Alon Bachot

אלון בחות


Genesis 35:8 names Alon Bachot as the place where Rivkah's (Rebecca's) nurse Devorah (Deborah) was buried, outside Beit-El.

Alon (אלון) or Elon means "an oak", and Bachot (בחות) means "tears", implying a weeping oak (probably the quercus robur pendula), a tree not common in England, where we are more accustomed to weeping willows, but common enough in the Middle East. 

The quercus robur in general are renowned for the size of their trunks, whose circumferences can be anywhere from 13 to 40 feet; the wood is particularly hardy. They are even more renowned for their longevity; the Stelmužė Oak in Lithuania and the Granit oak in Bulgaria are believed to be more than fifteen hundred years old, while the "Kongeegen" ("Kings Oak") in Denmark is estimated to be about twelve hundred years old, and another in Kvilleken, in Sweden, is over a thousand years old with a circumference of 14 metres (46 ft).

Hardly surprising that such trees were regarded as gods, and their surrounding areas used as sacred burial-grounds. The Alon Bachot in Genesis 35:8 was clearly such a burial-ground; it was attached to the megalithic baetyl at Beit-El, or Luz as it was still known.

Beehive tombs at Al Ayn, Oman

Devorah was a name for the priestess of the bee-goddess (דברה = "bumble bee") and the bee-goddess was the goddess of death, her every tumulus catacombed, or rather honeycombed, with tiered cells of burial-barrows known in Greek as tholoi. The description of Devorah as Rivkah's "nurse" suggests that Rivkah was a priestess of the fertility rites, brought up by a temple wet-nurse as a female Nazirite, the Yisra-Elit equivalent of the Christian nun or the Roman Vestal Virgin. This is especially plausible when we remember that the daughters of tribal sheikhs and clan-leaders were the principal source of temple priestesses in those days - princes became army chiefs, princesses became priestesses.

Most of the sacred oaks had names like this one. Judges 9:37 gives "the oak of the Magicians", Genesis 13:18 the terebinth-oaks of Mamre etc. "The oak of tears" may simply be a euphemism for the burial-ground, in the same way that Genesis 50:11 has the burial ground at Goren ha Atad also-named Avel Mitsrayim - "the grief of Egypt", when Yoseph and his brothers come to mourn Ya'akov there. 

Given that the sacred tree was oracular, and that oracles were made through a skull, it seems logical to posit that the skull of Rivkah herself would have acquired oracular status, something in the "alas poor Yorick I knew him well, Horatio" tradition. Certainly the burial-tomb of Rachel has had that status, and continues to do so, at Tseltsach (Zelzah). Based on the text of that tale, and later references to Rachel "weeping for her children" (she died giving birth to Ben-Oni, and Yoseph was alive and well at the time, so the statement is odd to say the least), I might suggest that there was probably a weeping oak over her tomb at some time also.

At Gristhorpe in Yorkshire a tree-coffin burial has been found: did they actually bury inside the tree?

See also YIDLAPH.

Copyright © 2019 David Prashker

All rights reserved

The Argaman Press