What Does Ezra 10:7 Mean?
And they sent a voice passing through Judah and Jerusalem to all the children of the uncovering, that they should gather together to Jerusalem.
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 they made proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem unto all the children of the captivity, that they should gather themselves together unto Jerusalem;THE KEY
The proclamation is a voice made to pass across the land until it reaches even the children of exile.
THE MEANING
You are addressed even from displacement: the summons travels through the land and reaches the children of exile. It calls them to gather in Jerusalem, holding the displaced and the assembly in the same sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
“Exile has put me beyond the reach of the call.” The proclamation reaches the children of exile and summons them to gather.
THE ROOT
לְהִקָּבֵץ
lehikkavets
GROWS FROM
קבץ
Gather, collect.
“gather themselves” in this verse is lehikkavets. The summons uses the root קבץ (qavats, gather), the language of bringing scattered people together. The verse presents gathering as the response to exile: those named by their displacement are called into one assembly.
ALSO GROWS
yeqabbets: He gathers.
יְקַבֵּץ
Isaiah uses this same root for gathering Judah’s dispersed, making the shared root a link between exile and being brought together.
qibbuts: Gathering, collection.
קִבּוּץ
The noun keeps the action of collecting audible inside the verse’s call for the exiles to assemble.
גּוֹלָה
golah
GROWS FROM
גלה
Uncover, reveal; also, go into exile.
“uncovering” in this verse is golah. גּוֹלָה (golah, exile) shares its root with גָּלָה (galah, uncover or reveal). The language lets exile carry an echo of exposure: the displaced are named openly, and the proclamation reaches them there.
ALSO GROWS
galah: Uncover, reveal.
גָּלָה
This related verb gives the exile word an echo of being exposed or brought into view.
galui: Uncovered, exposed.
גָּלוּי
The shared root keeps the condition of the children of exile connected to what is made visible.
וַיַּעֲבִירוּ קוֹל
vayyaʿaviru qol
GROWS FROM
עבר
Pass over, cross through.
“sent a voice passing through” in this verse is vayyaʿaviru qol. The Hebrew phrase says they caused a voice to pass: the proclamation is pictured as something moving through the land. Its reach is part of the verse’s meaning, the voice arrives even at the people marked by exile.
ALSO GROWS
ʿavar: Pass over, cross through.
עָבַר
The verb describes the movement carried by the proclamation as it travels through Judah and Jerusalem.
maʿavar: Passage, crossing.
מַעֲבָר
This related noun preserves the sense of a voice crossing distance to reach its hearers.
THE PATTERN
A call reaches scattered people and gathers them into a shared place.
And he will lift a banner for the nations, and gather in the driven ones of Israel, and gather the scattered of Judah from the four wings of the earth.He gathers them in from the lands, from the east and the west, from the north and the south.And not for that nation only, but that he would also gather together into one the children of God who were scattered abroad.THE THREAD
And he will lift a banner for the nations, and gather in the driven ones of Israel, and gather the scattered of Judah from the four wings of the earth.Ezra’s word for gathering and Isaiah’s “gather together” share the root קבץ (qavats, gather). The same root connects the children of exile with the wider movement of gathering the dispersed into one place.
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