Bible Synapse
Tel Hazor
Site · 13th century BC · Before the kings · also called Hazor, Tel Hatzor, Tell el-Qedah
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- 13th century BC (the burning of the Canaanite city)
- Found
- Tel Hazor, Upper Galilee, Israel, 1955. First probed by John Garstang in 1926. Yigael Yadin excavated for the Hebrew University in 1955–1958 and 1968, and Amnon Ben-Tor has led renewed excavations since 1990.
- Now
- At the site (Tel Hazor National Park), Upper Galilee, Israel
- Passages
- Joshua 11:1–13, Judges 4:2, 1 Kings 9:15, 2 Kings 15:29
What it is
A huge site north of the Sea of Galilee, about 80 hectares in all, with a high upper city and a much larger lower city below it. In the Middle and Late Bronze Ages it was the leading Canaanite city of the region, named in the Mari letters and the Amarna letters. Its Late Bronze Age city, with palace and temples, ended in a great fire in the 13th century BC. Iron Age Hazor had a six-chambered city gate and was destroyed again when the Assyrians took it in 732 BC.
How it connects to the Bible
Joshua 11 calls Hazor “the head of all those kingdoms” and says it was the one northern city Joshua burned. Its excavators Yadin and Ben-Tor linked the 13th-century fire with this account. The six-chambered gate fits 1 Kings 9:15, which names Hazor among the cities Solomon built, and the Assyrian destruction layer fits the capture recorded in 2 Kings 15:29.
What scholars debate
Who burned the Canaanite city is disputed; some scholars point to internal revolt or the wider collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Whether the gate dates from Solomon’s time or from the 9th century BC is also debated.