Hebrew word · H3066

יְהוּדִית

yehudit

Judean

An adverb, 'in the Judahite way', used of language: the spoken Hebrew of the kingdom of Judah (and later the province of Yehud). It is built from Yehudah (Judah) and the adjective yehudi, 'Judahite'. It appears only in 2 Kings 18:26, 28; Isaiah 36:11, 13; Nehemiah 13:24; and here.

Appears 6 times in 6 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

§ in the Jewish language, in Hebrew

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

From the study of 2 Chronicles 32:18

Range of meaning

An adverb, 'in the Judahite way', used of language: the spoken Hebrew of the kingdom of Judah (and later the province of Yehud). It is built from Yehudah (Judah) and the adjective yehudi, 'Judahite'. It appears only in 2 Kings 18:26, 28; Isaiah 36:11, 13; Nehemiah 13:24; and here.

Against the English

KJV/WEB 'the Jews' language/speech', YLT 'Jewish', BSB/NIV 'Hebrew', ESV 'the language of Judah'. The Hebrew Bible never calls its own language 'Hebrew'. It calls it 'Judahite' or, once, 'the language of Canaan' (Isaiah 19:18). The name 'Hebrew' for the language first shows up in the prologue to Ben Sira (2nd century BC) and later in Jewish writings.

How it drifted

'Jew/Jewish' later came to mean a religious and ethnic identity that crossed many lands and languages. In 701 BC a yehudi was simply a person from the kingdom of Judah, and yehudit was their local speech.

Used elsewhere in the period

In the parallel passages (2 Kings 18:26; Isaiah 36:11), Yehudit is set against 'aramit, Aramaic, which Hezekiah's officials understood but the common people did not. Aramaic was then the language of international diplomacy across the Assyrian empire. In Nehemiah 13:24 children of mixed marriages speak 'Ashdodite' and cannot speak Yehudit. The Greek Septuagint renders the word in Kings and Isaiah with Ioudaisti, 'in Judean'.

Similar words

Where it appears

2 Kings · 2

  1. 2 Kings 18:26 יְהוּדִ֔ית [in] Judean

    Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, along with Shebnah and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Do not speak with us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.”

  2. 2 Kings 18:28 יְהוּדִ֑ית [in] Judean

    Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out loudly in Hebrew: “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria!

2 Chronicles · 1

  1. 2 Chronicles 32:18 יְהוּדִ֗ית [in] Judean

    Then the Assyrians called out loudly in Hebrew to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall, to frighten and terrify them in order to capture the city.

    Here: An adverb meaning 'in Judahite', that is, in the everyday Hebrew of the kingdom of Judah. The point is that it was not Aramaic, the diplomats' language. The ordinary people on the wall could understand every word.

Nehemiah · 1

  1. Nehemiah 13:24 יְהוּדִ֑ית [in] Judean

    Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or of the other peoples, but could not speak the language of Judah.

Isaiah · 2

  1. Isaiah 36:11 יְהוּדִ֔ית [in] Judean

    Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Do not speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.”

  2. Isaiah 36:13 יְהוּדִ֑ית [in] Judean

    Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out loudly in Hebrew: “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.