A small Phoenician harbour town on the Mediterranean coast between Tyre and Sidon — its name means 'smelting-place, refinery.' It is best known as the place Elijah was sent during the drought, to lodge with a starving widow whose jar of flour and jug of oil did not run out, and whose son he later raised (1 Kings 17:8-24); Jesus points to that episode at Luke 4:26. Obadiah 1:20 uses it as a boundary marker — the returning exiles will hold the coast 'as far as Zarephath,' i.e. up into old Phoenician territory. Called SAREPTA in the Greek and Latin.