Libnah

Libnah is an ancient town cited in the Hebrew Bible as part of the land allotted to the tribe of Judah. It is described as a settlement in the western hills known as the Shephelah, the low-lying area between the hill country of Judah and the coastal plain. In biblical lists, Libnah appears among the towns attributed to Judah in the conquest era, and it is referenced in later narratives that reflect the organizational geography of Judah’s settlements during the Iron Age.

The exact location of Libnah is not known with certainty. Scholarly proposals have placed Libnah in various sites in the western Negev or in the Shephelah near Lachish, but no single identification has achieved wide consensus, and there is no decisive archaeological evidence definitively linking a particular site to Libnah.

Historically, Libnah appears in the broader context of Judah’s town networks in the late biblical period. While the biblical text provides limited detail about Libnah’s specific role or events centered there, its enumeration alongside other Judahite towns contributes to our understanding of the settlement pattern and administrative organization of the region during the early to iron-age periods.

In modern scholarship, Libnah remains one of several biblically attested towns whose precise geography remains debated. The name helps illuminate the scope of Judah’s territorial landscape and the distribution of communities in the Shephelah during biblical times.

See also: Shephelah, Judah, biblical geography, Levitical cities. References to Libnah are found in biblical passages such as Joshua 15 and related lists, with ongoing scholarly discussion about its location.