אֱלִימֶ֫לֶךְ
Elimelech
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Elimelech’ 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 H458 appears — 6 distinct verses 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.
Ruth 6 verses
- Ruth 1:2 אֱֽלִימֶ֡לֶךְ n Proper The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem Judah. They came into the country of Moab, and continued there.
- Ruth 1:3 אֱלִימֶ֖לֶךְ n Proper Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died; and she was left, and her two sons.
- Ruth 2:1 אֱלִימֶ֑לֶךְ n Proper Naomi had a kinsman of her husband's, a mighty man of wealth, of the family of Elimelech, and his name was Boaz.
- Ruth 2:3 אֱלִימֶֽלֶךְ n Proper She went, and came and gleaned in the field after the reapers: and she happened to come to the portion of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech.
- Ruth 4:3 לֶ/אֱלִימֶ֑לֶךְ prep + n Proper He said to the near kinsman, Naomi, who has come back out of the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech's:
- Ruth 4:9 לֶֽ/אֱלִימֶ֔לֶךְ prep + n Proper Boaz said to the elders, and to all the people, You are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech's, and all that was Chilion's and Mahlon's, of the hand of Naomi.
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.
אלימלך — transliterated ʼĔlîymelek — is a Hebrew name carrying the sense “Elimelech.” Its uses cluster heavily in Ruth (100% of all occurrences). With 6 verses in 1 book, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in Ruth 1:2. See 6-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H458 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Ruth 6 verses 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 6 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 verses · 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: Elimelech 3×
- American Standard Version: Elimelech 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Elimelech 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Elimelech 3×, Elimelek 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H458 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H458 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H458 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H458 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
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.
- Elimelech = "my God is king"
- Naomi's husband
Word origin
(& ־מֶ֑לֶךְ Ru 2:1) n.pr.m. (God is king, cf. מַלְכִּיאֵל) husband of Naomi Ru 1:2, 3; 2:3; 4:3, 9.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אל (ʼêl) (H410) — God.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms H458 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֱֽלִימֶ֡לֶךְ | Noun, Proper | Ruth 1:2 | 1 |
| אֱלִימֶ֑לֶךְ | Noun, Proper | Ruth 2:1 | 1 |
| אֱלִימֶ֖לֶךְ | Noun, Proper | Ruth 1:3 | 1 |
| אֱלִימֶֽלֶךְ | Noun, Proper | Ruth 2:3 | 1 |
| לֶ/אֱלִימֶ֑לֶךְ | Noun, Proper | Ruth 4:3 | 1 |
| לֶֽ/אֱלִימֶ֔לֶךְ | Noun, Proper | Ruth 4:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H458, 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.
- אל אלהי ישראל ʼÊl ʼĕlôhêy Yisrâʼêl H415 Elelohe-israel
- אל ביתאל ʼÊl Bêyth-ʼÊl H416 El-beth-el
- אלדד ʼEldâd H419 Eldad
- אלדעה ʼEldâʻâh H420 Eldaah
- אלוה ʼĕlôwahh H433 God
- אלזבד ʼElzâbâd H443 Elzabad
- אלחנן ʼElchânân H445 Elhanan
- אליאב ʼĔlîyʼâb H446 Eliab
- אליאל ʼĔlîyʼêl H447 Eliel
- אליאתה ʼĔlîyʼâthâh H448 Eliathah
- אלידע ʼElyâdâʻ H450 Eliada
- אליה ʼÊlîyâh H452 Elijah
- אליהו ʼĔlîyhûw H453 Elihu
- אליחבא ʼElyachbâʼ H455 Eliahba
- אליחרף ʼĔlîychôreph H456 Elihoreph
- אליסף ʼElyâçâph H460 Eliasaph
- אליעזר ʼĔlîyʻezer H461 Eliezer
- אליעם ʼĔlîyʻâm H463 Eliam
- אליפז ʼĔlîyphaz H464 Eliphaz
- אליפל ʼĔlîyphâl H465 Eliphal
- אליפלהו ʼĔlîyphᵉlêhûw H466 Elipheleh
- אליפלט ʼĔlîypheleṭ H467 Eliphelet
- אליצור ʼĔlîytsûwr H468 Elizur
- אליצפן ʼĔlîytsâphân H469 Elizaphan
+24 more proper names from this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 51 — not the complete family. 49 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Elimelech). 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
God his king, a man of the tribe of Judah, of the family of the Hezronites, and kinsman of Boaz, who dwelt in Bethlehem in the days of the judges. In consequence of a great dearth he, with his wife Naomi and his two sons, went to dwell in the land of Moab. There he and his sons died (Ruth 1:2, 3; 2:1, 3; 4:3, 9). Naomi afterwards returned to Palestine with her daughter Ruth.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(my God is king), a man of the tribe of Judah and of the family of the Hezronites, who dwelt in Bethlehem-Ephratah in the days of the Judges. (B.C. 1312.) In consequence of a great death in the land he went with his wife, Naomi, and his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, to dwell in Moab, where he and his sons died without posterity. (Ruth 1:2,3) etc.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
my God is king
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 Hebrew verses 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.
