Hebrew word · H1912
הֹ֫דּוּ
mehodu
India
The Indus region. It comes from Old Persian Hi(n)duš, related to Sanskrit Sindhu, 'river' (the Indus). In Persian usage it meant the province along the Indus valley that Darius I conquered around 518 BC, roughly today's Punjab and Sindh.
Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
§ India = "flee away" or " give ye thanks"
the country surrounding the Indus, mentioned as the eastern border of the empire of Ahasuerus
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
The Indus region. It comes from Old Persian Hi(n)duš, related to Sanskrit Sindhu, 'river' (the Indus). In Persian usage it meant the province along the Indus valley that Darius I conquered around 518 BC, roughly today's Punjab and Sindh.
- Against the English
Every major English version says 'India'. Today that suggests the whole subcontinent or the modern nation. The Persian province covered only its north-western corner.
- How it drifted
'India' grew from the Greek name for the land beyond the Indus to the whole subcontinent, and later to a modern nation-state.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Hiduš appears in the lists of subject lands in Darius' and Xerxes' inscriptions. Herodotus (3.94) says the Indians paid the largest tribute of any people, 360 talents of gold dust. The word occurs in the Bible only here and in Esther 8:9.
Where it appears
Esther · 2
-
Esther 1:1 מֵהֹ֣דּוּ from India
This is what happened in the days of Xerxes, who reigned over 127 provinces from India to Cush.
Here: Hoddu is the Indus River region (today's Pakistan and north-west India), the empire's far south-eastern edge. It is not the whole Indian subcontinent.
-
Esther 8:9 מֵהֹ֣דּוּ [were] from India
At once the royal scribes were summoned, and on the twenty-third day of the third month (the month of Sivan), they recorded all of Mordecai’s orders to the Jews and to the satraps, governors, and princes of the 127 provinces from India to Cush—writing to each province in its own script, to every people in their own language, and to the Jews in their own script and language.
Here: Hoddu is Persian Hinduš, the Indus valley region (largely modern Pakistan). It was the empire's eastern edge, not the Indian subcontinent as a whole.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.