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town or village
Lod
History
Lod, called Lydda in Greek, lies in the coastal plain about 18 km south-east of Joppa, where the plain meets the foothills of Judaea. People lived here as early as the sixth millennium BC, and in the Early Bronze Age it was an important settlement. Lod is usually recognised in the list of Canaanite towns that Thutmose III of Egypt had carved at Karnak in the fifteenth century BC.
Chronicles names Shamed of Benjamin as the builder of Ono and Lod, and after the exile 725 people of Lod, Hadid and Ono returned from Babylon (721 in Nehemiah's list). In the Hellenistic age Lydda belonged to the district of Samaria until about 145 BC, when the Seleucid king Demetrius II gave it, with two neighbouring districts, to Judaea. In 43 BC Cassius, raising money after Caesar's murder, sold its people into slavery; Mark Antony soon ordered the Jews who had been sold to be set free.
Peter came down to the saints at Lydda and healed Aeneas, who had kept his bed eight years, and all who lived at Lydda and Saron turned to the Lord. Because Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples there sent for Peter when Tabitha died. In AD 66 Cestius Gallus, the governor of Syria, found the town empty, its people gone up to Jerusalem for the feast of tabernacles, and burnt it; two years later it surrendered to Vespasian.
After AD 70 Lydda was a centre of Jewish learning, where rabbis such as Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and Tarfon taught. About AD 200 Septimius Severus made it a Roman city named Diospolis, and in the fourth century Eusebius used Diospolis as a landmark for many villages. In December 415 a synod of fourteen bishops met here and acquitted the monk Pelagius; Augustine wrote a treatise on its proceedings. Christian tradition later placed the tomb of St George at Lydda.
Scripture: 1 Chr 8:12; Ezra 2:33; Neh 7:37; Acts 9:32–35; Acts 9:36–38
Sources
- Thutmose III's list of Canaanite towns at Karnak
- 1 Maccabees 11.34; Josephus, Antiquities 13.127
- Josephus, Antiquities 14.275; 14.321; Jewish War 1.222
- Josephus, Jewish War 2.515-516; 4.444
- Eusebius, Onomasticon (e.g. s.v. Kariathiareim, Wolf no. 598)
- Augustine, On the Proceedings of Pelagius 1; Retractations 2.45 (NPNF numbering)
- J. J. Schwartz, Lod (Lydda), Israel: From its Origins through the Byzantine Period, 5600 B.C.E.-640 C.E. (BAR International Series 571, 1991)
- Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography (2nd ed., 1979)
Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.
Verses (7)
- 1 Chr 8:12
- The sons of Elpaal; Eber, and Misham, and Shamed, who built Ono, and Lod, with the towns thereof:
- Ezra 2:33
- The children of Lod, Hadid, and Ono, seven hundred twenty and five.
- Neh 7:37
- The children of Lod, Hadid, and Ono, seven hundred twenty and one.
- Neh 11:35
- Lod, and Ono, the valley of craftsmen.
- Acts 9:32
- And it came to pass, as Peter passed throughout all quarters, he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda.
- Acts 9:35
- And all that dwelt at Lydda and Saron saw him, and turned to the Lord.
- Acts 9:38
- And forasmuch as Lydda was nigh to Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent unto him two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to them.
King James Version