person
Adoni-bezek
אֲדֹנִי־בֶ֫זֶק
Adoni-bezek was a Canaanite king who was defeated by the men of Judah, and had his thumbs and big toes cut off as he had done to seventy other kings.
- verses
- 3
- first named
- Judges 1:5
- last named
- Judges 1:7
- period
- before Israel's Monarchy
- tribe
- Canaan
Description
Who was Adoni-bezek?
Adoni-bezek was a Canaanite king mentioned in Jdg.1.5-7. He ruled over the city of Bezek, which was located in the territory allocated to the tribe of Judah after the Israelites entered the Promised Land.
According to the account in Judges, the men of Judah and Simeon fought against Adoni-bezek and defeated him. During the battle, Adoni-bezek fled, but he was pursued, caught, and captured by the Israelites.
As punishment for his cruelty, the Israelites cut off Adoni-bezek's thumbs and big toes. This was an act of retribution, as Adoni-bezek himself confessed that he had done the same to seventy other kings who had gathered scraps under his table. The seventy kings Adoni-bezek mutilated likely represented the extent of his power and dominion over the surrounding areas.
Adoni-bezek acknowledged the justice of his punishment, stating, "As I have done, so God has repaid me" (Jdg.1.7). This statement reflects the biblical principle of reaping what one sows and the concept of divine retribution for evil deeds.
After his capture and mutilation, Adoni-bezek was brought to Jerusalem, where he died. The defeat of Adoni-bezek was part of the larger conquest of Canaan by the Israelites under the leadership of Joshua and the subsequent judges.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
Places
Where this happens
The places the claims about this person reach, drawn where the gazetteer locates them. A point is where a row puts them and never where tradition does; no line joins two points, because the rows state where and not in what order.
The pattern
Where Adoni-bezek is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
3 verses across 1 of 66 books; 65 write the name nowhere. Named in Judges (3).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 3, across 1 book.
Onward
Where this page goes
Nothing in the graph stands one hop from this entity yet. These are the best-connected entities of the same type, so the page still ends somewhere. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
Chapter by chapter
Atlas's reading of each chapter this person appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources