🔼The name Uriah: Summary
- Meaning
- Yah Is Light, Light Of The Lord
- Etymology
- From (1) the verb אור ('or), to be or give light; to shine, and (2) the divine name יה (yah).
🔼The name Uriah in the Bible
The name Uriah (sometimes written as Urijah) is assigned four times in the Bible:
- The most famous Uriah is the Hittite husband of Bathsheba (who although a Hittite has a Hebrew name and is committed to Israel, as per 2 Samuel 11:11). When king David finds himself attracted to Bathsheba, he sends Uriah to war and impregnates his wife. When a series of loathsome cover-ups attempts fail, David has Uriah killed. Following an elaborate condemnation by Nathan the prophet, the first son of David and Bathsheba dies after seven days. Their second child they name Solomon. Uriah is not only remembered as one of David's most lamentable victims, but also as one of his most honored mighty-men (2 Samuel 23:35). In response to his contrition, David writes Psalm 51, and Matthew refers in his genealogy of Christ to Bathsheba as "she of Uriah" (spelled Ουριας, Ourias), making Uriah the only person named in the Matthean genealogy of Christ who is not actually related to Jesus (Matthew 1:6).
- Later Scriptures make mention of two priests named Uriah, one during the reign of king Ahaz (2 Kings 16:10), and the other in the time of Ezra (Ezra 8:33).
- The prophet Jeremiah mentions a prophet named Uriah during the reign of king Jehoiakim (26:20), although his name is spelled with an additional waw: אוריהו (Uriahu, which is the same name as Uriah, as we will show below).
🔼Etymology of the name Uriah
The name Uriah consists of two parts:
The first part comes from the verb אור ('or), meaning to be light or to shine:
אור
The verb אור ('or) means to be light or to give light; to shine. This verb's primary derivative is the expectable noun אור ('or), meaning light. The 'metaphor' that relates light to wisdom may not be a metaphor, or at least not to the ancients. In our article on the verb נהר (nahar), meaning both to flow and to shine, we show that the ancients had a surprisingly solid grasp of Relativity Theory.
The second part of the name Uriah is יה (Yah) = יהו (Yahu) = יו (Yu), which in turn are abbreviated forms of the Tetragrammaton; the name of the Lord: YHWH.
🔼Uriah meaning
The name Uriah means Flame Of Yah or Light Is Yah.
For a meaning of the name Uriah, NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads Yahweh Is Light. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names reads Light Of The Lord.