Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach" . '' Genesis 10:22, Ezra 4:9) is said to be one of the sons of Shem, the son of
Noah
Noah (; , also Noach) appears as the last of the Antediluvian Patriarchs (Bible), patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5–9), the Quran and Baháʼí literature, ...
. The name is also used (as in Akkadian) for the ancient country of Elam in what is now southwestern
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
, whose people the Hebrews believed to be the offspring of Elam, son of Shem (Genesis 10:22). This implies that the Elamites were considered Semites by the Hebrews. Their language was not one of the
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic,
Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...
, but is considered a linguistic isolate.
Elam (the nation) is also mentioned in Genesis 14, describing an ancient war in the time of
Abraham
Abraham (originally Abram) is the common Hebrews, Hebrew Patriarchs (Bible), patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father who began the Covenant (biblical), covenanta ...
, involving Chedorlaomer, the king of Elam at that time.
The prophecies of the
Book of Isaiah
The Book of Isaiah ( ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BC prophet Isaiah ben Amo ...
(11:11, 21:2, 22:6) and the
Book of Jeremiah
The Book of Jeremiah () is the second of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the second of the Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. The superscription at chapter Jeremiah 1#Superscription, Jeremiah 1:1–3 identifies the book as "th ...
(25:25) also mention Elam. The last part of Jeremiah 49 is an apocalyptic oracle against Elam which states that Elam will be scattered to the four winds of the earth, but "will be, in the end of days, that I will return their captivity," a prophecy self-dated to the first year of Zedekiah (597 BC).
The
Book of Jubilees
The Book of Jubilees is an ancient Jewish apocryphal text of 50 chapters (1,341 verses), considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, as well as by Haymanot Judaism, a denomination observed by members of Ethiopian Jewish ...
may reflect ancient tradition when it mentions a son (or daughter, in some versions) of Elam named "Susan", whose daughter Rasuaya married Arpachshad, progenitor of another branch of Shemites. Shushan (or Susa) was the ancient capital of the Elamite Empire. (Dan. 8:2)
Elam as a personal name also refers to other figures appearing in the Hebrew Bible:
*Elam is a son of Shashak of the
tribe
The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide use of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. The definition is contested, in part due to conflict ...
of
Benjamin
Benjamin ( ''Bīnyāmīn''; "Son of (the) right") blue letter bible: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h3225/kjv/wlc/0-1/ H3225 - yāmîn - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (kjv) was the younger of the two sons of Jacob and Rachel, and Jacob's twe ...
in 1 Chronicles 8:24 .
*Elam is the son of Meshelemiah, a Levite of the family of Kohath in 1 Chronicles 26:3.
*Elam is the ancestor of a family that returned with
Zerubbabel
Zerubbabel ( from ) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, a governor of the Achaemenid Empire's province of Yehud Medinata and the grandson of Jeconiah, penultimate king of Judah. He is not documented in extra-biblical documents, and is considered ...
in Ezra 2:1-2,7.
*Elam is the ancestor of a family that returned from the Captivity in Ezra 2:31. This is possibly the same man and family as in Ezra 2:1-2,7.
*Elam is the ancestor of a family that returned with Ezra in Ezra 8:7 .
*Elam is the father of Jehiel and the grandfather of Shecaniah in Ezra 10:2.
*Elam is one of the men who joins Nehemiah in sealing the new covenant in Nehemiah 10:14.
*Elam is a priest who helps in the rededication of the rebuilt walls of
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...