Judah

Judah (יְהוּדָה "Praise") is the name of several Biblical and historical figures. The original Greek text of the New Testament makes no difference between the names "Judah", "Judas" and "Jude", rendering them all as Yĕhuwdah; but in many English translations "Judah" is used for the Old Testament figure and the tribe (tribe of Judah) named after him, "Judas" is used primarily for Judas Iscariot, and "Jude" for other New Testament persons of the same name.

The kingdom ruled by the house of David after the Kingdom of Israel broke off following the death of King Solomon, see Kingdom of Judah.

Judah/Yehuda (Hebrew: יְהוּדָה)) was, according to the Book of Genesis, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Judah; however some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an etiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation. With Leah as a matriarch, Biblical scholars regard the tribe as having been believed by the text's authors to have been part of the original Israelite confederation; however, it is worthy of note that the tribe of Judah was not purely Israelite, but contained a large admixture of non-Israelites, with a number of Kenizzite groups, the Jerahmeelites, and the Kenites, merging into the tribe at various points.

The text of the Torah argues that the name of Judah refers to Leah's intent to praise Yahweh, on account of having achieved four children, and derived from odeh, meaning I will give praise. In classical rabbinical literature, the name is interpreted as just being a combination of Yahweh and a dalet (the letter d); in Gematria, the dalet has the numerical value 4, which these rabbinical sources argue refers to Judah being Jacob's fourth son.

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