Timnah
תִּמְנָה
Where was biblical Timnah? At Tel Batash, in the Sorek Valley, about 30 km west of Jerusalem. I mark it very likely.
Samson went down to Timnah to marry a Philistine woman. At the wedding feast he posed his riddle, and when it went wrong he set the whole valley's wheat on fire.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- Tel Batash, in the Sorek Valley
- How sure
- Very likely Strong evidence, with no serious rival.
- Other names
- Timnath, Thimnathah, Tel Batash, Tell el-Batashi
- Location
- 31.7847° N, 34.9113° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
Joshua traces Judah's northern border west down the Sorek Valley, from Beit Shemesh to Timnah and on toward Ekron. Tel Batash sits on the valley floor exactly between the two, a low square mound beside the stream. Excavators found a planned town with a Philistine layer, then a Judean town above it, then a fortified Judean city later still. That is a border town changing hands. The Bible says the same thing. In the days of King Ahaz the Philistines took Timnah and its villages.
Stand on Tzorah and you see it below you, by the water in the valley. Sound carries up that slope. The day we filmed the Walking Tanach episode Samson's Secret up there, a wedding photo shoot was playing music on the hill. Samson grew up hearing Philistine life. And the Philistines were not barbarians. They had iron swords, chariots with iron axles and finely decorated pottery. The Israelites in the hills were simple bearded farmers with plain pots.
The Talmud notices a strange pair of verbs. Judah "went up" to Timnah, but Samson "went down." The geography answers it. Judah came along the valley road from Adullam and climbed to the town. Samson came down from high Tzorah. The rabbis add a second reading. Judah's trip led to Peretz, and from him to David. Samson's trip took him down, into Philistine entanglements and finally to his death.
A ruin called Khirbet Tibnah, a few kilometers south, still carries the name, and older explorers put Timnah there. But Tibnah has no remains from the Iron Age. Most now think the name wandered there after Tel Batash was abandoned.
Watch: Samson's Secret
Walking Tanach, Episode 1. Points out the tel of Timnah from the heights of Tzorah.
Visiting today
Tel Batash is a low mound in the fields by the Sorek stream, with no visitor facilities, and the valley around it is still wheat. I point it out from the top of Tzorah in Samson's Secret.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
See Timnah on the interactive map →
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Get the print + free ebookNearby places
- Ekron 6 km west
- Zorah (Tzorah) 7 km east
- Beth Shemesh 7 km southeast
- Gezer 8 km north
- Eshtaol 9 km east
- Azekah 10 km south