Jos 2:1 go ye know the land, and J
Jos 6:2 I have given J and his king into your hand
1Ki 16:34 in his time Gall from Bethel rebuilt J
2Ki 2:5 sons of the prophets who were in J
Matt 20:29; Mar 10:46 when they left J, I followed him
Luk 18:35 Jesus approaching J, a blind man was
Luk 19:1 having entered Jesus in J, was passing
Heb 11:30 by faith the walls of J later fell down
Jericho (Heb. Yer îjô, “city of the Moon” or “place of fragrance”; Gr. lerijo). Important city in the Jordan Valley, sometimes called “City of Palm Trees”* (Deu 34:3; Jdg 1:16; 3:13; 2Ch 28:15). It is situated about 8 km west of the river, about 13 km north of the Dead Sea, and about 24 km in a straight line northeast from Jerusalem (fig 161), at the foot of the mountains of Judah, on the upper ridge of the Jordan Valley. It is about 250m bnm, but about 140m above the riverbed. It has an almost tropical climate, so that palm trees and, in modern times, bananas grow without difficulty (fig 393). Map VI, E-3. Although excavations show that Jericho is one of the oldest cities in the world, it is not mentioned in any ancestral records outside of the Bible. When the Israelites invaded Canaan, as it was on the main east-west road, it was the first target of conquest in western Palestine, the promised land, and Joshua indicated that it should be dedicated to God as an offering (Jos 6:17-19 ). The account of the fall of Jericho is well known. Some men were sent from the camp east of the Jordan to spy out the city. They received hospitality at the house of Rahab, who protected them and helped them escape when the inhabitants of Jericho were looking for them. As a reward for his help and for his faith in the God of Israel, the spies promised to save his life and property, a promise that they later faithfully fulfilled (2: 1-22; 6:22, 23, 25). After crossing the Jordan, the Israelites camped at Gilgal, near Jericho (5:10), and marched around the city once a day for 6 days. On the 7th day they surrounded her 7 times and then, at a signal from the trumpets, they all shouted. When the walls of that great fortress fell (6:8-21), the Israelites entered the city, killed all its inhabitants (except Rahab and her family) and burned everything (except some precious objects for use in the sanctuary; vs. 1-21, 24). Joshua then pronounced a curse on anyone who rebuilt it (v 26). Although the city was not rebuilt until the time of Ahab, people must have lived in the vicinity, because the name Jericho continued to be used (2Sa 0:5). In the division of the territory, Jericho was on the border between Ephraim and Benjamin, and was assigned to Benjamin (Jos 16:1,7; 18:12, 21). When Eglon, king of Moab, oppressed the Israelites at the beginning of the time of the judges, he took Jericho from them (Jdg 3:13). David’s envoys, returning from their visit to the king of the Ammonites (who insulted them by shaving off half their beards), stayed in Jericho until their beards grew again (2Sa 0:5; 1Ch 19:5). In Elijah’s time, Hiel rebuilt the city, thus falling under Joshua’s curse and losing 2 of his sons (1Ki 16:34). In Elijah’s time a community of prophets lived there (2Ki 2: 4, 5, 15, 18), and later Elisha healed his spring (vs 19-22; fig 187). A century later, Jericho was the scene of the liberation of the captives of Judah taken by the army of King Pekah of Israel (2Ch 28:15). In the last days of the kingdom of Judah, the Babylonian army captured Zedekiah near this city (2Ki 25:5; Jer 39:5; 52:8). The people of Jericho would also have been taken captive, because 345 descendants of its former inhabitants returned from exile with Zerubbabel (Ezr 2:34; Neh 7:36). Some people from Jericho helped Nehemiah to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem (3:2). Jericho is mentioned again in the Maccabean period, when Bacchides, the Syrian general, repaired its fortifications (1 Macc. 9:49-50). Antony gave it to Cleopatra as a winter city. When Herod the Great later received it as a gift from Augustus, he beautified it, built a palace on it, and a fortress called Cipros behind it; Herod the Great died there. 275. The excavators’ ditches in the OT Jericho mound (viewed from the west). Jesus passed through NT Jericho (Luk 19:1), which was south and east of the OT city, at the entrance to Wâd§ Qelt, along which the road to Jerusalem ascended. It was the home of the publican Zacchaeus, whose hospitality Jesus enjoyed, and whose conversion is recorded in vs 1-10. In the vicinity of NT Jericho, Jesus healed blind Bartimaeus and his companion (Mat 20: 29-34; Mar_617 10: 46-52; Luk 18: 35-43). The modern city of Jericho, called Erîkh~, was founded in Crusader times, and is east of NT Jericho and southeast of OT Jericho. Because of its great biblical and historical importance, the site received the attention of several archaeological expeditions. The site of the OT city has been identified as Tell esSultân, on the northern edge of modern Jericho (figs 275, 276). In 1868, Charles Warren made preliminary explorations that did not materially add to our knowledge. From 1907 to 1909, Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger excavated parts of the mound, but