What Does Nehemiah 13:28 Mean?
And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite. Therefore I made him flee from me.
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 one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son in law to Sanballat the Horonite: therefore I chased him from me.THE KEY
The root that names fleeing becomes an action that makes someone flee, turning a marriage tie into a narrated expulsion.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a family connection and a severing together: a man is linked to the high priest’s line by birth and to Sanballat by marriage, then Nehemiah drives him away. The close bond does not soften the expulsion; the man is sent out of Nehemiah’s presence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that shared lineage guarantees shared belonging: this man is named within the high priest’s family and still is driven away.
THE ROOT
וָאַבְרִיחֵהוּ
va’avriḥēhû
GROWS FROM
ברח
Flee, escape; in the causative form, make someone flee.
“made flee” in this verse is va’avriḥēhû. The Hebrew verb is causative: Nehemiah says he made the man flee. The same root can name a person’s escape or the force that drives him out, holding both sides of departure in one seed.
ALSO GROWS
bāraḥ: Flee, escape.
בָּרַח
This is the root’s basic movement: a person leaves by fleeing.
hivrîaḥ: Make someone flee; drive away.
הִבְרִיחַ
This causative form names the action Nehemiah takes in the verse.
חָתָן
ḥātān
GROWS FROM
חתן
Enter kinship through marriage; become related as a son-in-law.
“son in law” in this verse is ḥātān. The term names a person incorporated into another household through marriage. Set beside the priestly descent, it gives two forms of belonging before the verse records expulsion.
ALSO GROWS
ḥātān: Bridegroom; son-in-law.
חָתָן
This is the marriage relationship tying the man to Sanballat.
ḥōtēn: Father-in-law.
חֹתֵן
This is the counterpart kinship term from the same root, showing the reciprocal family tie marriage creates.
THE PATTERN
Kinship can carry conflict into the household, where allegiance may bend or a bond may be severed.
So she said to Abraham, Drive out this servant woman and her son, for the son of this servant woman shall not take possession with my son, with Isaac.It came to be, when Solomon was old, that his wives bent his heart after other gods, and his heart was not whole with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.For I came to split a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.THE THREAD
But Abram said to Sarai, Behold, your handmaid is in your hand. Do to her what is good in your eyes. And when Sarai bent her low, she fled from her face.The Hebrew root ברח (bāraḥ), meaning flee or escape, appears here as “fled.” Nehemiah uses its causative form: Genesis shows a woman fleeing from another’s presence, while Nehemiah makes a man flee from his.
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