What Does Ezra 5:11 Mean?
And thus they returned an answer to us, saying, We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and we build the house that was built many years ago, which a great king of Israel built and raised.
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 thus they returned us answer, saying, We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and build the house that was builded these many years ago, which a great king of Israel builded and set up.THE KEY
Their service to the God of heaven and earth takes visible form in a house their work continues to raise.
THE MEANING
Your present labor can belong to a work that began before you; you are not building from zero. Here, service is not separate from the work in your hands, and the house carries what has already been raised.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that unfinished or interrupted work has lost its history and must begin again alone.
THE ROOT
וּבָנִין
ûḇānîn
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
To build, especially to establish a house or structure.
“build / builded” in this verse is ûḇānîn. The Aramaic uses this build-root for the present work and again for the earlier king’s work: the building now belongs to a line of building. The related Hebrew word בֵּן (ben, “son”) is traditionally linked to this root, letting “house” evoke both a structure and the household formed within it.
ALSO GROWS
binyan: A building or structure.
בִּנְיָן
This noun makes explicit the structure contained in the verb: the work is raising a house.
ben: A son; traditionally connected with the build-root.
בֵּן
The connection gives the image of a house another dimension: a household is built across generations.
עַבְדֵי
ʿaḇdê
GROWS FROM
עבד
ʿ-b-d
To work or serve.
The same root carries both service and labor. The verse names the speakers as servants and immediately names their work as building, so service appears as something embodied in what they do.
ALSO GROWS
eved: A servant or worker.
עֶבֶד
It names the identity the speakers claim before describing their work.
avodah: Labor or service.
עֲבוֹדָה
This branch holds service and practical work together, echoing the verse’s movement from servants to builders.
THE PATTERN
Service to God takes visible form in building, and present building continues work already begun.
Then I answered them and said to them, "The God of the heavens, he will break through for us. Therefore we, his servants, will arise and build, but you have no portion, nor alignment, nor remembrance, in Jerusalem."For we are fellow workers with God. You are God's field; you are God's building.You also, as living stones, are built up into a house of breath, a set-apart priesthood, to carry up sacrifices of breath, well received by God through Jesus, the Anointed One.THE THREAD
Then rose up Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and began to build the house of God in Jerusalem, and with them were the prophets of God, holding them up.This verse uses the same Aramaic root בנה (b-n-h, “build”) for raising the house. Beside it, “we build” reads as the visible expression of the speakers’ service, joining who they are to what their hands are doing.
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