Timnah

Timnah (also Timnath) was a town in the Shephelah region of Judah, assigned first to Dan and later recognized in Judah's territory (Josh. 15:10; 19:43). It was later seized by the Philistines (2 Chr. 28:18). The site is identified with Tell Batash in the Sorek valley, where significant archaeological excavations have confirmed occupation from the Late Bronze Age through the Iron Age.

Timnah is best known in the biblical narrative as the location where Samson took a Philistine wife (Judg. 14:1) and where he encountered the lion whose carcass later harbored a honeycomb — the basis of his famous riddle (Judg. 14:5-18). The name means forbidding or portion in Hitchcock's system. The site's location at the boundary between Israelite and Philistine territory made it a natural setting for the cross-cultural tensions of the Samson narrative.