diff --git a/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/TermQueryParser.java b/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/TermQueryParser.java
index 5e6babdbaeb..c0755289f06 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/TermQueryParser.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/TermQueryParser.java
@@ -89,6 +89,8 @@ public class TermQueryParser implements QueryParser {
                     fieldName = currentFieldName;
                     value = parser.objectBytes();
                 }
+            } else if (token == XContentParser.Token.START_ARRAY) {
+                throw new QueryParsingException(parseContext, "[term] query does not support array of values");
             }
         }
 
diff --git a/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/SimpleIndexQueryParserTests.java b/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/SimpleIndexQueryParserTests.java
index 992f1777a2c..88c3b9d2f90 100644
--- a/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/SimpleIndexQueryParserTests.java
+++ b/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/SimpleIndexQueryParserTests.java
@@ -516,6 +516,13 @@ public class SimpleIndexQueryParserTests extends ElasticsearchSingleNodeTest {
         assertThat(fieldQuery.getTerm().bytes(), equalTo(indexedValueForSearch(34l)));
     }
 
+    @Test(expected = QueryParsingException.class)
+    public void testTermQueryArrayInvalid() throws IOException {
+        IndexQueryParserService queryParser = queryParser();
+        String query = copyToStringFromClasspath("/org/elasticsearch/index/query/term-array-invalid.json");
+        unwrapTermQuery(queryParser.parse(query).query());
+    }
+
     private static TermQuery unwrapTermQuery(Query q) {
         assertThat(q, instanceOf(TermQuery.class));
         return (TermQuery) q;
diff --git a/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/term-array-invalid.json b/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/term-array-invalid.json
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..a198bc2dafc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/term-array-invalid.json
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{
+    "term": {
+        "age": [34, 35]
+    }
+}