Cabul: A Royal Gift Found

After King Solomon constructed the Jerusalem Temple and his adjacent royal palace, he made a gift to Hiram, the Phoenician king who had supplied him not only with craftsmen for the project, but also with much timber and gold. Solomon’s gift: 20 towns in Galilee. But when Hiram inspected the towns, he didn’t like them. As a result, they were named Cabul-land. No one seems to know what “Cabul” means or why the name was appropriate to express Hiram’s dissatisfaction (1 Kings 9:10–14).

I believe we have recently located Cabul in the Galilee. If we are correct, Hiram built an imposing fort there, which was twice destroyed and then abandoned.

The key to the identification is geography and, as so often happens, an Arabic place name that preserved, with slight modification, the Biblical name.