Hebrew word · H964

בִּזְיוֹתְיָה

uvizyotyah

Biziothiah

As the Hebrew stands, a proper name found only here. Older lexicons such as BDB and Gesenius guessed at a meaning like 'contempt of Yah', from bizzayon, 'contempt'. That is an unlikely name for a town, and most modern lexicons treat the form as doubtful.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

§ Bizjothjah = "contempt of Jehovah"

a town in southern Judah near Beersheba

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 Joshua 15:28

Range of meaning

As the Hebrew stands, a proper name found only here. Older lexicons such as BDB and Gesenius guessed at a meaning like 'contempt of Yah', from bizzayon, 'contempt'. That is an unlikely name for a town, and most modern lexicons treat the form as doubtful.

Against the English

KJV and YLT have 'Bizjothjah', most modern versions 'Biziothiah'. Some modern translations and many commentators follow the Greek and render 'and its villages'.

Used elsewhere in the period

The Septuagint reads 'and their villages' here. Nehemiah 11:27 lists 'Beersheba and its villages' (uvivnoteha, literally 'and in her daughters') in a list of southern settlements very close to this one. 'Her daughters' is the standard Hebrew idiom for a town's dependent villages (e.g., Num 21:25; Josh 15:45, 47).

Where it appears

Joshua · 1

  1. Joshua 15:28 וּבִזְיוֹתְיָֽה׃ and Biziothiah

    Hazar-shual, Beersheba, Biziothiah,

    Here: As the Hebrew text stands, this is a town name found nowhere else in the Bible, and no site has been identified for it. Many scholars think it began as 'and her daughters' (ubenoteha), meaning Beersheba's dependent villages, because the Greek translation and the parallel in Nehemiah 11:27 both point that way.

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