What Does Ezra 10:44 Mean?
All these had taken foreign women, and some of them had wives by whom they had children.
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
All these had taken strange wives: and some of them had wives by whom they had children.THE KEY
The word “strange” draws a boundary, while “children” shows that the boundary already runs through a household.
THE MEANING
This verse lets you see the household inside the category: some of the marriages already include children. “Strange wives” and children occupy one line, so the boundary named here reaches beyond the spouses into family life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A boundary about marriage affects only the couple. Here the sentence itself names children within the same household story.
THE ROOT
נָכְרִיּוֹת
nokhriyot
GROWS FROM
נכר
n-k-r
To recognize or regard as distinct; the word family also expresses foreignness.
“foreign women” in this verse is nokhriyot. The Hebrew word marks these wives as foreign or other. Its connection to recognizing something as distinct brings the force of the label into view: the verse describes a boundary of belonging, then places children inside the households it names.
ALSO GROWS
nakar: Recognize or acknowledge as distinct.
נָכַר
This branch helps show how the root can mark something as different or outside the familiar group.
nekhar: Foreignness or what is foreign.
נֵכָר
This is the root’s sense of otherness made explicit in the word translated “strange.”
בָּנִים
banim
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
Build.
The word for sons or children belongs to the Hebrew word family of building. The verse therefore names not only marriages, but households that have already taken shape through children.
ALSO GROWS
banah: Build.
בָּנָה
This is the basic action in the word family that includes the word for son.
ben: Son or child.
בֵּן
This related form makes the connection between children and the building word-family visible.
THE PATTERN
Scripture keeps children in view when it records a household union and its consequences.
And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the LORD has held me shut from bearing. Go in, I pray you, to my handmaid. Perhaps I may be built through her. And Abram heard and responded to the voice of Sarai.Now therefore let us cut a covenant with our God to bring out all the wives, and those born of them, according to the counsel of my lord, and of those who tremble at the command of our God, and let it be done according to the instruction.For the husband who does not trust has been set apart through the wife, and the wife who does not trust has been set apart through the husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are set apart.THE THREAD
Now therefore let us cut a covenant with our God to bring out all the wives, and those born of them, according to the counsel of my lord, and of those who tremble at the command of our God, and let it be done according to the instruction.The earlier proposal explicitly includes both the wives and “such as are born of them,” revealing the household scope behind the final list’s brief mention of children. The chapter’s response treats the children as part of the decision, not as a separate detail.
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