🔼The name Ramiah: Summary
- Meaning
- Yah Has Loosened
- Etymology
- From (1) the verb רמה (rama), to loosen or deceive, and (2) יה (yah), the shortened name of the Lord.
🔼The name Ramiah in the Bible
The name Ramiah occurs only once in the Bible. He was one of the sons of Parosh who had married a foreign wife directly after the return from the Babylonian exile (Ezra 10:25). In an attempt to purify Israel, Ezra enticed these men to divorce their foreign wives during the Purge of Ezra.
🔼Etymology of the name Ramiah
The name Ramiah appears to consist of two elements, the final one of which being יה (Yah), an abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton יהוה, YHWH, or Yahweh.
The first part of our name comes from the verb רמה (rama), meaning to loosen or deceive:
רמה
The verb רמה (rama) essentially means to loosen, but is used only three times literally (twice for shooting arrows and once for hurling riders into the sea). Mostly our verb is used in the sense of playing loose with the truth, i.e. to compromise the solidness of trustworthiness and be swampy.
Hence our verb is mostly translated with to beguile, deceive or mislead. Nouns רמיה (remiya), מרמה (mirma), תרמה (torma) and תרמית (tarmit) describe various degrees and nuances of treachery, deceit and looseness in the trustworthiness department.
🔼Ramiah meaning
NOBSE Study Bible Name List, curiously, appears to omit the name Ramiah. For a meaning of the name Ramiah, Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names reads Placed Of The Lord, which doesn't really do justice to the verb. BDB Theological Dictionary proposes a careful Yah Has Looseneth, and adds a question mark to demonstrate that this meaning is by no means the only possible one.