In 2019, Yossi Garfinkel and Sa'ar Ganor's excavation at Khirbet al-Ra'i — a small Iron Age I site in the Judean Shephelah, identified by Garfinkel with biblical Ziklag — recovered a pottery sherd bearing five proto-Canaanite letters drawn in ink. The reading published by Garfinkel and Ganor is Yerubaal — the alternate name given to Gideon in Judges 6:32, where his father Joash defends him against the men of Ophrah after Gideon has torn down the altar of Baal: "Therefore on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, Let Baal contend against him." The associated material was carbon-dated to roughly 1100 BC — within the Iron Age I window that the biblical chronology assigns to the period of the judges. The name itself is otherwise a hapax. Yerubaal appears in the Hebrew Bible as a personal name only of Gideon — in Judges 6, 7, 8, 9, and in 1 Samuel 12:11 where Samuel rehearses the Lord's deliverances by Yerubaal, Bedan, Jephthah, and Samuel himself. No other biblical figure carries the name. That makes the sherd suggestive without being decisive: it does not directly identify Gideon, but it places his distinctive name in the right region in the right century. The reading is disputed. Christopher Rollston has argued that the proto-Canaanite letters are damaged enough that the reading Yerubaal is uncertain — that other letter-combinations are possible from the surviving traces. Garfinkel and Ganor defended their reading in detail in their 2021 publication. The epigraphic case is genuinely contested, and the sherd should be cited with the dispute attached: a tantalizing find, well-stratified, well-dated, with a reading that remains under scholarly argument. The sherd is held by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Sources: Yosef Garfinkel et al, "An Inscription Bearing the Name Jerubbaal Written in Alphabetic Letters from Khirbet al-Ra'i" (Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology 1, 2021); Christopher Rollston, "The Khirbet al-Ra'i Inscription: Methodological Cautions" (Bible and Interpretation, 2021); Yosef Garfinkel and Sa'ar Ganor, Khirbet Qeiyafa Vol. 1: Excavation Report 2007–2008 (Israel Exploration Society, 2009); Judges 6:32.
A well-stratified Iron Age I sherd bearing what appears to be the name Yerubaal — Gideon's distinctive alternate name, otherwise a biblical hapax — offers rare onomastic evidence potentially contemporary with the judges period. Its epigraphic reading remains contested, making it significant but not probative for Gideon's historicity.