🔼The name Hadassah: Summary
- Meaning
- Myrtle
- Etymology
- From the noun הדס (hadas), myrtle.
🔼The name Hadassah in the Bible
There's only one person named Hadassah in the Bible. It's the Hebrew name of Esther, who became the wife of king Ahasuerus and thus queen of Persia in place of Vashti.
The name Hadassah occurs only once in the Bible, in Esther 2:7, which reads: "...and he [Mordecai] was bringing up Hadassah, that is Esther, his uncle's daughter..".
🔼Etymology of the name Hadassah
Scholars agree that the name Hadassah is a feminized form of the word הדס (hadas), meaning myrtle:
הדס
The noun הדס (hadash) describes the myrtle tree. It occurs in several related languages but it's unclear where it originated and from which verb it derived. That means that we don't know what action this tree was named after, and thus, essentially what the noun really means.
In the Bible this tree has nevertheless an important symbolic role, from booths made from myrtles to angelic horsemen standing among them, and a holocaust-averting empress who was named after them.
🔼Hadassah meaning
BDB Theological Dictionary, NOBSE Study Bible Name List and Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names unite in rare agreement and read Myrtle for the meaning of the name Hadassah .