Apharsathchites

The Apharsathchites are named once, in the list of foreign peoples who joined the formal complaint against Jerusalem early in the Persian period. They appear only as one entry in a sequence of deportee groups resettled in Samaria by Assyrian policy.

In the Letter Against Jerusalem

The setting is a letter sent in the days of Artaxerxes, drafted by Persian-period officials in Samaria: "And in the days of Artaxerxes: Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of his fellow slaves, wrote to Artaxerxes king of Persia; and the writing of the letter was written in the Syrian [character], and set forth in the Syrian [tongue]. Rehum the chancellor and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king in this sort" (Ezr 4:7-8). The list of co-signers includes the Apharsathchites: "then [wrote] Rehum the chancellor, and Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their fellow slaves, the Dinaites, and the Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, the Apharsites, the Archevites, the Babylonians, the Shushanchites, the Dehaites, the Elamites" (Ezr 4:9). The next verse identifies all of these groups as deportees: "and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar brought over, and set in the city of Samaria, and in the rest [of the country] beyond the River, and so forth" (Ezr 4:10).

The wider Assyrian resettlement of Samaria is described in Kings, where the names of the imported populations are different but the pattern is the same: "And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the sons of Israel; and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in its cities" (2Ki 17:24). The Apharsathchites are not named in that earlier notice, but Ezr 4:9-10 places them in the same program — foreign peoples relocated to the territory of the former northern kingdom and now functioning as the Persian-era population of Samaria.