Zelah

Place Name

Name meaning: "rib; side; halting"

Zelah was a town in the territory of Benjamin (Joshua 18:28) and the burial place of the family of Kish: they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the tomb of Kish his father (2 Samuel 21:14). This burial followed David's delivery of the bones of Saul and Jonathan from Jabesh-gilead, where the Jabesh-gileadites had retrieved them after the Philistines had displayed them at Beth-shean. The interment at Zelah finally gave Saul's family an honorable burial in their ancestral territory, after which God responded to the plea for the land. The site has not been positively identified.