Hebron
חֶבְרוֹן
Where was biblical Hebron? At Tel Rumeida, across from the Cave of Machpelah, about 30 km southwest of Jerusalem. I mark it certain.
Abraham made his home here and bought the Cave of Machpelah to bury Sarah. The twelve spies found the giant sons of Anak here, and Joshua later gave the city to Caleb. David was anointed king of Judah here and ruled from Hebron for seven and a half years.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- Tel Rumeida, across from the Cave of Machpelah
- How sure
- Certain The name, the sources and the finds all agree.
- Other names
- Kiriath-arba, Mamre, Tel Rumeida, Tel Hebron
- Location
- 31.5236° N, 35.1037° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
Hebron never lost its name or its people. Herod's great enclosure over the Cave of Machpelah has marked the tomb of the patriarchs for two thousand years. The Hebrew name Hevron carries two ideas. One is chaver, a friend, for Abraham the friend of G-d. That is why the Arabic name is al-Khalil, "the friend." The other is chibur, connection. This is where our roots are in the ground.
The biblical city is not around the cave. It is the mound of Tel Rumeida, on the hill across from it. I filmed there for the Walking Tanach episode Abraham's Footprints Discovered, beside a city wall about four thousand years old and the original stairs that climbed to the city gate. These are stairs that Abraham himself may have walked up. And when he bargained with Ephron the Hittite for the cave, he would have done it at the city gate, at the top of those steps.
Those walls were excavated only because the Jewish families living on the tel refused to leave. Their homes were raised on steel beams, and the archaeologists dug underneath. Jar handles stamped "lmlk Hebron," belonging to the king, show the city was a royal center of Hezekiah's kingdom.
Now cross to Machpelah. The cenotaphs you see inside the building are markers. The actual burial cave of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah lies deep beneath the floor, in one corner. Abraham insisted on buying, not borrowing. He paid four hundred shekels of silver, an outrageous price. He was putting down roots. A midrash says he followed a straying animal into the cave, smelled a sweet scent, and found Adam and Eve buried there. The rabbis named this cave as one of three places no nation can ever say the Jews stole, because the Tanach records that they were bought.
I first came here at nineteen or twenty, as a yeshiva student. I felt like a child who was adopted, walking into his real parents' house for the first time.
Abraham didn't camp inside the town. He lived across the valley, in the oaks of his friend Mamre. From a Hebron rooftop you can see that hilltop, green with trees and marked by the ruins of a Byzantine church. That is where three visitors came to his tent and Sarah laughed.
East of Hebron, a ridge looks down toward Sodom. A Muslim shrine there, dedicated to Lot, has two footprints carved in its floor that tradition calls Abraham's. I doubt the footprints. But I think it's very possible that this hilltop is the place where Abraham walked with the angels and argued with G-d over Sodom.
Watch: Abraham's Footprints Discovered
Walking Tanach. Filmed at the ancient wall and gate stairs of Tel Hebron.
Visiting today
The Cave of Machpelah is open to visitors, and the Tel Rumeida archaeological park shows the ancient walls and the Judean town. I filmed both for Abraham's Footprints Discovered.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
See Hebron on the interactive map →
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Get the print + free ebookNearby places
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