ephraim, wood of Summary and Overview

a forest in which a fatal battle was fought between the army of David and that of Absalom, who was killed there (2 Sam. 18:6, 8). It lay on the east of Jordan, not far from Mahanaim, and was some part of the great forest of Gilead.

The battlefield where Absalom fell, the entanglement of the wood occasioning large slaughter of the Ephraimites, from whence perhaps the wood was named. From 2 Samuel 17:24; 2 Samuel 17:26; 2 Samuel 18:3, it is certain that it was E. of Jordan, not W. where the tribe Ephraim was settled. Mahanaim was the "city out of" which David's army looked for "succour" from him. Grotius thinks, less probably, that the name was derived from the slaughter of Ephraim at the Jordan fords by Jephthah (Judges 12:1-5); the city Mahanaim and wood of Ephraim were miles off from the Jordan.