Zarephath

Zar´ephath [SAREPTA]

Job 1:20, a Phoenician seaport on the Mediterranean between Tyre and Zidon, usually subject to Tyre.\par During a famine in Israel, the prophet Elijah resided here, with a widow whose cruse of oil and barrel of flour were supplied and whose child was restored to life by miracle. Her noble faith in God is worthy of everlasting remembrance; universal imitation, 1Ki 17:9-24 . The place was afterwards called by the Greeks Sarepta, Luk 4:26, and is now known as Sarafend, a large village on the hills adjoining the seacoast.\par

Zar’ephath. (smelting place). The residence of the prophet Elijah, during the latter part of the drought. 1Ki 17:9-10. It was near to, or dependent on, Zidon. It is represented by the modern village of Sura-fend. Of the old town, considerable indications remain. One group of foundations is on a headland called Ain el-Kanatarah; but the chief remains are south of this, and extend for a mile or more, with many fragments of columns, slabs and other architectural features. In the New Testament, Zarephath appears under the Greek form of Sarepta. Luk 4:26.

("tsarfa’".) Elijah’s residence during the drought (1Ki 17:9-10); belonging to Sidon. A Canaanite, i.e. Phoenician city (Oba 1:20). Sarepta in Luk 4:26. The name means smelting shop. Now Surafend, a tell or hill, with a small village, seven or eight miles from Sidon, near the Zaharain river. The ancient town however was below on the shore; there, ruins of a flourishing city are found, columns, marble slabs and sarcophagi, and a chapel of the crusaders on the presumed site of the widow’s house.

Zarephath. (zăr’e-phăth), smelting-house, and Sarepta (sa-rĕp’tah). Luk 4:26. A town of Phœnicia, on the Mediterranean, between Tyre and Sidon. At Zarephath, Elijah found shelter with a widow during the great famine in Israel. 1Ki 17:8-24. The prophet Obadiah mentions it as marking the limits of Israel’s victory. Oba 1:20. Jesus made reference to this incident in Elijah’s life. Luk 4:26. Now in ruins.

[Zar’ephath]

City belonging to Zidon, where Elijah stayed with a widow during part of a time of drought and famine, being sustained by the miraculous increase of the widow’s meal and oil. 1Ki 17:9-10; Oba 1:20. Called SAREPTA in Luk 4:26. Identified with Sarafend, 33° 27’ N, 35° 18’ E.

ZAREPHATH (Authorized Version Sarepta).—A town of the narrow rocky Phœnician coast, 9 miles S.W. of Sidon, 17 miles N. of Tyre, and 60 miles directly N. of Nazareth, whence NT reference is made to it. Perched 500 feet high on a steep hillside a mile from the coast road, the modern shrunken hamlet looks down upon the traveller riding through a mile of the ruins of the ancient Zarephath, which once as a populous city extended to the sea, was provided with walls, and had a commodious harbour, now filled with sand and ruins.

While, in the theoretical division of the Holy Land among the twelve tribes by Joshua, Zarephath fell into the lot of Asher, going down, as that did, ‘even unto great Sidon,’ ‘and to the fortified city of Tyre’ (Jos 19:28 f.), it, together with the most of Asher’s territory, remained almost wholly Phœnician and Gentile. St. Luke’s report of Christ’s sermon at Nazareth distinctly connects Zarephath with Sidon, as do the LXX Septuagint and Massoretic Text in the account of Elijah’s sustenance by the widow there. This Evangelist—apparently the only Gentile-Christian NT writer—seizes as does no other upon the thought that the boundless grace of God has been extended in certain typical cases to remote Gentiles, even to the superseding and exclusion of those who were of the stock of Abraham and dwelt within the Holy Land. The choice, among all others, of the widow of pagan Phœnician Zarephath, and of Naaman the leper of heathen Syrian Damascus, to receive the favours of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, filled the crabbed synagogue hearers of Nazareth with wrath and murder (Luk 4:25 ff.).

Wilbur Fletcher Steele.

ZAREPHATH.—The Arab. [Note: Arabic.] village of Sarafend lies on a promontory about eight miles south of Zidon. On the shore in front of it are the scattered remains of what must have been a considerable town, the Zarephath or Sarepta of the Bible. Zarephath originally belonged to Zidon (1Ki 17:9), but passed into the possession of Tyre after the assistance rendered by the fleet of Zidon to Shalmaneser iv in b.c. 722 in his abortive attempt to capture insular Tyre. In Luk 4:26 it is again called a city of Sidon (RV [Note: Revised Version.] ‘in the land of Sidon’). Zarephath is included in the list of towns captured by Sennacherib when he invaded Phœnicia in b.c. 701. It was the town in which Elijah lodged during the years of famine (1Ki 17:8-24).

zar´ḗ-fath (צרפת, cār^ephath; Σάρεπτα, Sárepta): The Sidonian town in which Elijah was entertained by a widow after he left the brook Cherith (1Ki 17:9 ff). Obadiah refers to it as a Canaanite (probably meaning Phoenicia) town (Oba 1:20). It appears in the Greek form Sarepta in Luk 4:26 (the King James Version), and is said to be in the land of Sidon. Josephus (Ant., VIII, xiii, 2) says it was not “far from Sidon and Tyre, for it lay between them.” Eusebius, Onomasticon (s.v. “Sarefta”), places it on the public road, i.e. the road along the seashore. It can be no other than the modern Sarafend, about 13 miles North of Tyre, on the spur of the mountain which divides the plain of Tyre from that of Sidon.

The site of the ancient town is marked by the ruins on the shore to the South of the modern village, about 8 miles to the South of Sidon, which extend along the shore for a mile or more. They are in two distinct groups, one on a headland to the West of a fountain called ‛Ain el-Ḳantara, which is not far from the shore. Here was the ancient harbor which still affords shelter for small craft. The other group of ruins is to the South, and consists of columns, sarcophagi and marble slabs, indicating a city of considerable importance. The modern village of Sarafend was built some time after the 12th century, since at the time of the Crusades the town was still on the shore.

It is conjectured that the Syrophoenician woman mentioned in Luk 4:26 was an inhabitant of Zarephath., and it is possible that our Lord visited the place in His journey to the region as narrated in Mar 7:24-31, for it is said that he “came through Sidon unto the sea of Galilee.”

The place has been identified by some with Misrephoth-maim of Jos 11:8 and Jos 13:6, but the latter passage would indicate that Misrephoth-maim was at the limit of the territory of the Sidonians, which Zarephath was not in the days of Joshua. See MISREPHOTH-MAIM; SIDON.

Originally Sidonian, the town passed to the Tyrians after the invasian of Shalmaneser IV, 722 BC. It fell to Sennacherib 701 BC. The Wely, or shrine bearing the name of el-Khudr, the saint in whom George is blended with Elijah, stands near the shore. Probably here the Crusaders erected a chapel on what they believed to be the site of the widow’s house.