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Important Biblical events are set in the area of Hebron:
1. At Mamre, which the Bible places at or near Hebron, God promised Sarah and Abraham a son.
Later Abraham bought a burial cave "in the field of Machpelah before
Mamre." This received Sarah's body, then his own, and after that those
of Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah.
2. At Hebron, David ruled over Judah for seven and a
half years before becoming king of all Israel.
Here is a look at the city, with heights above sea level
indicated in feet:
Judging from the heights, this was not a very defensible
hill. (In Jerusalem, by contrast, the top of the city's hill was 150 feet higher
than the Kidron Valley.) Hebron depended for its defense, rather, on the
impregnability of the whole southern part of the mountain range. In this
respect, its situation was good. It needed to defend only three points. It
was centrally located among them, and all were within easy reach of
cavalry reinforcements. The points were Beth Zur, Zif and Adoraim.
But before we go into this defensive system, let us look at the wider context. The central mountain range stretches like a loaf of bread,
on a north-south axis, from the Jezreel Plain to the
Negev Desert. In the middle
of this range we find the Benjamin Plateau, between Bethel and Jerusalem. Over
this plateau passed the southernmost good link between the two trunk roads that joined
Egypt and Arabia to Damascus. Jerusalem barely grasped the plateau's
southeastern
edge, thus enjoying the best of two worlds: it had the commercial and
agricultural advantages of the plateau, and yet deep valleys defended it.
South of Jerusalem,
however, we are off the beaten track of antiquity. This part of the range, which at times belonged to the tribe of Judah, presents impediments
to invading armies on the east, south and west. On the east and south are deserts. On the west, the
mountain is steeply tilted (in places the rock layers bend 90 degrees).
Moreover, the rivers of the Shephelah (the "low land" between the mountain
range and
the coast) form a natural moat. (See map above.) From an ancient military standpoint, Mt. Judah
is a landed peninsula. As long as someone was up there defending it, an army had
little hope of success unless it included a major attack from the north (whence, said God through Jeremiah, disaster
comes).
In
antiquity, the wider
metropolitan area of Jerusalem extended south along the
watershed past Bethlehem for a total of twelve miles. Further south there was still plenty of
mountain, hence room for another city. Although this area was off the
beaten international track, conditions were conducive for a local emporium.
 These conditions were
as follows (using Karmon and Shmueli,
Part Two): First, in the southern half of Mt. Judah, the peak occupies a long
high stretch. With 62 square miles at over 3000 feet (and another 54 sq. mi. at
over 2600), Hebron's metropolitan area forms the highest settled part of the
country. Because of this height, nights are cool, the dew is heavy in summer, and there is
plenty of winter rain (20 inches per year). The valleys mix alluvial soil
with fertile loess (formed of sand blown in from the desert). All these factors combine to
produce the legendary Hebron grapes. It was probably thanks to the grapes, by
the way, that the Babylonians, in 586 BC, did not exile the vintners and farmers of this
region. They wanted the wine! (Jeremiah
52:16)
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 A Jewish tradition has Noah, after the flood, bringing a vine from Mt. Ararat to
Hebron, and an Arab tradition recognizes his grave in Dura (Biblical Adoraim),
five miles to the west. The
Bible tells us that
the men sent by Moses to spy out the land, having reached Hebron, hauled back
from the Valley of Eshkol ("grapes") a cluster so large that two had to carry it
on a pole. ("To spy," in the Biblical Hebrew, is to tur.
The image of the two bearing grapes has become the official symbol of Israeli
tourism.) Even today, grape clusters weighing four to six pounds are not uncommon.
(Keel 715).
Consider too how Jacob
blessed Judah (Genesis 49: 11-12):
Binding his foal to the vine,
his donkey's colt to the choice vine;
he has washed his garments in wine,
his robes in the blood of grapes.
His eyes will be red with wine,
his teeth white with milk.
The milk would have
been from the sheep and goats of Judah's desert, but the wine would have been
from Judah's mountain top.
