Beth-le-Aphrah

Beth-le-Aphrah (meaning: house of dust) is a town mentioned in Micah's lamentation over the towns of the Shephelah threatened by Assyrian invasion. The Authorized Version renders the Hebrew as in the house of Aphrah while the Revised Version treats it as the proper name of a town. Micah employs a series of puns on town names to convey the nature of the coming judgment: Beth-le-Aphrah, the house of dust, is told to roll itself in the dust—its very name becoming the description of its humiliation.

The prophetic wordplay in Micah 1:10–16 is one of the most concentrated examples of paronomasia in Hebrew poetry, with each town's name or meaning illuminating the character of its coming judgment or flight. Beth-le-Aphrah is tentatively identified with et-Taiyibeh in the Shephelah, southeast of Ashdod, though the identification is uncertain. Its significance in the biblical record is limited to this single prophetic reference, where it serves as an element in Micah's lament over the cities of the western approaches to Jerusalem.