What Does Nehemiah 10:16 Mean?
Adonijah, Bigvai, Adin,
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
Adonijah, Bigvai, Adin,THE KEY
A shared covenant holds people together without making their names interchangeable.
THE MEANING
Your belonging can be shared without reducing your identity to a role. Adonijah, Bigvai, and Adin stand side by side, yet each remains distinct.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that belonging to a people makes a person interchangeable dissolves here: each name is preserved.
THE ROOT
אֲדֹנִיָּהוּ
ʾĂḏōnîyāhû
GROWS FROM
א־ד־ן
ʾ-d-n
Lordship, mastery, or authority.
“Adonijah” in this verse is ʾĂḏōnîyāhû. The name begins with אָדוֹן (ʾādôn, lord or master) and ends with יָהוּ (yāhû, a form of the divine name YHWH). It compresses a relationship to YHWH into a personal name, so this roster preserves more than a label.
ALSO GROWS
ʾādôn: Lord, master
אָדוֹן
This noun supplies the name’s root of lordship.
ʾăḏōnāy: Lord
אֲדֹנָי
This title grows from the same root, showing how the name’s opening element belongs to a wider language of lordship.
עָדִין
ʿĀḏîn
GROWS FROM
ע־ד־ן
ʿ-d-n
To be delicate or luxuriant; the root also carries the sense of delight.
The name’s root reaches beyond a personal quality into a whole field of pleasure and delight. English leaves Adin as a name; the Hebrew root lets the name open into that wider meaning.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāḏan: To be delicate or luxuriant
עָדַן
This verbal branch holds the softness or refinement associated with Adin’s name.
ʿēden: Delight, pleasure
עֵדֶן
The same root expands from a quality in a name into the experience of delight.
THE PATTERN
A shared people becomes visible through particular persons named one by one.
Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob.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
They are drenched with the fatness of your house; and you make them drink from the stream of your delights.The word translated pleasures comes from עֵדֶן (ʿēden, delight), sharing the root ע־ד־ן (ʿ-d-n) behind Adin. The name’s sense of delicacy opens into a wider current of delight.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us