Lydda

Lydda was an ancient town on the Plain of Sharon, called Lod in Hebrew; descendants of Benjamin built the settlement, and the town also appears in the lists of Jews returning from exile. In apostolic times, while Peter was traveling among the holy ones, he came to Lydda and in the name of Jesus Christ healed Aeneas, who had been paralyzed for eight years, so that all who lived in Lydda and the Plain of Sharon turned to the Lord. Since Lydda was near Joppa, Peter was soon summoned to Joppa to raise Tabitha.

Lydda stood on the Plain of Sharon, about eighteen kilometers southeast of Joppa, commanding the route from the coastal highway up toward Jerusalem and the hill country; today it is the Israeli city of Lod. In the Hebrew Scriptures the town is called Lod: First Chronicles records that among the Benjaminites “the sons of Elpaal were Eber, Misham, and Shemed, who built Ono and Lod and its dependent towns” (1 Chronicles 8:12), showing that Lod and Ono belonged to the cluster of settlements the Benjaminites built on the southern edge of the Sharon plain. After the Babylonian exile, returning Jews resettled the area, and both Ezra and Nehemiah list “the sons of Lod, Hadid, and Ono” among those who came back (Ezra 2:33; Nehemiah 7:37), evidence that Lod remained an inhabited town in the territory of Benjamin. In the intertestamental period it was known in the Greco-Roman world as Lydda, and by the time of the Maccabean revolt it was already a significant Jewish center. In the New Testament, Lydda enters the record through a healing by Peter. Acts chapter 9 relates that after Stephen’s martyrdom and Saul’s conversion, “as Peter was going through all the regions, he also went down to the holy ones living in Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, who had been confined to his bed for eight years, for he was paralyzed. Peter said to him: ‘Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed.’ And he got up at once. And all those living in Lydda and the Plain of Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord” (Acts 9:32-35). The healing restored Aeneas and led the population of the whole Sharon plain to believe. Immediately afterward, the disciple Tabitha (Dorcas) in nearby Joppa fell sick and died; “since Lydda was near Joppa, when the disciples heard that Peter was there, they sent two men to him, urging: ‘Please come over to us without delay’” (Acts 9:38). Peter went to Joppa and raised Tabitha, and many became believers. In this narrative Lydda is the way-station of Peter’s circuit through the coastal plain, where healing power was displayed: from the healing at Lydda to the resurrection at Joppa, and then to Peter’s vision of clean and unclean animals at the house of Simon the tanner by the sea — all of which prepared the way for his preaching to the Gentile Cornelius in Caesarea. Later church tradition associated Lydda with the early believer community and with the legendary figure of “George of Lydda,” but its biblical significance remains that it was the place where Peter extended the good news across Israel’s coastal plain and bore witness to the power of the resurrection.