place · also Gebalite
Gebal
גְּבַל
- verses
- 4
- first named
- Joshua 13:5
- last named
- Ezekiel 27:9
- feature
- region
- coordinates
- 34.12°N · 35.65°E
Byblos (OpenBible)
Scholarship offers 2 identifications for this place. The leading one is shown; the others are recorded in the gazetteer.
Description
Gebal in the text
Gebal, also known as Byblos, was an important Phoenician city located on the Mediterranean coast, north of modern-day Beirut. The city is mentioned in several contexts in the Bible, highlighting its significance in the region.
In Ezk.27.9, Gebal is described as a source of skilled shipbuilders and wise men who helped repair the ships of Tyre, indicating the city's reputation for craftsmanship and maritime expertise. The "elders" and "wise men" of Gebal are specifically mentioned as being employed on Tyrian ships.
Gebal is also listed in Psalm 83:7 among the nations that formed a coalition against Israel, along with Edom, Moab, and others. This suggests that Gebal, at times, was hostile towards Israel and aligned with its enemies.
However, in 1Ki.5.18, the Gebalites (people of Gebal) are mentioned alongside the Sidonians as skilled stonecutters who helped prepare the stones for the construction of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. This indicates that Gebal also had a role in providing materials and labor for this important project.
The city of Gebal has a long history, with evidence of occupation dating back to the Bronze Age. It was an important center of trade and religion, particularly associated with the worship of the goddess Baalat Gebal. The city's strategic location and its valuable resources, such as cedar wood and skilled artisans, made it a significant player in the region's political and economic landscape.
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.
The pattern
Where Gebal 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.
4 verses across 4 of 66 books; 62 write the name nowhere. Named in Joshua (1), 1 Kings (1), Psalms (1) and Ezekiel (1).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 4, across 4 books.
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
What happened here
Atlas's reading of each chapter this place appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources