🔼The name Telem: Summary
- Meaning
- Oppression
- Etymology
- From the verb טלם (talam), to oppress or injure.
🔼The name Telem in the Bible
There are one man and one city named Telem in the Bible:
- Telem the town is mentioned in Joshua 15:24 as one of the towns located in the southern end of the territory allotted to Judah. Some scholars have proposed that this Telem is the same as the town called Telaim (טלאים) mentioned in 1 Samuel 15:4, but that is mere conjecture.
- Telem the man was a post-exilic gatekeeper, who is remembered only for being among the men who had married and pledged to divorce their foreign wives during the Purge of Ezra (Ezra 10:24).
🔼Etymology of the name Telem
The name Telem is probably Aramaic and comes from the verb טלם (talam), meaning to oppress or injure:
Excerpted from: Abarim Publications' Biblical Dictionary
טלם
Verb טלם (talam) means to oppress or injure. It's not used in the Bible.
🔼Telem meaning
For a meaning of the name Telem, NOBSE Study Bible Name List appears to equate Telem with Telaim and reads an erroneous A Lamb for Telem.
Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names proposes Oppression. BDB Theological Dictionary does not offer a translation of our name but does list it under the Aramaic verb טלם (tlm), meaning to oppress.