Dictionaries :: Kirjathjearim

Smith's Bible Dictionary

Kirjathjearim:

(the city of forests) first mentioned as one of the four cities of the Gibeonites (Joshua 9:17) it next occurs as one of the landmarks of the northern boundary of Judah, ch (Joshua 15:9) and as the point at which the western and southern boundaries of Benjamin coincided (Joshua 18:14, 15) and in the last two passages we find that it bore another, perhaps earlier, name-that of the great Canaanite deity Baal, namely BAALAH and KIRJATH‐BAAL. At this place the ark remained for twenty years (1 Samuel 7:2). At the close of that time Kirjath‐jearim lost its sacred treasure, on its removal by David to the house of Obed‐edom the Gittite (1 Chronicles 13:5-6; 2 Chronicles 1:4; 2 Samuel 6:2 etc.). To Eusebius and Jerome it appears to have been well known. They describe it as a village at the ninth mile between Jerusalem and Diospolis (Lydda.) These requirements are exactly fulfilled in the small modern village of Kuriet‐el‐Enab-now usually known as Abu Gosh, from the robber chief whose headquarters it was-on the road from Jaffa and Jerusalem.