Lilith, in Jewish folklore, demon that is an enemy of newborn children. The name Lilith is etymologically related to the Sumerian word lil (wind), not to the Hebrew word laylah (night), as was long supposed. Like the Sumerian wind demon and its later Babylonian counterpart, Lilith was regarded as a succubus, or female version of the incubus. In the popular imagination, Lilith eventually became confused with Lamashtu, the Babylonian child-slaying demon. The only biblical reference to Lilith is in Isaiah 34:14, in which she is depicted as a demon of the desert.
In postbiblical Jewish literature, Lilith came to be identified as Adam's first wife. The first fully developed account of her mythology is found in the Alphabet of Ben Sira,