I. Name

The name Judah, yĕhûdâ, occurs over 800 times in the OT and indicates (1) a person, e.g. the fourth son of Jacob; (2) the tribe Judah; (3) the kingdom governed by the dynasty of David; (4) a province in the Persian empire. The etymology of the name is still unsettled. The name has been construed as containing a theophoric element: e.g. J. Hempel (BHH II, 898) interprets the name as a hypocoristicon of yĕhûd-ʾēl, ‘Praised be El’. A. Alt (Der Gott der Väter, KS I [München 1953] 5 n.1) suggested that Judah originally was a p…