Zerah
biblical character
Zerah or Zerach (pronounced [ˈze.raχ]; Biblical Hebrew: זֶרַח, romanized: zéraḥ, lit. 'rising'), also spelled as Zarah or Zarach (זָרַח, zāraḥ, 'he rose'), refers to several people in the Hebrew Bible.
An Edomite
Zerah was the name of an Edomite chief. He was listed as the second son of Reuel, son of Basemath, who was Ishmael's daughter and one of the wives of Esau, the brother of Jacob.
Son of Tamar and Judah
According to Genesis 38:30, Zerah was the son of Tamar and her father-in-law Judah, and the twin of Perez. This same Zerah is mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:3 of the Christian Bible. Zerah is also listed as the ancestor of Achan, who was stoned to death as recounted in Joshua 7:1. The genealogy can be recounted as: Achan is the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, the son of Zimri, the son of Zerah.
Family trees
Simeonite clan
The Bible also identifies Zerah as the name of the founder of one of the Simeonite clans.
The Cushite
Zerah the Cushite is mentioned by the Book of Chronicles (2 Chronicles 14:9–15). There he is said to have invaded the Kingdom of Judah with an enormous army in the days of Asa.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Zerah” as biblical character. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as biblical character. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3223065. VIAF identifies the subject as 4160161030925123920009. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Zerah” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.