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| One of the great oaks of Olde Aengland - the terebinths don't grow quite this green |
An oak tree, from the root אלה = "a terebinth oak", but also closely connected to the word El (אל) through the shared root Ul (אול), so that El (god in the sense of "force", "power")+ On ("place") indicates "the place where the god dwells".
Genesis 12:6, 13:18, 14:13 and 18:1 all speak of a grove of terebinth oaks, the first identified with Moreh (מוֹרֶה), the other three with Mamre (מַמְרֵא). Deuteronomy 11:30 also speaks of Moreh, locating it close to Gil-Gal, the point of the river Yarden north of Yeru-Shala'im at which both Yehoshu'a and King David crossed into Kena'an, the former his arrival to begin the conquest (Joshua 3), the latter coming back from fleeing at the time of the attempted coup by Av-Shalom (Absalom) (2 Samuel 19:40).
Genesis 26:34 gives Eylon (אילן) of the Beney Chet (Hittites) whose daughter Basmat (בשמת) married Esav. Basmat comes from the root Besem (בשם) which is "balsam"; the mythological inference of this is strikingly apparent. Genesis 36:2 notes that Eylon's second daughter Adah (עדה) also married Esav, which parallels his own brother Ya'akov marrying two sisters, though no Biblical commentator that I have yet found appears to have so much as noticed this unusual coincidence (did Esav really only want one of the two, probably Adah, the younger, but Eylon made him work seven years for her, and then cheated him by giving him the other? I'll bet there's an Edomite myth somewhere that tells it just like that!).
Genesis 46:14 names an Eylon as a son of Zevulun.
1 Chronicles 4:37 makes him a sub-tribe of Shim'on, possibly called Alon rather than Eylon or Elon (most English versions render it as Alon or even Allon), although this may simply be a way of naming the local tribal god.
Joshua 19:33 places Elon Be-Tsa'ananim (אֵילוֹן בְּצַעֲנַנִּים) in the boundary of Naphtali - but with a name connected to oak trees, we should expect to find towns, villages, farms, shrines, all over the land.
Judges 4:11 names yet another, this one a Kenite town near Kedesh, but spells it Tsa'anim (צענים), which Yehudit versions then correct in brackets back to Tsa'ananim, though in fact Tsa'anim is much more likely to be correct; it comes from the root Tsa'an (צען), which means, guess what, "to move tents", which is exactly what Chever the Kenite is doing in this verse (see also Isaiah 33:20, which describes Yeru-Shala'im as "a tent which will not be moved"). This is important sociologically, because it allows us an understanding of the culture of the nomadic tribes, who no doubt sought out the oak trees for their caravanserai, not for their sacredness so much as for the size and splendour of their shade; but who then needed to propitiate the god of the oak tree, to thank him for his hospitality, and hopefully not to attract any lightning should it happen to storm during their sojourn.
1 Chronicles 4:37 makes him a sub-tribe of Shim'on, possibly called Alon rather than Eylon or Elon (most English versions render it as Alon or even Allon), although this may simply be a way of naming the local tribal god.
Joshua 19:33 places Elon Be-Tsa'ananim (אֵילוֹן בְּצַעֲנַנִּים) in the boundary of Naphtali - but with a name connected to oak trees, we should expect to find towns, villages, farms, shrines, all over the land.
Judges 4:11 names yet another, this one a Kenite town near Kedesh, but spells it Tsa'anim (צענים), which Yehudit versions then correct in brackets back to Tsa'ananim, though in fact Tsa'anim is much more likely to be correct; it comes from the root Tsa'an (צען), which means, guess what, "to move tents", which is exactly what Chever the Kenite is doing in this verse (see also Isaiah 33:20, which describes Yeru-Shala'im as "a tent which will not be moved"). This is important sociologically, because it allows us an understanding of the culture of the nomadic tribes, who no doubt sought out the oak trees for their caravanserai, not for their sacredness so much as for the size and splendour of their shade; but who then needed to propitiate the god of the oak tree, to thank him for his hospitality, and hopefully not to attract any lightning should it happen to storm during their sojourn.
Joshua 19:43 names still one more Eylon (אֵילוֹן), this time as a city in the patrimony of Dan, yet again marking the presence of the worship of the oak-god. Some translations prefer to render the name on this occasion as Ayalon, which is spelled exactly the same in the Yehudit, though generally regarded as a very specific place, the one which Yehoshu'a evoked in Joshua 10:12: "Sun, stand still upon Giv'on; and you, Moon, in the valley of Ayalon.' Yehudit with pointing renders Ayalon as אַיָּלוֹן, but without the pointing it is the same Eylon as elsewhere.
There is also the possibility, especially with Ayalon but actually with several of these, that the root was not the oak-tree at all, but the deer, which is an AYAL in Yehudit, and nuisancely spelled with the same letters - אַיָּל.
1 Kings 4:9 names either a son of Deker or possibly a man named Ben Deker (בֶּן-דֶּקֶר) - the text is ambiguous - as one of Shelomoh's (Solomon's) royal governors, in charge of Elon Beit-Chanan (אֵילוֹן בֵּית חָנָן) among other places.
Judges 12:11 states that Eylon of the Beney Zevulun judged Yisra-El for six years, and (verse 12) "was buried at Ayalon in the land of Zevulun". This needs some explaining. The tribe of Zevulun was based in western Galilee; a religious grouping, as were most of the northern tribes, it worshipped the mother-goddess under the name Yah-Zevel, who we know best (1 Kings 16:28 ff) from the marriage of King Achav (Ahab) to the princess-priestess of Tsur (Tyre), I-Zevel or Jezebel.
Eylon, as a Judge, would thus have been her oracular priest - equivalent of the wizard or druid or shaman, or in later Yisra-Eli terms, Prophet - a local priest-king whose shrine was effectively his palace-castle, and whose authority was equally spiritual and temporal. Where was this Eylon's headquarters - at Tsa'ananim perhaps? Which is to say, moveable, depending on where the king was quartered, the prophet was preaching, or the local nomadic Bedou happened to have set up their caravanserai. His name, which is in fact his title, being as ever Eylon = "the oak tree" (which translates literally into Celtic as "derwid" or "druid", which is to say "oak seer", the shaman of the cult). His burial in Ayalon is not surprising (see previous note above): like Devorah at Alon Bachot (a dialect variation of Elon Bachot, the "weeping oak"), he will have been buried beneath his own sacred oak tree.
Click here for my essay on the nature of these ancient cults, including the various oak tree gods of Greece and Europe, of which Zeus, Jupiter and Thor are probably the most famous, and all three of them the chief gods of their particular pantheons, as El was of the Kena'ani.
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