StrongerBible

hod

הוֹד

HebrewH1936Proper Noun“Hod”

Appears 1 time · tap a cell to see the verses

1Ch 7:37
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeHOHDproper noun

What hod means

Hod: a man listed in the family records of the tribe of Asher, whose name is the Hebrew word for royal splendor

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

The Bible mentions this man once. In a long record of the families of the tribe of Asher, a run of names is set down as the sons of Zophah, and Hod stands second in the verse that carries the list on (1 Chronicles 7:37). Nothing else is said of him: no story, no descendants, no town he lived in. His name is spelled exactly like the ordinary Hebrew word for the visible splendor that surrounds a king or God himself (הוֹד).

Names of this kind were ordinary in Israel. A parent could take a plain noun and give it to a child whole, so the name doubled as a hope or a boast: this boy is our splendor. Other names in the Bible attach that same word to the name of God, as with Hodaviah, usually understood to mean "the splendor of the LORD" (הוֹדַוְיָה). Hod is the short form, the bare noun used on its own.

The list he sits in is one of the harder stretches of Chronicles to follow.

  • His verse opens with no heading of its own, so its six men are normally read as more sons of Zophah, carried over from the line before.
  • Almost every name around him turns up nowhere else in the Bible.
  • The branches of the family do not line up neatly with the shorter accounts of Asher's descendants found elsewhere.

None of that puts Hod himself in question. The Hebrew text names him plainly. It only means the name is all we are given.

1Ch 7:37

What scholars say about hod

The sole occurrence is וָהוֹד at 1 Chronicles 7:37, inside the Asherite genealogy of 1 Chronicles 7:30-40. BDB and HALOT enter the personal name separately from the common noun הוֹד "splendour, majesty," and DCH files it as הוֹד II; all three treat the name as formally identical with the noun, whose sense across BDB, HALOT, DCH, Warmuth (TDOT) and Wakely (NIDOTTE) is the visible aura of legitimate sovereignty, divine or royal. Noth's standard study of Israelite personal names accounts for the type: a common noun taken over whole as a name, with the theophoric expansions הוֹדַוְיָה and הוֹדִיָּה standing alongside it. On the genealogy, the Chronicles commentary tradition (Japhet, Braun, Williamson, Knoppers) treats 1 Chronicles 7:30-40 as drawn from a source whose names are largely unattested elsewhere and whose internal affiliations are not fully clear: verse 37 carries no genealogical heading of its own, so its six names are normally read as a continuation of the sons of Zophah from verse 36, and the unit does not align cleanly with the Asher lists of Genesis 46:17 and Numbers 26:44-46. The commentaries note no wordplay on the meaning of the name, and no reconstruction identifies this Hod elsewhere in the canon.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 217, s.v. הוֹד (proper name)lexicon
  • HALOT 1:240, s.v. הוֹד IIlexicon
  • D. J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), II:503-504, s.v. הוֹדlexicon
  • G. Warmuth, "הוֹד hôd," Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament III (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 352-356dictionary
  • R. Wakely, "הוֹד," New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 1:1014-1016dictionary
  • M. Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung, BWANT 46 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1928)monograph
  • S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), ad loc. 1 Chronicles 7commentary
  • G. N. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 1-9, AB 12 (New York: Doubleday, 2004), ad loc. 1 Chronicles 7:30-40commentary
  • R. L. Braun, 1 Chronicles, WBC 14 (Waco: Word, 1986), ad loc.commentary
  • H. G. M. Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, NCBC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), ad loc.commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of הוֹד

m

וָהוֹד

1Ch 7:37