Hebrew word · H5720
עָדִין
'adin
Adin
A personal name. It is usually linked to the root ʿ-d-n, "to be lush, delightful, pampered" (compare ʿēden, "delight," the garden of Eden, and the adjective ʿādîn, "voluptuous, pleasure-loving," in Isaiah 47:8).
Appears 4 times in 4 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
A man living at the time of Exile and Return, first mentioned at Ezr.2.15
§ Adin = "dainty" or "delicate"
1) ancestor of a family of exiles who returned with Zerubbabel
2) a chief among the returned exiles who signed the covenant with Nehemiah
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 Nehemiah 7:20
- Range of meaning
A personal name. It is usually linked to the root ʿ-d-n, "to be lush, delightful, pampered" (compare ʿēden, "delight," the garden of Eden, and the adjective ʿādîn, "voluptuous, pleasure-loving," in Isaiah 47:8).
- Against the English
All English versions just spell out the name. Nothing is lost, though readers miss that the name probably sounded like "Delightful" or "Dainty."
- Used elsewhere in the period
The Adin clan shows up across the return-from-exile books: Ezra 2:15 (454 members), Ezra 8:6 (Ebed son of Jonathan comes with Ezra leading 50 men of the clan), Nehemiah 10:16 ("Adin" among the leaders who put their seal to the covenant), and 1 Esdras 5:14 and 8:32 in Greek.
Where it appears
Ezra · 2
Nehemiah · 2
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Nehemiah 7:20 עָדִ֔ין Adin
the descendants of Adin, 655;
Here: The ancestor or founder the clan is named after. The name probably comes from a root meaning "delightful, lush, delicate" (the same root as Eden). Here it works as a family name, not a description of anyone.
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Nehemiah 10:16 עָדִֽין׃ Adin
Adonijah, Bigvai, Adin,
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.