Not to be confused with Elisha the prophet, written with a final-letter Ayin (אלישע).
Genesis 10:4 names this Elishah as a son of Yavan (יון) which is to say Ionian Greece; probably the island of Elis, today's Iliá, the city from which the purple dye was brought to Tsur (Tyre) that gave Phoenicia and Kena'an their names (Phoenicia being Phoinix, which means "purple", Kena'an being in Hurrian Kinnahu, which means "purple"). The dye was elicited from the murex, a sea snail found in the eastern Mediterranean (but alas now "post-endangered"). It was this dye that made the Phoenicians wealthy, and enabled them to set to sea as traders. Historians like to speak of cataclysmic events and charismatic individuals, but in truth the discovery of the murex and the accidental genetic mutation of the reed-grasses of the Euphrates that produced bread wheat (see Ancestry of the Patriarch 1 - Kasdim 7000 BCE) have had far more impact on world history.
Ezekiel 27:7 - "your awnings were violet and purple from the coasts of Elishah".
The apparent presence of the name El in the name Elishah is most likely pure coincidence; the word is Phoenician or Greek, not Yehudit.
See also under Rodanim.
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