NEPHTHALI (Hebr. Naphtālī). - Second-born of Jacob, born of Bilhah, Rachel's slave.
His name is interpreted in Gen. 30:8 as "contest," an allusion to the sorrow of Rachel, who for a long time was barren in comparison with her sister Leah; from the root pṭlmiṭhī' al), Septuagint Νεφθελ[ε]ι[μ]. N. is the progenitor of the tribe of the same name. He is mentioned only with his four sons in the list of the sons of Jacob who moved to Egypt (Gen. 46:24) and in the prophetic farewell of his father, in tenth place (Gen. 49:21).
The tribe of N. was among the northern ones. In the division by lot of the land of Canaan, after the conquest under Joshua, it received the territory west of the lake of Merom (el-Hüleh, with its northern boundary roughly at the latitude of the city of Kedesh, which belonged to it) and of the lake of Gennesaret (cf. Deut. 33:23, where the fertility of the place is also alluded to), between Dan to the north, Asher to the northeast, Zebulun to the west, Issachar to the south. It was important in the period of the Judges (v.), when together with Zebulun (Judg. 4:6; 5:18; cf. Is. 8:23; Ps. 68:28) it carried out the enterprise led morally by Deborah and militarily by the Naphtalite Barak (v.) against Jabin and Sisera (Judg. 4), and exalted in the famous song (Judg. 5; cf. already Gen. 49:21). N. and Zebulun are also remembered as participants in Gideon's enterprise against the Midianites (Judg. 7:23). The Naphtalites later had the common fate of the northern tribes, first breaking away in the "Kingdom of Israel," then ruined by the deportation to Assyria (cf. I Chron. 5:26). Giovanni Rinaldi