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Meaning and etymology of the name Amariah




Amariah Amariah


The name Amariah is among the most popular in the Bible. It's assigned to no less than nine different men. The Amariah's of the Bible are:
A descendant of Aaron through Eleazar (1 Chronicles 6:7);
A descendant of the first Amariah (1 Chronicles 6:11);
The second son of Hebron, son of Kohath (1 Chronicles 23:19);
A chief priest in the time of king Jehoshaphat of Judah (2 Chronicles 19:11);
One of the distributors of goods among the Levites during the time of king Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 31:15). This Amariah may or may not be the same as the grandfather of the prophet Zephaniah (Zephaniah 1:1).
Then there is Amariah, one of the many sons of Bani, who had married a foreign woman, and who probably divorced her during the atrocious purge of Ezra (Ezra 10:42). This Amariah is either the same as or a contemporary of the Amariah who is listed among the signers of the sealed document (Nehemiah 10:3. And the same goes for the Amariah mentioned by Nehemiah among the returning priests (Nehemiah 12:2).

The name Amariah consists of two elements. The final part is Jah, Jah, which in turn is an abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton; the name of the Lord: YHWH. The first part of the name Amariah comes from the verb amar (amar):

The very common verb amar (amar) basically means to speak, say, command, promise and even to think (in the construction "to say in one's heart"). This verb amar should be distinguished from the verb dabar (dabar) in that dabar generally reflects an entire message, while amar tends to reflect the act of speaking. When, for instance, the name of the Lord occurs in conjunction with the word amar, it's translated as something like "the Lord spoke," or "the Lord promised," while the word dabar would usually lead to "the Word of the Lord..." See the name Dabar Yahweh.

The root amar (amar) yields the following derivations:
The masculine noun omer (omer), meaning speech or word or even "matter" or "saying" or "plan."
The feminine noun imra (imra), meaning utterance or speech, which in the Bible also occurs as the similar but slightly differently pronounced noun emra (emra).
The masculine noun ma'amar (ma'amar), meaning word or command.

Most notable is the masculine derivation amir (amir), which occurs twice in the Bible—in Genesis 49:21 and in Isaiah 17:6— where it means top or summit of a tree.

It's unclear how this beautiful metaphor is formed. It may be that the Hebrews saw the fruits of a tree as its words, but it may also be that a man's words were regarded as his fruits. But it certainly sheds clarifying light on the Biblical scenes where birds pick fruits from trees, or when men somehow are hanging from or sitting on a tree's branches (Absalom, 2 Samuel 18:9; Zacheus, Like 19:1-10)

For a meaning of the name Amariah, NOBS Study Bible Name List reads Yahweh Said. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names proposes Whom The Lord Spoke Of, i.e. promised. And BDB Theological Dictionary has Yahu Hath Promised.

Other names derived from the verb amar are Amorite, Amraphel, Immer, Omar and Omri.







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