Elon the Zebulunite אילון הזבולוני

That is everything known. No father, no oppressor, no war, no children — only a tribe, a term and a place of burial.

In Hebrew his name and the name of the town where he is buried are written almost identically: Elon and Aijalon. Such echoes are frequent in the book of Judges and usually mean that the person's name and the place's are linked — either the town is named after him, or he after it.

The emptiness of these two verses is itself meaningful. The book of Judges is built as an alternation: a detailed account of a deliverer, then a short entry about years without trouble. Elon's ten years stand between Jephthah's vow and the coming of the Philistines, and in them nothing happened that was worth writing down.

The years here are computed by adding up the terms given in the book of Judges itself, counting from the death of Joshua; they are not stated as such in the source.