What Does Ezra 2:5 Mean?
The children of Arah, seven hundred and seventy-five.
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 Arah, seven hundred seventy and five.THE KEY
“Children” carries the image of a household being built onward through generations.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a household in view as 775 lives, not an abstract crowd. “Children” links family to the idea of building: each generation belongs to the continuing structure of a people.
THE ROOT
בְּנֵי
benei
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
to build, build up
The Hebrew word for children is linked to the root meaning “build.” English gives a count of descendants; the Hebrew also lets you hear a household being built across generations.
ALSO GROWS
ben: son, child
בֵּן
This is the singular form behind “children,” carrying the family link to building onward.
banah: to build
בָּנָה
The root makes the family image concrete: children are described in terms of a household built through them.
binyan: building, structure
בִּנְיָן
This related word shows the root’s structural sense: a family is something built and continued.
THE PATTERN
Scripture holds number and identity together, counting lives without reducing them to an anonymous mass.
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.He counts the number of the stars; he calls each of them by name.But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not shrink, for you surpass many sparrows.THE THREAD
And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the LORD has held me shut from bearing. Go in, I pray you, to my handmaid. Perhaps I may be built through her. And Abram heard and responded to the voice of Sarai.Where the KJV says “obtain children,” the Hebrew says “be built through her,” using יבנה (yibbaneh) from בנה, “to build.” The same root beneath “children” in Ezra lets a family line appear as a structure built across generations.
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