🔼The name Addar: Summary
- Meaning
- Wide Open Place, Honorable
- Etymology
- From the verb אדר ('adar), to be majestic or wide.
🔼The name Addar in the Bible
There are one person and one town named Addar (or as some translations have it: Adar) in the Bible:
- The man named Addar is mentioned among the sons of Bela, the first-born of Benjamin (1 Chronicles 8:3), son of Jacob, the arch-father of Israel. The Chronicler lists Addar as the first-born of Bela, but in speaking of the sons of Bela, both Genesis 46:21 and Numbers 26:40 mention Ard and not Addar. It's probably most logical to assume that Addar and Ard are the same person. Pretty much all sources we've consulted concur.
- The town named Addar was situated on the southern border of the territory allotted to the tribe of Judah (Joshua 15:3). Some scholars assert that this Addar is the same as the Hazar-addar mentioned in Numbers 34:4.
🔼Etymology of the name Addar
The name Addar is directly derived from the verb אדר ('adar), meaning to be majestic:
אדר
The verb אדר ('adar) means to be superior or majestic (or literally: wide). Noun אדר ('eder) means glory or magnificence, or may refer to a wide cloak. Adjective אדיר ('addir) means majestic. Noun אדרת ('aderet) means glory.
🔼Addar meaning
For a meaning of the name Addar, NOBSE Study Bible Name List goes with the original meaning and reads Wide, Open Place. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names sticks to the secondary and more frequently used meaning and proposes Honorable. Similarly, BDB Theological Dictionary offers Noble but adds a question mark, indicating that no certainty exists, at least not to Brown, Driver and Briggs.
Note that this name was also applied to a Babylonian deity, and both the man and the town may have been named after it.