What Does Nehemiah 7:25 Mean?
The children of Gibeon, ninety-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 Gibeon, ninety and five.THE KEY
Gibeon’s name carries the hill into the count: these ninety-five remain a community with a place-name, not just a number.
THE MEANING
A community can remain distinct within a larger people: it has a name and an exact count. Gibeon’s name carries the image of a hill, a rise that stands out in the landscape.
THE ROOT
גִּבְעוֹן
Givʿon
GROWS FROM
גבע
To rise or be elevated; a hill.
“Gibeon” in this verse is Givʿon. The name grows from the word for elevation: a hill is a rise that stands out in the terrain. The count keeps not only people but their particular place-name visible.
ALSO GROWS
givʿah: Hill
גִּבְעָה
This related word makes the elevation carried in Gibeon’s name visible.
givʿonî: Gibeonite; an inhabitant of Gibeon
גִּבְעוֹנִי
The place-name becomes a people-name, keeping geographic identity attached to the community.
בְּנֵי
bənê
GROWS FROM
בנה
To build or establish.
The word for “children of” belongs to the word-family around building. It can evoke a people as a living structure carried forward through descendants, with each person counted as part of that continuity.
ALSO GROWS
banah: To build
בָּנָה
The verbal root brings a building image into the family term translated “children.”
ben: Son; child
בֵּן
This kinship word is linked with בנה, connecting descendants with the building forward of a family line.
THE PATTERN
A community remains part of a larger people through names and counts that preserve its particular identity.
The children of Gibbar, ninety-five.The LORD counts when he writes up the peoples; this one is born there. Selah.Yet do not rejoice in this, that the breaths submit to you, but rejoice instead that your names have been written in the heavens.THE THREAD
And when the settlers of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai,Joshua names the inhabitants of Gibeon as a people; this verse names Gibeon’s descendants and gives their count. The shared name carries a place into the identity of the community.
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