Bokim (בֹּכִים) means 'the weepers' or 'place of weeping.' It is the name given to a location in Canaan where the Angel of the LORD appeared to Israel after the death of Joshua (Judges 2:1-5). The name derives from the mass weeping (bakah, H1058) that broke out when the people heard God's rebuke for their failure to drive out the Canaanites and their adoption of foreign gods. The people 'wept loudly' and 'called that place Bokim.'
Bokim is a pivotal narrative location in Judges — it marks the spiritual turning point where the generation that knew Joshua gives way to one that 'did not know the LORD.' The weeping at Bokim is both genuine repentance and a foreshadowing of the cycles of apostasy and lamentation that structure the entire book of Judges. Theologically, this place of tears teaches that broken covenant produces sorrow — and that God's rebukes are intended to produce exactly this kind of contrite response.