Beth-lebaoth
Beth-lebaoth is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Negev in modern-day Israel. Known today as Jebel el Biri. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
Beth-lebaoth, meaning "house of lionesses," is a town in the tribal territory of Simeon mentioned in the inheritance lists of Joshua. Joshua 19:6 records it among the cities allotted to Simeon within the broader portion assigned to Judah in the Negev region of southern Canaan. The name evokes a place associated with lions or lion imagery, perhaps referencing a local cult site or a distinctive landscape feature. Simeon's allotment was generally embedded within Judah's territory, and many of the cities listed alongside Beth-lebaoth, such as Sharuhen and Beth-birei, were small settlements scattered across the arid southern margins of the land. The Simeonite inheritance reflects Israel's early settlement patterns in the Negev, where pastoralism and limited agriculture sustained communities on the edge of the wilderness. Beth-lebaoth does not appear again in the historical narrative, which suggests it was a modest settlement of local rather than national significance. Its single biblical occurrence in the boundary lists nonetheless confirms that the Israelite tribal system carefully catalogued even smaller communities as legitimate inheritors of the divine land grant, underscoring the theological importance of every clan's share in the Promised Land.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The precise location of Beth-lebaoth is uncertain. The site is tentatively associated with Jebel el-Biri or a nearby tell in the northern Negev, though scholarly consensus is not firmly established. The Negev region in general has yielded significant Iron Age I and II remains from archaeological surveys, reflecting the southward expansion of Israelite settlement during the early monarchy. Sites in this area typically show evidence of small agricultural and pastoral communities, consistent with what the biblical record implies for Simeonite towns. Without targeted excavation linked specifically to Beth-lebaoth, its identification remains provisional and dependent largely on its listed proximity to better-identified Simeonite towns.
Verse Appearances (1)
Josh
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]