What Does Nehemiah 7:29 Mean?
The men of Kirjath-jearim, Chephirah, and Beeroth, seven hundred and forty-three.
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 men of Kirjath-jearim, Chephirah, and Beeroth, seven hundred forty and three.THE KEY
The tally carries a landscape inside it: its people come from a city of forests and a place of wells.
THE MEANING
Belonging here has place and number: the people are counted through the communities that hold them. The names carry forest and wells into that count, making restoration tangible in land and sources.
THE ROOT
בְּאֵרוֹת
be'erot
GROWS FROM
באר
Well; a dug source of water.
English leaves Beeroth looking like a label, but Hebrew be’erot (בְּאֵרוֹת, wells) names the place as plural sources of water. The count keeps a place of provision inside the list: these are people connected to wells and the land around them.
ALSO GROWS
be'er: A well, a dug source of water.
בְּאֵר
This singular form is the word beneath the place name Beeroth.
Be'er Sheva: A place name built from the word for well.
בְּאֵר שֶׁבַע
The same word marks another place, showing how a well can become part of a landscape’s name.
Be'er-lahai-roi: A place name meaning Well of the Living One who sees me.
בְּאֵר לַחַי רֹאִי
Here too, the word for well makes a source of water part of a place’s identity.
יְעָרִים
ye'arim
GROWS FROM
יער
Forest, woodland.
Kirjath-jearim means “city of forests”; ya’ar (יַעַר, forest) places woodland inside the name. A related word-shape appears in ya’arat ha-devash (יַעֲרַת הַדְּבַשׁ, honeycomb), an echo that can call up gathered sweetness alongside the literal forest name.
ALSO GROWS
ya'ar: Forest or woodland.
יַעַר
This singular form is the landscape named in Kirjath-jearim.
ya'arat ha-devash: Honeycomb.
יַעֲרַת הַדְּבַשׁ
The related word-shape appears in the phrase for honeycomb, letting the forest name carry an echo of gathered sweetness.
THE PATTERN
Restoration becomes visible through named communities whose people are counted and gathered.
The children of Kirjatharim, Chephirah, and Beeroth, seven hundred and forty-three.And these are the heads of the province who settled in Jerusalem. But in the cities of Judah settled Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the given ones, and the children of Solomon's servants, every one in his holding, in their cities.Then those who gladly took his word in were immersed, and that day about three thousand living souls were added to them.THE THREAD
And Isaac dug again the wells of the waters, which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had plugged them after the death of Abraham, and he called them by the names his father had called them.Beeroth is the plural of be’er (בְּאֵר, well), the same word used here for wells that Isaac digs again. That shared word lets the place name hold an image of sources reopened and named again.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us