What Does Nehemiah 13:23 Mean?
In those days also I saw Judeans who had brought home wives from Ashdod, from Ammon, and from Moab.
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
In those days also saw I Jews that had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab:THE KEY
The Hebrew pictures these men as settling the women in their homes: marriage becomes dwelling, and dwelling makes belonging shared.
THE MEANING
This verse makes the household a place where communal identity takes shape: these men have made women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab part of their homes. Intimacy joins distinct inheritances into shared life, so belonging is shaped not only by public allegiance but by whom you make family.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that marriage is only a private bond with no bearing on communal identity.
THE ROOT
הֹשִׁיבוּ
hoshivu
GROWS FROM
ישב
y-sh-b
To sit, remain, or dwell.
“brought home” in this verse is hoshivu. The Hebrew form behind “married” is hoshivu, “they settled,” from yashav, “to sit or dwell.” The wording lets the household arrangement show through: the women are established within the men’s homes, and dwelling becomes an act of belonging.
ALSO GROWS
yashav: To sit, remain, or dwell.
יָשַׁב
This basic form makes dwelling the seed beneath the verse’s wording for marriage.
moshav: A dwelling place or seat.
מוֹשָׁב
This branch shows how the root can name the place where people settle together.
yoshev: An inhabitant, one who dwells.
יֹשֵׁב
This branch connects dwelling to belonging among the people who share a place.
THE PATTERN
Household bonds draw distinct lives into shared kinship and shape what passes through a family.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.And Ruth said, Do not press me to let go of you, or to turn back from following after you. For where you walk, I will walk, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people are my people, and your God my God.For the husband who does not trust has been set apart through the wife, and the wife who does not trust has been set apart through the husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are set apart.THE THREAD
God settles the lone ones into households; he brings out the bound ones in chains; but the ones who turn away dwell in a parched land.The Hebrew behind “settled” in Nehemiah and “setteth” here comes from ישב (yashav), “to sit or dwell.” The shared root opens the household language into a wider image: dwelling is how the solitary are placed among a people.
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