From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see cades
- This article is about Kedesh on the Israeli-Lebanese
border, see also Kadesh or Kadesh (South of Israel) .
The ruins of the ancient Canaanite village of Kedesh are
located within the modern Kibbutz Malkiya in Israel on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Kedesh was first documented in the Book of Joshua as a Canaanite citadel that was conquered by the Israelites under the
leadership of Joshua.
Ownership for Kedesh was turned over, by lot, to the tribe of Naphtali and subsequently, at the command of
God, Kedesh was set apart by Joshua as one of the Cities of
Refuge along with Shechem and Kiriath Arba (Hebron) (Joshua 20:7).
In the 8th century BCE during the reign of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III king of Assyria
took Kedesh and deported its inhabitants to Assyria (2 Kings 15:29).
Later, in the 5th century BCE Kedesh may have become the
capital for the Persian controlled, Tyrian administrated province of the Upper
In 259 BC Kedesh was
mentioned by Zenon, a traveling
merchant from Egypt.
Between 145 BC and 143 BC Kedesh (Cades) was
overthrown by Jonathan
Maccabeus in his fight against the Seleucid king Demetrius I
Soter  . It
remains abandoned until this day. Tel Kedesh continues to be
excavated by the University of Michigan.
In the Book of
Judges, the great oak tree in Zaanaim is stated to be near Kedesh (Judges 4:11).
Avraham; Gibson, Shimon (2005), Archaeological Encyclopedia of
the Holy Land, Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 0826485715,
Coordinates: 33°06′42″N 35°31′46″E / 33.111638°N