Hebrew word · H439

אַלּוֹן בָּכוּת

bakhut

Allon-bacuth

From bākhāh, 'to weep, wail'. Appears only here, as part of the place name. It means 'weeping, lamentation'. Related nouns are bekhî ('weeping') and bākhā' (the 'Valley of Baca', Ps 84:6, whose meaning is debated).

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

What it means

§ Allon Bachuth = "oak of weeping"

site of Deborah's (Rebekah's nurse) grave near Bethel

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 Genesis 35:8

Range of meaning

From bākhāh, 'to weep, wail'. Appears only here, as part of the place name. It means 'weeping, lamentation'. Related nouns are bekhî ('weeping') and bākhā' (the 'Valley of Baca', Ps 84:6, whose meaning is debated).

Against the English

The KJV, BSB and WEB keep the name untranslated ('Allon-bacuth'), so the meaning is lost unless the reader checks a footnote. YLT translates it as 'Oak of weeping', and some versions put that in the text or a note.

Used elsewhere in the period

Mourning in ancient Israel was loud and done together: weeping, wailing, sometimes over set periods (Gen 23:2; 50:10–11, where the Canaanites name a place 'Abel-mizraim' after Egyptian mourning, which is a close parallel of a place named for a death and lament). Jewish interpretation (Genesis Rabbah 81:5, followed by Rashi) read allon as the Greek allon, 'another', making it 'another weeping'. On this reading the name hints that news of Rebekah's death arrived at the same time.

Where it appears

Genesis · 2

  1. Genesis 35:8 אַלּ֥וֹן בָּכֽוּת׃ פ Allon, Bacuth

    Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak below Bethel. So Jacob named it Allon-bacuth.

    Here: The first half of the place name, the same word as 'the oak' earlier in the verse. It ties the name directly to the tree.

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