraim's.
  • Tahanites (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Ephraim's clan through Tahan, counted in the Numbers 26 census.
  • Tahapanes (Tahpanhes) An Egyptian fort town on the eastern edge of the Nile delta. After Gedaliah was murdered the refugees ran there and took Jeremiah with them against his advice, and he said there that Nebuchadnezzar would set his throne over stones buried at the entrance to Pharaoh's palace.
  • Tahath A wilderness camp between Makheloth and Terah in the list of Numbers 33, and nobody knows where it was.
  • Tahath (Levite living at the time of Divided Monarchy) 1 Chronicles names him twice, and he is a Levite from the divided-kingdom years.
  • Tahath (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) One of 3 men called Tahath. This one is a man from the divided-kingdom years, named once in 1 Chronicles.
  • Tahpenes (Woman living at the time of United Monarchy) She was Pharaoh's queen in Egypt when Hadad the Edomite fled there from Solomon. Pharaoh gave Hadad her sister as his wife, and Tahpenes raised their son in the palace.
  • Tahrea (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) Saul's great-grandson through Jonathan and Mephibosheth. The other copy of the list spells him Tarea.
  • Tahtim-hodshi (Kadesh) It turns up once, on Joab's census route east of the Jordan, somewhere north of Gilead. The Hebrew is hard to read here, and many think it is a garbled reference to the Hittites of Kadesh and not a town at all.
  • Talmai (King living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Caleb drove three Anakim giants out of Hebron, and Talmai was one of them.
  • Talmai (King living at the time of United Monarchy) A king of Geshur, whose daughter Maacah married David and bore Absalom.
  • Talmon (Levite living at the time of Exile and Return) He headed a family of temple gatekeepers, and his descendants were still keeping the gates after the exile.
  • Tamah (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Head of a family of temple servants, the Nethinim, who came back from Babylon with Zerubbabel. Some lists spell it Thamah.
  • Tamar Ezekiel names him twice, and nothing else is recorded.
  • Tamar (Absalom's daughter living at the time of United Monarchy) A man from the united kingdom, and 2 Samuel is the only book that names him.
  • Tamar (David's daughter living at the time of United Monarchy) David's daughter, raped by her half-brother Amnon. David did nothing, and her full brother Absalom had Amnon murdered for it.
  • Tamar (Woman living at the time of the Patriarchs) Judah's daughter-in-law, widowed twice with no heir. Judah held back his third son, so she dressed as a prostitute and conceived twins by Judah himself. He ended up saying she was more righteous than he was, and Ruth 4:12 blesses a family in her name.
  • Tammuz (A male deity in the Old Testament) In Ezekiel's vision the women sit at the temple's north gate weeping for Tammuz. He was the Mesopotamian god of shepherds and growing things, Dumuzi to the Sumerians, and the weeping mourned his yearly death.
  • Tanhumeth (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A Netophathite whose son Seraiah was one of the army captains who came over to Gedaliah after Jerusalem fell.
  • Taphath (Woman living at the time of United Monarchy) Solomon's daughter, married to Ben-abinadab, one of the twelve officers who fed the court a month each.
  • Tappuah A town on the line between Ephraim and Manasseh.
  • Tappuah Named once, in Joshua, and nowhere else.
  • Tappuah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) One of 3 men called Tappuah. This one is a man from the divided-kingdom years, named once in 1 Chronicles.
  • Tarah (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Abraham's father, whose family line Genesis 11 traces. Joshua 24:2 names him again.
  • Tarah (Terah) Named twice, in Numbers, and nowhere else.
  • Taralah A town given to Benjamin, in the hill country near Gibeon. Nobody has found the site.
  • Tarea (Man living at the time of United Monarchy) Saul's line again, through Jonathan, Mephibosheth and Micah. Tarea was Micah's son, and 1 Chronicles 9:41 spells him Tahrea.
  • Tarshish Far to the west, at the edge of what Israel knew of the sea. Solomon's ships went there for gold, and ships of Tarshish came to mean any big ocean-going ship. Jonah boarded one at Joppa to get away from Nineveh.
