Lion of Judah
aryeh shel yehudah
(יהודה של אריה)
Most instinctively our thoughts will go to Jesus/Yeshua as He is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah and we are familiar with that connection. However, the name of the tribe also gave rise to another more commonly known name as a way to reference the people – Jew.
Therefore Jew= a member of the tribe of Judah.
(The Lion of ‘Jewdah’)
As christians and believers, we happily associate ourselves with the scriptures and their emblems as a visual identity and by association being ‘grafted in’, we need to have an understanding and an appreciation of that which we are grafted into.
We cannot annex ourselves from truth, specifically that the Bible and Jesus are not inventions of western denominations that originate from the 11th century around 1054.
The origin of our faith is thousands of years older.
יהודה
The word יְהוּדָה Yehudah “Judah”
(Note the letter ‘J’ does not exist in the Hebrew (alphabet) Alef Beit (see other post on this subject, link below) and is always pronounced Y. It does not exist in the Greek either and is written as a letter ‘I’. This was changed much later into the letter and with the pronunciation we know as ‘J’. Other languages e.g. Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish etc., have the same sound as Hebrew for J/Y).
The term “Jew” is derived from the name of Jacob’s fourth son with Leah. Genesis 29:35. Judah –Yehudah, in the Hebrew
and may have originally applied only to Judah’s descendents, who comprised one of the twelve tribes of Israel.
View larger chart at http://www.biblechronology.org/charts/Geneology.jpg
(12 sons and 1 Daughter Dinah by Leah)
Jacob/Israel said in his blessing:
You and your brothers will acknowledge Judah will be the source of Jewish leadership and royalty of the Davidic dynasty and Messiah.
Chart Showing The Line From Judah To King David and King Solomon
Chart above enlargement at:
http://www.cookancestry.com/Biblical%20Genealogy/images/06%20Lineage%20of%20Judah.JPG
The word Jew comes from the blessing, Judah, so admired will you be by all your brothers that Jews will not say I am a Rubenite or a Simeonite but I am a Yehudi – Yudahite: Jew. Genesis 49
We read in the book of Esther that Mordechai, of Purim fame, was known as a Yehudi, even though he was from the tribe of Benjamin.
He was the first individual to be called a Jew (Yehudi) in the Scriptures.
“There was a man, a Yehudi, in Shushan the capital, whose name was Mordecai . . . a Yemini” (Esther 2:5)
Mordecai the Guardian
From the scriptures, we know that Mordecai was Esther’s elder cousin who raised her after the demise of her parents and became Mordecai the Guardian.
Mordecai sat in the king’s gate or court which meant that he was a man of intelligence and knowledge; very likely a scribe. His wisdom of the Medo-Persian culture and palace life gave him the wisdom to counsel Hadassah into taking a Babylonian name, and not disclosing her lineage or religion. It was also this wisdom—coupled with his palace access—that allowed him to save the king’s life. 2:21-23).
There is a passage in the Talmud (Tractate Megillah 12b) which asks on this: “He is called a Yehudi, implying that he descended from Judah; he then is called Yemini, implying that he is a Benjaminite!” Rabbi Jochanan responds: “He was a Benjaminite. Yet he was called a Yehudi because he rejected idolatry–and anyone who rejects idolatry is called a Yehudi.”
But there is also a deeper meaning to the name ‘Jew’.
The commentaries explain that the name Yehudah shares the same root as the Hebrew word hoda’ah, which means acknowledgement or submission.
One who acknowledges God’s existence and submits to His authority – to the extent that he is willing to sacrifice his life for the sanctification of His name – he is called a Yehudi.
Hence Abraham is commonly referred to as The First Jew.
As the first person to use his own cognitive abilities to discover and recognize the one God, reject the idolatrous ways of his ancestors and contemporaries, actively publicized the truth of God and was prepared to give his very life for these goals. Abraham epitomized Jewishness many centuries before the term came into common use.
A cub of a lion in the future Judah would be like a lion, the King of beasts that when Jacob blessed him he was still a cub, for his greatest moments when he would reign over the nation was still in the future.
