Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Gibeon

​Gibeon, a town famous in Old Testament history,known under the name of El Jib, situated 5 miles north-west of Jerusalem. It is now a small village standing on an isolated hill above a flat corn valley. The famous spring (2 Sam. ii. 13) comes out from under a cliff on the south-east side of the hill, and the water runs to a reservoir lower down. The sides of the hill are rocky, and remarkable for the regular stratification of the limestone, which gives the hill at a distance the appearance of being stepped. Scattered olive groves surround the place. The name is derived from the Hebrew root gabah, signifying "prominence," and there are throughout Palestine many ancient sites situate on rocky knolls which receive names (e.g., Gibeah, Geba, Gabe, Gaba—nearly all represented by the present Jeba) derived from this same root.

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