Tekel (Hastings' Dictionary)

See Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. TEKOA (J'lpn ; LXX Gcicue, Gf/coCe, BtKiifx, Geniis). — A town in the tribe of Judah, about 10 miles S. of Jerusalem and 5 S. of Bethleliem, situated on a detached hill about 2700 ft. high which is girt with other lower hills. From the summit there is a broad prospect. In the W. and S. tlie view is closed by hills, cultivated or clothed with low vegetation. On the N. is the ravine of Urt.'

is and its continuation KhureitOn, cutting deeply through the hills down to the Dead Sea. Tlie Frank moun- tain and Bethlehem are visible : Jerusalem is hidden behind intervening hills, but the Mount of Olives can be seen and, still farther to the N., Nebi SamAvil. To the S.E. is another deep and wild valley, Wady Jeliar, running towards the Dead Sea, glim])ses of which can be obtained through the distant clifis. Eastwards the hill slopes down to the Wilderness of Judah.

Canon Tristram describes the approach from the Wady liereikeh : ' In front of us is a long hill, with a copious spring at its foot. . The district in its natural features seems to have been always w^hat it is now — bare, treeless, open pasturage. We here lose all traces of the ancient terraces which gird the undulations of every hill farther west with their swathing bands.

Here and there are still patches of cultivation in the hollows of the valleys, but the soil is dry and stony, and we begin here to lose the rich vegetable mould w hich, however scanty, still covers more or less the whole of the central hills, and have, in its stead, only a thirsty, chalky marl.

That vegetable soil is doubtless due, in the lirst instance, to the prim- aeval forest, which certainly once covered the whole of the Judoean, as of the Gilead, range, but has left no trace of its existence on the Western slopes towards the Dead Sea.' The town is not mentioned very frequently in Scripture. The Heb. of Jos 15''" does not include it in the list of places Ijelonging to Judah : the LXX gives it and ten other towns, one of them being Bethlehem.

1 Ch 2-^ 4' ascrilie to Tekoa an anti- quity coeval with the Conquest. According to tnese passages, Ashhur, Caleb's half-brother, was the father, i.e. the founder, of Tekoa. In 2 S 14 the wLse woman of Tekoa is spoken of in such a manner as to convey the impression that her shrewdness had brought her dwelling, place into notoriety.

David spent much time in this part of the country during his Wanderjahre : afterwards it was a recruiting ground for the ranks of his mighty men (2 S 23-'», 1 Ch 11=8). prom 2 Ch 11« we learn that it was one of the towns fortified by Reboboam. Its commanding position and its situation on the utmost frontier of the cultivated land would ensure its being made a military post. Jer 6' shows that its defences continued to be kept up.

The p"ophet bids the children of Benjamin raise up a signal on Beth-haccherem (Jebel Fureidis, the Frank moun- tain), and blow tlie trumpet in Tekoa. This is not said merely for the sake of the play on words, tik'u, Tekoa [note also tak^H in v.^], but also because this was a garrison town. The Wilder- ness of Tekoa is named at 2 Ch 20^ as the battle- field where Jehoshaphat defeated the Ammonites and their allies. In the Bk.

of Nehemiah (3°- ") the public, spiritedness of the commonalty is sharply contrasted with the contemptuous retusal of their chiefs to bend the neck to the Tirshatha's yoke. 1 Mae 9^ relates that Simon and Jonathan ned to the Wilderness of Tekoa from before Bac- chides. The crowning glory of Tekoa was its connexion with the prophet Amos (Am 1'). Josephus, who mentions Tekoa as one of the 'strong and large cities' built by Rehoboam (Ant. Vlll. X.

1), speaks of it as a village in the Macca- baean period (BJ IV. ix. 5) and in his own day (Vita, 75). Jerome (Comm. in Jerem. vL 1) calls it a village, 12 (Roman) miles from Jerusalem, visible to him from Bethlehem every day. In the Pref .

to Amos he adds : ' There is no village be- yond Tekoa, not even [a probable conjectural emendation is 'except'] rustic huts, of the appear- ance of ovens, which the Africans call mapalia : such is the desolateness of the desert which extends as far as the Red Sea and the boundaries of the Persians, Ethiopians, and Jews.

And because no kind of crop whatever grows on the dry and sandy soil, the whole neighliourhood is occupied by shepherds, to comjiensate for the barrenness of the soil by the multitude of sheep.' The same Father asserts that the tomb of Amos was shown at this place. The Talmud speaks of the oil of Tekoa as the best in the country ; and one of the Arab geo- graphers says that its honey was so excellent as to have become proverbial. In the early part of the 6th cent.

