sepharad Summary and Overview

(Obad. 1:20), some locality unknown. The modern Jews think that Spain is meant, and hence they designate the Spanish Jews "Sephardim," as they do the German Jews by the name "Ashkenazim," because the rabbis call Germany Ashkenaz. Others identify it with Sardis, the capital of Lydia. The Latin father Jerome regarded it as an Assyrian word, meaning "boundary," and interpreted the sentence, "which is in Sepharad," by "who are scattered abroad in all the boundaries and regions of the earth." Perowne says: "Whatever uncertainty attaches to the word Sepharad, the drift of the prophecy is clear, viz., that not only the exiles from Babylon, but Jewish captives from other and distant regions, shall be brought back to live prosperously within the enlarged borders of their own land."

(separated), a name which occurs in #Ob 1:20| only. Its situation has always been a matter of uncertainty.

SEPH'ARAD (separation), a place from whence captive Jews would return to the cities of the South. It is named only in Ob 20. Some identify the place with Sardis in Lydia; others with Zarephath; while modern Jews regard it as Spain, and others identify it with Sipphara. See Sepharvaim.

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 Zarephath, 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 Pa Rad occurs before Ionia and Greece in a cuneiform inscription giving a list of the Persian tribes frontNiebuhr, 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 Ashkenazim.