Archaeology has been able to document an increasing number of individuals mentioned in the pages of the Bible – including the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah as well as King David, Hezekiah, and others (see the other posts in this category).
Most recently – just a few weeks ago – archaeologists officially announced the discovery of a 3,100-year-old inscription from the period of the biblical judges which may refer to Gideon, the Israelite warrior-leader famous for defeating the Midianite and Amalekite armies that invaded ancient Israel (Judges 6). While this inscription may not provide firm proof of Gideon, it is of great importance for a number of reasons.
For one thing, before its discovery there were practically no inscriptions of this time from the area of Israel in which it was found. Some had even argued that the alphabet was unknown in the region, that there were no scribes, and that the biblical accounts must therefore have been written much later. This find helps correct that view.
The inscription itself was found in excavations being conducted as a joint project of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Macquarie University in Australia. It consists of the name Jerubbaal, known in the Bible as the nickname of the judge Gideon (Judges 6:31–32), written in ink on what remains of a pottery jar or jug. The preserved name probably identified the owner of the vessel, which may have held a precious liquid, such as perfume.
The Bible explains why the name Jerubbaal was given to Gideon: “because Gideon broke down Baal’s altar, they gave him the name Jerub-Baal that day, saying, “Let Baal contend with him” (Judges 6:32). Jerubbaal may also mean “May Ba‘al be great,” and while biblical writers often used the word ba‘al to refer to the pagan Canaanite god Ba‘al, the word could simply mean “lord,” as in the name of one of David’s heroes Baaliah (“Yah is Lord”) in 1 Chronicles 12:5 – so that the name Jerubbaal (“May the lord be great”) could also refer to Israel’s God Yahweh.
But one of the important aspects of the newly released inscription is that outside the Bible the name Jerubbaal is otherwise unknown in archaeological or historical contexts. Even if the new inscription does not refer to the Jerubbaal we know as Gideon, it shows that Jerubbaal was a name in use in exactly the time Gideon is said to have lived.
It is not known that the Jerubbaal inscription does not refer to the biblical Gideon in some way – especially as the name is otherwise unknown. The find was made at the site of Khirbet al-Ra‘i, thought by some to be the biblical Ziklag (1 Samuel 30, etc.), and petrographic analysis indicates it was locally made. Since the biblical Gideon lived in Oprah (Judges 6:11, 8:27), usually assumed to have been in the Jezreel Valley nearly a hundred miles away, it is thought that this inscription likely belonged to another Jerubbaal. However, the exact location of Oprah is unknown, and so original ownership by the biblical Gideon could still have been possible.
Interestingly, the related name Ishbaal (“Man of Baal/ the Lord”), which is only mentioned in the Bible during the time of King David, was found in stratum dated to that period at the site of Khirbat Qeiyafa in Israel, showing an emerging pattern of names previously only known from the Bible being attested archaeologically.
Ultimately, of course, we do not know if the Jerubbaal artifact was named for Gideon or some other Jerubbaal, but the fact that it demonstrates the actual use of the unusual name for the first time and that it dates to the time of the biblical Gideon makes it especially interesting. The artifact may not be proof of Gideon, but it certainly demonstrates the reality of an important aspect of the Gideon story – the name Jerubbaal itself.