When Joseph ‘went missing’, Jacob had suspected Judah more than the others, because he was the one destined for kingship, he thought that he would be the one who felt most threatened by Joseph’s dreams.
Jacob was also referring prophetically to Judah’s greatest descendant David who first displayed his strength and courage as a boy when he killed a lion and a bear. Genesis 49:9
The word יְהוּדָה Yehudah is usually translated as “Judah” in English Bibles.
This name has such rich meaning for both Jewish and Christian traditions.
For example, in the Hebrew Bible, God called King David, who came from the tribe of Judah, “the man after My own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14).
In the New Testament, Jesus/Yeshua, a later descendant of David, is referred to as ‘the Lion from the tribe of Judah’ (Rev.5:5).
Further, the sons of Jacob and their descendants make up the 12 tribes of Israel. Among them Judah will be supreme. From the tribe of Judah comes King David and from David’s line Jesus Christ is born. In Revelation 5 John describes his vision of the scroll and the lamb. No one is found worthy to open the scroll. Then “One of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed, enabling him to open the scroll with its seven seals’” (verse 5).
The ‘Lion of the Tribe of Judah’ and the ‘Root of David’, are thus Messianic titles given to Jesus the Christ/Yeshua Ha Mashiach, who has been victorious in the struggle with evil.
The importance of Judah, therefore, is obvious.
But what does Judah actually mean in Hebrew?
The word Judah comes from the verb לְהודות Lehodot, which simply means ‘to thank’.
In the context of the Hebrew Bible, such thanks are synonymous not just with gratitude, but with praise.
The tribe of Judah is also synonymous with praise, as the praisers always led the Israelites on their journeys and the tribe of Judah was always at the front.
In fact, there was a particular sacrifice called ‘The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving.’ In the Temple in Jerusalem, it was called תּודָה “Todah” – the noun for “Thanksgiving.”
A commentary states that the reason for this was Leah’s motive in giving Judah his name. She gave it to express her gratitude to God for having given her more than her share. Genesis 29:35
It is characteristic of a Jew that he thanks God for everything, never feeling that he is entitled to divine benevolence, quite contrary to today’s attitude of entitlement and taking everything for granted and the expectation and attitude of, ‘ it is my right’.
It is a model for the heathen/ goyim. We would do well to emulate those to whom we are grafted into by grace and mercy.
It is interesting to note that in Modern Hebrew, to simply say ‘thanks’, Israelis use the very same word תּודָה todah, that was used in the Temple to express gratitude to God.
Middle English,
from Anglo-French ju, jeu,
from Latin Judaeus,
from Greek Ioudaios,
from Hebrew Yĕhūdhī,
from Yĕhūdhāh Judah, Jewish kingdom
Etymology of the name Judah
The name Judah appears to be associated to the verb ידה (yada), meaning to praise noun and הוד (hod), generally meaning splendor, majesty, vigor, glory or honor,:
(This from the Hebrew dictionary Abarim Publications)
הוד ידה
The two words ידה (yada) and הוד (hod) are formally completely separate, but their forms are so similar that when either of them appear in names, in conjunction with other elements, we can often not be entirely sure which one of the two we’re looking at.
The middle ו (waw) in the word הוד (hod), and the final ה (he) of the word ידה (yada) are allowed to drop out in several grammatical constructions, and the letter י (yod) appears frequently in front of a root to create a form that means ‘he will . . ‘ or ‘let him.. ‘.
In regular texts, the origin of a word can usually be understood from contexts but since names often lack a clear context, we usually can go both ways. Names that contain either of these words must be understood to possess two complete meanings.
הוד
The noun הוד (hod), generally meaning splendor, majesty, vigor, glory or honor, occurs frequently in the Bible, from the authority or majesty of the king (Jeremiah 22:18) or a prophet such as Moses (Numbers 27:20), to the divine splendor of God (Psalm 104:1), and the splendor of Israel due to the blessings of God (Hosea 14:7 – his beauty will be like the olive tree).
If our two words are indeed separate (which scholars assume), the word הוד (hod) is a single child of the identical (and also assumed) root הוד (hwd). And to make the mystery even greater, HAW, the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament reports, that “so far no related root in other Semitic languages has been found for hod. It is uniquely a Hebrew word”.
