heap of salt
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary
Connected with Telharsa and Cherub (Chiripha, in Ptolemy). Thelme (Ptolemy 5:20) or "hill of salt," a city of the low salt district near the Persian gulf (Gesenins).
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.
Tel-me'lah. See Tel-Harsa.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863
tel-mē?la (תּל־מלח, tēl-melaḥ, ?hill of salt?): A Babylonian town mentioned in Ezr_2:59; Neh_7:61 with Tel-harsha and Cherub (see TEL-HARSHA). It possibly lay on the low salt tract near the Persian Gulf. In 1 Esdras 5:36 it is called ?Thermeleth.?
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.
(Heb. Tel-me'lach, תֵּלאּמֵלִח, salt hill; Sept. Θελμελέχ and Θελμελέθ, v.r. Θελμεχέλ and Θερμελεθα; Vulg. Thelmala) is joined with Tel-harsa and Cherub as the name of a place where the Jews returned who had lost their pedigree after the Captivity (Ezr_2:59; Nehemiah 3:61). It is perhaps the Thelme of Ptolemy (5, 20), which some wrongly read as Theane (ΘΕΑΜΗ for ΘΕΛΜΗ), a city of the low salt tract near the Persian Gulf,' whence probably the name (Gesen. Lex. Heb. s.v.). Cherub, which may be pretty surely identified with Ptolemy's Chiripha (Χιριφά), was in the same region. Herzfeld (Gesch. Tsr. 1, 452) insists that it designates the province of Melitene according to Ptolemy (6,3), adjoining Susiana west of the Tigris; but Ptolemy (5, 7, 5) and Pliny (6, 3) know only a Melitene on the border of Cappadocia and Armenia Major.
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.