What Does Nehemiah 7:4 Mean in the King James?
Now the city was large and great: but the people were few therein, and the houses were not builded.
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
Room is capacity, not fullness: a city can be vast while its life remains unbuilt.
THE MEANING
The room around you can be larger than the life currently filling it. This verse holds the gap plainly: the people are few, and the houses are not built. Spaciousness and incompletion occupy the same place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that spacious circumstances mean a life is already established: here the city is broad, yet scarcely inhabited and without built homes.
THE ROOT
רַחֲבַת יָדַיִם
raḥavat yādayim
GROWS FROM
ר־ח־ב
r-ḥ-b
To be wide or spacious; to make room.
“large” in this verse is raḥavat yādayim. The city’s width is explicit: it is a place of room, even while its people are few and its houses are unbuilt. The same root can name a broad place or the making of room, but room itself is not yet habitation.
ALSO GROWS
merḥav: A broad place; open space.
מֶרְחָב
This branch names spaciousness as room available to be occupied, which is exactly what the city has before its houses are built.
Reḥovot: Broad places.
רְחֹבוֹת
The place name Rehoboth comes from this root, connecting spaciousness with the opening of room for life to grow.
בְּנוּיִם
benuyim
GROWS FROM
ב־נ־ה
b-n-h
To build or establish.
“builded” in this verse is benuyim. The houses are described as not yet in a built state, so the city’s open space has not become dwelling. The root links the act of building with the structure that takes shape through it: a city may have room before its homes give that room a lived form.
ALSO GROWS
banah: To build.
בָּנָה
The verb points to the work that has not happened in the city: its space is present, but its homes are not built.
binyan: A building; construction.
בִּנְיָן
This branch names the structure produced by building, underscoring the gap between having room and having a place to dwell.
THE PATTERN
Room becomes lived fullness through building, dwelling, and filling.
Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes;Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them;And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.THE THREAD
And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the LORD hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.Nehemiah’s wide city and Genesis’s “made room” share ר־ח־ב (r-ḥ-b, “be wide; make room”); Genesis names the place רְחֹבוֹת (Reḥovot, “broad places”). Together they show that room can open before a place is full of people and dwellings.
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