Elam עֵילָם

Who is Elam in the Bible?

Elam in the Bible was the ancestor of a significant Jewish family group whose descendants returned from Babylonian exile to Jerusalem. The descendants of Elam appear repeatedly in the records of the return, first listed among those who came back with Zerubbabel as documented in Ezra 2:7 and Nehemiah 7:12, and later among those who returned with Ezra in Ezra 8:7. Some members of Elam's family are also mentioned in Ezra 10:26 as among those who had married foreign women and agreed to put them away during the post-exilic reforms. The prominence of Elam's descendants across multiple returns and their inclusion in lists of significant returning families demonstrates their importance as a major clan in the restoration of the Jewish community after the Babylonian captivity.