Biblical place
The name Aphek or Aphec[1] 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).