Elam’s Afterlife

After the flood, the sons of Noah repopulated the earth. Shem’s first son was Elam (Genesis 10:22; cf. Genesis 14:1), the ancestor of the Elamite people that lived in the South of present-day Iran, with Susa as their capital. Elam is apparently the firstborn of the Shemites, displaced from that prominence, as far as the biblical story is concerned, by Eber, son of Shelah, son of Arpachshad, who was Elam’s brother (Genesis 10:22-25).

Chedorlaomer, the overlord of Canaan during the time of Abram, was an Elamite king (Genesis 14:1, 9). In a foreshadowing of things to come, Abram defeated the Elamites and their allies in battle.

For much of Israel’s history, Elam is invisible. During the exile, some Israelites are transported to Elam (cf. Isaiah 11:11), and that seems to be the source for the listing of returned exiles as “sons of Elam” (Ezra 2:7; Nehemiah 7:12). Elamites join with the Persians and Medes in conquering Babylon (Isaiah 21).

Jeremiah and Ezekiel describe the destruction of Elam, essentially the work of the Assyrian empire but finished by the conquests of the Medo-Persians. Elamites drink from Yahweh’s cup (Jeremiah 25:25), an d the Lord breaks their bows and destroys their thrones (Jeremiah 49:34-39). Ezekiel’s description of Elam’s plundering and destruction (Ezekiel 32:24) resembles the boast of Ashurbanipal, who took “the great holy city” of Susa in 640 BC. Susa remained, and served as a setting for the visions of Daniel (8:2) and the Persian capital in Esther.

Elam’s biblical history seems to end in horrors: “Elam is there and all her hordes around her grave; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, who went down uncircumcised to the lower parts of the earth, who instilled their terror in the land of the living and bore their disgrace with those who went down to the pit” (Ezekiel 32:34).

But Elam makes one final appearance in the Bible: In Acts 2:9, Elamites are listed with Parthians, Medes, Persians, Asians, and others as witnesses to the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. Abram once conquered an Elamite king; in Acts 2, the Spirit promised to Abram is spread out to Elamite God-fearers worshiping in Jerusalem. By the Spirit, Shem’s firstborn, once demoted in favor of Eber, is reincorporated into the Shemite inheritance.