Hebrew word · H1910

הֲדַדְרִמּוֹן

rimon

Hadad-rimmon

Appears only here. Both halves are known divine names. Hadad was the storm god of Syria and Canaan (Baal-Hadad at Ugarit; the kings Ben-Hadad of Damascus were named after him). Rimmon is also an ordinary place name, and the Hebrew word for 'pomegranate'.

Appears 2 times in 1 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

§ Hadad-rimmon = "Hadad of the pomegranates"

a place in the valley of Megiddo where a national lamentation was held for the death of King Josiah; named after two Syrian gods

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Zechariah 12:11

Range of meaning

Appears only here. Both halves are known divine names. Hadad was the storm god of Syria and Canaan (Baal-Hadad at Ugarit; the kings Ben-Hadad of Damascus were named after him). Rimmon/Rammanu, 'the Thunderer', was his title in Damascus (2 Kings 5:18) and appears in the Aramean royal name Tab-rimmon (1 Kings 15:18). Rimmon is also an ordinary place name, and the Hebrew word for 'pomegranate'.

Against the English

Most English versions just transliterate the name and leave it unexplained. Some phrase it 'mourning for Hadad-rimmon', which suggests a person or god being mourned. Others say 'of Hadad-rimmon', which could mean a place. The Hebrew itself does not decide.

Used elsewhere in the period

The Aramaic Targum (an early Jewish paraphrase) reads it as two royal deaths: Ahab, killed in battle in a war with Ben-Hadad's Aram (it names the killer 'Hadadrimmon son of Tabrimmon'), and Josiah, killed by Pharaoh in the plain of Megiddo. Jerome (around 400 CE) took it as a town near Jezreel, which he says was called Maximianopolis in his day. Many modern scholars point to the Ugaritic Baal myth, where the storm god dies and is ritually mourned by El and Anat (KTU 1.5–1.6). Ezekiel 8:14 shows women in Jerusalem 'weeping for Tammuz', a dying god of the same kind.

Where it appears

Zechariah · 2

  1. Zechariah 12:11 הֲדַדְ־ רִמּ֖וֹן Hadad-, Rimmon

    On that day the wailing in Jerusalem will be as great as the wailing of Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo.

    Here: Hadad was the name of the great West Semitic storm god, the one known as Baal at Ugarit. Here it forms the first half of a compound name that appears nowhere else in the Bible.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.