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Japanese Yes. Nathan was the prophet who brought God’s promise to King David and later confronted him over Bathsheba. It was also the name of one of David’s sons, and Luke traces the ancestry of Jesus back to David through him (Luke 3:31). The name is Hebrew and means “he gave.”
What does Nathan mean?
Nathan comes from the Hebrew Natan, from the verb natan, “to give,” and means “he gave.” Name books often give its meaning as “gift of God,” but the word for God belongs to two longer names built on the same verb: Nathanael, “God has given,” and Jonathan, “Yahweh has given.” Nathan itself does not say who gave. Nathanael is the disciple Jesus greeted as “an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit” (John 1:47), and he is usually identified with the apostle Bartholomew.
Bibles in other languages spell the prophet’s name in their own ways: Natán in Spanish, Natã in Portuguese, Natan in Italian and Nathan in French. Nate and Nat are English short forms, and Neithan and Neizan are Spanish spellings of the name.
Nathan has been used as a Christian given name in English since the Protestant Reformation. In the United States it has been among the 100 most popular names for boys every year since 1972. It reached 20th place in 2004 and 2005 and ranked 63rd in 2025. It is also common in France, where it ranked 29th in 2024.
Who was Nathan the prophet?
Nathan served at the court of King David and then of Solomon. Scripture does not name his father or his hometown. He first appears when David, settled in his own house, remarks that he lives in a house of cedar while the ark of God stays in a tent. Nathan tells him, “Go, do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you.” That same night the word of the Lord comes to Nathan, and he returns with a different message. David is not to build God a house. God will raise up David’s offspring, who “shall build a house for my name,” and David’s own house and kingdom will last: “Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:3–16). Christians read the promise as fulfilled in Jesus, of whom the angel Gabriel says, “the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32).
Nathan’s best-known visit came after David had slept with Bathsheba and arranged the death of her husband, Uriah the Hittite. Nathan told the king about a rich man with many flocks who, to feed a guest, took instead the one ewe lamb that a poor man had raised like a daughter. David was furious and said the man deserved to die. Nathan answered, “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12:1–7). When David admitted, “I have sinned against the Lord,” Nathan told him, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die,” but added that the child Bathsheba had borne him would die (2 Samuel 12:13–14). The heading of Psalm 51, David’s prayer of repentance, ties it to this moment: “when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”
When Bathsheba’s next son, Solomon, was born, the Lord “sent a message by Nathan the prophet,” and the child was given a second name, Jedidiah, “beloved of the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:24–25). Years later, when David was old and his son Adonijah had declared, “I will be king,” Nathan sent Bathsheba to remind David of his promise that Solomon would reign, then came in himself to confirm her words. David ordered Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet to anoint Solomon king at Gihon (1 Kings 1:5–40).
The books of Chronicles cite “the Chronicles of Nathan the prophet” and “the history of Nathan the prophet” among the records of David’s and Solomon’s reigns (1 Chronicles 29:29; 2 Chronicles 9:29). They also say that King Hezekiah later arranged the Levites’ music in the temple “according to the commandment of David and of Gad the king’s seer and of Nathan the prophet” (2 Chronicles 29:25). The Bible does not record how or when Nathan died.
Did King David have a son named Nathan?
Yes. Nathan was one of the sons born to David in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5:14). 1 Chronicles 3:5 lists him with Solomon among four sons “by Bath-shua, the daughter of Ammiel,” another form of Bathsheba’s name, so he was Solomon’s full brother. The Bible treats him and the prophet as two different men, and it tells nothing else about his life.
He appears again in Luke’s genealogy of Jesus, which runs “the son of Nathan, the son of David” (Luke 3:31). Matthew’s genealogy runs through Solomon instead (Matthew 1:6–7). Christians have explained the two lines in different ways. In the third century Julius Africanus reported a tradition that Joseph had a natural father and a legal father through a levirate marriage, and so appears in both lists. Another view, which became popular after 1498, holds that Luke gives Mary’s ancestry.
How many Nathans are in the Bible?
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia counts six men named Nathan in the Old Testament, besides a family. Apart from the prophet and David’s son, they are the father of Igal, one of David’s mighty men (2 Samuel 23:36); a descendant of Judah in the clan of Jerahmeel (1 Chronicles 2:36); one of the “leading men” Ezra sent for before leading exiles back from Babylon (Ezra 8:16); and a man listed among those who had married foreign wives in Ezra’s time (Ezra 10:39). Solomon’s officials Azariah and Zabud are called sons of Nathan (1 Kings 4:5), and that Nathan was probably the prophet. Zechariah 12:12 names “the family of the house of Nathan” beside the house of David among the families who will mourn in Jerusalem.
Is there a Saint Nathan?
The prophet is honored as a saint in the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church in America commemorates him on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, which falls between 11 and 17 December, and the Orthodox prayer of absolution after confession names him: “It was God Who pardoned David through the Prophet Nathan when he had confessed his sin.” In France, Nominis, the saints and names directory of the Catholic Church, lists a local feast of the prophet on 7 March and gives the name Nathan the name day of 24 August, the feast of Saint Nathanael.
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