Debir: a place name in the Bible, carried by a Canaanite hill town in Judah that Israel captured and by two lesser border sites.
Debir was a walled Canaanite town in the hills south of Hebron, and it is the place almost every mention of the name has in view. Joshua's southern campaign turned back to take it, and the giants of the hill country were cut off from it along with Hebron and Anab. The book of Joshua pauses twice to say that the town used to be called Kiriath-sepher, "city of the scroll" (קִרְיַת־סֵפֶר), and one town list calls it Kiriath-sannah instead. Judges tells how Othniel took it and won Caleb's daughter Achsah, who then asked her father for springs of water because the land she had been given was dry (Joshua 15:19; Judges 1:15). Later the town was handed over to the priests, so its name also appears in the lists of towns set aside for them.
The Bible attaches the same name to more than one spot:
- the hill town in Judah, which nearly every mention means
- a marker on Judah's northern boundary, up from the Valley of Achor
- a point on the eastern edge of Gad's land, across the Jordan
The name itself is see-through in Hebrew. It is the same word used for the innermost room of Solomon's temple (דְּבִיר), which got that name because it sat at the back of the building. For a town the sense would be something like "the place behind," a sensible label for a settlement at the far end of the hill country. Some scholars have suggested instead that the town was named for a shrine standing there, which would fit nicely with its older name if it really had been a Canaanite center of writing. Neither explanation can be proved.
Where the town stood was argued over for most of a century. It was long placed at Tell Beit Mirsim out in the low western foothills, and older maps still show it that way. Khirbet Rabud, about eight miles southwest of Hebron, fits the Bible better: it lies in the hill country where the text puts it, it is the right size for a Canaanite royal city, it belongs with the southern towns it is listed beside, and it had to draw on wells some distance off, which suits the story of Achsah asking for water. That identification is now the standard one.
Nuances
Disputed
Which ruin is the Debir of Judah: Tell Beit Mirsim in the western foothills, or Khirbet Rabud in the hill country south of Hebron.
- majorityKhirbet Rabud, roughly 13 km southwest of Hebron. It is the only Late Bronze hill-country site south of Hebron of a size commensurate with a Canaanite royal city, it fits the southern district list of Joshua 15:49 alongside Anab, Socoh and Eshtemoa, and its arid setting and dependence on cisterns and the nearby wells suit the Achsah water request of Joshua 15:19 and Judges 1:15.; K. Galling, "Zur Lokalisierung von Debir," ZDPV 70 (1954): 135-141; M. Kochavi, "Khirbet Rabud = Debir," Tel Aviv 1 (1974): 2-33; Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography, rev. and trans. A. F. Rainey, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979), 249, 293, 353; A. F. Rainey and R. S. Notley, The Sacred Bridge: Carta's Atlas of the Biblical World (Jerusalem: Carta, 2006)
- minorityTell Beit Mirsim, the site excavated between 1926 and 1932 and identified with Debir on the basis of those excavations, an identification its excavator maintained late in his career.; W. F. Albright, "Debir," in D. W. Thomas, ed., Archaeology and Old Testament Study (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 207-220
What the town's name meant: a topographical description from a Semitic root for "back, hinder part," or a designation derived from the architectural term, implying a pre-Israelite sanctuary at the site.
- contestedA topographical name, "back" or "hinder place," from the same root that lies behind the temple's rearmost chamber; Judahite toponyms are generally best explained topographically or administratively.; N. Na'aman, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction. Collected Essays (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005); A. F. Rainey and R. S. Notley, The Sacred Bridge: Carta's Atlas of the Biblical World (Jerusalem: Carta, 2006)
- contestedA "sanctuary town," the name taken directly from the architectural term and implying a Canaanite shrine at the site, a proposal made more attractive by the alternate names Kiriath-sepher and Kiriath-sannah, rendered in the Septuagint as "city of writings."; W. F. Albright, "Debir," in D. W. Thomas, ed., Archaeology and Old Testament Study (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 207-220