Hebrew word · H5877

עֵין חָצוֹר

ve'ein

En-hazor

A compound name. 'Ein (H5869) means 'eye' and also 'spring, fountain'. Chatsor (Hazor, H2674) comes from the root behind chatser, 'enclosure, courtyard, unwalled settlement or village'. Together the name means 'Spring of Hazor' or 'Spring of the enclosure/settlement'.

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

What it means

§ En-hazor = "fount of Hazor"

one of the fenced cities in the territory of Naphtali

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 Joshua 19:37

Range of meaning

A compound name. 'Ein (H5869) means 'eye' and also 'spring, fountain'. Chatsor (Hazor, H2674) comes from the root behind chatser, 'enclosure, courtyard, unwalled settlement or village'. Together the name means 'Spring of Hazor' or 'Spring of the enclosure/settlement'.

Against the English

KJV, BSB, ESV and YLT write 'En-hazor', while WEB and NIV write 'En Hazor'. None translates the name, so the picture of a spring beside a settlement is lost. That loss does no harm, but it is real.

Used elsewhere in the period

Names beginning 'En-' (spring) are common in Canaanite and Israelite geography: En-gedi, En-rogel, En-dor, En-shemesh. Names built on chatser/Hazor are also common (Hazor, Hazar-addar, Hazar-shual, Baal-hazor). The Septuagint appears to translate the first element as pēgē, 'spring', with 'Asor' for Hazor, which shows the Greek translators understood it as 'spring of Hazor'.

Where it appears

Joshua · 2

  1. Joshua 19:37 וְעֵ֥ין חָצֽוֹר׃ and En, Hazor

    Kedesh, Edrei, En-hazor,

    Here: 'Ein is the ordinary word for an eye, and by extension a spring, a place where water 'looks out' of the ground. Here it is the first half of a two-word place name.

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