Eleazar (Eleazer)

Eleazar is a Hebrew personal name meaning "God has helped" (from ʾel, "God," and ʿazar, "to help"), borne in Scripture by several different men, the most prominent being Aaron's third son, who succeeded his father as high priest.

The text says Aaron's wife Elisheba bore him Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar (Exodus 6:23), and that Eleazar was named with his father and brothers when Yahweh set them apart to minister as priests (Exodus 28:1). Numbers 3:32 gives him rank among the Levites as "prince of the princes of the Levites, with the oversight of those who keep the requirements of the sanctuary." His succession is narrated at Mount Hor: Moses stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on Eleazar, Aaron died on the mountain top, and Moses and Eleazar came down (Numbers 20:28); Deuteronomy 10:6 records that Eleazar "ministered in the priest's office in his place." He died and was buried "in the hill of Phinehas his son, which was given him in the hill country of Ephraim" (Joshua 24:33). First Chronicles 24:1-6 lists the divisions of Aaron's sons and describes lots drawn impartially between the sons of Eleazar and the sons of Ithamar, with one fathers' house taken for each.

The name belongs to other figures as well. In 1 Samuel 7:1 the men of Kiriath Jearim brought the ark into Abinadab's house on the hill and consecrated his son Eleazar to keep it — a different Eleazar, whose keeping of the ark stands in the narrative just before Samuel's call to Israel to put away foreign gods and the Ashtaroth and serve Yahweh only (1 Samuel 7:3). In Ezra 8:33 a priest named Eleazar son of Phinehas is among those into whose hands the silver, gold and vessels were weighed in the house of God after the return from exile. Linguistically, the same name also appears in later Jewish and Christian genealogical material, so occurrences must be distinguished by the family details given in each context rather than assumed to refer to one person.

Christian traditions read the Eleazar material with different emphases. In this tradition, the investiture with Aaron's garments (Numbers 20:28) has often been treated as a pattern for the handing on of priestly office, and is cited by Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican writers who stress an unbroken ministerial succession; the alternating divisions of Eleazar and Ithamar in 1 Chronicles 24 are likewise read by some as evidence of ordered priestly rotation. Other traditions, especially those that emphasize the priesthood of all believers, read these passages mainly as a historical record of Israel's cult and draw no continuing church-office conclusion from them. Interpretive suggestion: the recurring bare notice that "Eleazar died" and "Eleazar kept the ark" invites reading the several Eleazars as examples of faithful, largely unnamed service rather than as a single typological figure.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.