Sarepta

Sarepta

Shown within Lebanon
Location	Lebanon
Region	South Governorate
Coordinates	33°27′27″N 35°17′45″E / 33.45750°N 35.29583°E / 33.45750; 35.29583Coordinates: 33°27′27″N 35°17′45″E / 33.45750°N 35.29583°E / 33.45750; 35.29583

Sarepta (modern Sarafand, Lebanon) was a Phoenician city on the Mediterranean coast between Sidon and Tyre, also known biblically as Zarephath. It became a bishopric, which faded, and remains a double (Latin and Maronite) Catholic titular see.

Most of the objects by which Phoenician culture is characterised are those that have been recovered scattered among Phoenician colonies and trading posts; such carefully excavated colonial sites are in Spain, Sicily, Sardinia and Tunisia. The sites of many Phoenician cities, like Sidon and Tyre, by contrast, are still occupied, unavailable to archaeology except in highly restricted chance sites, usually much disturbed. Sarepta is the exception, the one Phoenician city in the heartland of the culture that has been unearthed and thoroughly studied.

Sarepta is mentioned for the first time in the voyage of an Egyptian in the 14th century BCE (Chabas, Voyage d'un Egyptien, 1866, pp 20, 161, 163). Obadiah says it was the northern boundary of Canaan (Obadiah 1:20): “And the exiles of this host of the sons of Israel who are among the Canaanites as far as Zarephath (Heb. צרפת), and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad, will possess the cities of the south.” The medieval lexicographer, David ben Abraham Al-Alfāsī, identifies Zarephath with the city of Ṣarfend (Judeo-Arabic: צרפנדה). Originally Sidonian, the town passed to the Tyrians after the invasion of Shalmaneser IV, 722 BCE. It fell to Sennacherib in 701.

The first Books of Kings (17:8-24) describes the city as being subject to Sidon in the time of Ahab, and says that the prophet Elijah, after leaving the brook Cherith, multiplied the meal and oil of the widow of Zarephath (Sarepta) and raised her son from the dead there, an incident also referred to by Jesus in Luke's Gospel.