What Does Ezra 2:18 Mean?
The children of Jorah, one hundred and twelve.
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
The children of Jorah, an hundred and twelve.THE KEY
Jorah’s name echoes yarah, the root behind Torah, so this bare count is carried beneath a name linked to teaching and direction.
THE MEANING
This verse holds one family in two forms at once: a shared name and a number, 112. Its compact wording keeps the family’s belonging concrete.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The idea that a counted group is anonymous gives way here to a family named and counted together.
THE ROOT
יוֹרָה
Yōrāh
GROWS FROM
ירה
יָרָה (yārâ): to throw or cast; by extension, to direct or teach.
Jorah is associated with ירה, the root that also gives Hebrew its word for instruction. The name above this counted family carries a trace of direction beneath the otherwise spare list.
ALSO GROWS
tôrāh: Instruction, teaching, direction.
תּוֹרָה
Torah shares the root echoed in Jorah, revealing the family name’s link to instruction and direction.
mōreh: Teacher; one who directs.
מוֹרֶה
This branch names a person who teaches or directs, making visible the same root within Jorah’s name.
THE PATTERN
A people can be held in view through both a shared belonging and a stated count.
And these are the children of the province who went up out of the exile, those who had been stripped bare, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had stripped bare and carried unto Babylon, and turned again unto Jerusalem and Judah, every one unto his city.He counts the number of the stars; he calls each of them by name.Then those who gladly took his word in were immersed, and that day about three thousand living souls were added to them.THE THREAD
And many peoples shall go and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will aim us along his ways, and we will walk in his paths, for out of Zion the instruction shall go forth, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.Here “teach” is יָרָה (yārâ, “direct or teach”), and “law” is תּוֹרָה (tôrāh, “instruction”), both carrying the root echoed by Jorah. Isaiah opens the family name onto a language of direction and instruction.
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