🔼The name Hazor: Summary
- Meaning
- Village, Trumpet, Enclosure
- Etymology
- From the verb חצר (hasar), to begin to cluster or gather.
🔼The name Hazor in the Bible
There are four or five settlements named Hazor in the Bible:
- A city in Canaan that was destroyed by Joshua (Joshua 11:1) but rebuild (Joshua 19:36) and fortified by Solomon (1 Kings 9:15, only here spelled חצר).
- There are two towns named Hazor in southern Judah (Joshua 15:23 and 15:25),
- One in Benjamin (Nehemiah 11:33),
- And one near a town called Kedar, which was most likely named after a son of Ishmael, who lived in the Arabian desert. (Jeremiah 49:28).
🔼Etymology of the name Hazor
The name Hazor comes from the word group חצר (hzr):
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.
🔼Hazor meaning
The name Hazor has many meanings, including Village, Trumpet, and Leek. NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads Enclosure; Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names reads Fence, Castle, but that seems a very liberal interpretation.