What Does Ezra 10:5 Mean?
Then Ezra rose and made the chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel swear that they would do according to this word. And they swore.
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
Then arose Ezra, and made the chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel, to swear that they should do according to this word. And they sware.THE KEY
The oath makes a communal command binding, while its causative verb keeps the pressure behind that unity visible.
THE MEANING
This verse puts the force of collective obedience before you: the leaders and all Israel are made to swear to carry out the proposal to put away wives and children. The phrase “made ... to swear” keeps the compulsion visible as the oath gives that proposal communal force.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A unanimous oath does not prove that a decision is freely chosen or harmless; the verse’s wording preserves the pressure behind the pledge.
THE ROOT
וַיַּשְׁבַּע
wayyašbaʿ
GROWS FROM
שבע
sh-b-ʿ
To swear an oath; in the causative form, to make someone swear.
“made ... to swear / swore” in this verse is wayyašbaʿ. The verse uses both the causative form, Ezra makes them swear, and the form for the people swearing. The shared consonants also appear in the word for “seven”; Genesis 21:31 brings that echo into view in the naming of Beersheba after an oath and the setting apart of seven lambs.
ALSO GROWS
shevuʿah: Oath
שְׁבוּעָה
The noun names the binding pledge that Ezra imposes on the leaders and the people.
shevaʿ: Seven
שֶׁבַע
The shared consonants echo in Beersheba, where Genesis links an oath with seven lambs.
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
To speak; a word, matter, or thing.
Davar can name both a spoken word and a matter to be dealt with. Here, “this word” is the proposal to put away wives and children: speech is bound to the concrete action the people are made to undertake.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke
דִּבֵּר
The spoken word is the source of the instruction the people swear to carry out.
devarim: Words, matters
דְּבָרִים
The same family holds speech and the matter at hand together, connecting the oath to the action it binds.
THE PATTERN
An oath binds spoken intention to action and gives those words force over the people who swear them.
Therefore he called that place the well of the swearing, Beersheba, because there the two of them swore.If a man vows a vow to the LORD, or swears an oath to bind a binding upon his living soul, he does not pierce his word; he does according to all that goes out of his mouth.When day came, certain of the Jews twisted themselves together and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had lifted Paul out of the way.THE THREAD
They took hold of their brothers, their mighty ones, and entered into a curse and into an oath, to walk in the instruction of God, which was given by the hand of Moses, the servant of God, and to guard and do all the commands of the LORD our Lord, and his judgments and his statutes;The Hebrew word for “oath” here, שְׁבוּעָה (shevuʿah), comes from the same root as “swear” in Ezra. This verse spells out the movement Ezra compresses: a people enter an oath, then walk, observe, and do.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us