What Does Ezra 4:11 Mean?
This is the copy of the letter which they sent to him, even to Artaxerxes the king. Your servants, the men 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
This is the copy of the letter that they sent unto him, even unto Artaxerxes the king; Thy servants the men on this side the river, and at such a time.THE KEY
Before the message is heard, its senders define themselves by rank and boundary: servants on this side of the river.
THE MEANING
A message reaches authority through the description its senders place around it. Here, that frame names their service and their side of the river before the letter’s substance appears. The word for “sent” also carries the sense of sending forth or releasing, holding the movement of a message alongside the possibility of release.
THE ROOT
שְׁלַחוּ
shelachu
GROWS FROM
שלח
sh-l-ḥ
To send, send forth, release, or let go.
The Aramaic “they sent” comes from the same root as Hebrew שַׁלַּח (shallach, send forth or release), heard in “Let my people go.” English separates dispatch from release, while the root holds them together: what is sent out is let go from the sender’s hand. Here, a letter carries its senders’ account toward the king.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send, send forth, release, let go.
שָׁלַח
This verb shares the root directly and preserves the range behind the letter being sent.
shaliach: Messenger, sent agent.
שָׁלִיחַ
A messenger is defined by being sent; the word carries the same outward movement as this letter.
THE PATTERN
Authority often receives a person through a description carried by others before hearing that person directly.
This is the copy of the letter which they sent to him, even to Artaxerxes the king. Your servants, the men across the river, and now.And two men, sons of Belial, came in and settled before him, and the men of Belial bore witness against him, even against Naboth, before the people, saying, Naboth blessed God and the king. Then they brought him out of the city, and stoned him with stones, and he died.For we have found this man a plague, and a stirrer of uprisings among all the Jews throughout the inhabited earth, and one who stands at the front of the division of the Nazarenes.THE THREAD
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.The Aramaic “they sent” in Ezra and Hebrew “let my people go” in Exodus share the root שלח (sh-l-ḥ). It holds dispatch and release in one motion: a message sent outward and a people let go.
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