Rimmon
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Rimmon (Hebrew "pomegranate") is the proper name for a number of people or objects in the Hebrew Bible:
- A man of Beeroth (2 Samuel 4:2), one of the four Gibeonite cities. (See Joshua 9:17.)
- A Syrian idol, mentioned only in 2 Kings 5:18.
- One of the "uttermost cities" of Judah, afterwards given to Simeon (Josh. 15:21, 32; 19:7; 1 Chronicles 4:32). In Josh. 15:32 Ain and Rimmon are mentioned separately, but in 19:7 and 1 Chr. 4:32 the two words are probably to be combined, as forming together the name of one place, Ain-Rimmon = "the spring of the pomegranate" (compare Nehemiah 11:29). It has been identified with Um er-Rumamin, about 13 miles south-west of Hebron.
- The Rock of Rimmon was where the Benjamites fled (Judges 20:45, 47; 21:13), and where they maintained themselves for four months after the fearful battle at Gibeah, in which they were almost exterminated, 600 only surviving out of about 27,000. It is the present village of Rummon, "on the very edge of the hill country, with a precipitous descent toward the Jordan valley," supposed to be the site of Ai.
This entry incorporates text from Easton's Bible Dictionary, 1897, with some modernisation.