'City' in the Bible

Cain knew his wife [one of Adam’s descendants] and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch; and Cain built a city and named it Enoch, after the name of his son.

and [Nimrod built] Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah; all these [combined to form] the great city [Nineveh].

They said, “Come, let us build a city for ourselves, and a tower whose top will reach into the heavens, and let us make a [famous] name for ourselves, so that we will not be scattered [into separate groups] and be dispersed over the surface of the entire earth [as the Lord instructed].”

Now the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the surface of the entire earth; and they stopped building the city.

Suppose there are fifty righteous [people] within the city; will You really sweep it away and not spare it for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it?

So the Lord said, “If I find within the city of Sodom fifty righteous [people], then I will spare the entire place for their sake.”

If five of the fifty righteous are lacking, will You destroy the entire city for lack of five?” And He said, “If I find [at least] forty-five [righteous people] there, I will not destroy it.”

It was evening when the two angels came to Sodom. Lot was sitting at Sodom’s [city] gate. Seeing them, Lot got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.

But before they lay down [to sleep], the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, surrounded the house, all the men from every quarter;

And the [two] men (angels) asked Lot, “Have you any others here [in Sodom]—a son-in-law, and your sons, and your daughters? Whomever you have in the city, take them out of here;

So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were [betrothed, and legally promised] to marry his daughters, and said, “Get up, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy this city!” But to his sons-in-law he appeared to be joking.

When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot [to hurry], saying, “Get up! Take your wife and two daughters who are here [and go], or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.”

But Lot hesitated and lingered. The men took hold of his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his two daughters, because the Lord was merciful to him [for Abraham’s sake]; and they brought him out, and left him outside the city [with his family].

Now look, this town [in the distance] is near enough for us to flee to, and it is small [with only a few people]. Please, let me escape there (is it not small?) so that my life will be saved.”

And the angel said to him, “Behold, I grant you this request also; I will not destroy this town of which you have spoken.

Hurry and take refuge there, for I cannot do anything [to punish Sodom] until you arrive there.” For this reason the town was named Zoar (few, small).

Now Ephron was present there among the sons of Heth; so within the hearing of all the sons of Heth and all who were entering the gate of his city, Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham, saying,

to Abraham as his possession in the presence of the Hittites, before all who were entering at the gate of his city.

Then the servant took ten of his master’s camels, and set out, taking some of his master’s good things with him; so he got up and journeyed to Mesopotamia [between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers], to the city of Nahor [the home of Abraham’s brother].

He made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at the time of the evening when women go out to draw water.

Behold, I stand here at the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water;

So he named the well Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.

He named that place Bethel (the house of God); the previous name of that city was Luz (Almond Tree).

Now on the third day [after the circumcision], when all the men were [terribly] sore and in pain, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s [full] brothers, took their swords, boldly entered the city [without anyone suspecting them of evil intent], and they killed every male.

Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom, and the name of his city was Dinhabah.

And Husham died, and Hadad the son of Bedad, who defeated Midian in the country of Moab, reigned as his successor. The name of his [walled] city was Avith.

Baal-hanan the son of Achbor died, and then Hadar reigned [as his successor]. His [walled] city was Pau; his wife’s name was Mehetabel the daughter of Matred, the daughter of Mezahab.

And Joseph gathered all the [surplus] food of the seven [good] years in the land of Egypt and stored [enormous quantities of] the food in the cities. He stored away in every city the food [collected] from its own surrounding fields.

When they had left the city, and were not yet far away, Joseph said to his steward, “Get up, follow after the men; and when you overtake them, say to them, ‘Why have you repaid evil [to us] for good [paid to you]?

Then they tore their clothes [in grief]; and after each man had loaded his donkey again, they returned to the city.

Moses said to him, “As soon as I leave the city, I will stretch out my hands to the Lord; the thunder will cease and there will be no more hail, so that you may know [without any doubt] and acknowledge that the earth is the Lord’s.

