RAPHIDIM. - An encampment of the Israelites on their itinerary from the Red Sea to Sinai, situated between the steppe of Sin and Sinai (Ex. 17:1), after the stages of Dophkah and Alush (Num. 33:12-13), famous for the spring that Moses caused to gush from the rock of Horeb (Ex. 17:1-7) and for the victory won over the Amalekites, in which the valor of Joshua shone forth (ibid. 17:8-16).
As early as the 4th century (Eusebius, Onom., 142, 22; Egeria in the portion of the itinerary reported in Peter the Deacon) R. was localized in the Wādī Fejrān, and even today on Gebel Tāhūneh, overlooking the Fejrān oasis, the remains of the churches erected to commemorate there the events of R. can be seen. Following the ancient pilgrims, not a few modern ones also mark the stages of the itinerary from the plain of el-Marḥah (= desert of Sin?) to Sinai through the mines of Magarah (Dophkah) and the valleys Mukatteb (Alush?) and Fejrān (R.?). But already in 1900 Fr. Lagrange pointed out that the plain of el-Marḥah (= desert of Sin?) is not topographically between "Elim and Sinai" (Ex. 16:1) and that if the itinerary marked by tradition had been followed, the biblical silence about the oasis of Fejrān, the pearl of the Sinaitic peninsula, would not be explained. He proposed the itinerary from Dabbet er-Ramleh (= desert of Sin) through the mines of Şerābit el-Hādim (Dophkah) and through the valleys el-'Ešš (Alush) and Erfājid (R.) to Sinai. This direction is preferred today both because of the trace of the ancient names of Alush and R. preserved in the Arabic names of el-'Ešš and Erfājid, and because it corresponds better to the topography of the whole region.