De´bir, a city in the tribe of Judah, about thirty miles south-west from Jerusalem, and ten miles west of Hebron. It was also called Kirjath-sepher (), and Kirjath-sannah (). The name Debir means 'a word' or 'oracle,' and is applied to that most secret and separated part of the Temple, or of the most holy place, in which the Ark of the Covenant was placed, and in which responses were given from above the cherubim. From this, coupled with the fact that Kirjath-sepher means 'book-city,' it has been conjectured that Debir was some particularly sacred place or seat of learning among the Canaanites, and a repository of their records. 'It is not indeed probable,' as Professor Bush remarks, 'that writing and books, in our sense of the words, were very common among the Canaanites; but some method of recording events, and a sort of learning, was doubtless cultivated in those regions.' Debir was taken by Joshua (); but it being afterwards retaken by the Canaanites. Caleb, to whom it was assigned, gave his daughter Achsah in marriage to his nephew Othniel for his bravery in carrying it by storm (). The town was afterwards given to the priests (). No trace of it is to be found at the present time.
There were two other places called Debir: one belonging to Gad, beyond Jordan (); the other to Benjamin, though originally in Judah.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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