Saba founded a new monastery here, which, in contradistinction to Laura (Miir SAha), was called Laura Nova, ' New Monastery.' Soon after his death it became the scene of tierce con- llicts between the Monophy sites and the orthodox. In Crusading times it was inhabited by a lar^e population of Christians, who afforded considerable help to the Franks during the first siege of Jeru- salem. The village was sacked by a party of Turks from beyrnd the Jordan in A.D.

1138, bul TEKOA TELEM 693 the majority of the inliabitants had taken refuge in the great cave of KliurcitCln. Tliere is a eonie- vhat puzzling reference in Baliaoddinus, Vita Salad., ed. bchultens, p. 237. He writes of 'the river of Tekoa (c «aJ .a)), one parasang [=about 3 Eng. miles] fruni Jerusalem, which fur- nished a suftiuient supply of water to Uichard of Kngland and his army ' of Crusaders. It is obvious that the distance here given does not agree with the facts.

Thesug;^estion has been made that the water in question was that of the lake mentioned 1 Mac 9** Td OSuip XiKKOv 'Aa(pdp (X, Ven.), or "Air^dX (A), which Josephus {Ant. XHI. i. 2) calls tA CSujp ri KoXov/ievo;/ XcLkkov 'Aatpdp, and which Miihlau identifies with ez-Z(i UrAne S. of Tekoa, Robinson (BliP' ii. 202) with Bir Selhub S.W. of En-gedi. The Palestine pilgrims of the Middle Ages do not enlighten us greatly as to the condition or history of Tekoa. In the account of St.

Willibald's pil- grimage (8th cent.) it is said that he came hither, and ' tliere is now a church, and there rests one of the prophets.' The anonymous itinerary of this journey asserts that Nathanael was one of the infants at Bethlehem wlien Herod slew the chil- dren, that his mother hid him under a tig tree (Jn l"), and that he escaped to Tekoa. In the 12th cent.

John of WUrzburg and I'etellus state that the tomb of Amos was shown there, the latter adding, ' From its confines Habakkuk was borne by the angel to Babylon. In Thecua many of the prophets used to meet together to discuss divine things.' Isaac Chelo (A.D. 1134) speaks of the tomb of Amos as being in a cave at this place. From William of Tyre we learn that in A.D. 11-44 queen Melesinda gave the spot to the canons of the Iloly Sepulchre in exchange lor property at Bethany.

The ancient name Tekiia still clings to the site (Robinson, Pal. ii. 4U0!i'. ; (iu6rin, Judie, iii. 141 ff.) In the neighbourliood large flocks of sheep and goats, together with a few oxen, are pastured by Arabs, genuine representatives of the nomads who dwelt there in ancient days. On the level ground immediately near the hill corn is grown. The shepherds use for sheep-cotes the numerous caves with which the mountains are honeycombed.

On the broad summit of the hill of Tekoa tliere are ruins which cover a space of four or Hve acres. They ' consist chiefl}' of the foundations of houses constructed of large hewn stones, some of them bevelled. At the K.E are the remains of a square tower, occupying a very commanding position ; and near the middle of the site are the ruins of a Greek church, with several broken columns and an octagonal baptismal font of rose-coloured lime- stone, 5 ft. diani.

on the outside, 4 on the inside, and 3 ft. 9 in. deep. There are also many cisterns excavated in the rock.' The view of the font in Wilson's Picturesque Palestine, iii. 184, is well worth seeing. Cyril of Alexandria asserts that the Tekoa of Amos was an Ephraimite, not a Juda;an city. The author of the Lives of the Pruphets says that it was in the tribe of Zebulun — probably a mi.stake for Simeon, since Simeon bordered clo.sely on Judah. Abarbanel and Kiinchi jilace it in the tribe of Asher.

But tliere is not a particle of real evidence in favour of a second Tekoa. Tekoite. — A native or inhabitant of Tekoa. The adjective is used three times in the singular number (2 S 23^, 1 Ch 112»27") of one of David's mighty men, Ira, the son of Ikkesh the Tekoite. In 2 S 14*- • the Heb. has the fem. form, but our versions render the expression, 'ishshAh hat-tiko tth, by ' woman of Tekoa.

In Neh 3'- " the plural is eni|)loyed for one of the bands of volunteers who rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem under Nehemiah. It is a little doubtful whether these men actually occupied Tekoa at the time. Tekoa does not figure in the list of repeopled towns given in Ezr 2 ; they ma}' have been simply ' a clan of fellow- townsmen who had held together during the Exile, and were known by this name after they had settled in Jerus;ilem.' In any case their public- spirited zeal (v.")

sheds lustre on the name. J. Taylor.