What Does Nehemiah 7:20 Mean?
The children of Adin, six hundred and fifty-five.
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
The children of Adin, six hundred fifty and five.THE KEY
Adin’s name carries the sense of delight, and here it lives on in a multitude counted under that name.
THE MEANING
A family name lives in the people who carry it: Adin’s descendants stand here as a count of 655. Belonging takes form through the households that carry a name forward, making continuity visible.
THE ROOT
עָדִין
ʿĀdîn
GROWS FROM
עדן
To be delicate or luxuriant; to take pleasure.
“Adin” in this verse is ʿĀdîn. The name carries a sense of delight or refinement that English leaves hidden. Its descendants keep the name present as a living family, rather than a bare entry in a list.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēden: Delight, pleasure; Eden.
עֵדֶן
This branch makes the name’s connection to delight visible.
maʿadannim: Delicacies, dainties.
מַעֲדַנִּים
The same root links Adin’s sense of refinement with what is richly enjoyed.
בְּנֵי
bənê
GROWS FROM
בנה
To build or establish.
“children of” in this verse is bənê. The word for children is traditionally connected with the language of building. The family line is pictured as something built across generations, and this count gives that continuity a concrete number.
ALSO GROWS
banah: To build.
בָּנָה
The shared root brings the idea of building into the phrase “children of.”
mivneh: Structure, form.
מִבְנֶה
This branch echoes the family line as a structure carried across generations.
THE PATTERN
A people becomes visible when names and households are counted as part of a whole.
The LORD counts when he writes up the peoples; this one is born there. Selah.But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not shrink, for you surpass many sparrows.Then those who gladly took his word in were immersed, and that day about three thousand living souls were added to them.THE THREAD
The children of Adin, four hundred and fifty-four.Ezra names Adin’s family with the same phrase, giving its count as 454 rather than 655. The shared name connects the two tallies directly, while the difference remains visible in the text.
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