  • Tarshish (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) One of 4 men called Tarshish. This one is a man from the divided-kingdom years, named once in 1 Chronicles.
  • Tarshish (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Genesis names him once, and he is a man from the patriarchs.
  • Tarshish (Persian living at the time of Exile and Return) A man from the exile and the return, and Esther is the only book that names him.
  • Tarsus Paul was born here, in the capital of Cilicia on the Cydnus River, about twelve miles from the sea, and he called it no mean city. It had schools of philosophy and rhetoric that rivalled Athens and Alexandria.
  • Tartak (A male deity in the Old Testament) One of two gods the Avvites worshipped after the Assyrians resettled them in Samaria. The other was Nibhaz, and nothing else is known about this one.
  • Tartan (Leader's title) An Assyrian title, roughly commander-in-chief, not a man's name. One tartan came with the delegation demanding Jerusalem's surrender from Hezekiah, and an earlier one took Ashdod for Sargon.
  • Tatnai (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) He was a Persian governor who challenged the Jews rebuilding the temple and wrote to Darius about it. The search turned up Cyrus's decree, and he was told to help instead.
  • Tebah (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Nahor's son by his concubine Reumah, and the first one named. Nahor was Abraham's brother.
  • Tebaliah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Hosah's third son, a Levite of Merari's family who kept the temple gates.
  • Tebeth (Name of the 10th month) Tenth month, December into January, and the month Esther was taken in to the king.
  • Tehinnah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) He founded Ir-nahash, the city of Nahash, according to Judah's genealogies.
  • Tekoa It sat about six miles south of Bethlehem, on the edge of the wilderness that carries its name. Rehoboam fortified it, and Amos was a herdsman there when he was called to prophesy against Israel.
  • Tekoite (Tekoa) Someone from Tekoa, the hometown of Amos. The wise woman Joab sent to David about Absalom was a Tekoite, and so were at least two of David's mighty men.
  • Tel-abib Ezekiel lived here among the exiles by the river Chebar. The name meant an old ruin-mound in Akkadian, and the founders of Tel Aviv borrowed it in 1910.
  • Tel-haresha (Tel-harsha) One of the places in Babylonia that exiles returned from. The families from there could not prove they were Israelites, and nobody knows where it was.
  • Tel-melah Hill of salt, a place in Babylonia. People who came back from there could not show their Israelite ancestry, and the site is unknown.
  • Telah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) An ancestor of Joshua in Ephraim's genealogy, and that line is all that is recorded of him.
  • Telaim Saul gathered his army here before he went against the Amalekites, in the Negev of Judah. It is probably the Telem of Joshua 15:24.
  • Telassar The Assyrian king's messenger names it with Gozan and Haran, places already conquered. The children of Eden lived there, somewhere in Mesopotamia.
  • Telem A town on Judah's southern border, in the list at Joshua 15:24. It may be the Telaim where Saul gathered his army against the Amalekites.
  • Telem (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Ezra names him once, and he is a man from the exile and the return.
  • Tema An oasis in the north Arabian desert, on the caravan road between Damascus and the Arabian interior, named for a son of Ishmael. Job's friend Eliphaz compares Job's useless helpers to the caravans of Tema. Much later the Babylonian king Nabonidus made it his residence.
  • Tema (Arabian living at the time of the Patriarchs) Genesis and 1 Chronicles name him twice, and he is a man from the patriarchs.
  • Temani (Edomite living at the time of the Patriarchs) Teman was Esau's grandson, and his Edomite clan had a name for wisdom. This is the word for that clan, and it is what Eliphaz is called all through Job.
  • Temeni (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Ashur, the founder of Tekoa, had a son by this name, and the genealogy records nothing else about him.
  • Terah (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Abraham's father, named once in Luke's genealogy. Josephus tried to give him a date, 292 years after the flood.
