Abiezer

Abiezer (Heb. av-ezer, father of help) is the name of two distinct men in scripture — separated by roughly two centuries, the first an ancestor of one of Israel's greatest judges, the second one of David's mighty men.

**1. The Manassite clan-father (Joshua 17:2; 1 Chronicles 7:18).** This Abiezer was a descendant of Manasseh — variously listed as Gilead's eldest son or great-grandson, depending on the genealogy — and the head of the clan known as the Abiezrites. The clan settled in the western half of Manasseh and produced its most famous son centuries later: Gideon, who threshed wheat in his father Joash's winepress at Ophrah of the Abiezrites when the angel of the LORD called him to deliver Israel from Midian (Judges 6:11). Gideon's later rebuke of the men of Ephraim — Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer? (Judges 8:2) — uses the clan name as a marker of his own house. Numbers 26:30 spells the name in a contracted form: *Jeezer.*

**2. One of David's mighty men (2 Samuel 23:27).** Abiezer the Anethothite — from Anathoth, the priestly village a few miles north of Jerusalem, later home to the prophet Jeremiah — was a member of David's elite warrior circle, the Thirty. The list at 1 Chronicles 27:12 names him captain over the ninth monthly course of David's army, twenty-four thousand men strong.