Eliam
E'liam
[usually El'am] (Hebrews Eliam', אֵַלועָם, God is [his] people, i.e., friend; Sept. Ε᾿λιάβ, Vulg. Eliam), the father of Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah and afterwards of David (2Sa 11:3). In the list of 1Ch 3:5, the names of both father and daughter are altered, the former to the equivalent AMMIEL SEE AMMIEL (q.v.), and the latter to Bathshua, both the latter names being also those of non-Israelite persons, while Uriah was a Hittite (comp. Ge 38:12; 1Ch 2:3; also 2Sa 17:27). 'The same name Eliam also occurs as that of a Gilonite, the son of Ahithophel, and one of David's "thirty" warriors (2Sa 23:34). It is omitted in the list of 1 Chronicles 11, but is now probably discernible as "AHIJAH the Pelonite" (verse 36) (see Kennicott, Dissertation, p. 207). The ancient Jewish tradition preserved by Jerome (Qu. Hebr. on 2Sa 11:3, and 1Ch 3:5) is that the two Eliams are the same person. An argument has been founded on this to account for the hostility of Ahithophel to king David, as having dishonored his house and caused the death of his son-in-law (Blunt, Coincidences, part 2, 10). But he would perhaps have rather been proud of this alliance with royalty. B.C. 1046.
