Jabin (
Hebrew: יָבִיןYāḇīn) is a Biblical name meaning 'discerner', or 'the wise'. It may refer to:
A king of
Hazor at the time of the entrance of
Israel into
Canaan (
Joshua 11:1 -
14), whose overthrow and that of the northern chiefs with whom he had entered into a confederacy against
Joshua was the crowning act in the conquest of the land (
Joshua 11:21 -
23; comp
14:6 -
15). The
Battle of the Waters of Merom, fought at Lake
Hula,[citation needed] was the last of Joshua's battles of which we have any record. Here for the first time the
Israelites encountered the iron
chariots and horses of the Canaanites. The Israelites killed him and everyone in his city along with all the people in the cities of Madon,
Shimron,
Achshaph,
Debir, and
Anab. They then destroyed Hazor by fire. According to
Norman K. Gottwald, Joshua had nothing to do with the incident, which probably reflects a tradition of the late 13th century BCE destruction of Hazor by part of a group later identified with the Israelite tribe of
Naphtali.[1]
Another king of Hazor, called "the king of Canaan," who overpowered the Israelites of the north one hundred and sixty years after Joshua's death, and for twenty years held them in painful subjection. The whole population were paralyzed with fear, and gave way to hopeless despondency (
Judges 5:6 -
11), until
Deborah and
Barak aroused the national spirit, and gathering together ten thousand men, gained a great and decisive victory over Jabin in the plain of
Esdraelon (
Judges 4:10 -
16; compare
Psalms 83:9) This was the first great victory Israel had gained since the days of Joshua. For the next forty years, they never needed to fight another battle with the Canaanites (
Judges 5:31).[2]
References
^Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh, Continuum, 1999 p.154.