What Does Ezra 4:8 Mean?
Rehum the master of the decree and Shimshai the writer wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king, in this manner.
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
Rehum the chancellor and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king in this sort:THE KEY
The letter is aimed at Jerusalem, but the name makes its target wholeness itself.
THE MEANING
Opposition takes the form of an official letter, carrying a claim against Jerusalem to royal authority. The place-name carries the language of wholeness, so the target bears a meaning beyond the city’s walls.
THE ROOT
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be whole or complete; to bring something to completion.
The name Jerusalem carries the sound and root of wholeness. The letter is directed against a place whose name holds that meaning, making the threat about more than a location: it presses against the possibility of wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness; peace
שָׁלוֹם
This branch makes the connection between Jerusalem and wholeness audible in a familiar word.
shalem: Whole; complete
שָׁלֵם
This branch reveals completion within the name’s root, sharpening what the opposition is directed against.
shillem: To repay; make good
שִׁלֵּם
This branch carries the root from wholeness into restoration or making good, a further shade of what wholeness can involve.
THE PATTERN
When writing reaches the hands of authority, a message can become an instrument that shapes the fate of a people.
And Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the LORD in Jerusalem, to keep the passover to the LORD God of Israel.Then the king's scribes were called on the thirteenth day of the first month, and it was written according to all that Haman commanded, to the king's satraps, to the governors of each province, and to the princes of each people; each province in its own writing and each people in its own tongue; written in the nature of King Ahasuerus and sealed with the king's ring.Claudius Lysias sends joy to Felix, the strongest one who leads.THE THREAD
Ask for the wholeness of Jerusalem; those who love you are at ease.The word translated “peace” is shalom, from the same root שלם carried in the name Jerusalem. Here the city named as the target of a letter is joined to wholeness, making the root-level tension visible.
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