IBZAN. From Bethlehem, a judge in Israel, who functioned for a period of seven years. He was renowned for having 30 sons and 30 daughters (Judg 12:8-10). He belongs to the list of five judges (Judg 10:1-5; 12:8-15) who together judged Israel for 70 years but have left no records about their exploits.
INSCRIPTIONS. Texts written on stone, clay tablets, papyri, tree, or metal. Over the period of the last 200 years, literally hundreds of thousands of inscriptions have emerged from the soil of the ancient Near East. These inscriptions have illuminated many aspects of life not only of the ancient Near East in general, but also of Palestine in biblical times. Thus several inscriptions have been found relevant to persons or events mentioned in the Old Testament. Most references to Old Testament personalities are short. However, some inscriptions provide additional information not included in the Old Testament and may elucidate episodes of history as preserved by the Old Testament. Generally speaking, the inscriptions from the ancient Near East should be considered a kind of “reservoir.” Their importance is indirect rather than direct. They contain a wealth of information about living conditions, the enactment of justice, religious beliefs, and literary conventions, common to the world also shared by the authors of Old Testament literature.
Nevertheless, their value is limited. First of all, scholars are depending on luck. Only inscriptions found by excavators are known. There can be no idea of what may still be hidden in the ground. Neither is it known how many inscriptions have been lost over time. The present may possess a fairly extensive collection of information but there is no reason to believe it to be complete. Rather, what is left is a highly fragmentary image of the past. Second, inscriptions found in the ground are often in bad shape. Sections have been lost, tablets have partly crumbled, inscriptions on stones have been obliterated either intentionally or in the course of time, or they are incomprehensible. Interpretation is often problematic.
The more important discoveries of inscriptions and assemblages of inscriptions have been made not in Palestine but in the great cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor—especially at Hattushash, the Hittite capital—and Syria. Inscriptions from Palestine are far apart and mostly very short.
Apart from the casual historical information in official war reports or victory hymns, the Egyptian inscriptions have only minor interest for the study of Palestinian society—with some notable exceptions. Among the important collections of references to Palestine may be mentioned the Execration Texts from the Middle Kingdom, at the beginning of the second millennium B.C.E. These are small inscriptions on figurines intended for magical purposes, mentioning leaders of Palestinian cities. The Amarna Letters from the Late Bronze Age are most important. Several of these include messages sent from Palestinian potentates to the Pharaoh. Merenptah’s victory inscription (c. 1208 B.C.E.) (see Israel Stele) is of special importance for the early history of Israel as it—apart from mentioning a number of localities such as Ashkelon and Gezer—also includes Israel among the vanquished foes of the Pharaoh: “Israel is destroyed. Its seed is no more”—the first known reference to Israel in any ancient text. Among the inscriptions of the first millennium, a list of conquered Palestinian cities included in a victory inscription of Pharaoh Shishak has direct relevance as it is likely to refer to events also mentioned by the Old Testament (1 Kgs 14:25-27).
In Mesopotamia, literally hundreds of thousands of inscriptions have been unearthed, including all possible genres of literature and other documentation. Only a few among them mention people known from the Bible. On the other hand, several compilations of law have been discovered, the most famous being the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon (1792-1750 B.C.E.), and thousands of documents from the courts of Mesopotamia provide an unparalleled insight into the life of ordinary people. Huge mythological texts have also been extracted of the utmost importance for the study of Old Testament literature and religious imagination. Sometimes the parallels are so close that the world of the Mesopotamian inscriptions has been identified also as the world of the biblical authors. Thus the texts from Mari and Nuzi have been understood as reflecting the milieu of the patriarchs. The Assyrian and later Babylonian war records of the first millennium sometimes provide direct information of relevance for the study of Israel’s history. Dating from the ninth century, Assyrian inscriptions mention both Ahab and Jehu, and from the eighth century also Hoshea of Israel. Doubtless the most famous Assyrian inscription pertaining to the Old Testament is Sennecherib’s description of the campaign that led to the siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E. The Babylonian Chronicle that records Nebucadnezzar’s conquest of Jerusalem in 597 B.C.E. is almost in the same category. Belonging to a later period, the private archive of the Murashu family includes references to the Jewish exilic society in Mesopotamia in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E.
