EPHRAIM, the stronger of the two tribes into which the house of Joseph was divided (cf. Gen. xlviii. 8-16). The terri torial boundary between the two in west Palestine (east of Jordan we find Manasseh alone) seems to have been uncertain, but Ephraim included the famous sites of Shechem, Shiloh, Timnath Heres and Samaria, while Bethel belonged to the allied tribe of Benjamin.
During the period of the monarchy, Ephraim was so much the dominant tribe in the northern kingdom, that its name is some times used as synonymous with Israel. Its early settlements were made in the central hill country, and the tribe may have owed its superior position to the comparative purity of its descent from the Aramaean invaders to whom Israel traced their ancestry.