What Does Ezra 7:26 Mean in the King James?
And whosoever will not do the law of thy God, and the law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily upon him, whether it be unto death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment.
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
Even “banishment” is named as uprooting: the decree’s penalties reach for life, place, property, and freedom.
THE MEANING
This verse places the decree of God beside the decree of the king and binds refusal to swift judgment. Its sanctions reach life, place, possessions, and liberty: death, uprooting, confiscation, or imprisonment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
These decrees are only words and cannot reach into a person’s body, place, property, or freedom.
THE ROOT
לִשְׁרֹשִׁי
lishrōshî
GROWS FROM
שׁרשׁ
sh-r-sh
To take root; in its causative sense, to root out or extirpate.
The Aramaic word לִשְׁרֹשִׁי (lishrōshî, to root out) shares שׁרשׁ with Hebrew שֹׁרֶשׁ (shoresh, root). The word rendered “banishment” carries an image of being uprooted, placing removal from one’s place beside death, seizure of goods, and imprisonment.
ALSO GROWS
shoresh: Root, source, or anchor of growth.
שֹׁרֶשׁ
The sanction’s image of removal comes from the same word-family as what anchors growth.
sharash: To take root; in causative forms, to root out.
שָׁרַשׁ
The root can describe both becoming rooted and being torn out; here the destructive direction is explicit.
עָבֵד
ʿāvēḏ
GROWS FROM
עבד
ʿ-b-d
To work, serve, or do.
The Aramaic verb עבד appears first in “do the law” and again in the phrase “judgment be executed.” The same root for doing and serving turns the decree into enacted work: compliance is demanded, then judgment is carried out.
ALSO GROWS
eved: Servant.
עֶבֶד
The noun carries the same work-and-service seed present in the verb.
avodah: Work or service.
עֲבוֹדָה
This branch keeps the root’s laboring dimension visible beneath “do.”
דִּינָה
dînā
GROWS FROM
דין
d-y-n
To judge or decide a case; judgment.
The Aramaic noun דִּינָה (dînā, judgment) comes from דין, a root for judging and deciding a case. Here that formal judgment is ordered to happen swiftly and is attached to specific consequences.
ALSO GROWS
dīnā: Judgment or a legal case.
דִּינָא
It is the same Aramaic word-family that gives the sentence its formal judicial character.
dayyān: Judge.
דַּיָּן
The judge is the one who decides the case carried by this root.
THE PATTERN
A decree gains material force when authority turns its terms into judgment and penalty.
And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the LORD thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die: and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel.Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.THE THREAD
God shall likewise destroy thee for ever, he shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the land of the living. Selah.Ezra’s Aramaic לִשְׁרֹשִׁי (lishrōshî, to root out) and Psalm 52:5’s Hebrew form וְשֵׁרֶשְׁךָ (veshērēshkha, root thee out) share the root שׁרשׁ. The shared image makes banishment more than relocation: it is removal from the place where a life is rooted.
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