Labayu

Overview

Labayu was a ruler of Shechem and its hill country during the Amarna period, in the reign of Akhenaten. He is known entirely from the Amarna Letters, where he is both the writer of three letters of his own and the subject of repeated complaints from neighbouring rulers.

Role and Activities

In his own letters Labayu answers charges laid against him at the Egyptian court, protesting his loyalty while defending his actions; in one he states that he did not know his son was consorting with the Habiru, and hands him over to the Egyptian commissioner. Other rulers describe him very differently. The king of Megiddo complains that two of Labayu's sons paid the Habiru and the Suteans to make war on him. The letters show a ruler operating with considerable independence in the central hill country while Egypt's grip on Canaan was weakening.

Biblical Significance

Labayu is not named in Scripture. His significance is that his territory and his period are the same hill country and the same generations that the biblical account of the conquest and the judges concerns, and that the Habiru appear in his correspondence. Gary Byers and others at the Associates for Biblical Research argue that the Habiru of these letters include the Israelites, and that Labayu's Shechem shows a centre outside Egyptian control in exactly the region Joshua 24 places Israel's covenant assembly. That identification is a live argument rather than a settled conclusion: other scholars read "Habiru" as a social term for displaced or outlaw groups rather than the name of a people, in which case Israelites could be among them without the word meaning Israel. The letters themselves name neither Israel nor Joshua.