Tabor Meaning in the Bible

Tabor is a place before it is a person. Mount Tabor is the steep, rounded hill rising out of the Jezreel valley in lower Galilee, marking the border of Zebulun, Issachar and Naphtali (Joshua 19:22). The Hebrew Tavor is of uncertain derivation; 'height' or 'mound' is the usual suggestion, and the shape of the hill makes it plausible.

Its moment is Judges 4. Deborah summons Barak and tells him to draw ten thousand men to Tabor, where Sisera's nine hundred chariots of iron cannot follow up the slope. 'And Deborah said unto Barak, Up; for this is the day in which the LORD hath delivered Sisera into thine hand' (Judges 4:14). The mountain is the tactical fact that makes the victory possible.

Christian tradition from the fourth century onwards identifies Tabor as the Mount of Transfiguration, and that is why churches stand on the summit today. The Gospels never name the mountain — Matthew 17:1 says only 'an high mountain apart' — so this is tradition rather than text, and worth stating as such.

There is a second, unrelated Tabor in English: the small drum played with a pipe in medieval and folk music. As a given name today Tabor is rare, reads as a surname-style boy's name, and has the advantage of being genuinely scriptural without being over-used.