What Does Ezra 9:12 Mean?
So now, do not give your daughters to their sons, and do not take their daughters for your sons, and do not seek their wholeness or their goodness for the ages, so that you may hold fast and eat the good of the land, and leave it as an inheritance to your children for the ages.
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
Now therefore give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their wealth for ever: that ye may be strong, and eat the good of the land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children for ever.THE KEY
The verse ties refusing marriage and the other peoples’ welfare to securing the land’s good as an inheritance for one’s children.
THE MEANING
The verse sets a hard boundary around marriage and shared welfare: daughters are not given or taken across it, and the other people’s peace and good are not sought. It presents this refusal as the condition for strength, eating the land’s good, and passing its possession to children.
THE ROOT
שְׁלֹמָם
shlomam
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be whole or complete.
Here shalom is set beside tov, “good” or “prosperity,” so the denied peace reaches the other community’s welfare, not only an absence of conflict. The root’s range holds wholeness, soundness, and making good together, sharpening how total the boundary is in this verse.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Peace, wholeness, welfare.
שָׁלוֹם
It shows that the verse withholds the other people’s well-being, not merely peaceful relations.
shalem: Whole, complete, sound.
שָׁלֵם
It reveals the depth of wholeness carried beneath the English word “peace.”
shillem: To make good, repay, or recompense.
שִׁלֵּם
This branch links wholeness with restoring or settling what is due.
וִירִשְׁתֶּם
virishtem
GROWS FROM
ירש
To take possession or inherit; in another form, to dispossess.
“leave it for an inheritance” in this verse is virishtem. The Hebrew speaks of possessing the land for one’s children, while the same root can describe dispossessing others. The promised inheritance is therefore bound to a taking and keeping of possession, not simply a gift passed down.
ALSO GROWS
yarash: To take possession or inherit.
יָרַשׁ
It underlies the verse’s promise that the land will pass to the children.
morashah: Possession or inheritance.
מוֹרָשָׁה
It makes explicit the transfer of a possession across generations.
horish: To dispossess or drive out.
הוֹרִישׁ
It exposes the other side of inheritance: one group’s possession can entail another’s removal.
THE PATTERN
These texts frame covenant continuity as requiring boundaries around binding relationships.
Neither shall you marry into them. Your daughter you shall not give to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son.Of the nations concerning which the LORD said to the children of Israel, You shall not go in to them, nor shall they come in to you, for surely they will bend your hearts after their gods. Solomon clung to these in love.Do not become unevenly yoked with the unsteady ones. For what share has alignment with living without boundary? And what sharing in common has light with darkness?THE THREAD
And seek the wholeness of the city where I have carried you away, and pray to the LORD for it, for in its wholeness you will have wholeness.Jeremiah uses the same root, shalom, and the same call to seek, but turns the direction: the city’s welfare becomes the reader’s own peace. Together, the verses show how much depends on whose wholeness is included in the circle of concern.
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