What Does Ezra 4:21 Mean?
Now make a decree to idle these men, and that this city not be built, until another decree is given by me.
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
Give ye now commandment to cause these men to cease, and that this city be not builded, until another commandment shall be given from me.THE KEY
The order suspends the city’s building, but “until another commandment” leaves the halt open to a new decision.
THE MEANING
A work can be halted by a command, yet this halt is bounded by the phrase “until another commandment”: the stoppage is real, but it is not declared final. The verse speaks wherever something shared remains unfinished under another’s authority, with its next movement depending on a new decision.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A delay means the work is over.
THE ROOT
טְּעֵם
ṭĕʿēm
GROWS FROM
טעם
ṭʿm
Taste; by extension, discern or judge. In Aramaic, the word also means a decree or decision.
English separates “commandment” from “taste,” but the Aramaic keeps both in the טעם word-family. The decree carries a shade of judgment and discernment beyond a bare command.
ALSO GROWS
ṭĕʿēm: An authoritative decision or command.
טְּעֵם
This is the word that makes the city’s building stop until a new decision is issued.
biṭʿēm: Taste or experience by the mouth.
בִּטְעֵם
This branch shows the same root extending from decree and judgment to sensory discernment.
THE PATTERN
A ruling can halt or release a work, so its course turns on who has authority to issue the next word.
Now when the copy of king Artaxerxes' letter was read before Rehum and Shimshai the writer and their companions, they went up in haste to Jerusalem to the Jews, and made them idle by arm and strength.Let the work of this house of God go; let the governor of the Jews and the gray-haired ones of the Jews build this house of God in his place. Moreover I set a decree for what you shall do to these gray-haired ones of the Jews for the building of this house of God. Out of the king's goods, even from the tribute across the river, let the outgoings be given forthwith to these men, that they be not hindered.And now I say to you, Stand away from these men and release them. For if this counsel or this work is of humankind, it will come undone. But if it is of God, you cannot undo them, lest perhaps you be found even fighting against God.THE THREAD
Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king, and his great ones, his wives, and his concubines, might drink in them.The Aramaic behind Ezra’s “commandment” belongs to טעם, the same root behind the word rendered “tasted” here. English separates a decree from sensory tasting, while the Aramaic word-family keeps judgment and discernment connected.
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