Unlocking the secrets of Libnah

Dr. Itzhaq Shai – excavation director at Tel Burna and assistant professor at Ariel University – and his colleagues are hoping to answer these questions in the coming years as they excavate what is believed to be the site of biblical Libnah, in the region known as the Shfela.

“Based on the material culture we discovered so far, such as pottery vessels, lamelech (“to/for the king”) jar handle impressions and figurines, the site clearly reveals finds consistent with other sites in Judah during the Iron Age,” said Shai, who is overseeing the excavations at Tel Burna for the Institute of Archeology at Bar-Ilan University.

Specifically, Shai and his team are researching the border interaction between the Philistines, who were based in the coastal plain in such cities as Ekron, Gat, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Gaza, and the Israelites, who were further east in the Shfela and hill country. He has spent the past 15 years as an area supervisor for the Tel es-Safi/Gat archeological project, while his doctoral work was on the Philistine material culture during the First Temple Period. In other words, Shai has extensive experience on the southwest border area of Israel, later Judah, during the First Temple Period.

The Shfela, mentioned 20 times in the Hebrew Scriptures, is a key region where Israel’s border fluctuated throughout history. Often translated as “lowlands” or “foothills,” it is one of the 50 distinct regions of the “Land Between” and serves as a buffer zone between the coastal plain and the more remote hill country in the center of Israel.

The area is strategic because it controls the southern and western access points to the mountains and key strongholds like Jerusalem and Hebron. If Israel controls the Shfela, its kingdom is relatively safe, for it is protecting the southern and western flanks. If the enemy controls the Shfela, it becomes a launching pad to divide and conquer the kingdom of Israel just as the Philistines attempted to do in 2 Samuel 5.

In the time of the Judges, the border appears porous enough for Samson to visit the Philistine town of Timna and choose a Philistine woman to be his bride (Judges 14). During the reign of King Saul, David single-handedly defeated the Philistines by killing Goliath in the Elah Valley, a key part of the Shfela (1 Samuel 17).

Then, during David’s reign, he removed the Philistines from the interior of the country to Gezer, which is located in the Shfela (1 Chronicles 14:8-16; 2 Samuel 5:17-25). Later, he continued his assault on the Philistines by pushing them further to the west (1 Chronicles 18:1; 20:4- 8). In addition, his son Solomon was given Gezer by the Egyptians after they defeated the Canaanites (1 Kings 3:1- 2; 9:16).

Following Solomon’s death, however, the kingdom was divided and began to retreat all along the border that Judah shared with the Philistines, especially in the northern Shfela, as may be perceived in the list of Rehoboam’s fortified cities that surrounded Libnah (2 Chronicles 11:5-12).

A little later, during King Asa’s reign, the border shrunk as evidenced by the Ethiopian army penetrating the Shfela as far as Maresha. In the same story, however, a short-lived territorial extension occurred as Judah pursued them to Gerar, a town southwest of the Shfela (1 Kings 15:27-28; 16:15; 2 Chronicles 14:8-14).

According to Zecharia Kallai, professor emeritus of Historical Geography of Palestine at the Hebrew University, in his Historical Geography of the Bible: The Tribal Territories of Israel, “The compass of Rehoboam’s fortifications in the west and conditions in the days of his heirs show a reduction in the territory of western Judah during the time of Rehoboam: the long drawn-out war between Israel and Philistines at Gibbethon, Philistine Ekron, Libnah on the Judaite-Philistine border, Maresha within the border of Judah, while Gerar, further south, is outside of Judah.”

During the reign of King Jehoram (840-830 BCE), Libnah rebelled because the king rejected the Lord. The success of the rebellion indicates the proximity of Libnah to the western border of the kingdom and an increasing reduction in the kingdom’s territory due perhaps to the weakening power of the king (2 Kings 8:16-22; 2 Chronicles 21:10).

The western border during the time of King Uzziah/Azariah expanded once again from the Shfela as far as to the coast as Judah defeated the Philistines at Gat, Yavne and Ashdod. Judah built cities throughout Philistine territory (2 Chronicles 26:6-7), thereby bringing stabilization and security to the southern Judean settlements.

But when Ahaz became king and encouraged the people to sin, the Philistines raided Judah in the Shfela and Negev. They captured extensive parts of the northern Shfela, including Beit Shemesh, Ayalon, Gederot, Soco, Timna and Gizmo, all north of Libnah (2 Chronicles 28:16-20).

Under King Hezekiah, Judah defeated the Philistines as far as Gaza (2 Kings 18:8). However, around 716 BCE we see King Sennacherib of Assyria ripping many of the towns in the Shfela away from Judah, including Libnah, before the Lord miraculously intervened (2 Kings 18-19; Isaiah 37:8).

Kallai summarizes Judah’s western border from the reigns of Uzziah through Hezekiah: “Due to Uzziah’s war on the Philistines, the territory of Judah in the lowlands [Shfela] was enlarged beyond that known in the days of Rehoboam and his heirs. This may be perceived in the northern region of the lowlands in the description of the losses of Ahaz, and further south the enlargement of the territory may be seen in the extent of the town-list of the lowlands of Judah, that is ascribed chiefly to Hezekiah.

“His territory included, according to this, the regions of Shaalvim and Gizmo in the northwest, whilst in the west it reaches as far as the line that continues from there southward along the border of the lowlands and the coastal plain. Due to Sennacherib’s campaign, the lowland cities were torn away from Judah.”

Three kings later, however, Libnah surfaces once again as a town of Judah, as King Josiah’s wife, Hamutal, originates from here. She provides two heirs to Josiah who later become kings: Jehoahaz and Mattaniah, who is renamed Zedekiah. These two sons represent two of the last four kings of Judah before the Babylonian conquest and defeat of Judah in 586 BCE.

With the border area changing hands through the centuries, one would expect the archeological record to be rather complicated. But with the technological advances archeologists have made in the last decades, the study of the material culture can provide answers to questions like those Shai and his team are asking.

“We are able to determine where the clay originates from the pottery we find,” Shai explained. “In Libnah, we are able to tell if the clay is from the west or east. If from the west, this could indicate a more porous border with the Philistines that could suggest an economic relationship once existed between Judah and the Philistines. If from the east, it suggests a more closed border.”

With the ongoing collection of data from sites on both sides of Judeo-Philistine border, archeologists hope to elucidate precisely how ancient borders operated and how border communities like those at Libnah functioned and were influenced by their neighbors.