The name Aphek or Aphec refers to one of several locations mentioned in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

and the

Arameans The Arameans, or Aramaeans (; ; , ), were a tribal Semitic people in the ancient Near East, first documented in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. Their homeland, often referred to as the land of Aram, originally covered c ...

and

Philistines Philistines (; LXX: ; ) were ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan during the Iron Age in a confederation of city-states generally referred to as Philistia. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the Philistines origi ...

: *Most famously, a town near which one or more rulers of

Damascus Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...

named Ben-hadad were defeated by the Israelites and in which the Damascene king and his surviving soldiers found a safe place of retreat (; ). Just before his death, the prophet

Elisha Elisha was, according to the Hebrew Bible, a Jewish prophet and a wonder-worker. His name is commonly transliterated into English as Elisha via Hebrew, Eliseus via Greek and Latin, Ełishe (Yeghishe/Elisha) via Armenian or Alyasa via Arabic, a ...

predicted: :"The arrow of the Lord's deliverance and the arrow of deliverance from Syria; for you must strike the Syrians at Aphek till you have destroyed them (). *A place at which the Bible states that the

had encamped, while the Israelites pitched in

Eben-Ezer Eben-Ezer () is a location that is mentioned by the Books of Samuel as the scene of battles between the Israelites and Philistines. It is specified as having been less than a day's journey by foot from Shiloh (biblical city), Shiloh, near Aphek ...

, before the Battle of Aphek in which the sons of

Eli Eli most commonly refers to: * Eli (name), a given name, nickname and surname * Eli (biblical figure) Eli or ELI may also refer to: Film * ''Eli'' (2015 film), a Tamil film * ''Eli'' (2019 film), an American horror film Music * ''Eli'' (Jan ...

were killed
I Samuel 4:1–ff.
*A city of the

Tribe of Issachar According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Issachar () was one of the twelve tribes of Israel and one of the ten lost tribes. In Jewish tradition, the descendants of Issachar were seen as being dominated by religious scholars and influential in ...

, near to Jezreel, in the north of the Sharon plain. The scene of another encampment of the Philistines, which led to the defeat and death of

Saul Saul (; , ; , ; ) was a monarch of ancient Israel and Judah and, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament, the first king of the United Monarchy, a polity of uncertain historicity. His reign, traditionally placed in the late eleventh c ...

. * Aphik, a city of the

tribe of Asher According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Asher was one of the Tribes of Israel descended from Asher (), the eighth son of Jacob. It is one of the ten lost tribes. Biblical narrative According to the biblical Book of Joshua, following the comp ...

, identified as either Tel Afek near

Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...

, or Afqa in

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

Location

Golan or eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee

After the turn of the 20th century the predominant opinion was that the location of all these battles is one and the same, and that the town lay east of the Jordan. Initially it was thought that the name is preserved in the now depopulated village of Fiq near Kibbutz

Afik Afik () is an Israeli settlement organized as a kibbutz in the Golan Heights. It was established in 1972 close to the abandoned Syrian village of Fiq following Israel's capture and occupation of the Golan Heights in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. I ...

, three miles east of the

Sea of Galilee The Sea of Galilee (, Judeo-Aramaic languages, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, גִּנֵּיסַר, ), also called Lake Tiberias, Genezareth Lake or Kinneret, is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth ...

, where an ancient mound, Tell Soreg, had been identified. Excavations by

Moshe Kochavi __NOTOC__ Moshe Kochavi (; 1928–2008) was an Israeli archaeologist and a founding faculty member of Tel Aviv University's Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology, Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies. Biography Born in Buchar ...

and Pirhiya Beck in 1987–1988 have indeed discovered a fortified ninth- and eighth-century BCE settlement, probably Aramean, but Kochavi considered it to be too small to serve the role ascribed to Aphek in the Bible. The site most favoured now by the archaeologists is Tel 'En Gev/Khirbet el-'Asheq, a mound located within Kibbutz

Ein Gev Ein Gev () is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee near the ruins of the Greco-Roman settlement of Hippos, it falls under the jurisdiction of Emek HaYarden Regional Council. In its population was . ...

. A more recent theory has focused on regarding this same Aphek also as the scene of the two battles against the Philistines mentioned by the Bible - the supposition being that the Syrians were invading Israel from the western side, which was their most vulnerable.

Judaean hills

Since most scholars agree that there were more than one Aphek, C.R. Conder identified the Aphek of Eben-Ezer with a ruin ('' khirbet'') some distant from

Dayr Aban Dayr Aban (also spelled Deir Aban; ) was a Palestinian people, Palestinian Arab village in the Jerusalem Subdistrict, Mandatory Palestine, Jerusalem Subdistrict, located on the lower slope of a high ridge that formed the western slope of a mount ...

(believed to be Eben-Ezer), and known by the name ''Marj al-Fikiya''; the name ''al-Fikiya'' being an Arabic corruption of Aphek.

Eusebius Eusebius of Caesarea (30 May AD 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilius, was a historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist from the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima. ...

, when writing about Eben-ezer in his '' Onomasticon'', says that it is "the place from which the

Gentiles ''Gentile'' () is a word that today usually means someone who is not Jewish. Other Groups claiming affiliation with Israelites, groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, have historically used the term ''gentile'' to describe outsider ...

seized the Ark, between Jerusalem and

Ascalon Ascalon or Ashkelon was an ancient Near East port city on the Mediterranean coast of the southern Levant of high historical and archaeological significance. Its remains are located in the archaeological site of Tel Ashkelon, within the city limi ...

, near the village of Bethsamys (

Beit Shemesh Beit Shemesh () is a city council (Israel), city located approximately west of Jerusalem in Israel's Jerusalem District. A center of Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodoxy, Beit Shemesh has a population of 170,683 as of 2024. The city is named afte ...

),"
Eusebius Werke
', Erich Klostermann (ed.), Leipig 1904, p. 33,24. a locale that corresponds with Conder's identification.

References

{{coord, 32.0833, N, 34.8833, E, source:wikidata, display=title Hebrew Bible cities