What Does Nehemiah 10:30 Mean?
And that we will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land, nor take their daughters for our sons;
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
And that we would not give our daughters unto the people of the land, nor take their daughters for our sons:THE KEY
The vow blocks the exchange in both directions, showing that a household is shaped by what it gives and what it takes in.
THE MEANING
A community’s commitments take shape in the households it forms: both giving daughters outward and taking daughters inward are refused here. The paired clauses make the boundary reciprocal and place the community’s future within its intimate bonds.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that marriage is only private and leaves communal identity untouched; this vow locates a community’s continuity in the household bonds it forms.
THE ROOT
נִתֵּן
nittēn
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, put, or set in place.
The root lets “give” carry the sense of placing something into a relationship or setting. Paired with the refusal to take, it reveals a boundary that governs both directions of household formation.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: Gift, something given.
מַתָּנָה
The shared root makes the act of giving in the verse resonate with what is placed into another’s hands or household.
netinah: Giving or donation.
נְתִינָה
This form keeps the focus on the act of giving, which the vow refuses in this relationship.
נִקַּח
niqqaḥ
GROWS FROM
לקח
To take or receive.
“take” in this verse is niqqaḥ. The root names receiving as an active entry into a bond. The verse pairs that entry with giving, making the boundary mutual rather than one-sided.
ALSO GROWS
leqaḥ: Teaching or instruction; something received.
לֶקַח
This related noun carries the sense of taking something in, echoing the verse’s concern with what enters a household.
laqach ishah: To take a wife.
לָקַח אִשָּׁה
This Hebrew usage shows how the verb can describe entering marriage, the bond at the center of the verse.
THE PATTERN
The bonds that join households also shape the loyalties and commitments a community carries forward.
Neither shall you marry into them. Your daughter you shall not give to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son.For they have taken their daughters for themselves, and for their sons, so that the set-apart seed have mixed themselves into the peoples of those lands. Indeed, the hand of the princes and deputies has been at the head of this breach.A wife is bound by the instruction while her husband lives, but if her husband has fallen asleep, she is free to marry whom she wills, only in the Lord.THE THREAD
Neither shall you marry into them. Your daughter you shall not give to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son.Deuteronomy uses the same Hebrew roots for “give” (נתן) and “take” (לקח), making the reciprocal structure explicit. Nehemiah’s vow gathers that same boundary into a communal commitment.
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