Reumah is a name found in the King James Bible, appearing 1 time in the text.
Who This Was
Reumah appears only once in the King James Bible, in the closing verse of Genesis 22. The chapter is chiefly remembered for the testing of Abraham on Mount Moriah, but its final verse turns to a genealogical note concerning his brother Nahor. Genesis 22:24 reads, “And his concubine, whose name was Reumah, she bare also Tebah, and Gaham, and Thahash, and Maachah.” The word “also” connects Reumah’s children to the record of Nahor’s family given earlier in the chapter, where his wife Milcah is named as the mother of eight sons (Genesis 22:20–23).
Reumah is therefore identified in Scripture as a concubine of Nahor, the brother of Abraham. A concubine in the biblical world was a woman of secondary marital status within a household, and her children belonged to the family line. The text says nothing of Reumah’s origins, her age, or her character; it records only that she bore four sons to Nahor: Tebah, Gaham, Thahash, and Maachah.
The setting is significant for the wider story of Genesis. These genealogies trace the family of Abraham’s kindred in Mesopotamia, the household from which a wife would later be sought for Isaac (Genesis 24). Reumah’s sons are named among that extended family, yet the narrative assigns them no further role. Her entire witness in Scripture is a single verse: a woman named, a mother of four, remembered in a family record. What the Bible says of her is brief, but it is not nothing—she is counted among those whose descendants formed the world into which Abraham’s covenant family was sent.
The Name
The meaning of the name Reumah is not clearly recoverable, and no meaning should be asserted as certain. Some suggest a possible connection to a Hebrew root having to do with being raised up or exalted, but this is a proposal rather than an established meaning, and the name may instead reflect an older Semitic or Mesopotamian form tied to the region of Nahor’s family. Because Scripture gives no interpretation of the name and the etymology is uncertain, the honest answer is that its meaning is unknown to us.
A Closing Thought
Reumah’s life is a reminder that God’s Word remembers people the world would overlook. She is not a matriarch of the covenant, not a prophetess, not a woman whose story occupies chapters. She is a concubine named once, in a list of sons. Yet the Lord who inspired Scripture saw fit to record her name and her children. Most of us will live lives that seem small by comparison to the great figures of the faith. Reumah teaches us that being known and named by God is enough, and that faithfulness in an ordinary place is never wasted in His sight.
At a Glance
- Gender: Male
- Testament: Old
- Mentions in the KJV: 1
Where It Appears in Scripture
- Genesis 22:24 — And his concubine, whose name was Reumah, she bare also Tebah, and Gaham, and Thahash, and Maachah.