What Does Ezra 10:6 Mean?
Then Ezra rose up from before the house of God, and went into the chamber of Johanan son of Eliashib. There he ate no bread and drank no waters, for he mourned over the betrayal of those of the uncovering.
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 Ezra rose up from before the house of God, and went into the chamber of Johanan the son of Eliashib: and when he came thither, he did eat no bread, nor drink water: for he mourned because of the transgression of them that had been carried away.THE KEY
The breach belongs to others, yet Ezra’s grief reaches his own body: sorrow can be shared without making its witness responsible for the rupture.
THE MEANING
A breach of trust can reach beyond the people who commit it: grief becomes so embodied that food and water go untouched. The verse holds responsibility and sorrow together without confusing them; another’s act can wound you without becoming your act.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that another person’s betrayal must leave you untouched: you can grieve a breach without being its author.
THE ROOT
מַעַל
maʿal
GROWS FROM
מעל
to act unfaithfully, deal treacherously
“betrayal” in this verse is maʿal. This word carries both unfaithfulness and breach of trust, giving the transgression a relational texture. Its word family names both the act of acting unfaithfully and the breach, so Ezra’s mourning answers a ruptured bond, not an abstract label.
ALSO GROWS
māʿal: to act unfaithfully; to deal treacherously
מָעַל
This verbal form supplies the action inside the transgression: the breach is unfaithfulness enacted.
maʿal: unfaithfulness; breach of trust; trespass
מַעַל
This noun names the rupture Ezra mourns.
מִתְאַבֵּל
mitʾabbēl
GROWS FROM
אבל
to mourn, lament
“mourned” in this verse is mitʾabbēl. The Hebrew form presents Ezra as mourning, giving grief the force of a lived state rather than a passing thought. Beside the untouched bread and water, mourning is shown reaching the body.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāvēl: a mourner
אָבֵל
The same root names the person who bears grief, linking lament with a lived human state.
ʾēvel: mourning; lament
אֵבֶל
This noun names the grief that the verse shows through Ezra’s response to the breach.
THE PATTERN
Grief is not merely inward: sorrow can interrupt appetite and reach ordinary bodily rhythms.
My heart is struck and dries like grass, for I forget to eat my bread.And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the face of the God of the heavens.And Jesus said to them, Can the children of the bridal chamber mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But days will come when the bridegroom is lifted away from them, and then they will fast.THE THREAD
Then were gathered to me everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the breach of those who had been carried away. And I sat emptied until the evening offering.“Transgression” here is the same Hebrew word, maʿal, for breach of faith that Ezra mourns in 10:6. What appears here as a community gathered around the rupture becomes, in 10:6, grief carried through one body.
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