Tappuah

Tappuah ("apple") was a town on the rugged border between the territories of Ephraim and Manasseh in the central hill country. Its king was among the thirty-one Canaanite kings Joshua defeated (Joshua 12:17). The boundary description carefully assigned the town itself to Manasseh but its surrounding lands to Ephraim: "On the south the boundary [of Manasseh] runs along the brook Kanah... The land of Tappuah belonged to Manasseh, but the town of Tappuah on the boundary of Manasseh belonged to the descendants of Ephraim" (Joshua 16:8, 17:7-8). Centuries later in the chaos after Pekah of Israel's assassination, Menahem son of Gadi sacked Tiphsah and "all who were in it and its territory from Tirzah on, because they did not open it to him. Therefore he sacked it, and he ripped open all the women in it who were pregnant" (2 Kings 15:16) — and a Greek manuscript tradition reads "Tappuah" rather than "Tiphsah" there, possibly reflecting the same town.