Jabesh

Jabesh (ja'-besh) יבש^[1] in the Bible is the father of king Shallum of the northern kingdom of ten tribes. Jabesh was also a city in Gilead. In Judges 19 11 tribes of Israel had all but wiped out the tribe of Benjamin. Only 600 men from Benjamin remained on the Rimmon Rock. However the eleven tribes relented from destroying the whole tribe and they decided that they needed to find wives for the 600 men since all other people in Benjamin had been killed. But they had taken an oath not to give their daughters to a Benjamanite so they found the one city in Israel that had not joined the fight: Jabesh. They brought back 400 virgins from Jabesh and gave them to the men on Rimmon Rock. Later Saul from the tribe of Benjamin and the city of Gibeah is made king of Israel. A month later in 1 Samuel 11 a King from Ammon attacks Jabesh and Saul leads Israel to the defense of Jabesh (maybe because his mother was from there and he was defending the only grandparents he had). When Saul dies in 1 Samuel 31 it is not the tribe of Benjamin or David who retrieve his body from the Philistines but men of Jabesh (maybe they were saving the son and hero of their city). ^[2] The name also means "dry" in Hebrew.^[3]

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