Hebrew word · H4789
מֵרוֹז
meroz
Meroz
A place name, found only here. Its meaning and location are unknown.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
§ Meroz = "refuge"
a place in northern Palestine
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
- Range of meaning
A place name, found only here. Its meaning and location are unknown.
- Against the English
All English versions simply transliterate the name. The Latin Vulgate speaks of 'the land of Meroz.'
- Used elsewhere in the period
No secure mention exists outside this verse. Khirbet Marus in upper Galilee has been suggested on the basis of a similar name, but this is not established. The Babylonian Talmud (Mo'ed Qatan 16a) records later speculation that Meroz was a great man or a star, the latter drawn from 5:20, and also a tradition that Barak put the place under a ban with blasts of 400 horns. These are later interpretations, not evidence about the original place.
Where it appears
Judges · 1
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Judges 5:23 מֵר֗וֹז Meroz
‘Curse Meroz,’ says the angel of the LORD. ‘Bitterly curse her inhabitants; for they did not come to help the LORD, to help the LORD against the mighty.’
Here: A place named nowhere else in the Bible, and its location is unknown. The town survives in the record only because of this curse.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.