Zalmon

Meaning: shady

Hebrew: צַלְמוֹן —transliteration: Tsalmown

also known as: Tsalmon and Salmon

This is the name of a biblical man and a place.

1. Zalmon, one of David’s warriors

   He is called the Ahohite (2 Samuel 23:28) and also Ilai (1 Chronicles 11:29).

2. Zalmon, a woods and forested hill

   This woods is near Shechem, from which Abimelech and his party brought boughs and started a murderous fire.

   Then Abimelech, son of Gideon, went up to Mount Zalmon, he and all the people who were with him. And Abimelech took an ax in his hand and cut down a bough from the trees, and took it and laid it on his shoulder; then he said to the people who were with him, “What you have seen me do, make haste and do as I have done.”

   So each of the people likewise cut down his own bough and followed Abimelech, put them against the stronghold, and set the stronghold on fire above them, so that all the people of the tower of Shechem died, about a thousand men and women.
   —Judges 9:48-49 NKJV

   Zalmon was a hill covered with dark forests, south of Shechem, from which Abimelech and his men gathered wood to burn that city (Judg. 9:48)

   In Psalm 68:14 the change from war to peace is likened to snow on the dark mountain, as some interpret the expression. Others suppose the words here mean that the bones of the slain left unburied covered the land, so that it seemed to be white as if covered with snow. The reference, however, of the psalm is probably to Josh. 11 and 12. The scattering of the kings and their followers is fitly likened unto the snow-flakes rapidly falling on the dark Salmon.

   It is probably the southern peak of Gerizim, later called Jebel Sulman or Jebel Suleiman.