🔼The name Baal-hazor: Summary
- Meaning
- Lord Of A Village
- Etymology
- From (1) the verb בעל (ba'al), to be lord, and (2) the noun חצר (haser), village.
🔼The name Baal-hazor in the Bible
The name Baal-hazor occurs only one time in the Bible. It's the name of a village near Ephraim, where Absalom had sheepshearers (2 Samuel 13:23). Apparently the shearing went together with a lot of merry making, because Absalom invited all his brothers to join in the festivities. When his half-brother Amnon was drunk, Absalom had his servants kill him, on account of the rape of Absalom's sister Tamar.
🔼Etymology of the name Baal-hazor
The name Baal-hazor consists of two parts. The first part is the familiar word בעל (ba'al), Baal, meaning lord or master:
בעל
The verb בעל (ba'al) means to exercise dominion over; to own, control or be lord over. The ubiquitous noun בעל (ba'al) means lord, master and even husband, and its feminine counterpart בעלה (ba'ala) means mistress or landlady.
God is obviously called 'lord' all over the Bible and the sin of the Baal priests (1 Kings 18:40) was not that they called upon some other deity but rather their incessant howling of the word 'lord' without any further responsibility or effects (see Matthew 7:21 and 11:4-5).
The second part of our name comes from the word group חצר:
חצר
The verb חצר (hasar) relates to the first visual manifestations of a gathering or emergence of some sort: to begin to cluster or gather or emerge.
The noun חציר (hasir) means grass, which is the first plant to sprout after, say, a fire. Noun חציר (hasir) means leek (a bigger version of grass) and חצצרה (hasosra) means trumpet, i.e. the perhaps leek-like instrument with which a gathering of humans is instigated.
The noun חצר (haser) denotes a hamlet or settlement or loose, rudimentary federation; the initial beginning of what some day might become a village or even a city. Noun חצר (haser) refers to an enclosure in the architectural sense, or even a court in the sense of it being a place where people loosely gather.
🔼Baal-hazor meaning
For a meaning of the name Baal-hazor, NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads Lord Of A Village. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names has Having A Village, and BDB Theological Dictionary proposes Possessor Of A Court.