  • Teresh (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) He and Bigthan guarded the door of King Ahasuerus and plotted to kill him. Mordecai found out and reported it, and both men were executed. The record of that service was later read to the king, and it turned the story of Esther.
  • Tertius (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Paul dictated Romans and Tertius wrote it down. At the end he slips in a greeting of his own, in his own voice.
  • Tertullus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) A hired speaker who put the case against Paul before Felix at Caesarea. He flattered the governor for a long time first, then called Paul a troublemaker, a leader of the sect of the Nazarenes, and a man who tried to profane the temple.
  • Thahash (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Another of Nahor's sons by Reumah, listed once in Genesis 22:24.
  • Thamar (Woman living at the time of the Patriarchs) She is Tamar, in Matthew's spelling: Judah's daughter-in-law, who conceived Perez and Zerah by Judah after he failed to give her his youngest son. She is one of four women in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus.
  • Thebez Abimelech, Gideon's son who made himself king, was besieging the tower at Thebez when a woman dropped a millstone on his head. He told his armor-bearer to kill him so nobody could say a woman did it. Joab still remembered it years later.
  • Theophilus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Luke wrote both his Gospel and Acts to him. He calls him most excellent, the title he also uses for Felix and Festus, and that is all anyone knows.
  • Thessalonian (Thessalonica) Someone from Thessalonica, the port in Roman Macedonia where Paul planted a church and then had to leave in a hurry. His two letters to them are among the earliest writing in the New Testament.
  • Thessalonica The capital of Macedonia, a busy port on the Via Egnatia. Paul preached in the synagogue there for a few weeks before opposition drove him on to Berea. Luke calls the city officials politarchs, an unusual title.
  • Theudas (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Gamaliel's example of a movement that died with its leader. Theudas raised a following, he was killed, and it came to nothing. Josephus mentions a rebel Theudas around AD 44, later than Gamaliel's speech, and whether that is the same man has never been settled.
  • Thomas (Apostle living at the time of the New Testament) One of the twelve, called the twin. He would not believe Jesus had risen until he could touch the wounds, and when Jesus showed him his hands and side he said, my Lord and my God.
  • Thummim (A Jewish oracle) Paired with the Urim in the high priest's breastpiece, and used the same way, to put a question to God.
  • Thyatira A trading city in the Roman province of Asia, known for its guilds, especially the dyers. Lydia, the seller of purple cloth Paul met at Philippi, came from there, and Revelation sends one of its seven letters to the church there.
  • Tiberias Named once, in John, and nowhere else.
  • Tiberias (Sea of Galilee) In John the Sea of Galilee goes by the Sea of Tiberias, after the city Herod Antipas built on its shore and named for the emperor Tiberius.
  • Tiberius (Emperor living at the time of the New Testament) The second Roman emperor, after Augustus, from AD 14 to 37. Luke dates the start of John's ministry to the fifteenth year of his reign, in the same verse that names Pilate and Herod.
  • Tibhath Hadadezer of Zobah held this city, and David carried off a great deal of bronze from it. Solomon later used that bronze for the temple. 2 Samuel 8:8 calls the place Betah.
  • Tibni (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) After Zimri died, half of Israel followed Tibni son of Ginath and half followed Omri. It went on for four years. Then Tibni died and Omri was king.
  • Tidal (King living at the time of the Patriarchs) King of Goyim, one of the four eastern kings under Chedorlaomer who attacked a group of Canaanite cities and carried off Lot. Abraham went after them and beat them. His name matches Tudhaliya, a name several Hittite kings carried.
  • Tiglath-pileser (King living at the time of Divided Monarchy) He was the third Assyrian king of the name, and he took territory from Israel and Syria and collected tribute. His own inscriptions record the same campaigns and payments 2 Kings describes.
  • Tikvah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) His son Shallum was married to Huldah, the prophetess who was asked about the law scroll found in Josiah's temple repairs.
  • Tikvah (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Father of one of the men who stood against the foreign-marriage decision under Ezra.
  • Tilon (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) One of Shimon's four sons in Judah's genealogy, and nothing more.
