thought by some to be found; and near Neby Samwll is licit Hantnah, supposed to be Naioth. the College of Prophi i . or "the House of Instruction" ><\' the Jewish Targum, which was connected with Kamah of Samuel 1 1 Sam. xix. is ■_' l ). See Naioth. Vet there are very formidable objections to its identification with Ramath- aim-zophim. It appears to be too near Gibeah, the capital of Saul's kingdom, to form a safe refuge foi David when he tied from that monarch : it is not an
RAMATHAIM-ZOPHIM
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hour's ride distant, and it is in full view. It has been shown, besides, that Neby Samwll is most probably the site of Mizpah (q. v.).
(8.) Bonar {Land of Promise, p. 1/8, 554) adopts er- Ram, which he places a short distance north of Beth- lehem, east of Rachel's sepulchre. Eusebius (Onomast. s. v. "Pttj&cif) says that " Rama of Benjamin" is near (TT(pi) Bethlehem, where the '"voice in Rama was heard ;" and in our times the name is mentioned, be- sides Bonar, by Prokesch and Salzbacher (cited in Rob- inson, Bib. Res. ii, 8, note') ; but this cannot be regarded as certain, and Stewart has pointed out that it is too close to Rachel's monument to suit the case.
(9.) Schwarz (Palest, p. 152-158), starting from Gib- eah of Saul as the home of Kish, fixes upon Rameh, north of Samaria and west of Sanur, which he supposes also to be Ramoth, or Jarmuth, the Levitical city of Is- sachar. All that is directly said as to its situation is that it was in Mount Ephraim (1 Sam. i, 1) ; and this would naturally lead us to seek it in the neighborhood of Shechem. But the whole tenor of the narrative of the public life of Samuel (in connection with which alone this Ramah is mentioned) is so restricted to the region of the tribe of Benjamin, and to the neighbor- hood of Gibeah, the residence of Saul, that it seems im- possible not to look for Samuel's city in the same local- ity. It appears, from 1 Sam. vii. 17, that his annual functions as prophet and judge were confined to the narrow round of Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpeh — the first on the north boundary of Benjamin; the second near Jericho at its eastern end; and the third on the ridge in more modern times known as Scopus, overlooking Jerusalem, and therefore near the southern confines of Benjamin. In the centre of these was Gibeah of Saul, the royal residence during the reign of the first king, and the centre of his operations. It would be doing a violence to the whole of this part of the history to look for Samuel's residence outside these narrow limits.
Those Scriptural allusions which tend to indicate the position of Ramathaim-zophim are the following, and they are our only trustworthy guides. The statements of Eusebius and later writers can have little weight; and, indeed, it appears that all knowledge of the city was lost before their time.
(a.) In 1 Sam. i, 1 we read, "There was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim, of Mount Ephraim." From this it would appear, at first sight, that Ramathaim was situated in the district called Mount Ephraim. The construction of the Hebrew, however, does not make this quite certain. The phrase D^EIU O"ir,"2-iri""j'0 CnSX "itra might possibly mean, not that Ramath- aim was in Mount Ephraim (which would be expressed rather by IfQ), but that Elkanah was in some way of Mount Ephraim (the Hebrew is 1112), though resid- ing in Ramathaim. The statement of the sacred writ- er, therefore, does not form an insuperable objection to a theory that would locate Ramathaim beyond the bounds of Mount Ephraim. Besides, the extent of the region called Mount Ephraim is nowhere defined. It may mean that section of mountain allotted to the tribe of Ephraim, or it may have extended so as to in- clude part, or even the whole, of Benjamin. In the mouth of an ancient Hebrew, the expression would mean that portion of the mountainous district which was, at the time of speaking, in the possession of the tribe of Ephraim. "Little Benjamin" was for so long in close alliance with, and dependence on, its more pow- ful kinsman, that nothing is more probable than that the name of Ephraim may have been extended over the mountainous region which was allotted to the younger son of Rachel. Of this there are not want- ing indications. The palm-tree of Deborah was "in Mount Ephraim," between Bethel and Ramah, and is identified with great plausibility by the author of the Targum on Judg. iv, 5 with Ataroth, one of the land- marks on the south boundary of Ephraim, which still
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survives in 'Atara, two and a half miles north of Ramah of Benjamin (er-Ram). Bethel itself, though in the catalogue of the cities of Benjamin (Josh, xviii, 22), was appropriated by Jeroboam as one of his idol sanct- uaries, and is one of the "cities of Mount Ephraim" which were taken from him by Baasha and restored by Asa (2 Chron. xiii, 19 ; xv, 8). Jeremiah (eh. xxxi) connects Ramah of Benjamin with Mount Ephraim (ver. G, 9, 15, 18). It could scarcely have embraced any portion of Judah. since the two tribes were rivals. for sovereignty. The allusions to Mount Ephraim in 1 Sam. ix, 4; Josh, xvii, 15; Judg. xvii, 1, appear to con- line the name to the territory of the tribe.