Hebrew word · H8512

תֵּל אָבִיב

tel

Tel-abib

A place name. Hebrew tel = ruin-mound. 'Aviv = fresh ears of barley, and the spring month named for them (Exod 13:4). The name is best explained as a Hebrew rendering of Akkadian til abūbi, 'mound of the Flood', a stock term for an ancient ruin thought to date from the deluge.

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

What it means

§ Tel-abib = "mound of the flood"

a city in Babylon, the home of the prophet Ezekiel, located on the river Chebar which was probably a branch of the Euphrates

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 Ezekiel 3:15

Range of meaning

A place name. Hebrew tel = ruin-mound. 'Aviv = fresh ears of barley, and the spring month named for them (Exod 13:4). The name is best explained as a Hebrew rendering of Akkadian til abūbi, 'mound of the Flood', a stock term for an ancient ruin thought to date from the deluge.

Against the English

English versions transliterate it as Tel-abib, Tel Aviv or Tel-Ahib (YLT). The Vulgate translates the Hebrew sense: 'heap of new grain'.

How it drifted

Modern readers hear the Israeli city. The city took its name from this verse: Nahum Sokolow used it in 1902 as the Hebrew title of Herzl's novel Altneuland ('Old-New Land'), and the new Jaffa suburb adopted it in 1910.

Used elsewhere in the period

Only here in the Bible. Babylonian texts use til abūbi for ruined mounds. Deportees were often settled on such abandoned sites to bring them back into farming.

Where it appears

Ezekiel · 2

  1. Ezekiel 3:15 תֵּ֣ל אָ֠בִיב Tel, Abib

    I came to the exiles at Tel-abib who dwelt by the River Kebar. And for seven days I sat where they sat and remained there among them, overwhelmed.

    Here: The first half of a place name. A 'tel' is a mound built up from the ruins of earlier settlements.

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