Hazarmaveth is the third of thirteen sons of Joktan

Joktan

Joktan or Yoktan was the second of the two sons of Eber mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. His name means "small" or "smallness"....

, who was a son of Eber

Eber

Eber is an ancestor of the Israelites, according to the "Table of Nations" in and . He was a great-grandson of Noah's son Shem and the father of Peleg born when Eber was 34 years old, and of Joktan. He was the son of Shelah a distant ancestor of Abraham...

, son of Shem

Shem

Shem was one of the sons of Noah in the Hebrew Bible as well as in Islamic literature. He is most popularly regarded as the eldest son, though some traditions regard him as the second son. Genesis 10:21 refers to relative ages of Shem and his brother Japheth, but with sufficient ambiguity in each...

 in the table of the Sons of Noah

Sons of Noah

The Seventy Nations or Sons of Noah is an extensive list of descendants of Noah appearing in of the Hebrew Bible, representing an ethnology from an Iron Age Levantine perspective...

 in Genesis chapter 10 and 1 Chronicles chapter 1 in the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

. This "Table of Nations" lists purported founders of neighboring ethnic groups or "nations".

Genesis 10:26 "...And Joktan hath begotten Almodad

Almodad

Almodad was a descendant of Noah and the first named son of Joktan in and . While the Bible has no further history regarding Almodad, this patriarch is considered to be the founder of an Arabian tribe in "Arabia Felix"...

, and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth, and Jerah..."

Hazarmaveth, also transcribed Hazarmaueth, means "dwelling of death" (Hitchcock's Bible Dictionary) and is composed of two parts in Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

: hazar/ḥaṣar ("dwelling" or "court") and maveth/mawet ("death"). (There are alternative systems for transliterating Hebrew into Latin letters.)

Scholars of Semitic languages

Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

 have related the name to the ancient region of Hadramaut in the modern Southern Arabian nation of Yemen

Yemen

The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....

, and indeed, one of the other sons of Joktan is Sheba

Sheba

Sheba was a kingdom mentioned in the Jewish scriptures and the Qur'an...

, the name of an ancient Southern Arabian kingdom. However, the etymology of Hadramaut may be from the Graeco-Roman period.