🔼The name Eliasaph: Summary
- Meaning
- God Has Added
- Etymology
- From (1) the word אל ('el), God, and (2) the verb יסף (yasap), to add.
🔼The name Eliasaph in the Bible
There are two men named Eliasaph in the Bible:
- A son of Deuel or Reuel, and leader of the tribe of Gad during the first of the wilderness years (Numbers 1:14). The tribe of Gad captained by Eliasaph was stationed on the south of the tabernacle (Numbers 2:14, 10:20), and he and his tribe made donations on the sixth day of the festival surrounding the consecration of the tabernacle (Numbers 7:42).
- A son of Lael, and the leader of the Gershonite branch of the Levites during the first of the wilderness years (Numbers 3:24).
🔼Etymology of the name Eliasaph
The name Eliasaph consists of two elements. The first part comes from אל ('el), the prominent Canaanite deity whose name became applied to the God of Israel, or the common abbreviation of Elohim, the genus God:
אל אלה
In names אל ('el) usually refers to אלהים ('elohim), that is Elohim, or God, also known as אלה ('eloah). In English, the words 'God' and 'god' exclusively refer to the deity but in Hebrew the words אל ('l) and אלה ('lh) are far more common and may express approach and negation, acts of wailing and pointing, and may even mean oak or terebinth.
The second part of our name derives from the verb יסף (yasap) means to add, increase or do again:
יסף
The verb יסף (yasap) means to add, increase or do again. It curiously has no [extant] derivatives.
🔼Eliasaph meaning
For a meaning of the name Eliasaph, both NOBSE Study Bible Name List and BDB Theological Dictionary read God Has Added. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names proposes Whom God Added.