Word study

Judah

3 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “judah”. English often uses one word where Hebrew or Greek has several, each with its own shade of meaning. Under each word are verses where it is translated this way; choose the word itself for its full study: every verse, how else it is translated, the forms it takes and what the dictionaries say.

At a glance

How often each original word is translated “Judah” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יְהוּדָה YehûdâhJudahtranslated this way 807 times of its 814 uses · Strong’s H3063Noun  ·  Translated: Judah 774, Judah's 7, people of judah 5, men of judah 3

    Genesis 29:35 And once more she conceived and gave birth to a son and said, “This time I will praise the LORD.” So she named him Judah. Then Leah stopped having children.

    Exodus 1:2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah;

    Full study and all 750 verses →
  • יְהוּד YehûdJudahtranslated this way 6 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s H3061Noun  ·  Translated: Judah 6

    Ezra 5:1 Later, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah son of Iddo prophesied to the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, who was over them.

    Daniel 2:25 Arioch hastily brought Daniel before the king and said to him, “I have found a man among the exiles from Judah who will tell the king the interpretation.”

    Full study and all 6 verses →
  • בֵּן bênsontranslated this way 3 times of its 4,587 uses · Strong’s H1121Noun  ·  Translated: son 1,843, sons 892, Israelites 422, descendants 358Full study and all 3,473 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • Ἰουδά IoudáJudah, Judas, Judetranslated this way 9 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s G2448Noun  ·  Translated: Judah 9, Joda 1

    Matthew 2:6 ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of My people Israel.’”

    Luke 1:39 In those days Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judah,

    Full study and all 9 verses →
  • Ἰούδας IoúdasJudah, Judas, Judetranslated this way 2 times of its 35 uses · Strong’s G2455Noun  ·  Translated: Judas 32, Judah 2, Jude 1

    Matthew 1:2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.

    Matthew 1:3 Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram.

    Full study and all 34 verses →
How to study a word well
  1. Start from the verse, not the dictionary. Find which Hebrew or Greek word stands in the verse you are studying. One English word often translates several different original words.
  2. Read every place the word is used. A word means what its writers used it to mean. The list of verses and the count by book show its range, and who uses it most.
  3. Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
  4. Notice the form. A command is not a statement, and a passive verb is something done to the subject. The form in your verse is part of the meaning.
  5. See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
  6. Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
  7. Come back to the verse. Context decides. A word does not carry every one of its meanings into every verse, and where a word came from does not settle what it means in a sentence written centuries later.

What the Bible says about Judah: passages by topic →

Scripture text and translation counts: Berean Standard Bible. Full entry: Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906, public domain), in the digital edition Brown-Driver-Briggs Enhanced by unfoldingWord (Joel Ruark, J. de Joode), based on data by Eliran Wong and Stephen Ku; its additions are used under CC BY 4.0. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project, CC BY 4.0. Hebrew-to-English verse numbering: original work of the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible available at https://github.com/openscriptures/morphhb, CC BY 4.0. We reformatted the data, linked the references to this site’s Bible text and left out words in other scripts that the source holds only as images. These are historical reference works; an entry gives its authors’ view, and a word’s meaning in any verse depends on how it is used there.