Aphek (biblical)

The name Aphek refers to either:

Locations mentioned by the bible as the scenes of a number of battles, which have been thought since the turn of the 20th century to refer to the same location.
- Most famously, a town near which one or more rulers of Damascus named Benhadad, were defeated by the Israelites (1 Kings 20:26, 30; 2 Kings 13:17). The site is disputed; the common opinion in the early 20th century was that the town lay east of the Jordan and that the name is preserved in the modern Fek, three miles east of the Sea of Galilee, on the edge of the plain of Jordan by the Golan Heights; later opinion, however, has focused on regarding this Aphek as the same as the scene of two battles against the Philistines mentioned by the bible - the supposition amongst scholars being that the Syrians were invading Israel from the western side as being the most vulnerable.
- A place at which the bible states that the Philistines had encamped, while the Israelites pitched in Eben-Ezer, before the battle in which the sons of Eli were killed.
- A city of the tribe of Issachar, near to Jezreel, in the north of the plain of Sharon. The scene, according to the Bible (1 Sam. 4:1; 29:1; comp. 28:4), 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 Tel Afek near Haifa or Aphaca in Lebanon.

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This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.