Hebrew word · H1382

גִּבְלִי

hagivli

Gebalite

A word naming the people of Gebal (Phoenician Gubla), the ancient port city on the Lebanese coast that the Greeks called Byblos. The city name is usually linked to the root g-b-l, 'border, mountain-ridge, boundary'.

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

Group of ge.val (גְּבַל "Gebal" H1380)

§ Giblites = "a boundary"

inhabitants of Gebal

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Joshua 13:5

Range of meaning

A word naming the people of Gebal (Phoenician Gubla), the ancient port city on the Lebanese coast that the Greeks called Byblos. The city name is usually linked to the root g-b-l, 'border, mountain-ridge, boundary'.

Against the English

KJV/YLT 'Giblites' and BSB/WEB 'Gebalites' are accurate transliterations, but most readers will not know who these people were. Some modern versions point directly to Byblos.

Used elsewhere in the period

Gebal's builders cut stone for Solomon's temple (1 Kings 5:18). Its 'elders and skilled men' caulked Tyre's ships (Ezekiel 27:9). It is listed among Israel's enemies in Psalm 83:7. Outside the Bible, Gubla is very well known: the Amarna letters (14th century BC) include dozens of pleas from its king Rib-Hadda to Pharaoh, and the Ahiram sarcophagus inscription is one of the earliest Phoenician alphabetic texts. The Greek word byblos ('papyrus'), from which biblion and eventually 'Bible' come, is traditionally connected with this city because Egyptian papyrus was traded through it.

Where it appears

Joshua · 1

  1. Joshua 13:5 הַגִּבְלִ֗י the Gebalite[s]

    the land of the Gebalites; and all Lebanon to the east, from Baal-gad below Mount Hermon to Lebo-hamath.

    Here: A singular word standing for a whole people: 'the people of Gebal'. Gebal is the Phoenician port the Greeks called Byblos, modern Jbeil, north of Beirut. The phrase names a city-state's territory by the people who live there.

1 Kings · 1

  1. 1 Kings 5:18 וְהַגִּבְלִ֑ים and the Gebalites

    So Solomon’s and Hiram’s builders, along with the Gebalites, quarried the stone and prepared the timber and stone for the construction of the temple.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.