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

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Israelites The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...

and the Arameans or

Philistines The Philistines ( he, פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Pəlīštīm; Koine Greek (LXX): Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: ''Phulistieím'') were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, whe ...

: *Most famously, a town near which one or more rulers of Damascus 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 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 (, ''’éḇen hā-‘ézer'', "the stone of help") 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 f ...

, before the

Battle of Aphek The Battle of Aphek is a biblical episode described in the First Book of Samuel of the Hebrew Bible. During this battle the Philistines defeated the Israelite army and captured the Ark of the Covenant. Among biblical scholars, the historicity of ...

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 Sharon plain ( ''HaSharon Arabic: سهل شارون Sahel Sharon'') is the central section of the Israeli coastal plain. The plain lies between the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the Samarian Hills, to the east. It stretches from Nahal T ...

. The scene, according to the Bible; of another encampment of the Philistines, which led to the defeat and death of

Saul Saul (; he, , ; , ; ) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the first monarch of the United Kingdom of Israel. His reign, traditionally placed in the late 11th century BCE, supposedly marked the transition of Israel and Judah from a scattered t ...

. * 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 Tel Afek, ( he, תל אפק), also spelled Aphek and Afeq, is an archaeological site located in the coastal hinterland of the Ein Afek Nature Reserve, east of Kiryat Bialik, Israel. It is also known as Tel Kurdani. History Antiquity The site ...

near

Haifa Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the 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 metropol ...

, or

Afqa Afqa ( ar, افقا; also spelled ''Afka'') is a village and municipality located in the Byblos District of the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate, northeast of Beirut in Lebanon. It has an average elevation of 1,200 meters above sea level and a total ...

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...

Location

Since 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, three miles east of the Sea of Galilee, where an ancient mound, Tell Soreg, had been identified. Excavations by Moshe Kochavi and Pirhiya Beck in 1987-88 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 ( he, עֵין גֵּב) 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 ...

. 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. 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; ar, دير آبان) was a Palestinian Arab village in the Jerusalem Subdistrict, located on the lower slope of a high ridge that formed the western slope of a mountain, to the east of Beit Shemesh. It was fo ...

(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 (; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος ; 260/265 – 30 May 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilus (from the grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος τοῦ Παμφίλου), was a Greek historian of Christianity, exegete, and Chris ...

, when writing about Eben-ezer in his '' Onomasticon'', says that it is "the place from which the Gentiles seized the Ark, between Jerusalem and Ascalon, near the village of Bethsamys (Beit Shemesh),"''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