IBLEAM ĭb’ lĭ əm (יִבְלְעָמ׃֙). The Canaanite town (Judg 1:27) in the southern point of Jezreel Valley proper, guarding one of the four or five passes on the Via Maris from the Sharon Plain. The name would appear to be an atronymic and is attested already in the 15th cent. b.c. by Thutmose III’s list of 119 Canaanite towns, of which No. 43 is Ybr’m, Ibleam. The perplexing reference in Joshua 17:11 that Manasseh had “in Issachar and in Asher...Ibleam” has been cleared up by Y. Kaufmann. The text should not be tr. in Issachar and in Asher, but beside, or along, or to the border of these other two tribes.

Ahaziah, king of Judah, was slain by Jehu when he fled by chariot at the ascent of Gur, which is near Ibleam (2 Kings 9:27). In 2 Kings 15:10, some would correct the awkward “before the people” to “in Ibleam,” on the basis of the LXX text of Lagardiana, thus making Ibleam infamous again as the site of Shallum’s assassination of the king of Israel, Zechariah.

It seems reasonable to take the 1 Chronicles 6:70 reference to the Levitical city “Bileam” as identical with Ibleam.

Modern Ibleam is Khirbet Bil ’ameh, N of Shechem and ten m. SE of Megiddo.

Bibliography Y. Kaufman, The Biblical Account of the Conquest of Palestine (1953), 36-40; Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible (1967), 148, 269, 270.