History of Hebron

Hebron continued to constitute an important local economic centre, given its strategic position along trading routes, but, as is shown by the discovery of seals at Lachish with the inscription lmlk Hebron (to the king. Hebron), it remained administratively and politically dependent on Jerusalem.

Classic antiquity

After the destruction of the First Temple, most of the Jewish inhabitants of Hebron were exiled, and according to the conventional view, their place was taken by Edomites in about 587 BCE. Some Jews appear to have lived there after the return from the Babylonian exile, however. During the Maccabean period, Hebron was plundered by Judah Maccabee in 167 BCE. The city appears to have long resisted Hasmonean dominance, however, and indeed as late as the First Jewish–Roman War was still considered Idumean. Herod the Great built the wall which still surrounds the Cave of the Patriarchs. During the first war against the Romans, Hebron was captured and plundered by Simon Bar Giora, a Sicarii leader, without bloodshed. The "little town" was later laid to waste by Vespasian's officer Cerealis. Josephus wrote that he "slew all he found there, young and old, and burnt down the town." After the defeat of Simon bar Kokhba in 135 CE, innumerable Jewish captives were sold into slavery at Hebron's Terebinth slave-market.

The city was part of the Byzantine Empire in Palaestina Prima province at the Deocese of the East. The Byzantine emperor Justinian I erected a Christian church over the Cave of Machpelah in the 6th century CE, which was later destroyed by the Sassanid general Shahrbaraz in 614 when Khosrau II's armies besieged