Beth-horon

Beth-horon was the name of twin towns, “Beth Horon the upper” and “Beth Horon the lower” (2 Chronicles 8:5), and of the pass between them on the road from Gibeon down to the lowland. Where Scripture says only “Beth Horon,” it may mean either town or the pass.

When five Amorite kings made war on Gibeon and Joshua came to its help, “Yahweh confused them before Israel. He killed them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them by the way of the ascent of Beth Horon”; “while they were at the descent of Beth Horon, Yahweh hurled down great stones from the sky on them” (Joshua 10:10–11). The towns stood on the border of Ephraim and Benjamin (Joshua 16:3; Joshua 16:5; Joshua 18:13), and “Beth Horon with its pasture lands” was given out of the tribe of Ephraim to the Kohathite Levites (Joshua 21:20–22; 1 Chronicles 6:66–68).

In Saul's day one company of Philistine raiders “turned the way to Beth Horon” (1 Samuel 13:18). Sheerah, of Ephraim's line, built both towns (1 Chronicles 7:24), and Solomon built them as “fortified cities with walls, gates, and bars” (2 Chronicles 8:5). In Amaziah's reign the soldiers he had sent home “fell on the cities of Judah from Samaria even to Beth Horon” (2 Chronicles 25:13).