What Does Nehemiah 13:24 Mean?
And their children spoke half in the lip of Ashdod, and could not speak Judean, but according to the tongue of each people.
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 their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews’ language, but according to the language of each people.THE KEY
The Hebrew says the children did not “recognize” how to speak their people’s language, linking lost speech with what has become unfamiliar.
THE MEANING
Where the surrounding voices shape a child’s speech, the language of their people can become unfamiliar from within. The loss reaches beyond vocabulary: those words are no longer available in the child’s own voice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A people’s language can disappear from the next generation without their connection to that people changing.
THE ROOT
מַכִּירִים
makirim
GROWS FROM
נכר
Recognize, distinguish, or know as familiar.
“could not speak” in this verse is makirim. The Hebrew phrase says they did not know how to speak Judean; the verb is from a root that can mean recognize or distinguish. Alongside inability, it evokes a language that has become unfamiliar to the children.
ALSO GROWS
hikkir: Recognize or distinguish.
הִכִּיר
It makes the break in speech also a break in what the children can recognize as familiar.
nokhri: A foreigner or stranger.
נָכְרִי
This related form shows how the boundary between familiar and foreign can surface in the language of belonging.
מְדַבֵּר
medabber ledabber
GROWS FROM
דבר
Speak or utter.
“spake; speak” in this verse is medabber ledabber. Both the children’s mixed speech and their inability to speak Judean use forms of the same root. That root also names a davar, a word or matter: speech carries what a people can share, not merely how their words sound.
ALSO GROWS
davar: A word or matter.
דָּבָר
The shared root links speaking to the words and matters carried in a people’s language.
dibbur: Speech or utterance.
דִּבּוּר
This noun makes explicit the shared root beneath both forms of “speak” in the verse.
לָשׁוֹן
lashon
GROWS FROM
לשן
Tongue; by extension, language or speech.
The phrase translated “the language of each people” is literally like the tongue of each people. English makes language sound abstract; Hebrew names it through the tongue that speaks it.
ALSO GROWS
lashon: Tongue or language.
לָשׁוֹן
The same word names both the speaking organ and a people’s language.
leshonot: Tongues or languages.
לְשׁוֹנוֹת
The plural keeps the image of languages as distinct tongues, as in the verse’s “each people.”
THE PATTERN
A shared language carries words across a community and between generations.
And the whole earth had one lip, and one set of words.And you shall sharpen them to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.When this voice arose, the crowd came together and was poured into confusion, because each one heard them speaking in his own tongue.THE THREAD
And you shall sharpen them to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.Nehemiah uses forms of דבר (davar) for both “spake” and “speak”; Deuteronomy uses that same root for “talk” with children. Together, the verses show how words are carried forward through everyday speech.
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