Places of the Bible

Jericho

City

What happened here

Healing Blind Bartimaeus · 30 AD
Zacchaeus Converted and Parable of the Pounds · 30 AD

Where the name appears

Events told in passages that name Jericho, 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. The numbers are the lines below.

1 Death of Moses · 1451 BC · 1 verse
2 Crossing the Jordan into Canaan · 1450 BC · 4 verses
3 War with Canaanites · 1450 BC · 15 verses
4 Dividing the land · 1444 BC · 1 verse
5 Reign of David · 1054 BC · 1 verse
6 Prophecies of Elijah · 909 BC · 2 verses
7 Elijah Translated · 896 BC · 2 verses
8 Prophecies of Elisha · 896 BC · 2 verses
9 Prophecies of Jeremiah · 627 BC · 2 verses
10 Reign of Zedekiah · 596 BC · 1 verse
11 Good Samaritan Parable Taught · 29 AD · 1 verse

What the spade found

Jericho is generally identified with Tell es-Sultan, a tell — a mound raised by one settlement built on the ruins of the last. It has been excavated, and at its largest covered 6 hectares.

Occupation shows in 19 dated phases: Early Bronze Age IA, Early Bronze Age IB, Early Bronze Age II, Early Bronze Age III, Early Bronze Age IV/Middle Bronze Age I/Int. Bronze, Middle Bronze Age I, 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, Byzantine, Early Roman, Late Roman.

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

Place of fragrance, a fenced city in the midst of a vast grove of palm trees, in the plain of Jordan, over against the place where that river was crossed by the Israelites (Josh. 3:16). Its site was near the ‘Ain es-Sultan, Elisha’s Fountain (2 Kings 2:19-22), about 5 miles west of Jordan. It was the most important city in the Jordan valley (Num. 22:1; 34:15), and the strongest fortress in all the land of Canaan. It was the key to Western Palestine.

This city was taken in a very remarkable manner by the Israelites (Josh. 6). God gave it into their hands. The city was “accursed” (Heb. herem, “devoted” to Jehovah), and accordingly (Josh. 6:17; comp. Lev. 27:28, 29; Deut. 13:16) all the inhabitants and all the spoil of the city were to be destroyed, “only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron” were reserved and “put into the treasury of the house of Jehovah” (Josh. 6:24; comp. Num. 31:22, 23, 50-54). Only Rahab “and her father’s household, and all that she had,” were preserved from destruction, according to the promise of the spies (Josh. 2:14). In one of the Amarna tablets Adoni-zedec (q.v.) writes to the king of Egypt informing him that the ‘Abiri (Hebrews) had prevailed, and had taken the fortress of Jericho, and were plundering “all the king’s lands.” It would seem that the Egyptian troops had before this been withdrawn from Palestine.

This city was given to the tribe of Benjamin (Josh. 18:21), and it was inhabited in the time of the Judges (Judg. 3:13; 2 Sam. 10:5). It is not again mentioned till the time of David (2 Sam. 10:5). “Children of Jericho” were among the captives who returned under Zerubbabel Ezra 2:34; Neh. 7:36). Hiel (q.v.) the Bethelite attempted to make it once more a fortified city (1 Kings 16:34). Between the beginning and the end of his undertaking all his children were cut off.

In New Testament times Jericho stood some distance to the south-east of the ancient one, and near the opening of the valley of Achor. It was a rich and flourishing town, having a considerable trade, and celebrated for the palm trees which adorned the plain around. It was visited by our Lord on his last journey to Jerusalem. Here he gave sight to two blind men (Matt. 20:29-34; Mark 10:46-52), and brought salvation to the house of Zacchaeus the publican (Luke 19:2-10).

The poor hamlet of er-Riha, the representative of modern Jericho, is situated some two miles farther to the east. It is in a ruinous condition, having been destroyed by the Turks in 1840. “The soil of the plain,” about the middle of which the ancient city stood, “is unsurpassed in fertility; there is abundance of water for irrigation, and many of the old aqueducts are almost perfect; yet nearly the whole plain is waste and desolate...The climate of Jericho is exceedingly hot and unhealthy. This is accounted for by the depression of the plain, which is about 1,200 feet below the level of the sea.”

There were three different Jerichos, on three different sites, the Jericho of Joshua, the Jericho of Herod, and the Jericho of the Crusades. Er-Riha, the modern Jericho, dates from the time of the Crusades. Dr. Bliss has found in a hollow scooped out for some purpose or other near the foot of the biggest mound above the Sultan’s Spring specimens of Amorite or pre-Israelitish pottery precisely identical with what he had discovered on the site of ancient Lachish. He also traced in this place for a short distance a mud brick wall in situ, which he supposes to be the very wall that fell before the trumpets of Joshua. The wall is not far from the foot of the great precipice of Quarantania and its numerous caverns, and the spies of Joshua could easily have fled from the city and been speedily hidden in these fastnesses.

From M. G. Easton, Illustrated Bible Dictionary (1893), in the public domain.

Named in 58 verses

Numbers: 22:1, 26:3, 26:63, 31:12, 33:48, 33:50, 34:15, 35:1, 36:13
Deuteronomy: 32:49, 34:1
Joshua: 2:1, 2:2, 2:3, 3:16, 4:13, 4:19, 5:10, 5:13, 6:1, 6:2, 6:25, 6:26, 7:2, 8:2, 9:3, 10:1, 10:28, 10:30, 12:9, 13:32, 16:1, 16:7, 18:12, 18:21, 20:8, 24:11
2 Samuel: 10:5
1 Kings: 16:34
2 Kings: 2:4, 2:5, 2:15, 2:18, 25:5
1 Chronicles: 6:78, 19:5
2 Chronicles: 28:15
Ezra: 2:34
Nehemiah: 3:2, 7:36
Jeremiah: 39:5, 52:8
Matthew: 20:29
Mark: 10:46
Luke: 10:30, 18:35, 19:1
Hebrews: 11:30

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.