Mount Ebal. Photographer: “Someone35”. Cropped and enhanced. License: CC BY-SA 3.0)
Mount Ebal, 3,080 feet / 940 meters above sea level

What and who is
Ebal

Hebrew: עֵיבָל or עיבל —transliteration: Eybal or Ebal —possible meaning: stony or bald or bare or heap of barrenness (This is a very ancient Edomite name.)

This is the name of a mountain and 2 biblical men.

  1. Mount Ebal

    also known as: Ibal, Mount Eival and Mountain of Cursing

    Hebrew: הר עיבל‎ —transliteration: Har ‘Eival

    This is a limestone mountain 3,076 feet above the level of the sea, and 1,200 feet above the level of the valley, on the north side of which stood the ancient city of Shechem where Abraham pitched his tent and built his first altar in the Promised Land, and received the first divine promise (Genesis 12:6-7).

    Many years later Joshua constructed an altar to YHWH on Mount Ebal (Deuteronomy 27:5-8; Joshua 8:30-35). This was the Israelites’ first great altar to God in the Promised Land. Archaeology has revealed the location of this altar, after thousands of years now visible due to years of careful excavation. It was discovered on the north side of the mountain overlooking Shechem where key events took place in the life of their patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, and where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah were buried in the cave of Machpelah.

    Mount Ebal in Israel (West Bank) / The modern name of the city of Shechem is Nablus.

    On this mountain, 6 of the tribes (Deuteronomy 27:12-13) were appointed to stand and respond according to the orders of Moses, where the law was read by the Levites (Deuteronomy 29:4, 13).

    When you cross the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.

    For the curse, these shall stand on Mount Ebal: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. —Deuteronomy 27:12-13 NASB

    After miraculously conquering Jericho and Ai, Joshua assembled all the Israelites between the 2 mountains of Shechem—Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim.

    At that tim Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, “an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool.”

    And they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings.

    And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written.

    And all Israel, sojourner as well as native born, with their elders and officers and their judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark before the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded at the first, to bless the people of Israel.

    And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them. —Joshua 8:30-35 ESV

    Streaming video— 
    Has Joshua’s Altar Been Found on Mt. Ebal?
    Archaeologist Dr. Scott Stripling with staff members of Associates for Biblical Research, a professional Bible archeology research organization
    Video by Associates for Biblical Research, a Christian Answers Team Member
    Length: 27 minutes
    Streaming video— 
    “The Yahweh Curse Tablet: ABR’s Greatest Archaeological Discovery!”
    Associates for Biblical Research is thrilled to announce the greatest archaeological discovery in our history: a lead curse tablet from an altar on Mount Ebal. Joshua 8:30 indicates an altar was built on this mountain of divine cursing. The 40 visible letters are written in an archaic Hebrew script, also known as proto-alphabetic. It is 200 to 400 years older than any Hebrew text ever found in Israel. Most remarkably, twice it reveals the personal divine name, Yahweh. This discovery will send shock waves through the world of biblical scholarship. An academic, peer-reviewed article is in process and will be published later in 2022.
    Video by Associates for Biblical Research, a Christian Answers Team Member
    Length: 1 minute
    Streaming video— 
    “Archaeological finds at Mt. Ebal upends secular academia”
    Video by One for Israel Ministry (a Christian organization that shares the Gospel of Yeshua the Messiah—Jesus Christ—with Israeli Jews and Arabs within the ancient land of Israel)
    Length: 37 minutes
    Streaming video— 
    “Yahweh Curse Inscription from Mount Ebal”
    Dr. Scott Stripling, ABR’s Director of Excavations and the Director of the Archaeological Studies Institute at The Bible Seminary (Texas) and Jim Scudder Jr. discuss the formulaic curse inscription recovered on a small, folded lead tablet. The ancient Hebrew inscription in proto-alphabetic script consists of 40 letters and is centuries older than any known Hebrew inscription from ancient Israel. It reads:

    Cursed, cursed, cursed - cursed by the God YHW.
    You will die cursed.
    Cursed you will surely die.
    Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.

    The defixio came to light in December 2019 when Scott Stripling, ABR’s Director of Excavations and the Director of the Archaeological Studies Institute at The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas, led an ABR team to wet sift the discarded material from Adam Zertal’s excavations (1982–1989) on Mt. Ebal. Stripling formed a collaboration with four scientists from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and two epigraphers (specialists in deciphering ancient texts): Pieter Gert van der Veen of Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa. The scientists employed advanced tomographic scans to recover the hidden text. In collaboration with Stripling, Galil and van der Veen deciphered the proto-alphabetic inscription.

    According to Stripling, “These types of amulets are well known in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but Zertal’s excavated pottery dated to the Iron Age I and Late Bronze Age, so logically the tablet derived from one of these earlier periods. Even so, our discovery of a Late Bronze Age inscription stunned me.”

    Almost immediately Galil recognized the formulaic literary structure of the inscription: “From the symmetry, I could tell that it was written as a chiastic parallelism.” Reading the concealed letters proved tedious, according to van der Veen, “but each day we recovered new letters and words written in a very ancient script.”

    Daniel Vavrik and his colleagues from Prague ensured the accuracy of the raw data which the team interpreted. According to Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8, Mt. Ebal was the mountain of the curse. Joshua 8:30 indicates that Joshua built an altar on Mt. Ebal. The defixio derived from previously excavated and discarded material from a structure Zertal believed was Joshua’s altar.

    An academic, peer-reviewed article is in process and will be published later in 2022. The collaborative team consists of Scott Stripling, Gershon Galil, Ivana Kumpova, Jaroslav Valach, Pieter Gert van der Veen, Daniel Vavrik, and Michal Vopalensky.
    Video by Associates for Biblical Research, a Christian Answers Team Member
    Length: 17 minutes

    Also see

  2. Ebal, a descendant of Eber and son of Joktan

    See: 1 Chronicles 1:19-23

    He is also called Obal (Genesis 10:28).

  3. Ebal, a descendant of Seir the Horite

    These are the sons of Shobal: Alvan and Manahath and Ebal, Shepho and Onam. —Genesis 36:23

More information

Article Version: September 18, 2024