🔼The name Eliada: Summary
- Meaning
- God Knows, God Has Known
- Etymology
- From (1) the word אל ('el), God, and (2) the verb ידע (yada'), to know.
🔼The name Eliada in the Bible
There are three men named Eliada in the Bible:
- One of the lesser known sons of king David, who is mentioned among the eleven sons who were born to him in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5:16). The same list of names occurs in 1 Chronicles 3:8, and again in 1 Chronicles 14:7, except that now Eliada is called Beeliada. It happens a few times in the Bible that a name that consists of the name Baal became changed to something else.
- The father of Rezon, who had fled from king Hadadezer of Zobah, and whom God raised as a satan to Solomon, because the latter had turned away from YHWH and had begun to serve idols (1 Kings 11:23).
- A Benjaminite commander of 200,000 archers in service of king Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 17:17).
🔼Etymology of the name Eliada
The name Eliada consists of two elements, the first one being אל (El), the common abbreviation of Elohim, meaning God (or gods):
אל אלה
In names אל ('el) usually refers to אלהים ('elohim), that is Elohim, or God, also known as אלה ('eloah). In English, the words 'God' and 'god' exclusively refer to the deity but in Hebrew the words אל ('l) and אלה ('lh) are far more common and may express approach and negation, acts of wailing and pointing, and may even mean oak or terebinth.
The second element of our name comes from the verb ידע (yada'), meaning to know:
ידע
The verb ידע (yada') means both to know and to have intimate relations (Genesis 4:1, Judges 11:39). Knowledge equals familiarity with truth, which in turn is the only thing all people can agree on, which in turn promotes the search for agreement and modes of expression (rather than mere data). The Bible holds all knowledge in the highest regard. God, after all, is both a God of knowledge (Jeremiah 3:15) and love (1 John 4:7).
Since all truth relates to the Word of God, wisdom begins with the reverence of the Creator (Proverbs 1:7) and learning equals love-making within a marital relation with the Creator (Isaiah 54:5).
Nouns דעה (dea), דע (dea') and דעת (da'at) all mean knowledge. Nouns ידעני (yidde'oni), מודע (moda') and מדעת (moda'at) describe familiarity or kinship. This root's Greek counterpart is γινωσκω (ginosko).
🔼Eliada meaning
For a meaning of the name Eliada, NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads God Has Known. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names proposes Whom God Knows. And BDB Theological Dictionary proposes God Knows.