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Yet grapes are not all. A bit to the south, and on the slopes
leading down to the many river beds, the night air is not so cold; released from the risk of frost, olives and figs do well
here. On the gentler
southern and eastern descents toward Beersheba and
Arad, the ancients would have
grown barley and wheat. Further south and east is the
midbar, often translated as wilderness, but meaning, in its root,
grazing land (midbar derives
from davar, an ancient term for "grazing").
The producers of these different products
would have required a center in which to trade. Where would this have been?
Jerusalem, as said, was too far north. If we concentrate on the
high, southern half of Mt. Judah, we find a bottleneck at Beth Zur. Here the Shinnar (Sa'ir)
riverbed intrudes from the eastern wilderness, pushing traffic
onto the narrow passage of the watershed, which is limited on the west by steep downward slopes. North and south of Beth Zur there is room again, and the roads
can fan out. Therefore, the bottleneck at Beth Zur is
the natural border between the northern and southern parts of Mount Judah. If
you are ruling from Hebron, this narrow pass four miles away is the single point
on your north side that you must take special care to defend.
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As for the east, the wilderness defended Hebron. Now we shall
look to its south.
In mountainous country, the best route is generally on the
watershed, because there is no need to cross riverbeds. (See the satellite image
above, for example.) Exceptions can occur if the watershed twists and turns;
or the rock may be hard, and
karstic erosion may have roughened it.
The last two factors are the case on the watershed between Bene Na'im (pron.
Bennay Na'eem) and Zif (see map below). Travelers between Beth Zur and points to
the south, therefore,
avoided this section of the watershed, using instead a broad and comfortable valley to its west.
In this valley grew the city of Hebron. From here they could continue south
through Zif, Carmel and Maon to Tell Malkhata,
with a side branch to Arad. They had other options as well. From
Hebron they could take a secondary watershed southwest to Beersheba.
Due south of Hebron was Yuta (which was much less developed in
Biblical times than in the 1870's, when the Survey map below was made.) But a
direct route between Hebron and Yuta was beset with harsh, interfering
riverbeds. Instead, travelers went via Zif. (Karmon and Shmueli
49)
The upshot is this: on the southeast, if you were ruling from
Hebron, there was only one point that you had to take special care to defend, and that was Zif, four miles away.
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What about the west side? Wadi Kof, the best route up from the
west, is a valley, hence too dangerous for an army. The next conceivable route
comes up to Adoraim, five miles from Hebron. This was the third point that had
to be strongly defended. From here one could also intercept any group approaching on the
watershed from Beersheba.
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Centrally located among the three strategic points (Beth Zur, Zif
and Adoraim), Hebron was in a unique position to protect the high and fertile
platform forming the southern part of Mt. Judah. This was so despite the fact that its
immediate natural defenses as a city were slight.
(According to 2 Chronicles, Solomon's son Rehoboam fortified precisely these four in the
region: Hebron, Beth Zur, Zif and Adoraim. The archaeological finds, however, point rather to Josiah as their
fortifier.)
Hebron's name implies its function. The
Hebrew root, kh-v-r, means to bind. A khaver is a friend. In the
Quran, Allah has taken "Abraham as friend," and because
of Hebron's connection with Abraham, Arabs also call it al-Khalil, the city of the
friend. (Compare 2 Chronicles 20:7,
James 2: 21-24.)
If we go back to the meaning of Hebron as "to bind," "to
connect," we may link this to its geopolitical function. Hebron might have
served as a place of alliance among Beth Zur, Zif and Adoraim. This could account for
the other name the Bible gives it: Qiryat Arba, "the city of the four." (Joshua
14:15, however, explains Arba as a man, the greatest among the Anakite
giants who once lived there.) We may recall, as well, the four basic kinds of
produce, based on the four regions joined by it, for which Hebron served as
emporium: grapes, olives, grain and milk.
In separate pages, we shall treat:
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