The Hittite archive from the Late Bronze Age includes only very few references that have to do directly with matters in southern Syria or Palestine. From an Old Testament point of view, the religious and mythological texts are more important. In contrast, texts from Syria are often very important, although their significance has sometimes been exaggerated, for example, as happened when the archives from Ebla in northern Syria were discovered in the 1970s. The famous texts from the Late Bronze Age discovered at Ugarit since 1929 include several items of extraordinary importance, however not so much for history. The great Ugaritic texts are epics about gods and heroes from the past. Historical information can be found in letters and documents of law, but this has very little to do with Palestine. The Phoenician inscriptions of the first millennium, although important, have only little to say of interest to the student of Israelite history. However, some inscriptions from Transjordan—especially the Mesha inscription—are very important in this respect.
Inscriptions from Palestine in pre-Hellenistic times are relatively few and insignificant as they mainly consist of short notes and messages. Cuneiform documents—both Akkadian and Ugaritic—have been found, for example, at Taanach and Lachish, dating from the Late Bronze Age. From the 11th century an “ABC” turned up in excavations at Izbet Sartah in the form of a Hebrew alphabet. From the 10th century, the Gezer calendar is noted for its layout of the agricultural year. From the ninth century come the Samaria ostraca, administrative documents from the royal court at Samaria. From the ninth or eighth century comes the Tel Dan inscription, the so-called “House of David” text, perhaps referring to an Aramaean victory over a coalition between Israel and Judah. From the eighth century the Siloam inscription is of special interest, recording the carving out of the water tunnel under Jerusalem (see also 2 Kgs 20:20). From the early part of the sixth century are the letters from Lachish recording the situation in Judah on the eve of the Babylonian conquest. On the other hand, the Persian period has yielded very few inscriptions, although the Wadi Daliyah papyri may help throw light on living conditions in Palestine in the fifth or fourth centuries B.C.E. On the other hand, the Elephantine Papyri sometimes have a direct bearing on conditions in Palestine.
ISAAC. The second among the three patriarchs of Israel, the son of Abraham and Sarah and the brother of Ishmael. The name—sometimes spelled differently (e.g., in Jer 33:26; Amos 7:9.16)—means “he who laughs” or “he is kind.” The name may be a shortened form of Isaac-El, that is, “God laughs/God is kind.” The name is not attested in any ancient Near Eastern documents outside the Old Testament. The story about Isaac includes several examples of playing with the meaning of his name, including his “play” with Ishmael that leads to the expulsion of Ishmael and his mother from Abraham’s household (Gen 21). Although Isaac is the hope of old Abraham, he, on the order of God, travels to Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son, but Isaac is saved at the last moment (Gen 22). The story continues to tell how Abraham sent his servant to his relatives in Haran to claim Rebecca as the wife of Isaac (Gen 24). The marriage between Isaac and Rebecca results in the birth of the twins Esau and Jacob (Gen 25) and the ensuing competition between the two brothers that led to the dissolution of Isaac’s family when Jacob fled to Laban, his mother’s brother in Haran, and Esau moved to Seir. When he died, Isaac was buried next to Rebecca in the cave of Machpela at Hebron (Gen 35:27-29).
Scholars have paid attention to the fact that the story about Isaac is limited in extent and almost engulfed by the respective stories about Abraham and Jacob. It has been argued that Isaac as an independent patriarch has been “squeezed” by the two more important patriarchs who have usurped most of the traditions about Isaac. His real home is supposed to have been in the Negeb. Such speculations presuppose that Isaac is a historical person, which is a rather doubtful assumption. Rather, the stories about Abraham and Jacob manipulate the Isaac tradition and partly decide its content. Thus the story about Isaac and Rebecca in Gerar (Gen 26) is no more than a vague retelling of Abraham’s visit to the Pharaoh (Gen 12) and to Gerar (Gen 20).
ISAIAH. A major prophet of the Old Testament, supposed to have prophesied in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (Isa 1:1). Thus he lived to see not only the Assyrian mutilation of the Kingdom of Israel in 732 B.C.E., when a greater part of this kingdom was made into an Assyrian province, but he also experienced its destruction in 722 B.C.E. At a later date, he was present in Jerusalem during Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E. His prophecies are generally accepted as an important testimony not only to the history of Israel and Judah toward the end of the eighth century B.C.E., but also concerning moods and policies—he, so to speak, represents the look behind the curtain. The sayings of Isaiah are covered by the first part of the prophetic book in the Old Testament carrying his name (chapters 1-39). The second part of the Book of Isaiah (Isa 40-55) is attributed by biblical scholars to an anonymous prophet who lived at the end of the Babylonian exile and prophesies about Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon and the return of the Jews to their homeland, while the third part (chapters 56-66) is believed to come from the hand of a post-exilic source of the Persian period.