  • Timaeus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) Bartimaeus means son of Timaeus, and Mark gives the father's name only to say whose son the blind beggar at Jericho was.
  • Timna (Woman living at the time of the Patriarchs) Two Edomites. One was a concubine of Esau's son Eliphaz, and her son Amalek fathered the people who were Israel's enemies for generations. The other was an Edomite clan chief.
  • Timnah The Philistine town where Samson saw the woman he wanted to marry. The riddle at that wedding feast started his long fight with the Philistines.
  • Timnah Named once, in Joshua, and nowhere else.
  • Timnath-heres The name means portion of the sun. Joshua was given this town in the hill country of Ephraim and was buried there, north of the hill of Gaash. The book of Joshua spells it Timnath-serah.
  • Timnite (Timnah) Samson's Philistine father-in-law, a man of Timnah. When his daughter was given to another man, the trouble that followed ended with his household burned.
  • Timon (Man living at the time of the New Testament) One of the seven chosen to handle the daily food for widows in the Jerusalem church. Nothing more is known of him.
  • Timotheus Timothy, from Lystra, with a Jewish mother and a Greek father. Paul took him along on his travels and trusted him with hard errands to churches in trouble, and two of Paul's letters are addressed to him.
  • Tipsah (Tiphsah) Solomon's rule reached as far as Tipsah, a crossing on the Euphrates the Greeks called Thapsacus. Menahem sacked it when he seized Israel's throne because it would not open its gates to him.
  • Tipsah (Tiphsah) Menahem took this town and treated it savagely. The other Tipsah is the Euphrates crossing at the far edge of Solomon's reach.
  • Tiras (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Japheth's youngest son in the Table of Nations. Genesis does not say where his people lived. Josephus connected them with the Thracians, and nobody can confirm it.
  • Tirathite (Scribal group in the Old Testament) Scribes at Jabez, named with the Shimeathites and Suchathites. They were Kenites from Hammath, father of the house of Rechab.
  • Tirhakah (King living at the time of Divided Monarchy) The Kushite pharaoh of Egypt in the early seventh century BC, known in his own records as Taharqa. Word that he was marching against Assyria made Sennacherib send Hezekiah a threatening letter during the siege of Jerusalem.
  • Tirhanah (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Caleb's son by his concubine Maachah, in Judah's genealogy, and that is all.
  • Tiria (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) Jehaleleel's son, named in 1 Chronicles 4:16. Nothing else is known.
  • Tirshatha A Persian word for the governor of Judah, not a name. It is used of Nehemiah, and on one reading of Zerubbabel.
  • Tirzah An old Canaanite royal city that served as capital of the northern kingdom before Samaria was built. The Song of Solomon sets its beauty beside Jerusalem's. Menahem seized the throne from there.
  • Tirzah (Woman living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) She was the youngest of Zelophehad's five daughters, named with her sisters each time the family's inheritance comes up.
  • Tishbite (Tishbe) Elijah is always the Tishbite, the man from Tishbe. Where Tishbe was, in Gilead or further north in Galilee, depends on how you read the Hebrew of 1 Kings 17:1.
  • Titus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) A Gentile convert who worked with Paul. He carried a hard letter to the church at Corinth and brought back word of how it landed. Paul later left him in Crete to organize the churches, and the letter to Titus is the instructions.
  • Tizite (Warriors, perhaps from Tiz) The epithet of Joha, one of David's mighty men. The place it points to is unknown.
  • Toah (Levite living at the time of United Monarchy) A Kohathite Levite in the line that ran down to Samuel and to Heman the singer. Other lists call him Nahath or Tohu.
  • Tob Jephthah's half-brothers drove him out for being a prostitute's son, and he went to the land of Tob, east of Gilead. He gathered outlaws there until Gilead's elders came to fetch him back to fight the Ammonites. Men of Tob later hired themselves out to the Ammonites.
