What Does Ezra 2:24 Mean?
The children of Azmaveth, forty-two.
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 Azmaveth, forty and two.THE KEY
The verse places forty-two children beneath a name that joins strength with death, making their identity more than a number.
THE MEANING
Forty-two children belong to the household named Azmaveth. The line holds a precise count together with a distinct family identity, keeping both in view.
THE ROOT
עַזְמָוֶת
ʿAzmāwet
GROWS FROM
מות
mût: to die; death
Azmaveth is commonly parsed from עַז (ʿoz, strength) and מָוֶת (māwet, death), often glossed “strong as death.” The name holds force and mortality together before the verse gives the household its precise count.
ALSO GROWS
māwet: death
מָוֶת
This noun is the death element embedded in Azmaveth, so the name’s mortality remains audible.
mût: to die
מוּת
The verb shares the root מות and shows death as an event as well as a name element.
בְּנֵי
bənê
GROWS FROM
בנה
bānāh: to build, establish
בְּנֵי means sons or children and belongs to the word-family associated with בנה, “to build.” The count therefore stays attached to a household structure rather than floating free as arithmetic.
ALSO GROWS
bānāh: he built
בָּנָה
This verb gives the family word its building association.
mivneh: structure, building
מִבְנֶה
This noun makes the root’s structural sense concrete: the forty-two are counted within a household.
bēn: son
בֵּן
בְּנֵי is the construct plural of בֵּן, the family term associated with building and continuing a household.
THE PATTERN
A people becomes visible through households and communities whose members are counted together.
Lift up the head of all the assembly of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, by the number of their names, every male, head by head.All the assembly together was forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty.Then those who gladly took his word in were immersed, and that day about three thousand living souls were added to them.THE THREAD
Look, children are the LORD's portion; and the fruit of the womb is a wage.The Hebrew word for “children” here and בְּנֵי in Ezra belong to the family word-group associated with בנה, “build.” Psalm 127 opens the roster’s count further: children are not only counted within a household; they are part of what builds its continuity.
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