Adoni-Bezek, ( ''’Aḏōnī-Ḇezeq'', "lord of Bezek"), also written Adonibezek or Adoni Bezek, was a

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

ite

king King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

referred to in the

Book of Judges The Book of Judges is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom in the ...

( ). Previous to the occupation of Canaan by the

Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

, he had subdued seventy of the kings of cities around him. The tribes of Judah and

Simeon Simeon () is a given name, from the Hebrew (Biblical Hebrew, Biblical ''Šimʿon'', Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian ''Šimʿôn''), usually transliterated in English as Shimon. In Greek, it is written Συμεών, hence the Latinized spelling Sy ...

attacked the Canaanites and the

Perizzites The Perizzites () are a group of people mentioned many times in the Hebrew Bible as having lived in the land of Canaan before the arrival of the Israelites. The name may be related to a Hebrew term meaning "rural person."For the etymology, see Hi ...

at Bezek and defeated him. The historical reality of events described in the book of Judges is the subject of ongoing dispute among scholars, who vary in their opinions about how much of the book is historical.

Bezek

Some scholars propose that Bezek was near

Gezer Gezer, or Tel Gezer (), in – Tell Jezar or Tell el-Jezari is an archaeological site in the foothills of the Judaean Mountains at the border of the Shfela region roughly midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It is now an List of national parks ...

. Others suggest that the place is to be identified with Khirbet Ibzik or the nearby Khirbet Salhab, while others think that "Bezek" is a corruption of "Zedek," in reference to the story of

Adonizedek According to the Book of Joshua, Adonizedek ( ''ʾĂḏōnī-ṣeḏeq'', also transliterated Adoni-zedec) was king of Jerusalem at the time of the Israelite invasion of Canaan. According to Cheyne and Black, the name originally meant "Ṣedeḳ ...

. Bezek appears again in as the site where

Saul Saul (; , ; , ; ) was a monarch of ancient Israel and Judah and, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament, the first king of the United Monarchy, a polity of uncertain historicity. His reign, traditionally placed in the late eleventh c ...

assembled the Israelite armies to fight against Nahash the Ammonite.

Mutilation

Adoni-Bezek, according to Judges, had removed the large toes and thumbs of kings he subjugated to render them harmless as warriors, presumably so they could no longer wield weapons or run. After

Joshua Joshua ( ), also known as Yehoshua ( ''Yəhōšuaʿ'', Tiberian Hebrew, Tiberian: ''Yŏhōšuaʿ,'' Literal translation, lit. 'Yahweh is salvation'), Jehoshua, or Josue, functioned as Moses' assistant in the books of Book of Exodus, Exodus and ...

had died, the tribes of Judah and Simeon continued the Israelite conquest of Canaan by leading an army against this Canaanite king. Employing the biblical law of "

eye for an eye "An eye for an eye" (, ) is a commandment found in the Book of Exodus 21:23–27 expressing the principle of reciprocal justice measure for measure. The earliest known use of the principle appears in the Code of Hammurabi, which predates the wr ...

" they did the same to Adoni-Bezek before sending him to

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

as a slave. Adoni-Bezek is recorded as saying "Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to pick up scraps under my table. As I have done, so God has repaid me." According to Elicott's Commentary for English readers, "The cutting off of his thumbs would prevent him from ever again drawing a bow or wielding a sword. Romans who desired to escape conscription cut off their thumbs".

Later life

According to the Book of Judges, he confessed that

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

had requited him for his cruelty to the seventy kings whom he had subdued. Otherwise, nothing is known of his life after his

mutilation Mutilation or maiming (from the ) is Bodily harm, severe damage to the body that has a subsequent harmful effect on an individual's quality of life. In the modern era, the term has an overwhelmingly negative connotation, referring to alteratio ...

Comparison with Adonizedek

According to Coggins, he is probably the same person as

mentioned in Joshua 10 who flourished c. 1200 BC. While some scholars think that the story of Adoni-bezek is a variation on the story of Adonizedek, James Martin argues that the stories are "so dissimilar" that the Adoni-Bezek narrative is most likely not "simply a variant" of the Adonizedek narrative. According to Joshua 10, Adonizedek was captured after taking refuge with four other rulers in a cave and put to death in the course of Joshua's campaign in Canaan. Adonibezek, on the other hand, was captured, in a campaign following Joshua's death, in his city (Judges 1). His name is missing from the list of thirty-one city kings in

12:9-24, although he had subjugated seventy other kings in the Judge's account. It has been argued that the latter figure may not be literally true: ''The Temple Dictionary of the Bible'' (1910) stated: '"This 0is a round number, meaning 'many'".

References

External links

{{Commons
''Jewish Encyclopedia'':
Adoni-Bezek

Adonibezek Amputees Book of Judges monarchs Canaanite people