Magbish
Magbish is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Judea in modern-day Israel. Known today as Khirbet el Makhbiyeh. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
Magbish appears in a single verse of Scripture, Ezra 2:30, within the census of exiles returning from Babylon to Judah under the decree of Cyrus the Great around 538 BC. The text records that "the sons of Magbish" numbered 156 individuals who made the journey home. This list, paralleled in Nehemiah 7, represents one of the most important administrative documents in the Old Testament, cataloguing the families and towns that reconstituted the Jewish community after the devastating Babylonian exile. Notably, Magbish does not appear in the parallel list in Nehemiah 7, suggesting either a scribal variation or that the town was absorbed into a neighboring community by the time of Nehemiah's account. The inclusion of Magbish among the returning exiles testifies to the persistence of communal identity even through decades of displacement. Each town named in Ezra's list, however small, represents families who preserved their heritage in Babylon and chose to return to the promised land, participating in God's ongoing work of restoration after judgment.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
Magbish has been tentatively identified with Khirbet el Makhbiyeh, located in the Shephelah (lowland) region of Judah, southwest of Jerusalem. This identification is based primarily on the similarity of the Arabic place name to the biblical Hebrew. The site sits in the foothills between the coastal plain and the Judean highlands, an area dotted with numerous small Iron Age settlements. Limited survey work in the area has documented pottery sherds from the Iron Age and Persian periods, consistent with a settlement that existed both before the exile and during the return. No systematic excavation has been conducted at the site. The Shephelah region as a whole has been extensively surveyed, revealing a dense pattern of small agricultural towns matching the biblical portrait.
Verse Appearances (1)
Ezra
Sources: ISBE Encyclopedia · OpenBible Geocoding (CC BY) · Pleiades Gazetteer View all →