IESCHA. — Under this name, which does not occur elsewhere in the Bible, a daughter of Haran, brother of Abraham, sister of Lot and Milcah, is mentioned in Gen. 11:29.
Since Iescha is no longer mentioned, while in the cited verse and the following one Sarah (q.v.), wife of Abraham, is spoken of—whose genealogy clearly interests the sacred Author—it is the opinion of many, already attested in antiquity (Targum Yerushalmi, Flavius Josephus, Ephrem, Jerome, etc.), that here reference is made to a single and identical person: Iescha = Sarah (cf. Gen. 20:12, where Abraham says that Sarah is his sister, that is, his niece, daughter of his father). It is probable that the difference in names arose from a confusion of similar letters in ancient writing, or that the same person, as in other cases, had a double name. But the identity is denied by others (H. Gunkel, Holzinger, G. Dillmann, M. Hetzenauer, etc.).