NETOPHAH, NETOPHAS nē tō’ fə, nē tō’ fəs (נְטֹפָ֖ה; Apoc., Νετέβας, Νετωφάς; dropping). A town of Judah, SE of Bethlehem.

The people of both Netophah and Bethlehem were descended from the patriarch Judah through Perez, Hezron (1 Chron 2:4, 5), Caleb (Chelubai, v. 9), and Salma (vv. 51, 54). The actual town of Netophah plays no part in the Biblical narrative, but a number of OT men derived from it. Two were among David’s top thirty-seven heroes (2 Sam 23:28, 29; 1 Chron 11:30); two, among his twelve monthly divisional army commanders (1 Chron 27:13, 15); one, the grandfather of a leading pre-exilic Levite in Jerusalem (9:16); one, a commander, and others as individuals, who supported Gedaliah in 586 b.c. (2 Kings 25:23; Jer 40:8); fifty-six, who returned to Pal. with Zerubbabel in 537 (Ezra 2:22; Netophas, 1 Esd 5:18; cf. Neh 7:26); and a number of Levitical singers from the חֲצֵרִ֗ים, unwalled settlements (KB, 325; cf. 1 Chron 9:16), of the Netophathites, who participated in the dedication of the walls of Jerusalem in 444 b.c.

While the precise location of Netophah remains uncertain, it was close to Bethlehem (1 Chron 2:54). Because of its listing between Bethlehem and Anathoth in Ezra 2:22 and Nehemiah 7:26, some have identified Netophah with the fortress of Ramat Rahel just S of Jerusalem (cf. J. Simons, Geographical and Topographical Texts of the OT, 339); but this community did not develop until after the time of David, and the lists in Ezra and Nehemiah do not appear to be in strict geographical order. Its more probable location is Khirbet Bedd Faluh, three m. SE of Bethlehem, where the Biblical name is still preserved in the nearby spring, ’Ain en-Natuf (so Simons, loc. cit.).