Kirjath-sepher

Kirjath-sepher (meaning city of books or city of the scribes) was the ancient name of Debir, one of the Anakite cities in the hill country of Judah. The name's literary connotation—a city associated with writing, records, or learning—has intrigued scholars, suggesting it may have housed a scribal school, archive, or treaty documents in the pre-Israelite period. It was one of the major Canaanite cities in the southern highlands that fell to Israel during the conquest.

Caleb offered his daughter Achsah as a prize to whoever captured Kirjath-sepher (Joshua 15:16; Judges 1:12), and Othniel son of Kenaz took it. The site is identified by most archaeologists with Khirbet Rabud, a prominent mound in the hill country of Judah southwest of Hebron, where remains from the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age have been found. The city later became a Levitical city for the Kohathites. Kirjath-sepher's dual name—city of books in the Canaanite period, Debir in the Israelite—may preserve the memory of its earlier function as a center of scribal activity under the pre-Israelite administration.