"As for me, I will dwell at Mizpah ..."

Jeffrey R. Zorn, Aaron Jed Brody

"Tell en-Naṣbeh (biblical Mizpah of Benjamin) was excavated on a grand scale by William F. Badè of Pacific School of Religion between 1926 and 1935. His team uncovered approximately two-thirds of this eight-acre site, providing an unmatched view of a typical rural Israelite town in the hill country in the Iron Age. The studies included in this volume provide insights into the life ways of the inhabitants of this important border town. Until relatively recently excavations in the ancient Near East have focused on macro level questions involving political history and chronology. Often these efforts in Israel focused on elucidating biblical history itself and tying that world into the larger ancient world. Very often the daily lives of average Israelites were ignored, and materials associated with them left largely unstudied and relegated to lists at the ends of site reports. Since 1990,...