  • Tob-adonijah (Man living at the time of Divided Monarchy) A Levite Jehoshaphat sent around the cities of Judah with priests and other Levites, teaching from the Book of the Law.
  • Tobiah (Man living at the time of Exile and Return) Ezra and Nehemiah name him twice, and he is a man from the exile and the return.
  • Tobiah (Nehemiah's adversary living at the time of Exile and Return) They called him the Ammonite. With Sanballat he mocked Nehemiah's wall and worked against it, and later a priest gave him a room inside the temple courts, so Nehemiah threw him and his things out.
  • Tochen It belonged to Simeon, and nobody knows where it was.
  • Togarmah (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Gomer's son and Japheth's grandson. Ezekiel's people of Togarmah trade horses and mules, from somewhere in eastern Asia Minor.
  • Tohu (Levite living at the time of United Monarchy) Several generations back in Samuel's family line, before his father Elkanah.
  • Toi (King living at the time of United Monarchy) King of Hamath. When David beat Hadadezer, who had been at war with Toi, Toi sent his son with gold, silver and bronze to congratulate him.
  • Tola (Judge living before Israel's Monarchy) Judges names him once, and he is a judge from the years before the monarchy.
  • Tola (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Here the verses are the man from the family lists, not the judge. He is in Genesis 46:13 among those who went down to Egypt, and in the Numbers 26 census and 1 Chronicles 7.
  • Tolad Simeon's town in the Negev of Judah. Joshua's lists call it Eltolad.
  • Tolaites (Man living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness) Issachar's clan through Tola, his firstborn, in the Numbers 26 census.
  • Tophel Deuteronomy opens with Moses speaking to Israel near Tophel. It is generally identified with Tafileh, on the edge of the Edomite plateau east of the Dead Sea.
  • Tophet (Valley of Hinnom) The place in the Valley of Hinnom where children were burned to Molech, until Josiah defiled it. Jeremiah said the valley would fill with the dead. Later Jewish pictures of Gehenna drew on it.
  • Trachonitis The rugged region, a lava field east of the Sea of Galilee. Philip the tetrarch governed it in the year Luke uses to date John the Baptist. Bandits hid in that ground in Herod's day, and it is still called the Lejah.
  • Troas It was a port on the northwest coast of Asia Minor near old Troy. Paul had his vision of the Macedonian man there, come over and help us, and on a later visit he raised Eutychus from the dead during a sermon that went all night.
  • Trophimus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) A Gentile from Ephesus who traveled with Paul. People in Jerusalem thought Paul had taken him into the temple, and that started the riot that ended with Paul under arrest.
  • Tryphena (Woman living at the time of the New Testament) She and Tryphosa are greeted by Paul at Rome as women who labored in the Lord. The names are so alike that some guess they were sisters, though the text does not say.
  • Tryphosa (Woman living at the time of the New Testament) Paul greets her at Rome with Tryphena, two women who worked hard in the Lord. The paired names may mean they were sisters. Nothing more is known of her.
  • Tubal In the prophets Tubal is a far northern people, usually named with Meshech, trading and making war. The name goes back to a son of Japheth.
  • Tubal (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Genesis and 1 Chronicles name him twice, and he is a man from the patriarchs.
  • Tubal-cain (Man living at the time of the Patriarchs) Lamech's son by Zillah, in Cain's line, and the first metalworker the Bible names, forging tools of bronze and iron. His half-brother Jabal fathered the herdsmen and Jubal the musicians.
  • Tychicus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) He carried Paul's letters, Ephesians and Colossians among them, and told the churches in person how Paul was doing.
  • Tyrannus (Man living at the time of the New Testament) After the synagogue in Ephesus put Paul out, he taught every day for two years in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. Whether Tyrannus was a Jewish teacher or a Greek who rented out the room is not said.
  • Tyre The leading Phoenician port, partly on the mainland and partly on an island offshore, rich from sea trade and purple dye made from murex shells. Its king Hiram sent cedar and craftsmen for David and Solomon. The prophets attacked its pride and said it would fall.

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