Aphek (biblical)

The name Aphek or Aphec refers to one of several locations mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the scenes of a number of battles between the Israelites and the Arameans and Philistines:

• 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 (1 Kings 20:26–30; 2 Kings 13:17, 24–25). 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 (2 Kings 13:17).

• A place at which the Bible states that the Philistines had encamped, while the Israelites pitched in Eben-Ezer, before the Battle of Aphek in which the sons of Eli were killed (I Samuel 4:1–ff.)
• A city of the Tribe of Issachar, 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.
• Aphik, a city of the tribe of Asher, identified as either Tel Afek near Haifa, or Afqa in Lebanon.