King living before Israel's Monarchy
Japhia was the king of Lachish, one of the Amorite cities defeated by Joshua.
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Japhia is mentioned in Jos.10.3 as the king of Lachish, one of the Amorite cities that formed an alliance against the Israelites during the conquest of Canaan. When the people of Gibeon made a peace treaty with Israel, Japhia joined forces with Adoni-Zedek, king of Jerusalem, and three other Amorite kings to attack Gibeon. In response, Joshua and the Israelite army came to Gibeon's defense and, with the help of God, defeated the Amorite kings and their armies (Jos.10.1-27). Lachish, along with the other Amorite cities, was conquered by Joshua and the Israelites. The text does not provide any further details about Japhia's life or his fate after the battle.
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JAPHI'A (splendid), the king of Lachish, one of the five kings of the Amorites who united against Joshua, but were defeated at Beth-horon and killed at Makkedah. Josh 10:3.
JAPHI'A (splendid), a place in the tribe of Zebulun. Josh 19:12. It is identified with a small village, called Yafa, a short distance south-west of Nazareth. See Josephus: Wars, 2:20, 6. Drake described some caves at this place unlike any other he had seen in Palestine. A passage 12 feet long leads into a circular chamber, in the floor of which are circular "man-holes" leading to two lower caves, which in turn lead to others. All the chambers are connected by intricate passage-ways. Mr. Drake conceives that they were not tombs, but places for the storage of grain.
Easton (1897), Smith (1863), Hitchcock (1869), Hastings (1898) and Schaff are in the public domain. Parsed text: neuu-org/bible-dictionary-dataset (CC BY 4.0). Headwords and whitespace normalised for this site.
1 verse in 1 book · English text: BSB (change it from the menu at the top) · Strong’s H3309
Therefore Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem sent word to Hoham king of Hebron, Piram king of Jarmuth, Japhia king of Lachish, and Debir king of Eglon, saying,
Names, family links and references: STEPBible TIPNR (Tyndale House Cambridge, CC BY 4.0). Short descriptions were drafted with AI assistance by STEPBible. Family links follow STEPBible’s scholarly decisions where genealogies are ambiguous.