That’s obviously a rarity, and raises the suspicion that our two words aren’t separate at all. BDB Theological Dictionary, on the other hand, reports of some Arabic verbs that are similar to our word, one of which means crash, roar, resonance, while the other, oddly enough, means to be gentle, quiet, especially in speech.
Quite a perfect description of Messiah Jesus Yeshua HaMashiach first and second appearances. The first gentle, quiet, especially in speech. and when He returns with more of a crash, roar and resonance.
ידה
The root-verb ידה (yada) means to confess, praise, give thanks.
HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament reports that ‘the primary meaning of this root is, ‘to acknowledge or confess sin, God’s character and works, or man’s character’.
Originally this verb probably meant to cast or throw (and – intuitively – seems to have to do with the noun יד (yad) meaning hand). Yet another by-form of this verb is ידד (yadad), meaning to cast, which is identical to the verb ידד (yadad), meaning to love; as in the name David).
Remnants of this meaning of ‘to cast’, can be found in Lamentations 3:53 and Zechariah 2:4. Then it moved to mean a private or national confession of sin (for instance in Leviticus 16:21, Aaron will praise over the scapegoat), which is the very thing the Law was designed to provoke (Romans 3:20).
Then it evolved to denote gratitude, and only finally it came to indicate what we know as praise. As the theologian Westermann noted, this verb is often translated with to thank, but the Hebrew language has no verb specifically reserved for expression of gratitude.
This verb yields two derivations:
The feminine plural noun הידות (huyyedot), meaning songs of praise (Nehemiah 12:8 only).
The feminine noun תודה (toda), meaning confession or praise (Joshua 7:19, Psalm 26:7).
The name יהודה (yehuda; Judah) also comes from this verb, and thus so do:
The masculine ethnonym יהודי (yehudi), meaning Judaic, Jewish or Jew.
The feminine ethnonym יהודית (yehudit, hence the name Judith), also meaning Jewish, but only used in the construction “Jewish language” (2 Kings 18:26, Nehemiah 13:24).
The verb יהד (yehud), meaning to become a Jew (Esther 8:17).
Interesting note, that the feminine form of this name, Judith, occurs a generation earlier than Judah and may very well be the original (meaning that the name Judah is derived from Judith and not vice versa). Judith is the Hittite aunt of Judah, married to Judah’s uncle Esau. This also implies that the Biblical meanings of the names Judah and Judith may have been imposed upon these existing names, and the spelling of them altered to fit the meaning.
The name Judah transliterated into Greek is Ιουδα, Iouda.
The name Judas (Ιουδας) is the Hellenized version of the Hebrew name Judah.
The lion who is still to come.
He came the first time as our submissive Passover lamb
and left His presence with us in
Holy Spirit / Ruach HaKodesh
but
He will come back
and also as Judge.
Lion of Judah and Judaism
The lion of Judah on the emblem of Jerusalem.
Within Judaism, the Biblical Judah (in Hebrew: Yehuda) is the original name of the Tribe of Judah – traditionall symbolized by a lion.
In Genesis, the patriarch Jacob refers to his son Judah as a Gur Aryeh יְהּוָדהַאְריֵהּגּור, a “Young Lion” (Genesis 49:9) when blessing him. In the Jewish naming tradition, the Hebrew name and the substitute name are often combined as a pair, as in this case.
As a result of the lion’s link to the tribe of Judah, the dominant tribe among the ancient Israelites and the legendary ancestor of the Kingdom of Judah, Judea and the modern Jews, variations or translations of the word “lion” have been used as a substitute name for Judah (Yehuda) among Jews.
Lion of Judah in Christianity
In Christian tradition, the lion is often assumed to represent Jesus.
Many Christian organizations and ministries use the lion of Judah as their emblem or even their name.
The following phrase appears in the New Testament Book of Revelation 5:5; “And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.”
In the fullness of time ..Gods time …Yeshua/Jesus will return as King of Kings
The Lion of the tribe of Judah יְהוּדָה Yehudah
