Eglon

Eglon is the name of a Canaanite town in the Shephelah, the lowland country between the Judean hill country and the coastal plain, remembered in the book of Joshua as one of the towns whose king joined a coalition against Israel and later listed among the towns allotted to Judah.

The text says that Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem enlisted four other kings, including the king of Eglon, to attack Gibeon after its treaty with Joshua (Joshua 10:3); the five Amorite kings camped against Gibeon and made war on it (Joshua 10:5), and were afterward taken from the cave at Makkedah (Joshua 10:23). In the southern campaign that follows, Joshua's forces move from Lachish to Eglon and strike it with the edge of the sword, with its king and all its cities, leaving no one remaining, "according to all that he had done to Eglon" (Joshua 10:37). Later, in the tribal allotment, Eglon appears in the list of Shephelah towns assigned to Judah, in sequence with Lachish and Bozkath (Joshua 15:39).

As a matter of historical geography, the site has not been identified with confidence. Scholars have proposed several candidates in the Judean lowlands — Tell 'Aitun and Khirbet 'Ajlan are among those most often discussed — but none commands general agreement, and the town is known only from these lists. Linguistically, the name is commonly connected with the Hebrew word for "calf" ('egel), though this is a suggestion about the name's origin rather than a settled fact.

One point of clarity: the same name belongs to a different figure, Eglon king of Moab, who oppressed Israel and was killed by Ehud (Judges 3:12–30); he is a person, not this town, and the two should not be conflated. As for how Christian traditions read the material differently, the difference lies less in the name than in the campaign narratives attached to it: some read Joshua 10 as a straightforward record of a military campaign, while others, including many historical-critical interpreters across the traditions, read the chapter as theological literature shaped to make a claim about Yahweh's gift of the land, and wrestle accordingly with the language of total destruction in Joshua 10:37; confessional readings in various churches differ over how that language is to be preached. On the bare facts — a Canaanite town, a king who opposed Israel, a place in Judah's allotment — the sources are not in dispute.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.