What Does Ezra 2:3 Mean?
The children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred and seventy-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 Parosh, two thousand an hundred seventy and two.THE KEY
The counted multitude is named with a word rooted in building: this is a people pictured as a household growing through generations.
THE MEANING
This verse shows belonging carried in a household name and made visible among a people. The number 2,172 stands beside Parosh, so the count remains attached to a family line rather than leaving the people anonymous.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A count reduces people to anonymous units; here, the number stays attached to Parosh’s family name.
THE ROOT
בְּנֵי
benei
GROWS FROM
בנה
Build, establish.
בְּנֵי (benei, “sons” or “children”) belongs to the root בנה (banah, “build”): the family word sits in the same root family as building. The verse presents the count as a lineage carried forward, a household taking shape across generations.
ALSO GROWS
ben: Son, child.
בֵּן
The singular form names the descendant whose line continues the household.
banah: Build, establish.
בָּנָה
This shared root makes the family line sound like a household being built through its children.
binyan: Building, structure.
בִּנְיָן
The related word for a built structure echoes the way a family line gives a people continuity.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes a people visible by tracing belonging through household lines.
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.Now these are the births of Perez. Perez brought forth Hezron.Abraham brought forth Isaac, and Isaac brought forth Jacob, and Jacob brought forth Judah and his brothers.THE THREAD
Then his brother's wife shall come to him before the faces of the elders, and pull his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face, and answer and say, "So shall it be done to the man who will not build his brother's house."The word בְּנֵי (benei, “children”) in Ezra shares the root בנה (banah, “build”) with “build up” in Deuteronomy. There, building a brother’s house means sustaining the family line; here, the children gathered under Parosh’s name make that line visible.
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