of Elath.—Gen. 36:40, 41, 43; 1 Chron. 1:52; see ELATH, ELOTH; TIMNA No. 3.

2. A son of Caleb the spy and father of Kenaz of the tribe of Judah.—1 Chron. 4:15.

3. Fourth king of the northern ten-tribe kingdom of Israel. Elah came to the throne on the death of his father Bassha and ruled in Tirzah for parts of two years, about 952-951 B.C.E. (1 Ki. 16:8) While Elah was drunk, Zimri, the chief over half the chariots, put him to death to get the kingship for himself and then went on to wipe out all of Baasha’s house, to fulflll Jehovah’s prophecy.—1 Ki. 16:1-14.

4. Father of King Hoshea, the last monarch of the northern kingdom.—2 Ki. 15:30; 17:1; 18:1, 9.

5. A descendant of Benjamin who lived in Jerusalem.​—1 Chron. 9:3, 7, 8.

6. A low plain or valley, perhaps named for an outstandingly large tree located therein. The “low plain of Elah” was the site of the encounter between the Israelites and the Philistines, championed by Goliath. (1 Sam. 17:2, 19; 21:9) It is usually associated with the fertile Wadi es-Sant, one of the principal wadies extending from the Philistine plains through the Shephelah into the mountainous regions of Judah, passing between the suggested locations of Azekah and Socoh. (17:1) It thus lay some fifteen miles (24.1 kilometers) SW of Jerusalem. The well-watered plain is about a quarter of a mile (.4 kilometer) broad and quite level. The opposing forces faced each other across this valley, each side having a strong position on a mountainside, the Philistines perhaps to the S and the Israelites to the N or NE. Through the low plain ran the “torrent valley,” probably the dry stream bed still found there. (17:40) Perhaps the delay of “forty days” spent by the two armies was due in part to the weak position in which either side would place itself in having to cross over this torrent valley and then go up against the enemy force on the opposing mountainside. (17:16) David selected his five smooth stones from the torrent valley when crossing over to face Goliath. After his victory, the routed Philistine army fled down the valley to the Philistine plain and the cities of Gath and Ekron.—17:52.

ELAM

(Eʹlam).

1. One of the five sons of Shem from whom descended “families, according to their tongues, in their lands, according to their nations.” (Gen. 10:22, 31; 1 Chron. 1:17) The names of Elam’s sons are not specified; his name, however, designates both a people and a region on the SE border of Mesopotamia.

Historically, the name Elam applied to an area in what is now called Khuzistan in SW Iran. It included the fertile plain on the eastern side of the lower Tigris valley, watered by the Karun and Karkheh Rivers, and evidently extended into the mountainous regions bordering this plain on the N and E, although these two boundaries are the least certain. A region called Anshan is believed to have been situated in these mountainous regions and is represented in inscriptions as forming a part of Elam from an early period. Elam, located at the extreme eastern end of the Fertile Crescent, was, therefore, in somewhat of a “frontier” position, being one of the regions where territory populated and generally dominated by Semitic races confronted or merged with races descended from Noah’s other sons, principally the Japhetic line.

The land of Elam was called elamtu by the Assyrians and Babylonians and Elymais by the classical Greek writers, who also at times referred to it as “Susiana” after the city of Susa or Shushan, at one time evidently the capital of Elam. Under the Persian Empire, Susa (Shushan) was a royal city. (Neh. 1:1; Esther 1:2) It was situated on the trade routes leading off to the SE and also up into the Iranian plateau. Efforts to gain control of these routes made Elam the object of frequent invasion by Assyrian and Babylonian rulers.

LANGUAGE

In discussing Elam, reference works generally claim that the writer of Genesis listed Elam under Shem only on a political or a geographical basis since, they say, the people of Elam were not Semitic. This view they base on the claim that the language of the Elamites was not Semitic. Investigation, however, reveals that the earliest inscriptions found in the geographical region designated Elam are “mere lists of objects pictorially jotted down on clay tablets with the numbers of each beside them, indicated by a simple system of strokes, circles and semicircles. . . . their contents at this time are purely economic or administrative.” (Semitic Writing, 1948, G. R. Driver, pp. 2, 3) These inscriptions have not been successfully deciphered; thus they could reasonably be called “Elamite” only as meaning that they were found in the territory of Elam.

The weight of the argument of those opposing the inclusion of Elam among the Semitic peoples, therefore, rests principally upon later inscriptions in cuneiform, considered as dating considerably within the second millennium B.C.E., as well as on the Behistun monument (of the sixth century B.C.E.), which contains parallel texts in Old Persian, Akkadian and “Elamite.” The cuneiform inscriptions attributed to the Elamites are said to be in an agglutinative language (one in which root words are joined together to form compounds, thereby distinguished from inflectional languages). Philologists have not been able successfully to relate this “Elamite” language to any other known tongue.

In evaluating the above information, it should be remembered that the geographical region in which the descendants of Elam eventually concentrated may well have been occupied by other peoples prior to or even during such Elamite residence there, just as the early non-Semitic Sumerians resided in Babylonia. The Encyclopœdia Britannica (1959 ed., Vol. 8, p. 118) states: “The whole country [designated Elam] was occupied by a variety of tribes, speaking agglutinative dialects for the most part, though the western districts were occupied by Semites [italics ours].”

Nimrod, of Cushite descent, is Biblically shown to have exercised dominion over much of Mesopotamia relatively early in the post-Flood period. (Gen. 10:8-12) In this regard, it is of interest to note that: “Sculptural remains discovered in the region [of Elam], and other evidences, point to its habitation at a very early date by Negroid peoples . . . ” (The New Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, 1950-1951, Vol. XII, pp. 4199-4200) After discussing the evidence for such negritic population in ancient times, The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Vol. II, p. 918) says: “Nevertheless pure Semites had settled in the country at a very early date, and it is probably on account of this that Elam is called (Gen 10 22) a son of Shem—indeed, the many Sem[itic] inscriptions found by the Fr[ench] explorers at Susa show how strong their influence was.”

That the cuneiform inscriptions found in the region of Elam would not of themselves prove that the true Elamites were originally non-Semitic can be seen from the many ancient historical examples that can be cited of peoples adopting a tongue other than their own due to domination or infiltration by foreign elements. There are likewise examples of ancient peoples simultaneously employing another language along with their own for commercial and international uses, even as Aramaic became a lingua franca used by many peoples. The “Hittites” of Karatepe wrote bilingual inscriptions (evidently in the eighth century B.C.E.) in “Hittite” hieroglyphic script and in old Phoenician. Some 30,000 clay tablets of the time of Persian King Darius were found at Persepolis, a royal Persian city. They were mainly in the language termed “Elamite.” Yet Persepolis would not be called an “Elamite” city.

Further showing that it is unwise to view the table of nations at Genesis chapter 10 as “purely geographical,”