So Moses left the city and Pharaoh, and stretched out his hands to the Lord; then the thunder and hail ceased, and rain no longer poured on the earth.

he shall order them to tear out the contaminated stones and throw them into an unclean place outside the city.

He shall have the entire inside area of the house scraped, and the plaster that is scraped off shall be dumped in an unclean place outside the city.

He shall tear down the house—its stones and its timber and all the plaster of the house—and shall take everything outside the city to an unclean place.

But he shall let the live bird go free outside the city into the open field. So he shall make atonement for the house, and it will be clean.”

‘If a man sells a house in a walled city, then his right of redemption remains valid for a full year after its sale; his right of redemption lasts a full year.

But if it is not redeemed for him within a full year, then the house that is in the walled city passes permanently and irrevocably to the purchaser throughout his generations. It does not revert back in the Year of Jubilee.

Therefore, what is [purchased] from the Levites may be redeemed [by a Levite], and the house that was sold in the city they possess reverts in the Year of Jubilee, for the houses in the Levite cities are their [ancestral] property among the Israelites.

But when we cried out to the Lord [for help], He heard us and sent an angel and brought us out of Egypt. Now look, we are in Kadesh, a city on the edge of your territory.

For Heshbon was the city of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab and had taken all his land out of his hand, as far as the Arnon.

That is why those who use proverbs say,“Come to Heshbon,Let the city of Sihon be built and established.

“For fire has gone out of Heshbon,A flame from the city of Sihon;It devoured Ar of MoabAnd the lords of the heights of the Arnon.

When Balak heard that Balaam was coming, he went out to meet him at the city of Moab, which is on the border at the Arnon [River], at the farthest end of the border.

“One from [the descendants of] Jacob shall have dominionAnd will destroy the remnant from the city.”

“The pasture lands around the cities which you shall give to the Levites shall reach from the wall of the city and outward a thousand cubits (1,500 ft.) around.

You shall also measure outside the city on the east, south, west, and north sides two thousand cubits (3,000 ft.), with the city in the center. This shall belong to the Levites as pasture lands for the cities.

The congregation shall rescue the offender from the hand of the blood avenger and return him to his city of refuge, [the place] to which he had escaped; and he shall live there until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the sacred oil.

But if at any time the one guilty of manslaughter comes outside the border of his city of refuge to which he fled,

and the blood avenger finds him outside the border of his city of refuge and kills the offender, the blood avenger will not be guilty of murder,

because the offender should have remained in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest. But after the high priest’s death the offender shall return to the land of his possession.

You shall not accept a ransom for him who has escaped to his city of refuge, so that he may return to live in his [own] land before the death of the high priest.

At the same time we took all his cities and utterly destroyed every city—men, women and children. We left no survivor.

From Aroer, which is on the edge of the Arnon Valley, and from the city which is in the valley, as far as Gilead, there was no city [whose wall was] too high and too strong for us; the Lord our God handed over everything to us.

We captured all his cities at that time; there was not a city which we did not take from them: sixty cities, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.

We utterly destroyed them, just as we did to Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying every city—the men, women, and children.

that some worthless and evil men have gone out from among you and have tempted the inhabitants of their city [to sin], saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods’ (whom you have not known),

you shall most certainly strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it and all that is in it, even its livestock with the edge of the sword.

Then you shall collect all its spoil (plunder) into the middle of its open square and burn the city and set fire to the spoil as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It shall be a ruin forever. It shall not be built again.

then the elders of his own city shall send for him and have him taken back from there and turn him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may be put to death.

“When you advance to a city to fight against it, you shall [first] offer it terms of peace.

If that city accepts your terms of peace and opens its gates to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you.

Only the women and the children and the animals and everything that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the Lord your God has given you.

“When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to capture it, you shall not destroy its [fruit-bearing] trees by swinging an axe against them; for you may eat from them, and you shall not cut them down. For is the tree of the field a man, that it should be besieged (destroyed) by you?

