Jebusite

Overview

• The Canaanite people who held Jebus — the fortress city that would become Jerusalem — until David captured it.
• The Temple itself was later built on a Jebusite threshing floor.

Summary

The Jebusites were one of the peoples of Canaan (Genesis 10.16), holding the stronghold of Jebus in the central hill country. So strong was their city that the tribes of Judah and Benjamin could not drive them out, and "the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day" (Joshua 15.63; Judges 1.21). It was David who finally took the fortress of Zion, which then became "the city of David" and the capital of the kingdom (2 Samuel 5.6-9).[^1] The most remarkable turn comes at the end of David's reign: to stay a plague, David buys the threshing floor of Araunah (Ornan) the Jebusite and there builds an altar to the Lord (2 Samuel 24.18-25) — and on that very Jebusite ground Solomon would raise the Temple (2 Chronicles 3.1).[^2] Thus a captured pagan hill-fort becomes the site of the holiest place in Israel, a quiet sign of how God takes what was outside the covenant and makes it holy.

Sources

[^1]: Jebusite descent (Genesis 10.16); the city not dispossessed (Joshua 15.63; Judges 1.21); David's capture of Zion (2 Samuel 5.6-9). [^2]: The threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite bought for an altar (2 Samuel 24.18-25), and identified as the site of the Temple (2 Chronicles 3.1).