Gender Masculine
Scripts אֶלְעָזָר (Ancient Hebrew) Ἐλεάζαρ (Ancient Greek)
From the Hebrew name אֶלְעָזָר (‘El’azar) which means “my GOD has helped” (or “who GOD helps). In the Old Testament this is the name of one of Aaron’s sons, exactly his third son, belonging to the tribe of Levi, and high priest of Israel. His two older brothers, Nadab and Abiu, died before their father, in the Sinai desert, as a punishment for offering profane fire to YHWH.
The Greek name Lazarus is a Hellenized version of the name Eleazar.
Mentions in the Holy Scriptures
The name Eleazar is very similar to the name Eliezer ( אליעזר) and is assigned to eight different men in the Bible. The two best known Eleazars are:
Aaron’s son, father of Phinehas (Exodus 6:23).
The son of Abinadab, to whose care the men of Kiriath-jearim placed the Ark (1 Samuel 7:1).
Note the striking symmetry between these two Eleazars. The first is a son of the father of all priests (Aaron), and he and his brother Ithamar form the two main sub-castes of priests in Israel (1 Chronicles 24:4). Their two brothers Nadab and Abihu are executed by the Lord for offering profane fire before the tabernacle that contained the Ark of the Covenant (Leviticus 10:1-4). The other Eleazar is the son of the man in whose house the Ark resided after his stay with the Philistines, and his brother Uzzah famously died when he touched the Ark as it threatened to slip from the chariot (2 Samuel 6:7).
Lesser-known Eleazars reported in the Bible are:
A grandson of Merari (1 Chronicles 23:22).
One of David’s most important powerful men (2 Samuel 23:9).
A priest (Ezra 8:33).
One of those who divorced their foreign wives during Ezra’s purge (Ezra 10:25).
A priest present at the dedication of the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 12:42).
The mattean great-grandfather of Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus (spelled Ελεαζαρ; Matthew 1:15).