What Does Esther 9:23 Mean?
And the Jews took hold of what they had begun to do, and what Mordecai had written to them.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written unto them;THE KEY
A beginning becomes a shared practice when a community receives it as its own.
THE MEANING
What has begun in you can continue when you receive it as yours and give it a shared shape through action. Here, commitment lives in what people take up and do together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a beginning is only a moment, unable to become shared practice, is undone here: what is received can continue in what a people do.
THE ROOT
קִבְּלוּ
qibbelu
GROWS FROM
קבל
q-b-l
receive, accept, take up
“took hold of” in this verse is qibbelu. The verb translated “undertook” carries the sense of receiving or accepting. The community does not merely witness what has begun or read what is written; it takes both up, and the words become a shared practice.
ALSO GROWS
qabbalah: reception; that which is received
קַבָּלָה
This noun keeps the focus on receiving: the practice takes hold as something the community accepts.
meqabbēl: one who receives
מְקַבֵּל
This form makes the receiver visible, echoing the verse’s emphasis on a community actively taking up what it has begun and what is written.
THE PATTERN
A shared memory takes root when it is enacted and carried forward through a community.
And this day will be for you a remembrance. You will keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations, a statute for the ages.And you shall sharpen them to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.THE THREAD
The Jews made it stand, and took hold of it upon themselves, and upon their seed, and upon all who attached themselves to them, so that it would not pass away, and that they would keep these two days according to their writing, and according to their appointed time, year by year.The phrase “took upon them” translates קִבְּלוּ (qibbelu, “they received/accepted”), the same verb at the heart of “undertook” here. In this verse, receiving extends to their seed and those joining them, showing the commitment becoming a practice carried forward.
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