What Does Ezra 7:22 Mean in the King James?
Unto an hundred talents of silver, and to an hundred measures of wheat, and to an hundred baths of wine, and to an hundred baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much.
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 decree gives silver, wheat, wine, and oil fixed amounts, then names salt without writing a quantity beside it.
THE MEANING
You meet provision here in two forms: four supplies have stated measures, while salt is included with no amount written. The verse lets what is counted and what remains open occupy the same line.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what has no written number has been withheld: salt is explicitly included, though its amount remains unspecified.
THE ROOT
דִּי לָא כְתָב
dī lā ketāb
GROWS FROM
כתב
K-T-B
To write, inscribe, or set something down in writing.
“without prescribing how much” in this verse is dī lā ketāb. The Aramaic phrase frames the unmeasured amount as something not written down. Salt is named in the provision; what stays absent is its number, leaving the written limits beside an open quantity.
ALSO GROWS
katav: To write or inscribe.
כָּתַב
This verb makes the contrast concrete: the other amounts are set down, while salt’s quantity is not.
mikhtav: A letter or written message.
מִכְתָּב
A written message carries specified terms; here, the salt is part of the terms without a specified amount.
ketav: Writing or script.
כְּתָב
The verse’s silence is in the writing itself: salt appears in the list, but no figure follows it.
THE PATTERN
A stated measure can coexist with provision whose sufficiency is not captured by counting.
And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number.And when they did mete it with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating.And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:THE THREAD
And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.Ezra’s Aramaic phrase uses the K-T-B root for what is not written; Exodus uses its Hebrew form in the command to write a memorial. Together they make the boundary of the written record visible: salt is included, but its amount is left off the page.
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