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EPHRAIM

(Heb. ʾeprayim)

(PERSON)

The second son of the patriarch Joseph and eponymous ancestor of the tribe, which lent its name to the central hill country of Palestine.

Eponymous Figure

The exact etymology of the name Ephraim is unknown. The biblical text provides a popular etymology based on Heb. prh, “be fertile” (Gen. 41:52). Although the ending -ayim suggests a topographic name, there is disagreement over further elaboration of the name’s meaning

The biblical figure is the second son of Joseph and Asenath, daugther of Potiphera priest of On (Gen. 41:52; 46:20). However, he received from Jacob the blessing of the firstborn instead of Manasseh, over the objections of Joseph (Gen. 48:13-20). Both Ephraim and Manasseh were adopted by Jacob as his own sons and thus reckoned among their uncles as tribal ancestors (Gen. 48:5). Ephraim was the father of nine sons who were killed by the men of Gath, and then of one additional son and a daughter (1 Chr. 7:20-24).

Tribe

The story of Ephraim replacing Manasseh as firstborn in Gen. 48 may be related to the historical situation whereby the tribe of Manasseh, at first more significant than the tribe of Ephraim (Num. 26:28-37), came to be outstripped by Ephraim, which eventually came to designate the entire northern kingdom of Israel. While some passages speak of “the land of Ephraim and Manasseh” (Deut. 34:2; 2 Chr. 30:10) as a territorial designation, in many prophetic passages “Ephraim” alone designates the sociopolitical entity of the northern kingdom (Isa. 7:2-17; 9:9, 21[MT 8, 20]; 11:13; Jer. 31:9-20; Ezek. 37:16-19; Hos. 5). The origin of this usage is uncertain, but may stem from the fact that Ephraim’s territory actually constituted the geographic center of the northern kingdom, or because its first king, Jeroboam, was from the tribe of Ephraim (1 Kgs. 11:26). Hos. 5 may be a special case, in that there seems to be a distinction between Israel and Ephraim (v. 5). This may reflect a time when the northern kingdom was divided into two polities: Israel on the east bank of the Jordan (= Gilead, first annexed by Assyria), and Ephraim on the west bank remaining under Samaria’s control.

Territory

The land of Ephraim comprised the central hill country of Palestine, stretching approximately from Bethel in the south to the latitude of Shechem in the north. The southern boundary ran from Jericho westward through Ai, Bethel, Gezer, and to the sea, while the northern border followed the Yarkon River in from the coast, and its tributary the Kanah River as far inland as the Ebal-Gerizim massif. East of Shechem, Ephraim’s territory did not extend to the Jordan River, but turned south at Taanath-Shiloh and ran along the eastern borders of Samaria down to Jericho.

This geographic area contains several different topographic zones, as diverse as the narrow Sharon Plain along the coast and the heights of Ebal and Gerizim. Most of Ephraim was hill country of the Nablus syncline, among the most fertile areas in Palestine, boasting both good rainfall and soils. It supported an economy of both cereal farming and olive production, while the drier valleys of the Michmethath (Josh. 16:6; 17:7) and Beth-dagon were more suited to herding.

Israelite settlement in Ephraim begins with a dramatic growth in the Early Iron Age. At both the northern and southern extremes of Ephraim were regional centers at Shechem (Tell Balâtah) and Bethel (Beitin) and Ai (et-Tell), respectively. This illustrates the problem of applying the biblical tribal borders to the archaeological record, as these cities that straddle tribal boundaries seem to have governed territories that extended on “both sides” of the supposed lines. An economic polity which could be more clearly called Ephraim would be that centered on Iron I Shiloh (Khirbet Seilûn, Sailun). Here, the walled 12-dunam city appears to have been supported by a system of subordinate village centers and small hamlets extending far to the east and west. In Iron II, there was a tremendous 65 percent increase in the number of sites, more than 120 ha. (300 a.) were built up, and the entire region was under cultivation. The transition to a state economy, however, eliminated the great cities of Ephraim: Shiloh declined to a poor settlement, Shechem was replaced by northern kingdom capitals at Tirzah and Samaria, and the centers on the southern border diminished because of the political upheavals here on the border separating the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. After a sharp decrease in the Persian period, settlement in Ephraim was extensive in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods.

Bibliography. I. Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem, 1988); ed., Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site (Tel Aviv, 1993); D. C. Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan (Sheffield, 1985); L. Watkins, “Southern Samaria, Survey of,” OEANE, 5:66-68.

Robert D. Miller, II

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

EPHRAIM

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)