Name of Biblical Judge Surfaces

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An inscription bearing the personal name Jerubba‘al was uncovered in 2019 at Khirbet al-Ra‘i, a small Iron Age site located near Lachish in the Judean Foothills. Written in black ink on a small sherd from a ceramic jug, the inscription was found inside a grain silo dated to the late 12th or early 11th century B.C.E., the time of the biblical judges.¹ The name Jerubba‘al appears in the Book of Judges (Judges 6:32), where it is given as another name for Gideon: “Therefore on that day he was called Jerubba‘al.”

A few years earlier, an inscription bearing the name Eshba‘al was uncovered at the nearby site of Khirbet Qeiyafa, incised on the shoulder of a storage jar.² That inscription, found on a floor of the fortified city thought to be biblical Sha‘arayim, dates to the early tenth century B.C.E., the time of King David. The name Eshba‘al is also known in the Bible, as the name of the son of Saul who challenged David’s kingship (1 Chronicles 8:33; 2 Samuel 2-4).

These are the first occurrences of the names Jerubba‘al and Eshba‘al in the archaeological record. Taken together with the biblical evidence, they contribute to our understanding of naming practices in Judah during the time of the judges and the formative years of the Judahite kingdom, respectively.

Both names include the element Ba‘al, which was the name of the Canaanite storm god. The composite name Jerubba‘al means “founded by Ba‘al,” while the name Eshba‘al can be translated as “man of Ba‘al.” Later biblical writers, however, sometimes replaced the component Ba‘al with the word bosheth (“shame”): Jerubba‘al (as the name of Gideon) appears in the Tanakh as Jerubbesheth (“founded by shame,” 2 Samuel 11:21), while Eshba‘al became Ish-bosheth (“man of shame,” 2 Samuel 2:8). As such, the new inscriptions clarify that there was indeed a process of cleansing pagan elements from names in the Hebrew Bible.

The personal names Jerubba‘al and Eshba‘al do not appear after the tenth century B.C.E. The correlation between the biblical tradition and the archaeological finds indicates that these were indeed common names only during a specific historical period. It also suggests that personal names mentioned in the Bible were actually used during the periods discussed by the biblical writers.^a In the heated debate about how much history is preserved in the Hebrew Bible, the use of such personal names points to authentic memories from as early as the time of the judges.

An inscription bearing the personal name Jerubba‘al was uncovered in 2019 at Khirbet al-Ra‘i, a small Iron Age site located near Lachish in the Judean Foothills. Written in black ink on a small sherd from a ceramic jug, the inscription was found inside a grain silo dated to the late 12th or early 11th century B.C.E., the time of the biblical judges.1 The name Jerubba‘al appears in the Book of Judges (Judges 6:32), where it is given as another name for Gideon: “Therefore on that day he was called Jerubba‘al.” A few years earlier, an inscription bearing the name […]