Kiriath-jearim

Kiriath-jearim is a town in the hill country of Judah, west of Jerusalem, whose name means “city of forests” and which Scripture remembers chiefly as the place where the ark of the covenant rested before David brought it up to Jerusalem.

The text places it on Judah’s northern border: Joshua 15:9–10 traces the boundary from the waters of Nephtoah to Baalah “also called Kiriath Jearim,” then past Mount Jearim down to Beth Shemesh. Joshua 9:17 names it among the four cities — with Gibeon, Chephirah and Beeroth — whose inhabitants made a treaty with Israel, so it belongs to the Gibeonite group in the narratives of conquest and settlement. Joshua 18:28 lists “Kiriath” among the towns of Benjamin, which indicates a town on the Judah–Benjamin line rather than a securely Judahite one. Linguistically, Hebrew qiryat is “city” and the second element is related to “forests”; the same place appears in Scripture under several names — Baalah (Joshua 15:9), Baale-judah (2 Samuel 6:2), Kiriath-baal and Jaar. Historical geographers commonly identify the site with a ruin about nine miles west of Jerusalem, though the identification is a scholarly judgment rather than something the text states. First Chronicles 2:50 calls Shobal “the father of Kiriath Jearim,” which most read as a clan designation for a Calebite group settled there rather than a reference to a person who founded the town.

Its main role in the narrative concerns the ark. After the Philistines returned the ark to Beth Shemesh, messengers asked the inhabitants of Kiriath Jearim to bring it up, and the men of the town set it in Abinadab’s house on the hill and consecrated Eleazar his son to keep it (1 Samuel 6:21; 7:1). David later went from Baale-judah, that is Baalah or Kiriath Jearim in Judah, to bring the ark up (2 Samuel 6:2; 1 Chronicles 13:5–6), and 2 Chronicles 1:4 recalls the move as a completed fact. Jeremiah 26:20 mentions Uriah son of Shemaiah of Kiriath Jearim, a prophet who spoke against Jerusalem and the land in Yahweh’s name in Jeremiah’s own time.

Christian readers differ on several points. One interpretive question is what the double name Baalah/Kiriath-baal preserves: some read it as evidence of an earlier Canaanite sanctuary at the site, later renamed, while others treat the names as ordinary toponyms and caution against inferring a cult. Another is how to harmonize Joshua 15:9 with Joshua 18:28, whether by positing a border town listed twice or by treating the lists as reflecting different periods. Psalm 132:6 speaks of hearing of the ark “in Ephrathah” and finding it “in the fields of Jaar,” which some traditions read as a reference to this town and use liturgically, while others take it as a poetic or textual puzzle. The ark’s stay in a private house rather than at a sanctuary is read by some as a sign of the shrine’s provisional status, and by others simply as the narrative’s setting; the text itself does not adjudicate between these readings.

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.