Azariah

Azariah is a Hebrew personal name meaning “Yahweh has helped,” and in the Old Testament it is carried by a large number of different men, so that the name alone rarely identifies a single figure; its best-known bearer in English Bibles is the young Judean exile renamed Abednego, one of Daniel’s three companions.

In the Daniel narrative the text says that Azariah was among the young men of Judah brought to Babylon and that the official in charge gave him the name Abednego (Daniel 1:6–7). When Nebuchadnezzar’s image was set up, Azariah and his companions refused to bow, and the text records their brief answer to the king, that they had no need to answer him in this matter (Daniel 3:16); the furnace was then heated seven times more than usual (Daniel 3:19). The king himself calls “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego” out of the fire (Daniel 3:26), blesses the God who sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him (Daniel 3:28), and issues a decree protecting their God’s honor (Daniel 3:29).

The same name belongs to several other figures. It is the throne name by which a king of Judah is known in Kings: Azariah son of Amaziah, called Uzziah in Chronicles, who reigned in Jerusalem and is said to have done what was right in Yahweh’s eyes (2 Kings 15:1–4; 2 Chronicles 26:1–4), but who was struck with leprosy after he entered the temple to burn incense and the priest Azariah with eighty priests withstood him (2 Chronicles 26:16–21). A prophet Azariah son of Oded speaks under the Spirit of God in 2 Chronicles 15:1–2, and an Azariah son of Hoshaiah is among the proud men who accuse Jeremiah of lying and lead the remnant into Egypt, where the text says they came because they did not obey Yahweh’s voice (Jeremiah 43:2–7). Priests and returning exiles also bear the name, including an Azariah in the priestly line of Ezra (Ezra 7:1) and an Azariah among those who came up from Babylon (Nehemiah 7:7).

Linguistically, the name is a compound of the root meaning “to help” and the divine name, so it functions as a confession that Yahweh helps. The Babylonian name Abednego was, the text says, assigned by the chief official (Daniel 1:7); its exact etymology is disputed, and scholars commonly suggest it was formed to evoke a Babylonian deity rather than the God of Israel, though this remains a proposal rather than a certainty. Traditions differ over the material attached to this figure: Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include the Prayer of Azariah and the Hymn of the Three Young Men within Daniel 3, and these canticles have a long liturgical use, while Protestant Bibles follow the Hebrew and Aramaic Daniel and treat those sections as Apocrypha. Many Christian readers have also taken the three companions in the furnace as a pattern of faithful witness under persecution, a reading the text invites but does not itself state.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.