Lecah is a name found in the King James Bible, appearing 1 time in the text.
Who This Was
Lecah was a descendant of Judah, named in the tribal genealogies recorded in 1 Chronicles. He is identified specifically as a son of Er, who was himself a son of Shelah, the son of Judah. This places Lecah within the line of Shelah, one of the three sons born to Judah through Bathshua the Canaanite (Genesis 38:2–5). The Chronicler, writing after the Babylonian exile to reestablish Israel’s identity, traced these family lines carefully, and Lecah appears in that record as part of the wider household of Judah.
The setting of the passage is a genealogy, not a narrative. Scripture gives no account of anything Lecah said or did. He appears only in the single verse that lists the sons of Shelah: “Er the father of Lecah, and Laadah the father of Mareshah, and the families of the house of them that wrought fine linen, of the house of Ashbea” (1 Chronicles 4:21). From this we learn only his paternity and his place among the descendants of Judah.
What Scripture says of Lecah is therefore minimal: he was a named descendant of Judah through Shelah and Er. The verse surrounding his name also notes that this branch of the family included guilds of linen workers, but the text attaches that detail to the house of Ashbea, not specifically to Lecah. Beyond his name in the genealogy, the Bible records nothing further about his life, occupation, or death.
The Name
The Hebrew name Lecah (לֵכָה) is not clearly explained in Scripture, and its meaning is not well established. Some have suggested a connection to a root related to walking or journeying, but this is uncertain and not reliably recoverable from the text. Because the Bible offers no interpretation of the name and the etymology is obscure, it is best to say plainly that the meaning of Lecah is unknown rather than to assign it a meaning the evidence does not support.
A Closing Thought
Most of the people in Scripture are like Lecah: a name in a list, a single line in a long record. Yet the genealogies of Judah were not filler. They were the family tree into which, generations later, Jesus Christ was born. Lecah never knew that his name would be preserved for that reason. In the same way, our quiet, unseen lives are held within a story far larger than we can see. Faithfulness does not require fame; it requires belonging to the line God is weaving toward His purposes.
At a Glance
- Gender: Male
- Testament: Old
- Mentions in the KJV: 1
Where It Appears in Scripture
- 1 Chronicles 4:21 — The sons of Shelah the son of Judah were, Er the father of Lecah, and Laadah the father of Mareshah, and the families of the house of them that wrought fine linen, of the house of Ashbea,