Bible Synapse
Gibeon: the great pool and inscribed jar handles
Site · Iron Age (c. 1200–600 BC) · Israel and Judah · also called el-Jib, Pool of Gibeon, Al Jib jar handles
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- Iron Age (c. 1200–600 BC) (the pool and the inscribed handles)
- Found
- al-Jib, West Bank, 1956. Excavated in six seasons from 1956 to 1962 by James B. Pritchard of the University of Pennsylvania. The inscribed handles lay in the debris that had washed into the pool after the city was destroyed around 600 BC.
- Now
- At the site, al-Jib, West Bank
- Passages
- 2 Samuel 2:12–17, Jeremiah 41:12, Joshua 9:3, 1 Kings 3:4–5, Jeremiah 28:1
What it is
A round shaft cut into the rock, about 11.5 metres across and more than 10 metres deep, with a spiral stair down its side; a tunnel continued down to a water chamber below the city. In its fill Pritchard found more than sixty jar handles inscribed in Hebrew with the town’s name, gb‘n (Gibeon), often followed by gdr and a personal name such as Hananiah or Amariah. The handles are now divided between the Penn Museum in Philadelphia and the Jordan Archaeological Museum in Amman.
How it connects to the Bible
The handles settled the identification of el-Jib with Gibeon, a town that appears often in the Bible, from the Gibeonites’ treaty with Joshua to Solomon’s sacrifice at its high place. Pritchard identified the shaft with “the pool of Gibeon” where the men of Joab and Abner met (2 Samuel 2:13), and Jeremiah 41:12 mentions “the great waters that are in Gibeon”. One handle bears the name Hananiah, like the prophet from Gibeon in Jeremiah 28:1.
What scholars debate
That this shaft is the pool of 2 Samuel 2:13 is possible but cannot be shown, and the date of the pool is debated.