OREB and ZEB. – Totemic names ('ôrêbh “raven”; zê'êbh “wolf”) of two Midianite chiefs, captured by the GERDONE (v.) west of the Jordan (Iudc. 7:25; 8:3; cf. Ps. 82:12), and killed, together with many of their men, in a locality near the river (probably in the territory of Ephraim), subsequently named, in memory of the event, respectively “the rock of O.” (Iudc. 7:25 and Is. 10:26) and “the winepress of Z.” (Iudc. 7:25). This second name perhaps refers to an outcropping rock whose shape recalled that of a winepress: two communicating cavities, one large and one smaller (the “pit”).
BIBL.: E. Kalt, Archeologia biblica, Italian trans., Turin 1927, p. 63. Giovanni Rinaldi
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