Hebrew word · H2024

הָרָא

vehara'

Hara

This place name appears only here. No secure location is known.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament.

What it means

§ Hara = "mountain land"

a place of exile in Assyria

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

Range of meaning: This place name appears only here. No secure location is known.
Against the English: All the English versions transliterate it as 'Hara', which makes it look like a known town.
Used elsewhere in the period: The parallel lists in 2 Kgs 17:6 and 18:11 read 'Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and the cities of the Medes'. Some Greek witnesses there have 'mountains of the Medes', which in Hebrew would be hārê māday. Many commentators (e.g., Williamson, Japhet, Klein) think Hara comes from hārê, 'mountains', with 'Medes' dropped.

1 Chronicles · 1

1 Chronicles 5:26 וְהָרָא֙ and Hara

So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria (that is, Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria) to take the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh into exile. And he brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river of Gozan, where they remain to this day.

Here: 'And Hara'. This place is otherwise unknown. It may come from 'mountains [of the Medes]', meaning the far eastern edge of the empire.

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