Hebrew word · H3067
יְהוּדִית
yehudit
Judith
A personal name. It is probably connected to the root 'praise' (as in Judah, Gen 29:35) and so means something like 'praised'. In later Hebrew the same form became an ordinary adjective, 'Judean / Jewish (woman)', and also named the Judean language (2 Kgs 18:26; Neh 13:24).
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
A woman living at the time of the Patriarchs, only mentioned at Gen.26.34;
daughter of: Beeri (H0882); married to Esau (H6215)
§ Judith = "Jewess" or "praised"
the daughter of Beeri the Hittite and wife of Esau
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 Genesis 26:34
- Range of meaning
A personal name. It is probably connected to the root 'praise' (as in Judah, Gen 29:35) and so means something like 'praised'. In later Hebrew the same form became an ordinary adjective, 'Judean / Jewish (woman)', and also named the Judean language (2 Kgs 18:26; Neh 13:24).
- Against the English
All versions give 'Judith'. English readers may connect it with the heroine of the book of Judith or with the meaning 'Jewess', but neither belongs to this Hittite woman.
- How it drifted
The later sense 'Jewish woman', and the fame of the book of Judith, can make the name sound Israelite. In Genesis it is simply a Semitic name current among the peoples of Canaan.
- Used elsewhere in the period
This is the only Judith in the Hebrew Bible. The book of Judith, written in the Second Temple period (2nd–1st century BC), gives its heroine the name precisely because by then it meant 'the Jewish woman'.
Similar words
Where it appears
Genesis · 1
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Genesis 26:34 יְהוּדִ֔ית Judith
When Esau was forty years old, he took as his wives Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite.
Here: A West Semitic name, probably from the root 'praise' that also lies behind 'Judah'. Later Hebrew used the same word to mean 'Judean/Jewish (woman, language)', but that meaning has nothing to do with a Hittite woman here.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.