אֵלָא
Elah
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Elah’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H414 appears — 1 distinct verse across 1 book. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
1 Kings 1 verse
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
אלא (ʼÊlâʼ) is a Hebrew name most often rendered “Elah.” With only 1 verse it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. It clusters heavily in 1 Kings, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. Found nowhere else but 1 Kings 4:18. For the data behind this summary, explore 1-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H414 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 1
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #6,101
- by frequency
- Rank #6,101 (rank 6,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Kings 1 verse 100%
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 1 distinct verse.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 100%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Elah 1×
- American Standard Version: Ela 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Ela 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Ela 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H414 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H414 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H414 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H414 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 2 senses BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- Elah = "oak"
- father of one of Solomon's deputies
Word origin
n.pr.m. father of an officer of Solomon 1 K 4:18 (= ii. אֵלָה terebinth?).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אלה (ʼêlâh) (H424) — terebinth.
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
אֶלָּא
- (contr. of אִן לָא = אִם לֹא)
- 1. if not, except, but, only. Targ. O. Ex. XV, 11 לית אִ׳ את none but thou, none besides thee; a. e.—Ber. V, 1 אין עומדין … א׳ וכ׳ one must stand up for prayer in no other disposition but that of humility.—Snh. 4ᵃ לא נתן א׳ שלשה he did only three times. Ber. I, 1 ולא זו בלבד (אמרו) א׳ וכ׳ and not only in this case they said so, but wherever &c. Ib. 5ᵃ אל תקרי תְלַמְּדֶנּוּ א׳ תְלַמְּדֵנוּ read not th’lamm’dennu (thou instructest him) but th’lamm’dēnu (thou teachest us); a. v. fr.
- 2. (ellipt.) (you cannot say anything except …) but, a logical inference excluding all other explanations &c. Ib. 30ᵇ א׳ לא שנא but (the conclusion is proven) there is no difference. Ib. א׳ אמר ר׳ but, said R. … we may derive it &c.; a. fr.
אֵלָא
- buttress, v. אֵילָא.
אֲלָא I
- to lament, v. אלי.
אֲלָא II
- club, bat. Targ. Cant. VIII, 5; v. אַלָּתָא.
אלי II
- (= ילל, v. אִילְיָא) to lament, wail. Targ. II Sam. I, 17; a. e.
- same. Targ. Jud. XI, 40 לאַלָּאָה (some ed. לאֲלָאָה).
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H414, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Elah). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Terebinth or oak. (1.) Valley of, where the Israelites were encamped when David killed Goliath (1 Sam. 17:2, 19). It was near Shochoh of Judah and Azekah (17:1). It is the modern Wady es-Sunt, i.e., "valley of the acacia." "The terebinths from which the valley of Elah takes its name still cling to their ancient soil. On the west side of the valley, near Shochoh, there is a very large and ancient tree of this kind known as the 'terebinth of Wady Sur,' 55 feet in height, its trunk 17 feet in circumference, and the breadth of its shade no less than 75 feet. It marks the upper end of the Elah valley, and forms a noted object, being one of the largest terebinths in Palestine." Geikie's, The Holy Land, etc.
(2.) One of the Edomite chiefs or "dukes" of Mount Seir (Gen. 36:41).
(3.) The second of the three sons of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh (1 Chr. 4:15).
(4.) The son and successor of Baasha, king of Israel (1 Kings 16:8-10). He was killed while drunk by Zimri, one of the captains of his chariots, and was the last king of the line of Baasha. Thus was fullfilled the prophecy of Jehu (6, 7, 11-14).
(5.) The father of Hoshea, the last king of Israel (2 Kings 15:30; 17:1).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
+ One of the dukes of Edom. (Genesis 36:41; 1 Chronicles 1:52) + Shimei ben-Elah was Solomon's commissariat officer in Benjamin. (1 Kings 4:18) (B.C. 1013.) + A son of Caleb the son of Jephuneh. (1 Chronicles 4:15) (B.C. 1450.) + Son of Uzzi, a Benjamite, (1 Chronicles 9:8) s, and one of the chiefs of the tribe at the settlement of the country. (B.C. 536.)
(an oak, strength).
+ The son and successor of Baasha king of Israel. (1 Kings 16:8-10) His reign laster for little more than a year; comp. ver. 8 with 10. (B.C. 928-7.) He was killed while drunk, by Zimri, in the house of his steward Azra, who was probably a confederate in the plot. + Father of Hoshea, the last king of Israel. (2 Kings 15:30; 17:1) (B.C. 729 or before.).
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
an oak; a curse; perjury
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 1 Hebrew verse it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
