What Does Nehemiah 7:67 Mean?
Besides their servants and their maidservants, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven. And they had two hundred and forty-five singing men and singing women.
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
Beside their manservants and their maidservants, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty and seven: and they had two hundred forty and five singing men and singing women.THE KEY
The count holds communal song beside servitude, showing that music does not make unequal status disappear.
THE MEANING
A community’s song and its hierarchy can occupy the same record. The verse keeps both visible: people counted through service and singers counted for their voices.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The presence of communal song means everyone in the community is free and equally honored.
THE ROOT
עַבְדֵיהֶם
ʿavdehem
GROWS FROM
עבד
To work or serve.
“their servants” in this verse is ʿavdehem. The Hebrew word translated “manservants” comes from עבד, a root that names both the person who serves and the work or service itself. The count records people through that labor relation even as it counts singers in the same verse; song does not erase the social order carried by the word.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeved: Servant; one who serves.
עֶבֶד
This noun names the person counted as a manservant in the verse.
ʿavad: To work or serve.
עָבַד
The verb makes the labor within the status of “servant” audible.
ʿavodah: Work, labor, or service.
עֲבֹדָה
This noun connects the people counted here with the work and service their status entails.
THE PATTERN
A community’s shared life does not erase the distinct people and roles within it.
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your sojourner who is within your gates.So their number, with their brothers who were trained in the songs of the LORD, even all the discerning, was two hundred and eighty-eight.For the body is not one limb, but many.THE THREAD
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work, neither you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your animals, nor the sojourner who is within your gates, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as you do.The word translated “manservant” in both verses belongs to the Hebrew root עבד, which carries the meanings of service and work. Deuteronomy makes the human dimension of that word explicit: the person named by service is also included in the command to rest.
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