Places of the Bible
Gezer
City
Where the name appears
Events told in passages that name Gezer, and how many of their verses do. That is not the same as saying they happened here: a place can be named as a landmark, as somewhere being travelled to, or as the subject of a prophecy.
A dot is a moment; a bar is something that lasted, drawn to its length. The fainter the mark, the fewer verses name the place.
- War with Canaanites · 1450 BC · 2 verses
- Reign of David · 1054 BC · 1 verse
- Reign of Solomon · 1014 BC · 3 verses
What the spade found
Gezer is generally identified with Tel Gezer, a tell — a mound raised by one settlement built on the ruins of the last. It has been excavated, and at its largest covered 12 hectares.
Occupation shows in 12 dated phases: Chalcolithic, Early Bronze Age I-II, Middle Bronze Age II-III, Late Bronze Age I, Late Bronze Age II, Late Bronze Age III, Iron Age I, Iron Age IIa, Iron Age IIb, Iron Age IIc, Iron Age III (Persian), Hellenistic.
The excavation is from the survey dataset From Villages to Empires (Zanoni and others, 2025), used under CC BY 4.0. The identification is the one modern scholarship settles on, compiled by OpenBible.info from over seventy works, also under CC BY 4.0. Identifying a mound with a biblical name is a scholarly judgement, and for some places it is still debated.
Easton’s Bible Dictionary
A precipice, an ancient royal Canaanitish city (Josh. 10:33; 12:12). It was allotted with its suburbs to the Kohathite Levites (21:21; 1 Chr. 6:67). It stood between the lower Beth-horon and the sea (Josh. 16:3; 1 Kings 9:17). It was the last point to which David pursued the Philistines (2 Sam. 5:25; 1 Chr. 14:16) after the battle of Baal-perazim. The Canaanites retained possession of it till the time of Solomon, when the king of Egypt took it and gave it to Solomon as a part of the dowry of the Egyptian princess whom he married (1 Kings 9:15-17). It is identified with Tell el-Jezer, about 10 miles south-west of Beth-horon. It is mentioned in the Amarna tablets.
From M. G. Easton, Illustrated Bible Dictionary (1893), in the public domain.
Named in 14 verses
- Joshua
- 10:33, 12:12, 16:3, 16:10, 21:21
- Judges
- 1:29
- 2 Samuel
- 5:25
- 1 Kings
- 9:15, 9:16, 9:17
- 1 Chronicles
- 6:67, 7:28, 14:16, 20:4
The place, its people and its events come from Theographic, a knowledge graph of the Bible by Robert Rouse, used and shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.