Judah, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, was the ancestor whose line received the blessing of kingship (Genesis 49:10): the sceptre would not depart from Judah until Shiloh came. The blessing was borne out in the reigns of David and his descendants and in the kingship ascribed to Jesus Christ.
Judah’s name passed to both a tribe and a territory. The tribe descended from him settled south of Jerusalem and Jericho, bounded on the east by the Dead Sea and on the west by the Philistine-held Mediterranean plain. When the kingdom of Israel split after Solomon’s death, the southern kingdom took the name Judah after its dominant tribe (1 Kings 12).
Jerusalem, capital of the former united kingdom, remained the religious and political center of Judah after the split. Judah was a vassal to Assyria and then Babylon from about 732 to 586 B.C. The kingdom ended with the Babylonian destruction of the temple and much of Jerusalem and the exile of many Israelites; the surviving people came to be called the Jews (2 Kings 25).
In Nephite scripture the term “Judah” appears in several uses. It names the southern kingdom through its kings, “Zedekiah, king of Judah” (1 Nephi 1:4; 5:12; Omni 1:15) and “Ahaz, king of Judah” (2 Nephi 17:1). Paired with “Jerusalem,” it denotes the covenant people of various tribes within the kingdom’s borders (2 Nephi 12:1; 13:1; 15:3). The “fruit of the loins of Judah” (2 Nephi 3:12) refers to the writings of Judah’s descendants, which would grow together with the writings of Joseph’s line. The phrase “out of the waters of Judah” (1 Nephi 20:1; Isaiah 48:1) is glossed in the Nephite text itself as “out of the waters of baptism” (1 Nephi 20:1).
The Book of Mormon also looks forward, addressing Gentile contempt for the Jews. The Lord calls them “mine ancient covenant people” and declares that he has not forgotten them (2 Nephi 29:4–5), affirming that the Judahite covenant line remains active beyond the exile.