Gezer

גֶּזֶר

Where was biblical Gezer? At Tel Gezer National Park, between Ramla and Beit Shemesh, about 30 km west of Jerusalem. I mark it certain.

Gezer
Photo: Davidbena, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Pharaoh burned Gezer and handed it to his daughter as a wedding gift when she married Solomon. Solomon rebuilt it as a fortress city.

By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker

Site today
Tel Gezer National Park, between Ramla and Beit Shemesh
How sure
Certain The name, the sources and the finds all agree.
Other names
Gazara, Tell Jezer, Tell Abu Shusha
Location
31.8599° N, 34.9197° E (Google Maps)
Gezer on the hand-drawn Map of Biblical Israel
Gezer on our hand-drawn Map of Biblical Israel. Get the full map as a print →

How we know where it was

Few biblical cities sign their own name. Gezer did. In the 1870s a researcher found boundary stones cut into the bedrock around the tel, the mound built up from one ruined city on top of another. They were inscribed in Hebrew, "boundary of Gezer." More have turned up since. Egyptian records name the city too, among them the Amarna letters and the Merneptah Stele. And the Gezer Calendar, one of the oldest Hebrew inscriptions known, was found here in 1908.

Why did everyone want it? Look at where it sits. Gezer guards the junction where the road from the coast turns inland and climbs to Jerusalem through the Aijalon Valley. Whoever held Gezer held a door into the mountains.

That explains its long story. Horam king of Gezer came to help Lachish, and Joshua defeated him. But the tribe of Ephraim never drove out the Canaanites of Gezer, who stayed on as forced laborers. David chased the Philistines all the way here. Then Pharaoh took the city and gave it away, and Solomon fortified it alongside Hazor and Megiddo.

Excavators uncovered a six-chambered gate. Some archaeologists link it to Solomon. Others date it later, and that argument is still open. The identity of the city is not.

Visiting today

Tel Gezer National Park has walking trails, the six-chambered gate, an older Canaanite gate, standing stones and a huge water tunnel, with wide views over the coastal plain.

Read it in the Bible

Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.

See Gezer on the interactive map →

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