History BACK

Some 3,600 years ago Hebron was a Canaanite town that had not yet changed its name from Kiryat Arba to Hebron (Joshua 14:15). At about this time Abraham and Sarah pitched their tent by the Oaks of Mamre. Through divine appearance they were promised the birth of Isaac (Genesis 18).

When Sarah died in Hebron, Abraham bought the Cave of Machpelah, with the trees and the field adjoining it, in the first recorded transaction involving a Hebrew purchaser of real estate in the land of Canaan (Genesis 23).

About 700 years later, Moses sent men to spy out the land as he prepared to advance on the Promised Land. They visited Hebron which, they reported, was occupied by giants and was well fortified. But when they came to the nearby Valley of Eshkol, ``they cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them'' (Numbers 13:21-24). Ever since, this image has represented the bounty of the Promised Land.

Hoham, King of Hebron, was slain by Joshua at the battle of Ayalon during the conquest of Canaan (Joshua 10:3).

About 250 years later King David ordered the assassins of Saul's son, Ish-bosheth, hanged beside the pool at Hebron, after their feet and hands were cut off (2 Samuel 4:12).

Jews were expelled after the destruction of the First Temple and again 1,700 years later when the Crusaders converted the mosque and synagogue around the Cave of Machpelah into a church.

The Hasmonaean John Hyrcanus took the city at the end of the 2nd century BCE. During the war against the Romans the Jews captured it, only to lose it later when the Romans burned it down.

The Byzantines erected a church over the cave of the patriarchs. This was adapted as a mosque with the Moslem conquest. Henceforth Hebron was known as Khalil al-Rahman, ``The beloved (Abraham) of (God) the merciful.''
It became a district capital under the Mamelukes. Their harsh decree in 1266 forbidding the Jews to enter the Cave of Machpelah was enforced by various conquerors and authorities until June 1967. Before then, the closest Jews could get was to the seventh step of the staircase leading up to the mosque.

In all its turbulent history, Hebron has seldom witnessed such chilling, xenophobic murder as the pogroms of 1929, when its Jewish community was literally decimated in a few hours.

When the town was captured in the Six Day War the Jewish quarter and cemetery were found almost completely destroyed.