Oak
אֵלָהStrong’s H0424elah (e-lah)
Appears in 12 verses of the Old Testament
In short
Elah is the Hebrew word usually translated “oak”, “like an oak” and “like terebinth”. It appears in 12 verses of the Old Testament.
“And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.”
Meaning
- Terebinth, terebinth tree
- Valley where David killed Goliath
How it's translated
- the oak 7
- in the oak 2
- like an oak 1
- like terebinth 1
- terebinth 1
- and terebinth 1
Word-by-word English from the STEPBible tagged text.
Where it's used most
- 2 Samuel 3
- Judges 2
- Isaiah 2
- Genesis 1
- 1 Kings 1
- 1 Chronicles 1
8 books in all.
Explore in Scripture
- Judges 6:11And there came an angel of the LORD, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites.
- Judges 6:19And Gideon went in, and made ready a kid, and unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour: the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak, and presented it.
- 2 Samuel 18:9And Absalom met the servants of David. And Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth; and the mule that was under him went away.
- 2 Samuel 18:10And a certain man saw it, and told Joab, and said, Behold, I saw Absalom hanged in an oak.
- 2 Samuel 18:14Then said Joab, I may not tarry thus with thee. And he took three darts in his hand, and thrust them through the heart of Absalom, while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak.
- 1 Kings 13:14And went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak: and he said unto him, Art thou the man of God that camest from Judah? And he said, I am.
Hebrew dictionary
אֵלָה elah · oak
1) terebinth, terebinth tree 2) valley where David killed Goliath
From STEPBible’s Hebrew lexicon (based on Brown-Driver-Briggs).
Webster's 1828 Dictionary
How the English word “oak” was understood when the King James Version was still the common Bible of English readers.
OAK, noun
[It is probably that the first syllable, oak was originally an adjective expressing some quality, as hard or strong, and by the disuse of tree, oak became the name of the tree.]
Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Verse references are checked against the KJV. Read the full entry.
Verses are from the King James Version. Word meanings come from the original Hebrew, not from any one translation.