Hebrew word · H8405
תֵּבֵץ
tevetz
Thebez
A proper name. It is not certain what the name means, and no sure meaning should be built on it.
Appears 3 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
§ Thebez = "conspicuous"
a town near Shechem
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
- Range of meaning
A proper name. It is not certain what the name means, and no sure meaning should be built on it.
- Against the English
Every English version simply transliterates it as 'Thebez'.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Eusebius, a 4th-century church historian, writes in his Onomasticon (a gazetteer of biblical place names) that in his day there was a village called Thebes 13 Roman miles from Neapolis (Shechem) on the road to Scythopolis (Beth-shean). That fits modern Tubas. The name comes up again in 2 Sam 11:21, where Joab expects David to recall that 'a woman dropped an upper millstone on him from the wall … at Thebez.' Abimelech's death there was a well-known warning story about getting too close to a city wall.
Where it appears
Judges · 2
-
Judges 9:50 תֵּבֵ֑ץ בְּתֵבֵ֖ץ Thebez, at Thebez
Then Abimelech went to Thebez, encamped against it, and captured it.
Here: A town in the hill country of Manasseh, usually placed at modern Tubas, about 15 km (9 miles) northeast of Shechem. It appears only here and in the retelling of Abimelech's death at 2 Samuel 11:21.
2 Samuel · 1
-
2 Samuel 11:21 בְּתֵבֵ֔ץ in Thebez
Who struck Abimelech son of Jerubbesheth? Was it not a woman who dropped an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?’ If he asks you this, then you are to say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead as well.’”
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.