A biblical Hebrew name meaning Yahweh is glory, borne by the mother of Moses.
Few names carry the weight of Jochebed's story. In the Hebrew Bible, she is the mother of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam — arguably the three most consequential siblings in the Abrahamic tradition. Her name, from the Hebrew *Yocheved* (יוֹכֶבֶד), is generally interpreted as "Yahweh is glory" or "glory of God," making it one of the earliest theophoric names in recorded Scripture that incorporates the divine name YHWH directly.
Scholars have noted that her name's appearance predates many other such names in the Biblical text, suggesting she occupies an extraordinarily ancient stratum of Israelite tradition. Jochebed's act — placing the infant Moses in a basket of bulrushes to save him from Pharaoh's decree — has resonated through millennia of art, literature, and theology as the ultimate act of a mother's love and trust in providence. She is not a passive figure: the Midrash elaborates her life extensively, crediting her with extraordinary spiritual gifts and even associating her with Puah, one of the midwives who defied Pharaoh.
In Christian iconography she appears in stained glass and illuminated manuscripts; in Jewish tradition she is honored as a matriarch of the first order. Despite this heritage, Jochebed has rarely been used as a given name outside of deeply traditional Jewish and Christian communities, where its Biblical gravity is precisely the point. In recent years it has attracted renewed interest among parents seeking genuinely rare Biblical names with deep roots — a name that carries an entire story before anyone asks about it.