What Does Ezra 4:10 Mean?
And the rest of the nations whom the great and weighty Asnapper carried away and set in the cities of Samaria, and the rest that are across the river, and now.
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
And the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Asnappar brought over, and set in the cities of Samaria, and the rest that are on this side the river, and at such a time.THE KEY
The verb translated “brought over” carries the force of exile, so the new settlement still bears the mark of people being removed from home.
THE MEANING
This passage lets you see people named as “the rest” and by the cities where they now live, while the verb for bringing them there carries the force of exile. Where they are placed does not tell the whole story of how they arrived.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A population’s settled location does not prove that its arrival was voluntary; the place people inhabit can preserve a history of removal.
THE ROOT
הַגְלִי
haglî
GROWS FROM
גלה
To uncover or reveal; in the causative Aramaic form here, to exile or deport.
“carried away” in this verse is haglî. The Aramaic verb belongs to the root family that includes both uncovering and exile. Here, “brought over” carries the force of removal: Asnappar displaces people, then settles them in Samaria, so their new location does not erase how they came there.
ALSO GROWS
galah: To uncover or reveal.
גָּלָה
This branch shows the root’s sense of making something exposed or visible, a meaning that sits alongside its use for exile.
golah: Exile or the people carried away.
גּוֹלָה
This branch names the displaced people themselves, clarifying the force held inside “brought over.”
שְׁאָר
she'ar
GROWS FROM
שאר
To remain or be left over.
The word for “the rest” appears twice, grouping the people placed in Samaria and those across the river under the same label of what remains. The repeated wording makes the list sound like an account of populations left in place after displacement.
ALSO GROWS
she'ar: Remainder; what is left.
שְׁאָר
This is the Aramaic noun used twice in the verse, defining both groups by what remains.
she'erit: Remnant; what remains.
שְׁאֵרִית
This Hebrew branch shares the root and echoes the verse’s language of people counted as a remainder.
THE PATTERN
Displacement leaves people identified by the lands where power carries or scatters them.
And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and set them in the cities of Samaria in place of the children of Israel. They possessed Samaria and settled in its cities.By the rivers of Babylon, there we settled, and we wept when we remembered Zion.Peter, a sent one of Jesus the Anointed One, to the picked out who dwell alongside, scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away, whom I have carried from Jerusalem to Babylon.Ezra’s Aramaic verb translated “brought over” and Jeremiah’s Hebrew verb translated “carried away” share the root גלה (galah), which includes both uncovering and exile. Together, they keep the act of displacement visible even after people have been settled in a new place.
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