Tarpelites

The Tarpelites are named once in the UPDV — as one of the resettled peoples whose officials co-signed the letter sent to Artaxerxes against the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

Co-Signatories of the Letter Against Jerusalem

The setting is the formal complaint Rehum and Shimshai forwarded to Persia: "Rehum the chancellor and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king in this sort" (Ezr 4:8). The list of joint signatories that follows runs through a string of resettled nations, and the Tarpelites stand third in that string: "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 verse that closes the roll-call identifies the whole group as transplanted populations: "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 Tarpelites therefore appear in the text as one nation among many resettled by an Assyrian king in the territory beyond the River, joining the chancellor's letter against the returning exiles' rebuilding work in Jerusalem.