Place · Region
Gilboa
Named in 3 verses across 2 books, first in 1 Samuel 28:4.
In the Bible
All 3 verses, in Bible order. Text from the Berean Standard Bible; verse numbers follow the KJV.
1 Samuel
- 1 Samuel 28:4
The Philistines came together and camped at Shunem, while Saul gathered all Israel and camped at Gilboa.
2 Samuel
- 2 Samuel 1:21
O mountains of Gilboa, may you have no dew or rain, no fields yielding offerings of grain. For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul, no longer anointed with oil.
- 2 Samuel 21:12
he went and took the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan from the men of Jabesh-gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth-shan where the Philistines had hung the bodies after they had struck down Saul at Gilboa.
Dictionary
From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), as attached to this record by Theographic. Its geography and “modern” descriptions date from the 1890s. Easton wrote in 1897, and some of his views are now debated.
Read Easton’s entry
Boiling spring, a mountain range, now Jebel Fukua’, memorable as the scene of Saul’s disastrous defeat by the Philistines. Here also his three sons were slain, and he himself died by his own hand (1 Sam. 28:4; 31:1-8; 2 Sam. 1:6-21; 21:12; 1 Chr. 10:1, 8). It was a low barren range of mountains bounding the valley of Esdraelon (Jezreel) on the east, between it and the Jordan valley. When the tidings of this defeat were conveyed to David, he gave utterance to those pathetic words in the “Song of the Bow” (2 Sam. 1:19-27).