🔼The name Arumah: Summary
- Meaning
- Height, Elevated
- Etymology
- From the verb רום (rum), to be high.
🔼The name Arumah in the Bible
The name Arumah occurs only once in the Bible. It's the name of a town close to Shechem at which Abimelech, the fratricidal son of Gideon (or Jerubbaal), supposedly resided (Judges 9:41).
Abimelech had killed his seventy brothers at Shechem and had taken control over Israel, but Gaal, son of Ebed stirred up the Shechemites into an insurrection against him. Mayor Zebul of Shechem enticed Gaal to battle the forces of Abimelech, but when he did so his army was utterly defeated. With Gaal on the run, Abimelech remained at Arumah and Zebul gave chase to Gaal. The next morning, Abimelech awaited the Shechemites as they went to work on their fields, and killed everybody and destroyed the city. What Zebul thought of that, the story doesn't tell.
Some scholars assume that Arumah is the same as the town called רומה (Rumah), where Pedaiah, the maternal grandfather of king Jehoiakim of Judah came from (2 Kings 23:36), but that is conjecture.
🔼Etymology of the name Arumah
The name Arumah comes from the verb רום (rum), meaning to be high:
רום
The verb רום (rum) means to be high or high up in either a physical, social or even attitudinal sense, and may also refer to the apex in a natural process: the being ripe and ready-for-harvest of fruits. Subsequently, our verb may imply a state beyond ripe (higher than ripe, overripe), which thus refers to rotting and being maggot riddled. This means that to the ancients, higher did not simply mean better, and an arrogant political status that was higher than it should be equaled rot and worms (Acts 12:23).
Derived nouns, such as רום (rum) and related forms such as רמה (rama), describe height or pride. Noun רמות (ramut) describes some high thing. The noun ארמון ('armon) refers to a society's apex: a citadel or palace. The noun ראם (re'em) describes the wild ox, which was named possibly for the same reason why we moderns call a rising market a "bull" market. The similar verb ראם (ra'am) means to rise.
The important noun רמון (rimmon) means pomegranate and the pomegranate became the symbol for harvest-ready fruit (see our full dictionary article for more on this). Overripe items might suffer the noun רמה (rimma), worm or maggot, or the verb רמם (ramam), to be wormy.
🔼Arumah meaning
For a meaning of the name Arumah, NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads Height and Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names has Elevated. BDB Theological Dictionary does not interpret this name.