ISHBOSHET. The youngest son of King Saul, who after the battle at Gilboa and his father’s death succeeded Saul. Abner, his uncle, was the instrument in the rise of Ishboshet to the throne (2 Sam 2:8-10). In the time following his ascension to the throne, Ishboshet continuously lost territory to David. When he also lost the support of Abner, who initiated negotiations with David but was killed at Hebron, Ishboshet’s fate was sealed. Soon after Abner’s abortive mission to David, Ishboshet was killed, whereupon his kingdom transferred its loyalty to David (2 Sam 4). Ishboshet means “man of evil.” It is most likely a pejorative form of Ishba’al, “the man of Baal” (see also 1 Chron 8:33).
ISHMAEL, ISHMAELITES. Ishmael, the eponymous ancestor of the Ishmaelites, was the oldest son of Abraham with his Egyptian secondary wife Hagar (Gen 16; 21). In this way the Ishmaelites are related to the patriarchs. Between c. the eighth and the fifth centuries B.C.E., the Ishmaelites formed the members of the first major Arab tribal coalition known from history—in Assyrian sources they are called the Shumuil. The home of this coalition was the Syrian and North Arabian Desert. The membership of the Ishmaelite coalition also counted “the sons of Ishmael” (Gen 25:12-18). Several among these names are known from Assyrian sources that record numerous encounters with these roaming camel nomads. The later Nabateans may be descendants from the Ishmaelite coalition.
ISHMAEL. A member of the royal house of Judah, who murdered Gedaliah a few months after he had been installed as governor over Judah by the Babylonians (2 Kgs 25:25; Jer 41:2).
ISRAEL. The name of Israel has never been explained. The last element of the name may refer to the West Semitic god El, but no convincing explanation of the first element has ever been proposed. Outside the Old Testament, the references to Israel are few and far between. The name appears for the first time in Pharaoh Merenptah’s Israel stele (c. 1208 B.C.E.) among the vanquished foes of the Pharaoh. The next time it appears is as Serilaya, evidently a corrupted form, in the Assyrian record of the battle at Qarqar (853 B.C.E.). Otherwise the Assyrians referred to Israel as Bit Humriya, “the House of Omri.” Around the middle of the ninth century B.C.E., King Mesha of Moab mentions Israel in his famous inscription (see Mesha and the Mesha inscription). Finally, the Dan inscription refers to the king of Israel, maybe as a parallel to the king of “the house of David” mentioned alongside the king of Israel. In the Old Testament, Israel is the name of a patriarch, a nation, and a state. It is the second name of the patriarch Jacob, who was officially accorded the name of Israel following his fight with God at night (Gen 32:22-32). From its apical ancestor, the chosen people of God carried the name of Israel and Israel is identified as the Jewish people. However, in the Period of the Monarchy, Israel became the name of the Northern Kingdom in contrast to Judah, its southern neighbor.
ISRAEL, KINGDOM OF. The usual name of the northern part of Solomon’s kingdom that gained political independence from Judah and the Davidic dynasty in the time of King Jeroboam I. In Old Testament scholarship it is also called the Northern Kingdom.
ISRAEL STELE. An Egyptian inscription put up by Pharaoh Merenptah (1213-1203 B.C.E.) in commemoration of his victory over the Libyans in his fifth year. The final part of the inscription consists of a hymn praising the Pharaoh for his victory over Asia. This hymn includes the earliest known mention of Israel and has since its discovery been considered the decisive argument for dating the Israelite settlement in Palestine to the end of the 13th century B.C.E. See also SETTLEMENT OF ISRAEL.
ISSACHAR. The fifth son of Jacob and Leah, and the eponymous ancestor of the tribe of Issachar. Little is known about the tribe of Issachar’s early history, although the Blessing of Jacob describes Issachar as a strong ass who submitted to forced labor (Gen 49:14-15). Issachar’s tribal territory was eastern Galilee close to Mount Tabor, a holy place that may have been the common sanctuary of the tribes of Zebulon, Naphtali, Issachar and probably also Asher. The Song of Deborah reckons Issachar among the tribes that fought the Canaanite coalition led by Sisera (Judg 5). In Hebrew Issachar means “a hired worker,” and it has been proposed that the tribe originated as a social term denoting workers living in the Valley of Jezreel who revolted against their Canaanite lords and joined the Israelite tribes.