Jebusi: Jerusalem's Very Ancient - and Oddly Prophetic - Name
Some sources say that the Hebrew name Jerusalem can be translated to mean City of Peace. That is a beautiful thing if accurate because one day in the future it will be a city of unending peace where God himself will dwell, and He will secure its peace.
If you read the Bible for long you come across the fact that a people (apparently a Canaanite people) called the Jebusites lived in Jerusalem and were never driven completely out of that city by the invading Israelites. The Israelites fought them, but allowed the surviving Jubusites to remain once they took their city. Why? I do not think the Bible ever tells us why they were spared, because God's instructions were to wipe out all of the wicked Canaanites from the Promised Land. But the Jebusites remained.
Their city had been called Jebusi at the time that Joshua invaded the land of Canaan with the Israelites. That is only mentioned in a couple of spots in the King James Bible. The NIV tends to refer to it as 'the Canaanite city' in those same spots, such as Joshua 18:28.
In that verse a long list of towns is being named off that are to be allotted to the tribe of Benjamin, and there in that verse - Joshua 18:28 it says:
"And Zelah, Eleph, and Jebusi, which is Jerusalem, Gibeath, and Kirjath; fourteen cities with their villages. This is the inheritance of the children of Benjamin according to their families." KJV End Quote.
Here is an oddity about that...a Bible nugget of sorts: if you look up the name Jebusi some of the sources list that word as meaning "trodden underfoot". TRODDEN UNDERFOOT.
What makes that kind of interesting, to my mind, and I know a lot of readers will have already thought of this, is that Jesus would one day prophecy about Jerusalem and mention that it would be 'trodden underfoot' by the Gentiles at a future time subsequent to His earthly life. Luke 2:24
"They will fall by the sword and be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." NIV
“And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” KJV