What Does Ezra 7:14 Mean?
For you are sent from before the king and his seven counselors, to look over Judah and Jerusalem according to the instruction of your God, which is in your hand,
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
Forasmuch as thou art sent of the king, and of his seven counsellors, to enquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem, according to the law of thy God which is in thine hand;THE KEY
A royal commission sends Ezra to investigate, but the measure of his inquiry is God’s instruction already in his hand.
THE MEANING
You stand in the place of the one sent: the inquiry concerns a people and a city named with wholeness. The king and his seven counselors authorize the task, while your God’s instruction is already in your hand as its measure. Public authority and divine instruction meet here without becoming the same thing.
THE ROOT
שְׁלִיחַ
sheliach
GROWS FROM
שלח
The Aramaic word belongs to the Semitic root shalach: send forth, release, let go.
The word carries the movement of being sent outward into a task. Ezra’s commission is not only authority granted; it is a release into work concerning a people and a city.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send, send forth, release.
שָׁלַח
The Hebrew verb makes the movement inside “sent” visible: someone is released toward an assigned work.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name behind Siloam.
שִׁלֹחַ
In the Siloam scene, the sent waters become part of the restoration of sight, joining sending with release from what covers perception.
לְבַקָּרָא
ləvaqqārā
GROWS FROM
בקר
Examine, inspect, investigate closely.
“look over” in this verse is ləvaqqārā. The Aramaic verb gives inquiry the sense of careful inspection, not a passing question. Ezra’s task turns toward what is actually present in Judah and Jerusalem, measured against the instruction in his hand.
ALSO GROWS
baqqar: Inspect or examine.
בַּקַּר
This verbal form makes the careful looking within the inquiry explicit.
bikkur: Visit or inspection.
בִּקּוּר
The related noun joins examination with going to see directly, echoing a commission that requires attention to a people and place.
יְרוּשְׁלֶם
Yerushlem
GROWS FROM
שלם
Wholeness, completeness; the root of shalom.
The place-name carries the sound and sense of shalom, wholeness. The inquiry reaches both Judah and Jerusalem, the people and the place named with wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
This root meaning lets Jerusalem’s name carry more than a location: it evokes wholeness as part of what the inquiry concerns.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
The same root links the city’s name with completeness, placing wholeness beside the charge to investigate.
THE PATTERN
A commission gives inquiry or action a defined direction toward the life of a people.
Now go, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.Go, seek the LORD for me, and for those who remain in Israel and in Judah, about the words of the scroll that is found. For great is the burning anger of the LORD that is poured out upon us, because our fathers did not guard the word of the LORD, to do according to all that is written in this scroll.Then Jesus said to them again, Wholeness be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.THE THREAD
Now go, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.Ezra’s Aramaic word for “sent” and Exodus’s “I will send thee” share the root שלח, shalach: send forth, release. Moses is sent to bring a people out; Ezra is sent to examine Judah and Jerusalem with God’s instruction in hand.
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