Hadassah Meaning in the Bible

Hadassah (הֲדַסָּה) means 'myrtle,' from the Hebrew hadas. Esther 2:7 names her twice in a single verse: 'he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle's daughter.' The double naming is the story in miniature. Hadassah is the covenant name of a Jewish orphan in exile; Esther is the Persian court name, most likely derived from the goddess Ishtar or the Persian stara, 'star.' She lived under one and was known by the other, and the whole book turns on the moment she stops concealing which one she truly is.

The myrtle itself is not a decorative choice. It is one of the four species carried during the Feast of Tabernacles, prized because it stays fragrant when dried and crushed — a quality rabbinic writers connected to a righteous person under pressure. Isaiah uses it twice as a sign of God reversing desolation: 'instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree' (Isaiah 55:13), and in Zechariah's night vision the angel of the LORD stands 'among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom' (Zechariah 1:8), in the low place, with the exiles.

That is the theological weight of Hadassah as a name: a modest, low-growing, unspectacular plant that God keeps placing at the centre of scenes about deliverance from exile. Esther's own line — 'who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this' (Esther 4:14) — belongs to the same logic.

In current use, Hadassah is well established in Jewish and Messianic families and increasingly chosen by Christian parents who want Esther's story without Esther's ubiquity. It carries the natural nicknames Hadas, Dassah, and Dassi, and it is one of the few four-syllable biblical girls' names that never sounds ornamental.