Zelah was a town in the territory of Benjamin. It is best known as the location of the family tomb of Kish, father of King Saul.
After the execution of descendants of Saul in connection with Saul's violence against the Gibeonites, David gathered the remains of Saul and Jonathan and buried them with the other members of Saul's family in the tomb of Kish at Zelah.
The precise modern location of Zelah has not been established securely.
Joshua lists Zelah among the towns assigned to the tribe of Benjamin.
The town receives greater significance in 2 Samuel 21. After the deaths of seven descendants of Saul, David arranged for their remains to be buried together with the bones of Saul and Jonathan.
The burial took place in the land of Benjamin at Zelah, in the tomb of Kish, Saul's father.
The passage therefore associates Zelah directly with the ancestral territory and burial place of the family of Israel's first king.
Zelah belonged to the Benjaminite territory north or northwest of Jerusalem, but the biblical text gives little additional information about the settlement.
Its association with the family tomb of Kish suggests that it belonged within the ancestral landscape of Saul's family.
Several sites in Benjamin have been proposed for Zelah, but the similarity of ancient and modern place-names has not produced a universally accepted identification.
The precise location of biblical Zelah remains uncertain.
Proposed identifications have generally sought a location within the territory of Benjamin consistent with the Saul family traditions.
Zelah should not be equated automatically with Haeleph, which appears separately in the Benjaminite town list of Joshua 18:28.
AVWJ should therefore retain Zelah as an unidentified Benjaminite settlement unless stronger archaeological or inscriptional evidence becomes available.