🔼The name Eliathah: Summary
- Meaning
- God Comes, God Has Come
- Etymology
- From (1) the word אל ('el), God, and (2) the verb אתה ('ata), to come.
🔼The name Eliathah in the Bible
There's only one man named Eliathah in the Bible. He is listed as one of the fourteen musical sons of Heman "the king's seer" who sang to YHWH and prophesied during the reign of king David (1 Chronicles 25:4, spelled אליאתה).
When secondary duties were assigned, Eliathah and sons caught the twentieth lot, although it's not told what that entailed (1 Chronicles 25:27, spelled without the central א, aleph: אליתה).
🔼Etymology of the name Eliathah
The name Eliathah 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 possibly comes from the verb אתה ('ata), meaning to come:
את
The ubiquitous particle את ('et) usually marks the accusative (the subject of a sentence) but often has an unclear function. Sometimes it (or an identical second particle) indicates a close relationship between the words that surround it, and can be translated with "with" or "near."
The form את ('et) is also the base of the four second person pronouns, meaning "you": (אתה, you man; את, you woman; אתם, you men and אתן, you women).
The verb אתה ('ata) is closely similar to the masculine singular pronoun (you man) and means to come. It has no extant derivatives.
A fourth instance of the form את is the masculine noun את ('et), which denotes an iron cutting instrument like a ploughshare, mattock or axe head.
🔼Eliathah meaning
For a meaning of the name Eliathah, both NOBSE Study Bible Name List and BDB Theological Dictionary read God Has Come. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names proposes God Comes.