and was situated upon the site of the present village of er-Râm, two hours to the north-west of Jerusalem, upon a conical mountain to the east of the Nablus road (see at Jos 18:25). This supposition is neither at variance with the account in 1 Samuel 9-10 (see the commentary upon these chapters), nor with the statement that Ramathaim-Zophim was upon the mountains of Ephraim, since the mountains of Ephraim extended into the tribe-territory of Benjamin, as is indisputably evident from Jdg 4:5, where Deborah the prophetess is said to have dwelt between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim. The name Ramathaim-Zophim, i.e., “the two heights (of the) Zophites” appear to have been given to the town to distinguish it from other Ramah's, and to have been derived from the Levitical family of Zuph or Zophai (see 1Ch 6:26, 1Ch 6:35), which emigrated thither from the tribe of Ephraim, and from which Elkanah was descended. The full name, therefore, is given here, in the account of the descent of Samuel's father; whereas in the further history of Samuel, where there was no longer the same reason for giving it, the simple name Ramah is invariably used.[1].
The connection between Zophim and Zuph is confirmed by the fact that Elkanah's ancestor, Zuph, is called Zophai in 1Ch 6:26, and Zuph or Ziph in 1Ch 6:35. Zophim therefore signifies the descendants of Zuph or Zophai, from which the name “land of Zuph,” in 1Sa 9:5, was also derived (see the commentary on this passage). The tracing back of Elkanah's family through four generations to Zuph agrees with the family registers in 1 Chron 6, where the ancestors of Elkanah are mentioned twice, - first of all in the genealogy of the Kohathites (1Ch 6:26), and then in that of Heman, the leader of the singers, a grandson of Samuel (1Ch 6:33),
- ↑ The fuller and more exact name, however, appears to have been still retained, and the use of it to have been revived after the captivity, in the Ῥαμαθέμ of 1 Macc. 11:34, for which the Codd. have Ῥαθαμεΐ́ν and Ῥαμαθαΐ́μ, and Josephus Ῥαμαθά, and in the Arimathaea of the gospel history (Mat 27:57). “For the opinion that this Ramathaim is a different place from the city of Samuel, and is to be sought for in the neighbourhood of Lydda, which Robinson advocates (Pal. iii. p. 41ff.), is a hasty conclusion, drawn from the association of Ramathaim with Lydda in 1 Macc. 11:34, - the very same conclusion which led the author of the Onomasticon to transfer the city of Samuel to the neighbourhood of Lydda” (Grimm on 1 Macc. 11:34
