What Does Nehemiah 7:32 Mean in the King James?
The men of Beth-el and Ai, an hundred twenty and three.
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 record places “house of God” beside “ruin heap” and counts their people together.
THE MEANING
Your place in the record remains specific: Beth-el and Ai are named, and their people are held together in one count. Beth-el means “house of God”; Ai carries the sense “ruin heap,” so names of dwelling and devastation share the same line. Neither origin disappears when the people are counted.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
You must come from a sacred or already-whole place to belong in the count.
THE ROOT
בֵּית־אֵל
Bēt-ʾĒl
GROWS FROM
בית
House, household, dwelling.
Beth-el carries both dwelling and belonging: it is a house or household explicitly joined to God. Beside Ai, whose name carries the sense of a ruin heap, it places shelter and devastation in the same count.
ALSO GROWS
bayit: House, dwelling, household.
בַּיִת
The root can name a building and the people who belong within it, so Beth-el evokes a community as well as a place.
beit: “House of,” the construct form of bayit.
בֵּית
This form joins a dwelling to what it belongs to; in Beth-el, the name joins house to God.
עַי
ʿAy
GROWS FROM
עי
Heap or ruin mound; Ai is commonly understood as “heap of ruins.” The attested noun is biliteral, without a securely recoverable third radical.
Ai’s name carries the image of a ruin heap into the record. Its people are named alongside those of Beth-el, so the count holds both names without making them the same.
ALSO GROWS
ʿî: Heap or ruin mound.
עִי
This common noun carries the ruin-heap sense associated with the place-name Ai.
ʿay: Ai, a place-name understood as “heap of ruins.”
עַי
The place-name preserves the noun’s image, bringing devastation into the line beside Beth-el.
THE PATTERN
Restoration remembers people through their places and reaches places marked by devastation.
The men of Beth-el and Ai, two hundred twenty and three.These are the children of the province, that went up out of the captivity, of those that had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and came again to Jerusalem and to Judah, every one unto his city;And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.THE THREAD
And he called the name of that place Beth-el: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.Genesis makes the name’s meaning visible: Bethel is “house of God.” Nehemiah sets that name beside Ai, understood as a ruin heap, and counts the people of both together.
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