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AbileneAid to Bible Understanding
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At Luke 3:1 we are told that in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar (28/29 C.E.) the district was ruled by Lysanias. This fact is confirmed by an inscription found at Abila in connection with a temple dedication dating from the reign of Tiberius and which inscription bears the name “Lysanias the tetrarch.” Prior to this, Abilene had formed part of the kingdom of Herod the Great, but following his death, about the year 1 B.C.E., it was included in the province of Syria. Josephus records that the “tetrarchy of Lysanias” was joined to Palestine, in 37 C.E., under Herod Agrippa I and that it was thereafter bestowed upon Herod Agrippa II by Claudius, in 53 C.E.
Still to be seen around the site of Abila are the ruins of temples, tombs, aqueducts and roads evidencing its Greco-Roman culture. The so-called ‘tomb of Abel’ is located in Abila, but this tradition is doubtless the result of confusing the name of Cain’s brother (Heʹvel, Hebrew) with ʼa·velʹ, “a meadow.”
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AbimaelAid to Bible Understanding
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ABIMAEL
(A·bimʹa·el) [my father is God; God is father].
A descendant of Shem through Arpachshad. His father was Joktan, whose brother, Peleg, was an ancestor of Abraham. (Gen. 10:28; 1 Chron. 1:17-27) It is likely that Abimael and his twelve brothers were the sources from which thirteen different Arabian tribes developed, settling in the Arabian peninsula.
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AbimelechAid to Bible Understanding
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ABIMELECH
(A·bimʹe·lech) [my father is Melek (king)].
Either a personal name or an official title of several Philistine kings, similar to the title “Pharaoh” among the Egyptians and “Caesar” among the Romans.
1. The king of the city of Gerar, where Abraham and Sarah took up temporary residence in 1919 B.C.E. Thinking the couple were brother and sister, he took Sarah to become his wife, but, providentially, did not touch her. Sarah was probably already in her first months of pregnancy with Isaac at this time. Warned by Jehovah in a dream, the king returned Sarah to Abraham together with compensation consisting of livestock and slaves, and, in addition, a thousand shekels of silver ($475) as a guarantee of Sarah’s chastity. Sometime later this king concluded a covenant of peace and mutual confidence with Abraham at Beer-sheba.—Gen. 20:1-18; 21:22-34.
2. Possibly another king of Gerar at the time Isaac went there because of a famine. This was after the death of Abraham in 1843 B.C.E. Isaac, like his father Abraham, attempted to pass Rebekah off as his sister but when the king, by accident, discovered she was Isaac’s wife, he issued a public decree granting them protection. Isaac’s God-given prosperity, however, became the object of envy, and so the king requested Isaac to move out. Sometime later this king of Gerar concluded a covenant of peace with Isaac similar to the one his predecessor had made with Abraham.—Gen. 26:1-31.
3. The Philistine king of the city of Gath in David’s day.—Psalm 34, superscription.
4. A son of Judge Gideon born to his concubine at Shechem. After his father’s death, Abimelech with presumptuous impudence sought to make himself king. Cunningly, he appealed to the landowners of Shechem through his mother’s influential family. Upon obtaining their financial support he hired some ruffians, went to his father’s house at Ophrah and there massacred his seventy half brothers upon a single stone, with only the youngest, Jotham, escaping the slaughter.
Abimelech was then proclaimed king, but Jehovah allowed a bad spirit to develop between the Shechemites and their new “king,” in order to avenge the bloodguilt of all those connected with the conspiracy. A revolt was organized by Gaal. Abimelech quickly crushed it, captured and destroyed the city of Shechem and sowed it with salt. Then he attacked the vault or sanctuary of the house of El-berith and set it afire, and in the conflagration about a thousand of his previous collaborators, the landowners of the tower of Shechem who had taken refuge there, were burned to death. Immediately Abimelech followed up this success by attacking Thebez to the north, only to have a woman on the city tower hurl an upper millstone down upon his head. Abimelech’s three-year “reign” came to an end when his armor bearer, in compliance with his dying request, ran him through with the sword, so that it could not be said that a woman had killed him.—Judg. 8:30, 31; 9:1-57; 2 Sam. 11:21.
5. The Authorized Version reads “Abimelech” in 1 Chronicles 18:16, due to a copyist’s error, for the Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac Peshitta and twelve Hebrew manuscripts read “Ahimelech,” and this is in agreement with 2 Samuel 8:17.
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AbinadabAid to Bible Understanding
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ABINADAB
(A·binʹa·dab) [my father is noble, father of liberality].
1. An inhabitant of the city of Kiriath-jearim in the territory of Judah about eight miles northwest of Jerusalem, in whose home the ark of the covenant was kept for a time. When the sacred Ark was brought up from Beth-shemesh after its disastrous seven-month sojourn among the Philistines, it was deposited in the home of Abinadab, and his son Eleazar was sanctified to guard it. Here in this home the Ark remained for some seventy years, until David arranged to transfer it to Jerusalem. During the transfer another of Abinadab’s sons, Uzzah, dropped dead in his tracks when Jehovah’s anger blazed against him, due to touching the Ark in disregard of the command at Numbers 4:15.—1 Sam. 6:20–7:1; 2 Sam. 6:1-7; 1 Chron. 13:6-10.
2. The second son of Jesse, and one of David’s three older brothers who went to war with Saul against the Philistines.—1 Sam. 16:8; 17:13.
3. One of the sons of King Saul who was slain by the Philistines at Mount Gilboa.—1 Sam. 31:2; 1 Chron. 9:39.
4. The father of one of King Solomon’s twelve food-supply deputies. This deputized “son of Abinadab,” who is also called Ben-abinadab, married Solomon’s daughter Taphath, and was assigned to provide food for Solomon’s household one month out of the year from all the mountain ridge of Dor.—1 Ki. 4:7, 11.
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AbinoamAid to Bible Understanding
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ABINOAM
(A·binʹo·am) [father of pleasantness].
The father of Judge Barak, and a descendant of Naphtali. He was evidently a resident of the refuge city of Kedesh in the territory of Naphtali.—Judg. 4:6, 12; 5:1, 12.
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AbiramAid to Bible Understanding
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ABIRAM
(A·biʹram) [father of elevation, pride or lordliness; proud].
1. A Reubenite, the son of Eliab and brother of Dathan and Nemuel. He was a family head and one of the principal men in Israel at the time of the exodus from Egypt.—Num. 26:5-9.
Abiram and his brother Dathan supported Korah the Levite in his rebellion against the authority of Moses and Aaron. A third Reubenite, named On, is also included in the initial stage of the rebellion but thereafter receives no mention. (Num. 16:1) Having gathered a group of 250 chieftains, who were “men of fame,” these men accused Moses and Aaron of arbitrarily elevating themselves over the rest of the congregation. (Vss. 1-3) From Moses’ words to Korah it is clear that Korah and his followers among the Levites sought the priesthood that had been conferred on Aaron (Vss. 4-11); but this was evidently not the case with Abiram and Dathan, who were Reubenites. Moses dealt separately with them, and their rejection of his call for them to appear before him contains accusations directed solely against Moses with no mention made of Aaron. They decried Moses’ leadership of the nation and said that he was ‘trying to play the prince over them to the limit,’ and that he had failed in making good the promise of leading them into any land flowing with milk and honey. Moses’
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