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(Hebrews with the art. ha-Eleph, äָàֶìֶ , Vulg. Eleph), one of the second group of towns allotted to Benjamin, and named between Zelah and Jerusalem (Jos_18:28). It is possibly the ruined site marked as Katamon on Van de Velde's "Map of the environs of Jerusalem," about one mile S.W. of Jerusalem. The Sept. unites the preceding name with this, under the compound form ÓçëáëÝö (Vat. MS. ÓåëåêÜí ), and accordingly assigns only thirteen ( äåêáôñåῖò ) cities to this group. Eusebius and Jerome (in their Onomasticon, s.v.) mention Sela ( ÓåëÜ , öõëῆò Âåíéáìßí ) as distinct from Eleph. The Peshito strangely renders the name as Gebira. From the occasional use of àì in the bucolic sense of "ox," it has been conjectured that "Eleph and its villages" was a pastoral district. The extremely frequent numerical sense, however, of àì , a thousand, points rather to the populousness of these towns, which lay in the neighborhood of Jebus or Jerusalem. Schultens (Proverbs Solom. 2:17) refers to the Arabic alaph, "union," in illustration of both the numerical and the domestic sense of the Hebrews root. (See further Meier, Hebrews W. w. b. page 379.) Simonis (in his Oonomasticon, page 141) refers to the name of the Cilician town Ìõñßáíäñïò in illustration, and to Deu_1:11; Psa_91:7, etc., for an indefinite use of àì , to designate a great multitude. Furst, in his Hebraisches Worterb. (1:91, 98), finds in Zec_9:7 another mention of our town Eleph, under the form àִìּåּ or àִìֻּ , Alluph; which, like Jebusi, he makes a frontier city belonging to Benjamin and Judah. He quotes from Jephet (or Jefet ben-Ali), a Jewish commentator who lived at Jerusalem in the 10th century, a statement that the words of Jos_18:28; Jos_18:6 ìֶ äִéְáåּñַé öֵìִò , are, in fact, the designation of but a single city — or still less, apparently, than even that, for he further quotes Jefet as saying that in his time a ward of Jerusalem bore that aggregate name, in which was the sepulcher of Zechariah. We reject this view as not only doing violence to the distinct enumeration of the group of cities given in Jos_18:28, but as disturbing the sense of the passage in Zec_9:7 (see Hengstenberg, Christology, 3:392-394). The phrase àִìֻּ áַּéäåּãָä (tribe-prince in Judah), used by the prophet in this passage, is by him repeated twice (see Zec_12:5-6). In the Pentateuch and 1 Chronicles the same noun, àִìֻּ , in the plural, designates the chieftains or "dukes" of Edom. For some valuable remarks on the phrase, as indicating the genuineness of the passages in Zechariah, see also Hengstenberg, 4:67, note.