GELBOE. – Biblical name of the group of hills—the northeastern terminus of the mountain region of Ephraim and Samaria—which border the plain of Esdraelon to the southeast and serve as the watershed between the Jordan valley and the Mediterranean slope.
The battle between the Israelites and the Philistines, in which Saul and his three sons died (I Sam. 28:4), took place at the “dead of G.”; the mountains remained famous because of the curse that David pronounced against them in the sublime elegy on the death of King Saul and his friend Jonathan (II Sam. 1:21).
Eusebius (Onom., 72, 73) mentions the village of Gelbus, six miles from Scythopolis (Bejsān), whose name survives today in the village of Gelbon. The mountain is today called Gebel Fuqāʾsh, after the village of the same name situated on its summits (548 m.).