Hali: a town in the northern territory of Asher, named once in the roll of towns that tribe received
Hali appears once in the Bible, in the list of towns given to the tribe of Asher in the north of the country. The writer simply reels the names off one after another: Helkath (חֶלְקָת), Hali, Beten (בֶּטֶן), Achshaph (אַכְשָׁף). Nothing else is said about the place anywhere. No story happens there, nobody is described as coming from there, and the name is never used again.
The reason the name gets a dictionary entry of its own is the way it is spelled. Written out in Hebrew it is exactly the rare poetic word for a fine gold ornament (חֲלִי), and it is built from the same three consonants as the common word for sickness (חֳלִי). Whether the town was actually named for jewelry, or for anything else, is unknown. The reference works list it as a place and make no attempt to explain the name, and nothing in the verse hints at a meaning behind it.
Where the town stood is not known, though its neighbors in the list mark out the general district well enough:
- Achshaph, two names later, was a Canaanite city already known from Egyptian records long before Israel arrived.
- Helkath, the name just before it, turns up again as one of the towns handed over to the Levites.
That run of names belongs to the coastal plain around Acco and the western edge of Lower Galilee. A ruin in that area, Khirbet Ras Ali, is often proposed for Hali, but the case rests largely on the similar sound of the later Arabic name, and no identification has won agreement.