What Does Ezra 10:6 Mean in the King James?
Then Ezra rose up from before the house of God, and went into the chamber of Johanan the son of Eliashib: and when he came thither, he did eat no bread, nor drink water: for he mourned because of the transgression of them that had been carried away.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The breach belongs to others, yet Ezra’s grief reaches his own body: sorrow can be shared without making its witness responsible for the rupture.
THE MEANING
A breach of trust can reach beyond the people who commit it: grief becomes so embodied that food and water go untouched. The verse holds responsibility and sorrow together without confusing them; another’s act can wound you without becoming your act.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that another person’s betrayal must leave you untouched: you can grieve a breach without being its author.
THE ROOT
מַעַל
maʿal
GROWS FROM
מעל
to act unfaithfully, deal treacherously
This word carries both unfaithfulness and breach of trust, giving the transgression a relational texture. Its word family names both the act of acting unfaithfully and the breach, so Ezra’s mourning answers a ruptured bond, not an abstract label.
ALSO GROWS
māʿal: to act unfaithfully; to deal treacherously
מָעַל
This verbal form supplies the action inside the transgression: the breach is unfaithfulness enacted.
maʿal: unfaithfulness; breach of trust; trespass
מַעַל
This noun names the rupture Ezra mourns.
מִתְאַבֵּל
mitʾabbēl
GROWS FROM
אבל
to mourn, lament
“mourned” in this verse is mitʾabbēl. The Hebrew form presents Ezra as mourning, giving grief the force of a lived state rather than a passing thought. Beside the untouched bread and water, mourning is shown reaching the body.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāvēl: a mourner
אָבֵל
The same root names the person who bears grief, linking lament with a lived human state.
ʾēvel: mourning; lament
אֵבֶל
This noun names the grief that the verse shows through Ezra’s response to the breach.
THE PATTERN
Grief is not merely inward: sorrow can interrupt appetite and reach ordinary bodily rhythms.
My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven,And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.THE THREAD
Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the transgression of those that had been carried away; and I sat astonied until the evening sacrifice.“Transgression” here is the same Hebrew word, maʿal, for breach of faith that Ezra mourns in 10:6. What appears here as a community gathered around the rupture becomes, in 10:6, grief carried through one body.
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