What Does Ezra 2:40 Mean?
The Levites, the children of Jeshua and Kadmiel, and of the children of Hodaviah, seventy-four.
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 Levites: the children of Jeshua and Kadmiel, of the children of Hodaviah, seventy and four.THE KEY
The name Levi carries the root of joining: restoration takes shape through people joined in shared service.
THE MEANING
This line holds a community together through a counted people whose service is joined to the whole. The names Jeshua and Levi carry deliverance and joining into that structure: the movement out of constriction happens through belonging.
THE ROOT
הַלְוִיִּם
ha-Leviyyim
GROWS FROM
לוה
L-W-H
Join, attach, accompany.
Genesis links Levi’s name to the word for being joined. Here, the Levites’ identity holds that joining inside a counted community: their name carries a relation of shared service.
ALSO GROWS
veyillaveh: Will be joined.
וְיִלָּוֶה
This is the wordplay in the verse that names Levi, making the root of joining audible in the name.
livvah: Accompany, escort.
לִוָּה
Joining also means staying alongside; this branch reveals service as a relation within the community.
יֵשׁוּעַ
Yeshua
GROWS FROM
ישע
Y-Š-ʿ
Deliver, bring out from narrowness into spaciousness.
Jeshua carries the nature of deliverance in its name. Beside Levi’s root of joining, it places being brought out and belonging together in this line.
ALSO GROWS
yasha: Deliver, bring out.
יָשַׁע
This is the root carried by the name Jeshua, giving the name its sense of deliverance.
yeshuah: Deliverance.
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun makes explicit the movement held in Jeshua’s name: being brought out into spaciousness.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance takes form through people joined into shared service.
And she conceived again, and bore a son, and she said, Now this time my husband will cling to me, because I have borne him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi, Joined.And your brothers also of the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father, bring with you, that they may be joined to you and serve you, but you and your sons with you shall serve before the dwelling of the witness.There are portions of service, but the same Lord.THE THREAD
And she conceived again, and bore a son, and she said, Now this time my husband will cling to me, because I have borne him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi, Joined.Genesis connects Levi’s name to being joined, the same root carried by “Levites” in Ezra. The name turns the census line into a glimpse of people joined together in service.
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