What Does Nehemiah 10:13 Mean?
Hodijah, Bani, Beninu.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Hodijah, Bani, Beninu.THE KEY
The building-root inside Bani makes this roll call an image of how a people takes shape: through named lives.
THE MEANING
Hodijah carries the sense “majesty of Yah”; Bani belongs to the language of building; Beninu can be heard as “our sons.” Together, the names make shared commitment concrete: it takes form through particular people and continues through generations. The verse gives belonging the shape of a community whose members are known by name.
THE ROOT
בָּנִי
Bānî
GROWS FROM
בנה
To build or establish; the name is associated with “built.”
Bani belongs to the language of building, so the name carries an image as well as an identity. In this roll call, that image lets the community appear as something taking shape through named lives.
ALSO GROWS
banah: To build
בָּנָה
This verb carries the core action inside the name’s word-family.
mivneh: Structure, building
מִבְנֶה
The related noun makes the building image concrete: a shared life can take form as a structure.
binyan: Building, construction
בִּנְיָן
This branch keeps the focus on building as an ongoing process, fitting a list of people who give a community its form.
THE PATTERN
Shared life becomes visible through the named people who carry it together.
Now those who pressed their seal were, Nehemiah, the governor, the son of Hachaliah, and Zidkijah,Now there were in the assembly at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; Barnabas, and Simeon who was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, who had been nourished alongside Herod the ruler of a fourth, and Saul.Embrace Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in the anointed one, Jesus.THE THREAD
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.Bani belongs to the Hebrew root בנה (b-n-h; banah), meaning “to build,” the same root behind “build” in this verse. Nehemiah’s names show a community taking shape through its people; the psalm places that building under the LORD’s hand.
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