History Globe
town or village
Tirzah
- Today Tell el Farah
Lifetime: … – c. 600 BC
Tell el-Far'ah (North), a royal city of the northern kingdom until Omri moved to Samaria; after the Assyrian conquest the town declined and was abandoned about 600 BC.
Battles and sieges
- c. 885 BCOmri besieges Tirzah; Zimri burns the palace over himself 1 Kgs 16:15–18
Omri with all Israel, come up from Gibbethon, against Zimri in Tirzah. The city is taken; Zimri dies in the burning palace after seven days as king.
History
Tirzah is usually identified with Tell el-Far'ah (North), a large mound about 11 km north-east of Nablus at the head of Wadi el-Far'ah, by two strong springs and on the road from the hill country of Shechem down to the Jordan Valley. No inscription names the site. Edward Robinson had thought of Talluza for the likeness of its name; in 1931 W. F. Albright proposed Tell el-Far'ah as a large, well-watered and easily defended site of the right periods, and its excavator Roland de Vaux came to accept the identification. Most scholars and atlases follow it, though it remains a hypothesis.
De Vaux dug the mound in nine seasons between 1946 and 1960 and traced settlement from the Neolithic. In the early third millennium BC a walled town with a monumental gate stood here; it was abandoned in the middle of that millennium, and only centuries later did a Middle Bronze Age town rise on the ruins. Joshua lists the king of Tirzah among the thirty-one kings Israel defeated, and Tirzah is also the name of one of the daughters of Zelophehad, usually read as a clan of Manasseh.
After the kingdom divided, Tirzah became the royal city of Israel. Jeroboam's wife came home to Tirzah, and their sick son died as she crossed the threshold. Baasha and his son Elah reigned there; Zimri killed Elah as he lay drunk in the house of his steward, and seven days later, when Omri besieged the city, burned the king's house over himself. Omri reigned six years in Tirzah and then built Samaria. De Vaux saw in a large unfinished building at Tell el-Far'ah a trace of that move; Israel Finkelstein assigns Tirzah to an earlier level of the mound, and the dating of these levels is still debated.
Menahem went up from Tirzah to Samaria, killed King Shallum and took the throne. The Song of Songs says, "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah". After the Assyrian conquest the town declined, and Tell el-Far'ah was abandoned about 600 BC. In the fourth century AD Eusebius could say of Thersa only that Joshua took it with its king.
Scripture: Num 26:33; Josh 12:24; 1 Kgs 14:17; 1 Kgs 15:33; 1 Kgs 16:8–10; 1 Kgs 16:15–18; 1 Kgs 16:23–24; 2 Kgs 15:14; Song 6:4
Sources
- W. F. Albright, 'The Site of Tirzah and the Topography of Western Manasseh', Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society 11 (1931) 241-251
- R. de Vaux, 'The Excavations at Tell el-Far'ah and the Site of Ancient Tirzah', Palestine Exploration Quarterly 88 (1956) 125-140; 'El-Far'a, Tell, North', in M. Avi-Yonah (ed.), Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, vol. 2 (1976) 395-404
- Eusebius, Onomasticon, s.v. Thersa (no. 498 in C. U. Wolf's translation)
- J.-L. Montero Fenollós and F. Caramelo, 'Nouvelles recherches archéologiques sur l'âge du Fer IIA à Tell el-Far'a, Palestine', CuPAUAM 47 (2021) 11-30 (history of the identification; the periods c. 8500-600 BC)
- I. Finkelstein, 'Tell el-Far'ah (Tirzah) and the Early Days of the Northern Kingdom', Revue Biblique 119 (2012) 331-346
Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.
Verses (13)
- Josh 12:24
- The king of Tirzah, one: all the kings thirty and one.
- 1 Kgs 14:17
- And Jeroboam’s wife arose, and departed, and came to Tirzah: and when she came to the threshold of the door, the child died;
- 1 Kgs 15:21
- And it came to pass, when Baasha heard thereof, that he left off building of Ramah, and dwelt in Tirzah.
- 1 Kgs 15:33
- In the third year of Asa king of Judah began Baasha the son of Ahijah to reign over all Israel in Tirzah, twenty and four years.
- 1 Kgs 16:6
- So Baasha slept with his fathers, and was buried in Tirzah: and Elah his son reigned in his stead.
- 1 Kgs 16:8
- In the twenty and sixth year of Asa king of Judah began Elah the son of Baasha to reign over Israel in Tirzah, two years.
- 1 Kgs 16:9
- And his servant Zimri, captain of half his chariots, conspired against him, as he was in Tirzah, drinking himself drunk in the house of Arza steward of his house in Tirzah.
- 1 Kgs 16:15
- In the twenty and seventh year of Asa king of Judah did Zimri reign seven days in Tirzah. And the people were encamped against Gibbethon, which belonged to the Philistines.
- 1 Kgs 16:17
- And Omri went up from Gibbethon, and all Israel with him, and they besieged Tirzah.
- 1 Kgs 16:23
- In the thirty and first year of Asa king of Judah began Omri to reign over Israel, twelve years: six years reigned he in Tirzah.
- 2 Kgs 15:14
- For Menahem the son of Gadi went up from Tirzah, and came to Samaria, and smote Shallum the son of Jabesh in Samaria, and slew him, and reigned in his stead.
- 2 Kgs 15:16
- Then Menahem smote Tiphsah, and all that were therein, and the coasts thereof from Tirzah: because they opened not to him, therefore he smote it; and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up.
- Song 6:4
- Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.
King James Version