Ephes-dammin

Ephes-dammin is a Philistine encampment in Judah, named at one of Israel's most famous standoffs and again — under a slightly contracted spelling — at a separate Philistine raid recalled in the chronicler's roll of David's mighty men.

Between Socoh and Azekah

The site is fixed by its neighbors when the Philistines mass for war against Saul: "Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle; and they were gathered together at Socoh, which belongs to Judah, and encamped between Socoh and Azekah, in Ephes-dammim" (1Sa 17:1). The Philistine line is pitched on Judahite ground, in the corridor between two named towns — the staging area for the long impasse across the valley that ends with David and Goliath.

The Plot of Barley at Pasdammim

The chronicler returns to the same locale under the contracted form Pasdammim when recounting Eleazar son of Dodo's stand: "He was with David at Pasdammim, and there the Philistines were gathered together to battle, where was a plot of ground full of barley; and the people fled from before the Philistines" (1Ch 11:13). The detail of the barley plot — an agricultural patch worth defending — places the action squarely in Judah's farmland, and the verse aligns the spelling Pasdammim with the Ephes-dammim of the earlier campaign.