Ezra 8:23

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

So we fasted and begged our God for this: and he was entreated of us.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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וַיֵּעָתֵ֖ר

ʻâthar

H6279

“and · to pray”

Conjunction + Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular

Appears 20× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 25:21

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root [rather denominative from H6281 ]

TWOT: 1722

to pray, entreat, supplicate - (Qal) to pray, entreat - (Niphal) to be supplicated, be entreated - (Hiphil) to make supplication, plead

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

7: words
6: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is וַיֵּעָתֵ֖ר to pray H6279 — appearing just 20 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

וַיֵּעָתֵ֖ר to pray H6279 occurs in 19 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

3 verbs
1 noun
1 pronoun
2 prepositions

Verb forms

וַנָּצ֛וּמָה Qal · Sequential Imperfect
וַנְּבַקְשָׁ֥ה Piel · Sequential Imperfect
וַיֵּעָתֵ֖ר Niphal · Sequential Imperfect

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 15 words from the Hebrew and 15 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the same length.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 7 Hebrew tokens and 13 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Ezra 8:23 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Jeremiah 29:12–13 You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
Matthew 7:7–8 "Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you.
2 Chronicles 33:12–13 When he was in distress, he begged Yahweh his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.
Ezra 8:31 Then we departed from the river Ahava on the twelfth [day] of the first month, to go to Jerusalem: and the hand of our God was on us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy and the bandit by the way.
Deuteronomy 4:29 But from there you shall seek Yahweh your God, and you shall find him, when you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
1 Chronicles 5:20 They were helped against them, and the Hagrites were delivered into their hand, and all who were with them; for they cried to God in the battle, and he was entreated of them, because they put their trust in him.
Esther 4:16 Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast you for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast in like manner; and so will I go in to the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.
Isaiah 19:22 Yahweh will strike Egypt, smiting and healing; and they shall return to Yahweh, and he will be entreated of them, and will heal them.

Daniel 9:3 I set my face to the Lord God, to seek by prayer and petitions, with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.
Nehemiah 9:1 Now in the twenty-fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, and with sackcloth, and earth on them.
Psalms 66:18–20 If I cherished sin in my heart, The Lord wouldn't have listened.
Jeremiah 33:3 Call to me, and I will answer you, and will show you great things, and difficult, which you don't know.
Jeremiah 50:4–5 In those days, and in that time, says Yahweh, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together; they shall go on their way weeping, and shall seek Yahweh their God.
Luke 2:37 and she had been a widow for about eighty-four years), who didn't depart from the temple, worshipping with fastings and petitions night and day.
Acts 10:30 Cornelius said, "Four days ago, I was fasting until this hour, and at the ninth hour, I prayed in my house, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing,

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Ezra 8:23 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַנָּצ֛וּמָה וַנְּבַקְשָׁ֥ה מֵאֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ עַל זֹ֑את וַיֵּעָתֵ֖ר לָֽנוּ

So we fasted and begged our God for this: and he was entreated of us.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Ezra 8:23 Septuagint · lemma form

καί νηστεύω καί ζητέω παρά ὁ θεός ἐγώ περί οὗτος καί ἐπιἀκούω ἐγώ

So we fasted, and asked of our God concerning this; and he listened to us.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

In the Septuagint this is one book — Esdras B (2 Esdras): Ezra is chapters 1–10, Nehemiah 11–23.

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Commentary

Notes on Ezra 8:23 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Ezr 8:23 So we fasted and besought our God for this: and he was intreated of us.

Ver. 23. So we fasted] They put their holy resolution into execution: purpose without practice is like Rachel, beautiful, but barren.

And besought our God for this] And they had it, Ezr 8:31. For fasting and prayer are like Jonathan’s bow and Saul’s sword, that never turned back or returned empty, 2Sa 1:22. God is a liberal rewarder of all such as in this sort diligently seek him, Heb 11:6 2Ch 15:2. he will turn their fasting into feasting, their prayers into praises, Eze 36:37 Zec 8:19. They shall have out their prayers either in money or money’s worth; either in the very thing they desired, or at least strength to stay themselves upon God, with good assurance that his grace shall be sufficient for them, and that he will be their shield, and their exceeding great reward.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joseph Benson's Commentary

Ezr 8:23. And he was entreated of us — They had some comfortable assurance in their own minds that their prayers were answered; and the event showed that they were, for they escaped all the dangers they had been afraid of, and in due time arrived safe in Judea.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

8:23 fasted . . . prayed: In the Old Testament, fasting often accompanied prayer as a demonstration of need before God (1 Kgs 21:9; 2 Chr 20:3; Neh 1:4; Dan 9:3).

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

23. for this] either prayed for this favour, or as in Ezr_9:15, ‘because of this’, i.e. on the ground of this mingled faith and self-abasement.

and he was intreated of us] This phrase occurs also in Gen_25:21; 2Sa_21:14; 2Sa_24:25; 2Ch_33:13.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

Then I separated twelve of the chief of the priests,.... That were in company with him; so that it seems there were more than the two mentioned, Ezr 8:2, very probably their families, or some of their brethren, were with them:

Sherebiah, Hashabiah, and ten of their brethren with them; these men named were Levites, and not priests, Ezr 8:18 and therefore the copulative "and" must be supplied:

and Sherebiah, &c. or with the twelve priests, Sherebiah, &c. and ten Levites more with them; so that the number of priests and Levites were equal, and in all twenty four.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

He gave us some assurance of his gracious answer to our request.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

John Wesley's Explanatory Notes

Intreated - He gave us an assurance of his gracious answer to our request.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

and He accepted our prayer for we arrived safely in Jerusalem.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Ezra, in the Historical, opens this verse with 7 words (6 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʻâthar (“to pray”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word ʻâthar carries the sense “to pray.” How does it shape the verse?
How does Genesis 25:21, which shares the word «to pray», read alongside this verse?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
«וַנָּצ֛וּמָה» is a Qal Sequential Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Joseph Benson's Commentary read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 7 Hebrew ↔ 13 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 6 words in this verse.
6 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 7 words in this verse.