Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Dear B-Hebrew friends:

In Judges 1:8 it’s written that Judah fought against Jerusalem and took it, burning it with fire. I think this is a copyist error because:

Judges 1:3 Judah was fighting within its inheritance, and that of Simeon, and Jerusalem was in the inheritance of Benjamin.

Judges 1:21 Benjamin didn’t capture Jerusalem, not until King David was Jerusalem captured.

Possible answers:

There was more than one city named Jerusalem. After all, there were two if not three cities named Bethlehem, and at least three cities named Qadesh, so can we rule out a second city named Jerusalem? I think this answer is unlikely but I can’t rule it out.

What evidence is there from textual variants and DSS?

LXX has Jerusalem.

Karl W. Randolph.