What Does Ezra 7:25 Mean?
And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God that is in your hand, set magistrates and judges, to judge all the people across the river, all who know the instruction of your God; and teach those who do not know.
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 thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God, that is in thine hand, set magistrates and judges, which may judge all the people that are beyond the river, all such as know the laws of thy God; and teach ye them that know them not.THE KEY
Ezra’s name, עֶזְרָא (ʿEzrāʾ, help), gathers the verse’s movement: wisdom held in one person becomes justice and shared understanding for all.
THE MEANING
The wisdom in your hands takes public shape in the decisions that affect a whole community and in teaching people what they do not yet know. Authority here carries both discernment and the opening of understanding.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that wisdom is complete when it remains private: here, its purpose is seen in just judgment and in making understanding accessible.
THE ROOT
חָכְמַת
ḥokmat
GROWS FROM
חכם
ḥ-k-m
To be wise or skillful; to act with practical discernment.
The Aramaic word for wisdom comes from a root that also describes skill. Wisdom in your hand is active capacity: it shapes judgment and makes understanding available to those who do not yet know.
ALSO GROWS
ḥākām: A wise or skilled person.
חָכָם
The same root joins discernment with the ability to carry it into action.
ḥokhmāh: Wisdom, including practical skill.
חָכְמָה
This form shows that wisdom can be exercised as a capacity, fitting the verse’s picture of wisdom in hand.
דָּיָנִין
dāyānīn
GROWS FROM
דין
d-y-n
To judge, adjudicate, or decide a case.
“judge” in this verse is dāyānīn. The Aramaic term for judges shares its root with the word for judgment. The verse ties wisdom to the decisions that order communal life.
ALSO GROWS
dayyān: A judge or adjudicator.
דַּיָּן
This is the singular form behind the judges appointed in the verse.
dîn: A judgment or legal decision.
דִּין
The related word brings the judges’ work into view: rendering judgment.
תְּהוֹדְעוּן
tehōdeʿûn
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know or perceive; in a causative form, to make known.
The Aramaic verb is causative: Ezra is to make known what others do not know. Teaching moves understanding from absence into shared access.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: To know or perceive.
יָדַע
This is the knowing the verse says some people do not yet have.
daʿat: Knowledge or understanding.
דַּעַת
The related noun names what teaching makes accessible.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom held in trust becomes communal through fair judgment and understanding passed on to others.
And I commanded your judges at that time, saying, Hear and respond between your brothers, and judge in alignment between each man and his brother, and the sojourner who is with him.And he set judges in the land, throughout all the walled cities of Judah, city by city.And these things you heard from me among many witnesses, place beside steady people who will be able to teach others also.THE THREAD
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.The Aramaic root ד־י־ן (d-y-n, judge or adjudicate) underlies the judges in Ezra and the judgment in Daniel. The shared root opens a connection between judgment carried out among a community and judgment set before the opened books.
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