Ezra 7:14 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Ezra 7:14
Forasmuch as thou art sent of the king, and of his seven counsellors, to enquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem, according to the law of thy God which is in thine hand;
Jerusalem · conjunction + preposition + proper noun, a place name
law
בְּדָ֥תbe.Dat
H1882
a royal edict or statute · preposition + noun, common both genders singular construct
God
אֱלָהָ֖ךְ'e.la.Hakh
H426
God · noun, common both genders singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
hand
בִידָֽךְvi.Dakh
H3028
a hand (the open one (indicating power · preposition + noun, common both genders singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Esther 1:14 And the next unto him was Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and Media, which sa…
Deuteronomy 17:18-19 And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is b…
Ezra 1:3 Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the…
Ezra 5:8 Be it known unto the king, that we went into the province of Judea, to the house of the great God, which is builded with great stones, and t…
Ezra 6:12 And the God that hath caused his name to dwell there destroy all kings and people, that shall put to their hand to alter and to destroy this…
Ezra 7:15 And to carry the silver and gold, which the king and his counsellors have freely offered unto the God of Israel, whose habitation is in Jeru…
Ezra 7:25-26 And thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God, that is in thine hand, set magistrates and judges, which may judge all the people that are beyo…
Ezra 7:28 And hath extended mercy unto me before the king, and his counsellors, and before all the king’s mighty princes. And I was strengthened as th…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Ezra 7:11-26
We have here the commission which the Persian emperor granted to Ezra, giving him authority to act for the good of the Jews; and it is very ample and full, and beyond what could have been expected. The commission runs, we suppose, in the usual form: Artaxerxes, King of kings. This however is too high a title for any mortal man to assume; he was indeed king of some kings, but to speak as if he were king of all kings was to usurp his prerogative who hath all power both in heaven and in earth. He sends greeting to his trusty and well-beloved Ezra, whom he calls a scribe of the law of the God of heaven (Ezr 7:12), a title which (it seems by this) Ezra valued himself by, and desired no other, no,…
sent of the king, and of his seven counsellors--This was the fixed number of the privy council of the kings of Persia (Est 1:10, Est 1:14). The document describes, with great clearness and precision, the nature of Ezra's commission and the extent of power and prerogatives with which he was invested. It gave him authority, in the first place, to organize the colony in Judea and institute a regular government, according to the laws of the Hebrew people, and by magistrates and rulers of their own nation (Ezr 7:25-26), with power to punish offenders by fines, imprisonment, exile, or death, according to the degree of their criminality. Secondly, he was empowered to carry a large donation in money…
His seven counsellors - It is very likely that the privy counsel of the king consisted of seven persons simply. The names of these seven counsellors or chamberlains may be found in the book of Esther, Est 1:10.
John Gill on Ezra 7:14
Forasmuch as thou art sent of the king, and of his seven counsellors,.... Such a number the kings of Persia used to have from the times of Darius Hystaspis, who was chosen out of seven nobles to be king, and ever after the Persian kings had seven counsellors privileged, as those nobles were, Esther 1:14, and Ezra had the honour to be sent with a commission from this king and his seven counsellors:
to inquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem; the inhabitants thereof, whether they had knowledge of and behaved
according to the law of thy God which is in thine hand; a copy of which he had with him, and was very expert in and conversant with, and could readily and at once pass judgment whether th…
The Church Fathers
For you have been sent from the presence of the king and his seven advisors, etc. And in the book of Esther, we read that it was the custom of the Persian kings to use the counsel of seven wise men in all matters to be done or decided. The faithful use seven advisors when in all things they do, they follow the precepts and decrees of the divine Scriptures. Of which the Psalmist says: The words of the Lord are pure words, silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times (Psal. XI). This is perfected by the holy sevenfold illumination of the Spirit. But if anyone finds it incongruent that something good could be figured in the holy Church from the advisors of that Persian king by whom the people and prophet of the Lord are released from captivity and sent back to their homeland, let them read the small works of the Fathers, who figuratively said that the holy actions of our Redeemer were designed through the actions or cases of reprobate kings Saul and Jeconiah: namely, Saul anointed as king but killed due to his own crimes, interpreted as the innocent death of King Christ: and Jeconiah's translation from Judah to Bethlehem, which he held due to his sins, relating typologically to the grace of our Redeemer, by which He deemed it worthy to migrate for the salvation of nations around the world, leaving the Jews behind due to their perfidy. They taught that the actions or deeds of Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar should be understood typologically in relation to the enemies of the Church. For example, Pharaoh commanded the male infants of God's people to be killed in the river, but to spare the females; because the devil desires to extinguish strength in us and nurture what is frail and weak. Likewise, Nebuchadnezzar ordered all the peoples subject to him to bow down and worship his statue upon hearing the sound of symphony and music. And the devil strives to bend the hearts of mankind away from righteousness through the allure of earthly pomp and toward following desire, which is the servitude of idols, deceiving their hearts. Therefore, if the evil deeds of the reprobate happened as a figure not only of evil but also of good, why could not the good deeds or words of the good, contained in the prophetic volume, prefigure the good acts of their followers? Also, let us consider the works of Saint Augustine, who said that even the seven men of one woman who died without…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Bible — Bible, the English form of the Greek name Biblia, meaning “books,” the name which in the fifth century began to be given to the entire collection of sacred books, the “Library of Divine Revelation.”…
Chaldee language — Employed by the sacred writers in certain portions of the Old Testament, viz., Dan. 2:4-7, 28; Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Gen. 31:46; Jer. 10:11. It is the Aramaic dialect, as it is sometimes called, as…
Persia — An ancient empire, extending from the Indus to Thrace, and from the Caspian Sea to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The Persians were originally a Medic tribe which settled in Persia, on the eastern…
Cabinet · Artaxerxes — Artaxerxes
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The commission given by Artachshasta to Ezra (Ezr 7:11), with a short postscript by Ezra (Ezr 7:27 and Ezr 7:28). - Ezr 7:11 The introductory title, "This is the copy of the letter," On פּרשׁגן, comp. Ezr 4:11, and on נשׁתּון, Ezr 4:7. Ezra is here, as also in the letter itself, Ezr 7:12, Ezr 7:21, and in Neh 8:9; Neh 12:26, called only הסּופר הכּהן, the priest, the scribe; in other places we find merely one title or the other: either the priest, Neh 10:10, Neh 10:16, Neh 8:2; or the scribe, Neh 8:4, Neh 8:13; Neh 12:36. To designate him according to his rank, as the priest, seems to have subsequently become more customary; hence in the first book of Esdras he is constantly called ὁ Ἱιερευ…
I and my council of seven: The Greek historian Xenophon knew of this council (Xenophon, Anabasis 1.6.4-5), and Esth 1:14 lists the names of the seven princes of Xerxes, Artaxerxes’ father. • your God’s law: The word translated law in this verse is the Aramaic word dath rather than the Hebrew torah (7:10), suggesting that a Persian wrote this letter (7:11-26).
Rashi on Ezra 7:14
Because of this Because of this, you are sent from the king and his seven advisors who saw the king’s face.
and his seven advisors and his seven advisors; they are the seven who see the king’s face.
to search out Judea An order to seek and to search out the Jews who are in Jerusalem, to see whether they are engaged in the Torah of the Holy One, blessed be He, which is in your hand.
