What Does Ezra 9:2 Mean in the King James?
For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons: so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass.
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 verse locates the breach in the community’s future, and says its rulers are leading it.
THE MEANING
The verse brings relationships, the community’s future, and leadership into one charge: what is set apart is mingled with the people of the lands. It names the rulers as chiefly responsible, placing the greatest weight on those who lead the breach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a breach becomes harmless when people in authority lead it; here, their leadership makes them chiefly accountable.
THE ROOT
זֶרַע
zeraʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
To sow; seed and what grows from it.
The same word can name seed and offspring, holding the present generation together with what it passes on. Here, “holy seed” makes the community’s future part of the verse’s charge, not just the choices of individuals in the present.
ALSO GROWS
zāraʿ: To sow.
זָרַע
The action of sowing shows seed as something that carries life forward.
zeraʿ: Seed or offspring.
זֶרַע
This noun lets the verse speak of a people’s continuity through the image of seed.
קֹדֶשׁ
qodesh
GROWS FROM
קדש
To set apart or consecrate.
“holy” in this verse is qodesh. The phrase is “seed of the set-apart,” joining generative continuity to consecration. The verse presents the mixing as a breach of that distinction, while placing the responsibility especially on its leaders.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart; consecrated.
קָדוֹשׁ
This form names the quality attributed to the seed in the verse.
miqdash: Sanctuary; a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
The sanctuary shows how the same root can describe something reserved as sacred.
הִתְעָרְבוּ
hitʿārevū
GROWS FROM
ערב
To mix or become intermingled.
“mingled” in this verse is hitʿārevū. The verb pictures participation in a mixture, not merely contact between separate groups. Placed beside “seed” and “set apart,” it makes the verse’s concern a crossing that reaches into communal continuity.
ALSO GROWS
hitʿārev: To become mixed or intermingle.
הִתְעָרֵב
This related form makes the joining within the verse’s central verb visible.
ʿerev: A mixed company.
עֵרֶב
This noun uses the same root for a group understood as mixed.
THE PATTERN
When those entrusted with a community’s sacred boundaries lead their breach, the consequences extend beyond private choices.
Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they shewed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.THE THREAD
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.Genesis uses the same word, זֶרַע (zeraʿ, seed), for what carries life within itself and forward. Ezra applies that generative image to the community, so the concern reaches beyond the present choice to what it passes on.
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