Ephron
Ephron is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Samaria in modern-day Israel. Known today as Taybeh. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
Ephron as a city appears in 2 Chronicles 13:19, where the account of Abijah's war against Jeroboam records that Abijah of Judah captured Bethel, Jeshanah, and Ephron with their surrounding villages from the northern kingdom of Israel. This military action was part of Abijah's broader campaign to reassert Judahite dominance in the hill country, and the capture of these three towns represented a significant territorial gain on the northern frontier of Judah. The city's mention alongside Bethel, one of Jeroboam's great cult centers, situates Ephron in the contested border zone between Judah and Israel during the divided monarchy period. Scholars have proposed identifying this Ephron with the site known in the New Testament as Ephraim (modern Taybeh), which would place it in the hill country northeast of Jerusalem at an elevation offering both defensive advantage and control of regional routes. The city thus represents the kinds of frontier settlements whose control directly affected the political balance between the two Israelite kingdoms.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
Ephron of 2 Chronicles 13:19 is most often identified with et-Taiyibeh, the same site proposed for biblical Ephraim, modern Taybeh northeast of Jerusalem. The identification is not certain but is supported by phonetic similarity and geographical appropriateness. The site's hilltop location at approximately 900 meters elevation would have made it militarily valuable in border conflicts between Judah and Israel. Iron Age II pottery recovered from surveys in the Taybeh area is consistent with the period of the divided monarchy when Abijah's campaign occurred. More definitive archaeological confirmation of this identification awaits systematic excavation of the site's earlier strata.
Verse Appearances (1)
2Chr
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]