place
Shephelah
שְׁפֵלָה
The Shephelah was the lowland region between the Judean hills and the coastal plain, known for its fertile valleys and strategic importance (Josh. 9:1; 10:40; 2Chr. 28:18; Jer. 17:26; 32:44; 33:13).
- verses
- 19
- first named
- Deuteronomy 1:7
- last named
- Zechariah 7:7
- feature
- region
- coordinates
- 31.69°N · 34.88°E
Shephelah (OpenBible)
The gazetteer records one identification, and no competing one.
Description
Shephelah in the text
The Shephelah, meaning "lowland" in Hebrew, refers to the fertile foothills and valleys located between the Judean hills and the coastal plain of Israel. This region is mentioned numerous times throughout the Old Testament, often in the context of military campaigns, agricultural abundance, and territorial allotment.
The Shephelah was known for its strategic importance, as it served as a natural buffer between the hill country of Judah and the Philistine cities along the coast. During the conquest of Canaan, Joshua and the Israelites fought against the kings of the Shephelah (Josh. 9:1; 10:40; 11:2, 16; 12:8). The region was allotted to the tribes of Judah and Dan (Josh. 15:33; Judg. 1:9).
The Shephelah was renowned for its fertility and agricultural productivity. It was a region where wheat, barley, grapes, and olives were cultivated (1Chr. 27:28; 2Chr. 26:10). The abundance of sycamore and cedar trees in the Shephelah was compared to the abundance of stones during Solomon's reign (1Ki. 10:27; 2Chr. 1:15; 9:27).
The prophets Jeremiah and Zechariah mention the Shephelah in their prophecies, highlighting its importance and the restoration of its cities and villages (Jer. 17:26; 32:44; 33:13; Zech. 7:7). The prophet Obadiah also foretells that the people of the Shephelah will possess the fields of Ephraim and Samaria (Obad. 1:19).
The Shephelah played a significant role in the history of ancient Israel, serving as a region of strategic, agricultural, and prophetic importance. Its fertile valleys and proximity to major trade routes made it a valuable and contested area throughout the biblical period.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
The pattern
Where Shephelah is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
19 verses across 9 of 66 books; 57 write the name nowhere. Named in Deuteronomy (1), Joshua (6), Judges (1), 1 Kings (1), 1 Chronicles (1), 2 Chronicles (4), Jeremiah (3), Obadiah (1) and Zechariah (1).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 19, across 9 books. The name is written 20 times in them.
Onward
Where this page goes
Nothing in the graph stands one hop from this entity yet. These are the best-connected entities of the same type, so the page still ends somewhere. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
What happened here
Atlas's reading of each chapter this place appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources