What Does Nehemiah 2:10 Mean in the King James?
When Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel.
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
What the opponents experience as “great evil” is the arrival of someone seeking good for Israel.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the moment when one people’s good is already felt as loss by someone else. A man seeks Israel’s good, and his opponents experience his arrival as “great evil.” Their distress reveals how a people’s restoration can unsettle those invested in its weakness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
If another people’s restoration distresses someone, that must mean the restoration itself is harmful.
THE ROOT
וַיֵּרַע לָהֶם רָעָה גְדוֹלָה
vayyēraʿ lāhem rāʿāh
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
raʿaʿ
To be bad, harmful, or displeasing.
“grieved exceedingly” in this verse is vayyēraʿ lāhem rāʿāh. The Hebrew says the news “was evil to them, a great evil”; the KJV renders that as grief. The repeated root places their distress in the word-family of harm, while the thing that distresses them is a man seeking good for Israel.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil.
רַע
This is the same root heard in the verse’s description of how the news lands for the opponents.
rāʿāh: Evil, harm, or calamity.
רָעָה
The noun repeats the root in “a great evil,” intensifying the opponents’ experience of the news.
טוֹבָה
tovah
GROWS FROM
טוב
tov
Good, beneficial, or sound.
“welfare” in this verse is tovah. The object of the seeking is the good of Israel. Tobiah’s name carries the same root, Toviyah means “Yah is good”, so the verse holds a pointed name-level echo: one bearing “good” in his name is among those troubled by the good sought for Israel.
ALSO GROWS
tov: Good, beneficial.
טוֹב
This is the root beneath tovah, the good Nehemiah’s arrival seeks for Israel.
Toviyah: “Yah is good”; the name Tobiah.
טוֹבִיָּה
The name shares the root of Israel’s sought-for good, creating an echo within the verse itself.
THE PATTERN
When a people’s restoration threatens someone’s place, power, or profit, its good can be felt as harm.
But it came to pass, that when Sanballat heard that we builded the wall, he was wroth, and took great indignation, and mocked the Jews.If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.THE THREAD
But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.Genesis holds evil and good in the same word-pair that Nehemiah’s verse sets against each other. Here, the news is evil to the opponents while the sought-for outcome is good for Israel; the shared roots reveal how one change can be experienced from opposing sides.
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