Uriah (or Urijah in some older English translations) is a

prophet In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the s ...

and

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...

mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.

Biblical narrative

He is described as being the son of Shemaiah from

Kiriath-Jearim Kiriath-Jearim (also Kiryat Ye'arim; he, קִרְיַת-יְעָרִים ', "city of woods"; grc, Καριαθιαριμ ; Latin: ') was a city in the Land of Israel. It is mentioned 18 times in the Hebrew Bible. The biblical place was identif ...

. During the reign of

Jehoiakim Jehoiakim, also sometimes spelled Jehoikim; la, Joakim was the eighteenth and antepenultimate king of Judah from 609 to 598 BC. He was the second son of king Josiah () and Zebidah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah. His birth name was Eliakim.; ...

, king of Judah, he fled into

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

from the cruelty of the king, but having been brought back he was beheaded and his body "cast into the graves of the common people."

Lachish Letters

While not is not certain, there is a scholarly opinion that Uriah might be referenced in the Lachish letters. See

Lachish letters The Lachish Letters or ''Lachish Ostraca'', sometimes called ''Hoshaiah Letters'', are a series of letters written in carbon ink containing Canaanite inscriptions in Ancient Hebrew on clay ostraca. The letters were discovered at the excavations at ...

References

Biblical murder victims Book of Jeremiah Deaths by decapitation Male murder victims {{judaism-stub