Shephelah
Lowland region in south-central Israel
The Shephelah (Biblical Hebrew: הַשְּפֵלָה, romanized: hašŠəp̄ēlā, lit. 'the Lowlands') or Shfela (Modern Hebrew: הַשְּׁפֵלָה, romanized: haŠfelá), or the Judaean Foothills (Modern Hebrew: שְׁפֵלַת יְהוּדָה, romanized: Šfelát Yəhūdá), is a transitional region of soft-sloping rolling hills in south-central Israel stretching over 10–15 km (6.2–9.3 mi) between the Judaean Mountains and the Coastal Plain. The different use of the term "Judean Plain", as either defining just the Coastal Plain segment stretching along the Judaean Mountains, or also including, or only referring to, the Shfela, often creates confusion.
Today the Shfela is largely rural with many farms, but the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Rehovot, Beit Shemesh, and Kiryat Gat roughly surround it.
The Bible assigned land in the Shfela to the tribes of Judah and Dan.
Biblical references
The Shfela is mentioned many times in the Hebrew Bible. In the King James Version, its name tends to be translated as 'vale' or 'valley'. The Shfela was the site of many biblical battles. During the Bar Kokhba revolt, hollowed out hills were connected to form elaborate bunker systems for the combat with the Romans.
Geography
The Shfela is bordered to the northeast by the Samarian Hills and the north-south Afek Pass at Rosh HaAyin-Antipatris (near the east-west Ayalon Valley) and Rishon LeZion in the northwest, and in the south by the northern Negev (the Nahal Shikma area).
The Shfela consists of fertile rolling hills.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Shephelah” as lowland region in south-central Israel. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as lowland region in south-central Israel. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2066007. VIAF identifies the subject as 315133903. The Library of Congress control number is sh93009321. Authority coordinates are 31.692, 34.875. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shephelah” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.