What Does Ezra 2:46 Mean?
The children of Hagab, the children of Shalmai, the children of Hanan.
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 Hagab, the children of Shalmai, the children of Hanan,THE KEY
The repeated “children” carries a building resonance: restoration is a people taking shape through named generations.
THE MEANING
The verse gathers three family lines into the returning people by name. Even where a household gets only a brief line in the larger story, it remains part of the structure being restored. Your place, too, can belong to a story larger than the scene you can see.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a family matters only when its story is long or dramatic dissolves here: three households are held in the record in a single line.
THE ROOT
בְּנֵי
bənê
GROWS FROM
בנה
Build, establish.
The family word בְּנֵי (bənê, “children”) is traditionally linked with בָּנָה (banah, “build”). That resonance lets the register sound like more than descent: each named line is part of the structure through which a people is carried forward.
ALSO GROWS
ben: Son, child.
בֵּן
The word for a child carries the family language repeated across the verse.
binyan: Building, structure.
בִּנְיָן
Its shared root gives the named family lines a building resonance: generations form part of a people’s structure.
חָנָן
ḥānān
GROWS FROM
חנן
Show favor, be gracious.
Favor is carried inside Hanan’s name, even in a bare record of family lines. The verse preserves names whose roots hold meanings beyond the short mention they receive here.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēn: Favor.
חֵן
This related word makes the favor contained in Hanan’s name audible.
ḥannūn: Gracious, showing favor.
חַנּוּן
This related form echoes the gracious quality carried in the name Hanan.
THE PATTERN
After rupture, scripture carries a people forward by preserving its family lines and names.
All the living souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, who came out of his thigh, apart from the wives of Jacob's sons, were threescore and six.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.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.THE THREAD
And she said, Look, my maidservant Bilhah. Go in to her, and she shall bear upon my knees, that I too may be built up through her.Rachel’s phrase “have children” translates Hebrew built on בנה (banah, “build”), the same root traditionally linked with בֵּן (ben, “child, son”). Ezra’s repeated “children” carries that building resonance: a people takes shape through its family lines.
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