Gibeah

Gibeah is a Hebrew place name meaning “hill” or “height,” used in the Old Testament especially for a Benjaminite town also written Gibeath; the English form Gibeathite denotes an inhabitant of that place.

The text says Joshua 18:28 lists “Gibeath” among the cities of Benjamin, alongside “the Jebusite (also called Jerusalem)” and Kiriath, which places the town in the Benjaminite hill country near Jerusalem. Later narrative calls it “Gibeah of Benjamin” (1 Samuel 14:16) and “Gibeah of Saul” (2 Samuel 21:6), and messengers come to Saul there (1 Samuel 23:19; 26:1). Linguistically, Hebrew gib‘ah is the ordinary noun for a hill, so English “hill” in passages such as Joshua 24:33 (“the hill of Phinehas”) or 1 Samuel 7:1 (Abinadab’s house “on the hill”) need not refer to the town; the same root underlies the place name.

The text says Judges 19:22 describes the men of the city—Gibeah in the surrounding story—as “certain wicked fellows” who surround the house and demand, “Bring out the man who came into your house, that we can have sex with him!” Hosea later treats the place as a byword for corruption: “They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah” (Hosea 9:9), and calls for the cornet to be blown in Gibeah (Hosea 5:8). The Saul narrative also connects a “hill of God” and “the hill” with a band of prophets (1 Samuel 10:5,10); interpreters debate whether this is Saul’s Gibeah or another height.

Christian traditions do not make Gibeah a point of doctrinal division. Historically, its exact site is debated, with Tell el-Ful a common proposal; interpretively, readers differ over whether Judges 19:22 and Hosea 9:9 function chiefly as a literal historical warning, as a prophetic indictment of covenant unfaithfulness, or as a typological pattern of judgment.

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.