found its ruins to be very confused and had been modified by subsequent building and erosion. As Palestinian archeology was still in its infancy, the conclusions of these scholars were unsatisfactory, and later had to be modified when explorations at other sites showed that their interpretations of certain evidence could no longer be sustained. John Garstang, who excavated Jericho from 1930 to 1936, discovered a Late Bronze Age cemetery, the burial place of Jericho’s inhabitants until about 1350 BC, as indicated by Egyptian seals found there. The remains of the city’s fortifications were so confused that some of its walls were misidentified, as later excavations made clear. Garstang’s interpretation of the archaeological history of the city is now obsolete and need not be repeated here. From 1952 to 1957, Kathleen M. Kenyon excavated Jericho using the latest scientific methods. She discovered another cemetery, with graves from the Middle Bronze Age, including funerary equipment such as wooden tables, benches, plates, food in containers, cloth, baskets, etc. (fig 458), all in an amazing state of preservation due to the filtration of poisonous gases that killed bacteria and prevented these ancient materials from disintegrating, something that has not happened elsewhere in Palestine. Excavations of the mound itself exposed very early occupation levels. They showed that Jericho was a city long before there were ceramic pots. In fact, it now appears that its walls and towers are the oldest discovered in the Near East. The city was destroyed several times, but the remains of at least 7 successive walls from the Early Bronze Age period (3rd millennium BC) were discovered: the last of them was destroyed by an earthquake. At that time the “city” was about 230 m long and no more than 76 m wide. In the Middle Bronze Age, the Hyksos period, it had been expanded to a length of about 260 m and a width of about 130 m, and was surrounded by a huge stone wall with a sloping slope. This was destroyed by one of the Egyptian kings of the 18th dynasty (s XV BC). Nothing was found of the walls of the Late Bronze Age, which would be the one that fell in the time of Joshua. Unfortunately, the forces of man and nature seem to have destroyed the upper levels of the mound to such an extent that virtually nothing remains from that time. Kenyon’s excavation unearthed only a small earthenware pot, in a portion of one floor level, dating from Joshua’s Jericho. At the foot of the mound appeared some of Jericho’s last structures, built during the Iron Age (after 1200 BC). 276. Suburbs of modern Jericho, the “City of palm trees”, seen from the mound of ancient Jericho. Although the results of the excavations have been very interesting to the archaeologist, and have thrown light on the early history of the city, they have unfortunately contributed very little of direct interest to the Bible student. However, Jericho’s cemeteries have shown that it ceased to be used as a burial place in the 14th century BC, which can be taken as evidence that the city could not have been destroyed much later than then. See fig 275. A portion of NT Jericho, Tulûl Abã el-Alâyiq, was excavated in 1951 and 1952 by the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, under the direction of JL Kelso and JB Pritchard, and again by E Netzer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1972-1974). Excavations uncovered parts of Herod’s magnificent winter palace, which had a façade nearly 100m long, and a pool, probably the one he used to drown his brother-in-law, the high priest Aristobulus III. Bib.: John Garstang and JBE Garstang, The Story of Jericho, 2nd ed. (London, 1948); SH Horn, The Ministry, February 1954, pp 29-31 (with extensive bibliographic references); Kathleen M. Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho (New York, 1957); EAEHL II:550-564; FJ-AJ xvi.5.2; FJ-GJ i.2.4, 9. On the NT Jericho excavations see JL Kelso et al., AASOR 29, 30 (1955); JB Pritchard, AASOR 32, 33 (1958); E. Netzer, YEJ 25 (1975):89-100; G. Foerster and G. Bacchi, EAEHL 11:551-575.
Source: Evangelical Bible Dictionary
moon city One of the oldest cities in the world, in the West Bank, about seven kilometers west of the Jordan River, on the northern edge of the Dead Sea, about 244 meters below sea level, so its climate is tropical. This city, throughout its history, has been several times destroyed and rebuilt. At the beginning of the 20th century, some walls were found, near the current J., which surely correspond to the first city of the Natufian era, a Mesolithic culture that settled here ca. the 9000 a. C. The city is also known, since the first mentions in the Bible, as “city of palm trees”, Dt 34, 3; Jc 1, 16; 3, 13; 2 Cro 28, 15. In the conquest of the land of Canaan, Joshua sent two spies from Sitín to explore the city of J., where the prostitute Rajab protected them, since her presence in the city was noticed; they promised to respect the life of this woman and that of her relatives, as long as she did not denounce them, Jos 2. After crossing the Jordan, the Israelites camped in Gilgal, to the east of J., Jos 4, 19; and celebrated Easter in…