servile.
This is the name also of a Levitical town of the Gershonites, in the tribe of Asher ( Joshua 21:30 ; 1 Chronicles 6:74 ). The ruins of Abdeh, some 8 miles north-east of Accho, probably mark its site.
servant; cloud of judgment
(servile ).
ABDON (1)
ab'-don (`abhdon, perhaps "service"; Abdon):
A certain importance attaches to Abdon from the fact that he is the last judge mentioned in the continuous account (Judges 2:6-13:1) in the Book of Jgs. After the account of him follows the statement that Israel was delivered into the hands of the Philistines forty years, and with that statement the continuous account closes and the series of personal stories begins--the stories of Samson, of Micah and his Levite, of the Benjamite civil war, followed in our English Bibles by the stories of Ru and of the childhood of Samuel. With the close of this last story (1?Samuel 4:18) the narrative of public affairs is resumed, at a point when Israel is making a desperate effort, at the close of the forty years of Eli, to throw off the Philistine yoke. A large part of one's views of the history of the period of the Judges will depend on the way in which he combines these events. My own view is that the forty years of Judges 13:1 and of 1?Samuel 4:18 are the same; that at the death of Abdon the Philistines asserted themselves as overlords of Israel; that it was a part of their policy to suppress nationality in Israel; that they abolished the office of judge, and changed the high-priesthood to another family, making Eli high priest; that Eli was sufficiently competent so that many of the functions of national judge drifted into his hands. It should be noted that the regaining of independence was signalized by the reestablishment of the office of judge, with Samuel as incumbent (1?Samuel 7:6 and context). This view takes into the account that the narrative concerning Samson is detachable, like the narratives that follow, Samson belonging to an earlier period. See SAMSON.
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ABDON (2)
ab'-don (`abhdon, perhaps "service"):
One of the four Levitical cities in the tribe of Asher (Joshua 21:30; 1 Chronicles 6:74). Probably the same with Ebron (in the King James Version "Hebron") in Joshua 19:28, where some copies have the reading Abdon. Now called Abdeh, a few miles from the Mediterranean and about fifteen miles south of Tyre.
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