IJON ĭ’ jŏn (עִיֹּ֣ון, heap [?]). A town of Naphtali in the Huleh Valley, nine m. N of Abelbeth-maacah, on the road coming from Hazor. The valley is bounded on the W by the Litani River and on the E by Mount Hermon. Both Amen-hotep II and Rameses II took this route on their campaigns that took them up to the Orontes River. Northern invaders used this route to enter Pal, e.g. Ben-hadad of Damascus (1 Kings 15:20) during Baasha’s reign, and Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria (2 Kings 15:29) in the deportation in the reign of Pekah.

The name appears on several texts: the 19th cent. Execration texts list c’yn (no. E. 18) as one of the sixty-four place names given on these figurines. Thutmose III gives the same spelling in his roster of 119 Canaanite towns (no. 95). Tiglath-pileser III does not list this town, but he does mention the city to the S in a broken passage of the Nimrud tablet.

The site is prob. to be identified with modern Tell Dibbîn near Merj ’ayûn, which seems to preserve the ancient name. Others have doubted this identification because surface explorations have not yielded any Iron II (900-600 b.c.) pottery, as the narratives in Kings requires.

Bibliography G. Posener, Princes et Pays d’Asie et de Nubie (1940), 74; Y. Aharoni, Land of the Bible (1967), 151, 264, 328, 329.