Zarephath
צָרְפַת
Where was biblical Zarephath? At Ras el-Qantara, below Sarafand, in Lebanon, about 75 km north of Tiberias. I mark it certain.
Elijah hid here, in the heart of Jezebel's home country. A starving widow baked him a cake from her last handful of flour, and her jar of flour and jug of oil never ran dry until the rain came back.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- Ras el-Qantara, below Sarafand, in Lebanon
- How sure
- Certain The name, the sources and the finds all agree.
- Other names
- Sarepta, Sarafand, Sarafend, Tsarfat
- Location
- 33.4575° N, 35.2958° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
The name survived almost unchanged. The Lebanese village on the hill above the shore is still called Sarafand. Josephus and Byzantine pilgrims knew the same town on the coast between Sidon and Tyre as Sarepta. That fits the way the Bible names it, "Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon."
Excavators dug the tell by the shore at Ras el-Qantara. They found a Phoenician town lived in through the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. It had pottery kilns, olive-oil works and workshops for purple dye. It also had a shrine, and in it an ivory plaque dedicated to Tanit-Ashtart.
That is the point of the story. Jezebel came from this world, where Baal and Asherah were served. In the middle of the drought G-d sent Elijah to hide among her own people, and fed him through a widow of Sidon. When the widow's son died, Elijah carried him up to the upper room, stretched himself over the boy three times, and brought him back to life.
The name had a second life. Obadiah sees Israel's exiles holding the Canaanite coast as far as Zarephath, in Hebrew Tzarfat. In later Hebrew, Tzarfat became the name for France, and Israelis still call France by it.
Visiting today
Sarafand is in Lebanon and closed to Israeli visitors. The excavated tell and the old harbor area lie by the shore below the village.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
See Zarephath on the interactive map →
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