Ammah
Ammah is a mountain mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Judea in modern-day Israel. Known today as east of Gibeon. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
Ammah appears in 2 Samuel 2:24 as a hill located east of Gibeon, in the territory of Benjamin. The passage records the aftermath of the battle at the pool of Gibeon, where Abner son of Ner and the forces of Ish-bosheth clashed with Joab and the army of David. After the engagement, Abner and his remaining men fled northward toward the wilderness, and Joab and Abishai pursued them until they reached the hill of Ammah, which lay before Giah on the way to the wilderness of Gibeon. It was at this point that Abner called for a halt to the pursuit, appealing to Joab with the question, 'Shall the sword devour forever?', a plea that forestalled further bloodshed that day. The hill of Ammah thus marks the site of a fateful moment in the transition from civil war to the united monarchy, a geographical landmark witnessing the restraint that delayed but could not ultimately prevent the consolidation of David's kingdom. The location is a minor but historically significant toponym in early monarchic narratives.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The hill of Ammah has not been securely identified with a modern site. The narrative of 2 Samuel 2 places it east of Gibeon (modern el-Jib, north of Jerusalem) on the road toward the wilderness of Gibeon. The area east of Gibeon consists of the descending terrain toward the Jordan Valley, a rugged landscape of chalk hills and wadis. No archaeological excavation has specifically targeted a hill associated with the name Ammah. The general region has been surveyed as part of broader Benjamin plateau studies. Gibeon itself was excavated by James Pritchard in the 1950s and 1960s, confirming substantial Iron Age occupation, but the specific toponym Ammah remains unlocated archaeologically.
Verse Appearances (1)
2Sam
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- OpenBible.info (n.d.) Bible Geocoding. Available at: https://www.openbible.info/geo/. [CC BY 4.0]
- Bagnall, R. et al. (eds.) (n.d.) Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places. Available at: https://pleiades.stoa.org. [CC BY 3.0]
- Wikidata contributors (n.d.) Wikidata. Available at: https://www.wikidata.org. [CC0]
- Lawrence, D. et al. (2025) Villages to Empires: a settlement dataset for the Southern Levant. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15111732. [CC BY 4.0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]