Sidon (place)

SI'DON.

1. The first son of Canaan (Gen. 10:15).
2. A city founded by the Phoenicians, now called Saida. It is 20 miles north of Tyre and the same distance south of Beirut, on a small promontory. Reference to this city is found in the Tel el-Amarna tablets of 1400 B.C. When the Promised Land was divided among the tribes, Sidon was the northern limit of the country of Zebulun (Gen. 49:13). It was a place of heathen worship even to the days of Ahab, for his wife Jezebel, a Baal worshiper, came from Sidon (1 Kin. 16:31-33; 18:18ff). It was destroyed in 678 B.C. by Esarhaddon, king of Assyria. It was later rebuilt. Joel the prophet condemned it because it had sold Hebrew captives as slaves (Joel 3:4-6). When the second temple was rebuilt, cedar wood was brought from the Sidonians (Ezra 3:7). Sidon became subject to Rome in 64 B.C. With its neighbor Tyre, it had a part in the public ministry of Jesus (Mark 3:8; Luke 6:17; Matt. 11:21,22; Mark 7:24-30). In the 11th and 12th centuries it became a battleground of the Crusaders.