GEZER.
(1) Name. This Canaanitish city (p. 703) is called Gob in 2 Sam. xxi :18, while the Sep tuagint and Syriac versions read Gath. The Philistines appear to have been emigrants from Egypt, but they may have belonged to the old half Semitic and half Mongol race of the Hyksos period. The names of their chiefs, such as Abimclech, are usually Semitic, and this applies also to those whose letters, written in Assyrian and Babylonian from Ascalon and Joppa, La chish and Gezer, are preserved, and these let ters date from the ish cent. B. C. (See Amraphel, also Tell Amarna Tablets.) (2) Egyptian Conquest. When the Egyp tians of the eighteenth dynasty conquered Ca naan, Gezer was placed under an Egyptian governor. At the time of the Tell Amarna Tablets the Philistines had not as yet come into Palestine, but the towns which they after wards occupied were there, and they took pos session of them without changing their names ; hence in one of the letters (1o5 B) Adonizedek speaks of a raid on Gezer, Ascalon, and the territory as far as Lachish, after the taking of Ajalon by the Hebrews. Subsequently Gezer was occupied by a Bedawi sheikh, Labai, and his ally: under this rule the city joined in an attack on Ebed-top, the king of Jerusalem. When the Israelites entered Canaan, Horam was king of Gezer, and he went to the assistance of Lachish, but "Joshua smote him and his people, until he had left him none remaining" (Josh. x :33). The town was included in the southern border of the inheritance of Ephraim. "And they drove
not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer." But the Gezerites served the Ephraimites "under tribute." (3) Philistine War. In the time of David "there arose war at Gezer with the Philis tines." A recently discovered inscription of Meneptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, says: "Carried away is the land of Ashkelon. Over powered is the land of Gezer. The Israelites are minished so that they have no seed." (Men eptah, p. 1141.) (4) Under Solomon. In the reign of Solo mon it was again taken by an Egyptian Pharaoh who gave it to his daughter, the wife of Solo mon (1 Kings ix :16). Conder thinks that the Pharaoh who then burned Gezer and gave the site to his daughter may have been the ener getic Saaman of the twenty-first dynasty. The important position of the town as commanding the communication between Egypt and Jerusalem made it a valuable strategic point for Solomon to hold, and he rebuilt and fortified it. It was not heard of again until after the captivity, yet it played an important part in the struggles of the nation, being the Gazera or Gazara of the Apocrypha and Josephus (1 Mace. xv :28, 35).
The place, under the modern name of Tell Jezar, lies to the right of the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem; it is about eighteen miles from the "City of David," and the site is marked by fragments of early pottery and blocks of un hewn stone. It would probably well repay fur ther exploration.—E. A. B.