Hebrew word · H3125
יְוָנִי
haiyevanim
Greek
Ionian, Greek. Yavan is a son of Japheth in the Table of Nations (Gen 10:2, 4). It is the general name for the Greek-speaking peoples of the Aegean islands and western Asia Minor, and later for the Greek kingdoms (Dan 8:21; Zech 9:13).
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
Someone from Greece, founded by Java who was a man living at the time of the Patriarchs, first mentioned at Gen.10.2;
son of: Japheth (H3315);
brother of: Gomer (H1586), Magog (H4031), Madai (H4074), Tubal (H8422), Meshech (H4902) and Tiras (H8494);
father of: Elishah (H0473), Tarshish (H8659), Kittim (H3794) and Dodanim (H1721); also called Greek at Jol.3.6 + NT.
Group of ya.van (יָוָן "Javan" H3120)
Grecian, Ionian
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
Ionian, Greek. Yavan is a son of Japheth in the Table of Nations (Gen 10:2, 4). It is the general name for the Greek-speaking peoples of the Aegean islands and western Asia Minor, and later for the Greek kingdoms (Dan 8:21; Zech 9:13).
- Against the English
"Greeks" or "Grecians" makes modern readers think of classical Greece, a single nation centred on Athens. YLT's "sons of Javan" keeps the Hebrew name. The term covers a wider and looser group: seafaring Ionians and Greek settlements around the eastern Mediterranean.
- How it drifted
English translators turned Yavan into "Greeks" by way of the Greek and Latin versions (Hellēnes, Graeci). The modern idea of "Greece" as a nation-state is a later concept.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Assyrian records from the 8th century BC mention the Yamnaya/Yawanaya (Ionians) as raiders and traders on the Levantine coast, e.g. under Sargon II. Greek trading posts were active in the Levant by the 8th–7th centuries (Al Mina). Ezekiel 27:13 and 19 place Javan in Tyre's trading network.
Where it appears
Joel · 1
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Joel 3:6 הַיְּוָנִ֑ים the Greeks
You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, to send them far from their homeland.
Here: The Hebrew Yavan comes from "Ionian" and means the Greek-speaking peoples of the Aegean and the coast of Asia Minor. To someone in Judah they were traders on the far western rim of the known world.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.