The Aramaic noun elah is the primary word for God in the Aramaic portions of the Old Testament — Daniel and Ezra. It is the equivalent of Hebrew El and Elohim, appearing over 90 times to denote both the true God and pagan deities in context.
During the Babylonian captivity, Daniel and Ezra were partly written in Aramaic — the international language of the ancient Near East. The use of elah demonstrates that the God of Israel was not a local deity but the supreme ruler acknowledged even by foreign kings. Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, and Cyrus all ultimately confessed the Elah of Israel as the Most High. This word anticipates the universal scope of the Kingdom that Daniel saw in his visions — a Kingdom that will fill the whole earth.