the Fourth Week of Advent
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Bible Dictionaries
Sepharad
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or Jerusalem's citizens, captives at Sepharad, shall return to occupy the city and southern Judaea (Obadiah 1:20). Jerome's Hebrew tutor thought Sepharad was on the Bosphorus. Jerome derives it from an Assyrian word "limit," i.e. scattered in all regions abroad (so James 1:1). The modern Jews think Spain. As Ζarephath , a Phoenician city, was mentioned in the previous clause, Sepharad is probably some Phoenician colony in Spain or some other place in the far West (compare Joel 3:6, to which Obadiah refers). C Ρa Rad occurs before Ionia and Greece in a cuneiform inscription giving a list of the Persian tribes (See also Niebuhr, Reiseb. 2:31). Also in Darius' epitaph at Nakshi Rustam, 1:28, before Ionia in the Behistun inscription (i. 15). Thus, it would be Sardis (the Greeks omitting the -ph ) in Lydia. In favor of Spain is the fact that the Spanish Jews are called Sephardim , the German Jews Αshkenazim .
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Sepharad'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/s/sepharad.html. 1949.