Only the trees which you know are not fruit trees shall you destroy and cut down, so that you may build siegeworks against the city that is making war with you until it falls.

It shall be that the elders of the city which is nearest to the dead man shall take a heifer of the herd, one which has not been worked and which has not pulled in a yoke;

and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a [river] valley with running water, which has not been plowed or planted, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley.

All the elders of that city nearest to the dead man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley;

then his father and mother shall take hold of him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown.

They shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’

Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from among you, and all Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

then the young woman’s father and her mother shall get and bring out the evidence of her virginity to the elders of the city at the gate [where court is held].

and behold, he has made baseless charges against her, saying, “I did not find in your daughter the evidence of her virginity.” But this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.’ And they shall spread out the garment before the elders of the city.

Then the elders of that city shall take the man and reprimand him,

then they shall bring her out to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed a deliberate sin in Israel by playing the prostitute in her father’s house. So you shall remove the evil from among you.

“If a young woman who is a virgin is engaged (legally betrothed) to a man, and another man finds her in the city and is intimate with her,

then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and stone them to death—the young woman because she did not cry out for help [though she was] in the city, and the man because he has violated his neighbor’s [promised] wife. So you shall remove the evil from among you.

Then the elders of his city will summon him and speak to him. And if he stands firm and says, ‘I do not want to marry her,’

“You will be blessed in the city, and you will be blessed in the field.

“You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the field.

and the Negev (South country) and the plain in the Valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar.

the waters which were flowing down from above stopped and rose up in one mass a great distance away at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan. Those [waters] flowing downward toward the sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were completely cut off. So the people crossed [the river] opposite Jericho.

Now you shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do this [once each day] for six days.

So Joshua had the ark of the Lord taken around the city [on the first day], circling it once; then they came back into the camp and spent the night in the camp.

On the second day they marched around the city once, and returned to the camp; they did this for six days.

Then on the seventh day they got up early at daybreak and marched around the city in the same way seven times; only on that day they marched around the city seven times.

And the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city.

The city and everything that is in it shall be under the ban [that is, designated to be destroyed as a form of tribute] to the Lord; only Rahab the prostitute and all [the people] who are with her in her house shall [be allowed to] live, because she hid and protected the messengers (scouts) whom we sent.

So the people shouted [the battle cry], and the priests blew the trumpets. When the people heard the sound of the trumpet, they raised a great shout and the wall [of Jericho] fell down, so that the sons of Israel went up into the city, every man straight ahead [climbing over the rubble], and they overthrew the city.

Then they utterly destroyed everything that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.

Then they completely burned the city and everything that was in it. They put only the silver and the gold, and the articles of bronze and of iron, into the treasury of the house (tabernacle) of the Lord.

Then Joshua made them take an oath at that time, saying, “Cursed before the Lord is the man who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho; with the loss of his firstborn he shall lay its foundation, and with the loss of his youngest son he shall set up its gates.”

Now the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not fear or be dismayed (intimidated). Take all the men of war with you and set out, go up to Ai; see, I have given the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land into your hand.

You shall do [the same] to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king; [except that] you shall take only its spoil and its cattle as plunder for yourselves. Set up an ambush for the city behind it [on the west side].”

He commanded them, saying, “Listen closely, you are going to lie in wait and ambush the city from behind it. Do not go very far away from the city, but all of you be ready.

Then I and all the people who are with me will approach the city. And when they come out to meet us [for battle] as [they did] the first time, we will run away from them.

They will come out after us until we have lured them away from the city, because they will say, ‘They are running from us as [they did] before.’ So we will run from them.

Then you will emerge from the ambush and take possession of the city, for the Lord your God will hand it over to you.

When you have taken the city, you shall set it on fire; you shall do [exactly] as the Lord commanded. See, I have commanded you.”