What Does Ezra 4:15 Mean?
That search may be made in the book of the records of your fathers, so you will find in the book of the records, and know that this city is a breaking-away city, damaging to kings and provinces, and that they have moved sedition within it from of old, for which cause this city was dried up.
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
That search may be made in the book of the records of thy fathers: so shalt thou find in the book of the records, and know that this city is a rebellious city, and hurtful unto kings and provinces, and that they have moved sedition within the same of old time: for which cause was this city destroyed.THE KEY
The same root names both the city’s rebellion and the sedition attributed to it, turning repeated actions into the city’s defining identity.
THE MEANING
The verse shows a record being searched as evidence: the city is named rebellious, described as harmful to kings and provinces, and charged with persistent revolt. Its destruction is presented as the consequence of that case. The wording shows how an account of the past can carry an accusation into a present verdict.
THE ROOT
מָרָדָה
maradah
GROWS FROM
מרד
To rebel or revolt against authority.
“breaking-away” in this verse is maradah. The word rendered rebellious and the later word rendered sedition both come from מרד. English gives them separate labels, while the repeated root links the city’s description to the revolt attributed to its people, making the record’s accusation sound like a defining nature.
ALSO GROWS
marad: To rebel; to revolt.
מָרַד
The verbal form presents rebellion as an action, as in the verse’s claim that revolt is being carried out within the city.
mered: Rebellion; revolt.
מֶרֶד
This noun shares the root of the verse’s word for sedition, joining the two charges in one root family.
mored: A rebel; one who rebels.
מוֹרֵד
This form names the one who rebels, showing how an action from this root can become a label for a person or, in the verse, a city.
THE PATTERN
A written record carries past actions forward into present judgment or consequence.
On that night the king's sleep fled, and he commanded that the book of remembrances, the words of the days, be brought, and they were read before the king.A river of fire flowed and came out from before him. Thousands upon thousands attended him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The judgment sat down, and the scrolls were opened.And I see the dead, small and great, standing before God. The scrolls are opened, and another scroll is opened, which is the book of life. The dead are judged by the things written in the scrolls, according to their works.THE THREAD
The LORD was with him, and he prospered wherever he went out. He turned against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.The verb translated rebelled comes from the same root מרד as Ezra’s repeated charge. Here the root describes resistance to the king of Assyria in a verse that also says the LORD is with Hezekiah, showing that the root names revolt without by itself settling its moral meaning.
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