Province or district locates people within an administered region rather than describing the moral quality of its government. Esther names the provinces under Xerxes, then follows destructive orders reaching them and the mourning of threatened Jewish communities.
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Full entry for מְדִינָה (H4082) · Open the biblical lexicon
Province or district locates people within an administered region rather than describing the moral quality of its government. Esther names the provinces under Xerxes, then follows destructive orders reaching them and the mourning of threatened Jewish communities.
The BSB source-word alignment has 53 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include provinces (9), . . . (8), province (7), of the provinces (5), the provinces (5).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at 1 Kings 20:14. Its strongest book concentrations include Esther (39), 1 Kings (4), Nehemiah (3), Daniel (2).
Province or district locates people within an administered region rather than describing the moral quality of its government. Esther names the provinces under Xerxes, then follows destructive orders reaching them and the mourning of threatened Jewish communities. Ezra identifies people of the province returning from exile to their towns. Nehemiah receives a report of survivors in the province facing trouble and disgrace, and he responds with weeping and prayer.
The same geographical term can therefore occur with imperial reach, displacement, return or vulnerable life. Ask which region is named, who exercises power there and how the inhabitants are affected. An official jurisdiction does not make every decree just, and its residents are not one undifferentiated moral group. Teaching should keep the people visible beneath administrative descriptions, without turning ancient provincial arrangements into a mandate for a current nation's boundaries or political program.
Esther's empire-wide correspondence, returned exiles and Nehemiah's report show the term locating government and community life. Named orders and actual conditions determine what the setting means for its inhabitants.
This is what happened in the days of Xerxes, who reigned over 127 provinces from India to Cush.
The opening names Xerxes' 127 provinces from India to Cush, describing the narrative's imperial extent rather than declaring every exercise of power righteous.
Now these are the people of the province who came up from the captivity of the exiles carried away to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar its king. They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own town,
People of the province return from Babylonian captivity to Jerusalem, Judah and their towns, retaining displacement and particular homecoming destinations.
And they told me, “The remnant who survived the exile are there in the province, in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”
Survivors in the province are reported in great trouble and disgrace with broken walls and burned gates, prompting Nehemiah's mourning rather than a claim of secure prosperity.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Administrative territory defined by judicial authority; region governed under a ruler's legal jurisdiction
Administrative territory defined by judicial authority; region governed under a ruler's legal jurisdiction
properly, a judgeship, i.e. jurisdiction; by implication, a district (as ruled by a judge); generally, a region BDB: province Usage: (× every) province.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
מְדִינָה is built from this root:
A province is a setting for human decisions and experiences, not a verdict that the decisions are right. Esther first presents extensive royal territory and then shows how a destructive edict spreads through its provinces. Mourning follows wherever the decree arrives, and later letters are written in the scripts and languages of their intended recipients. Ezra uses the same term while naming people returning from captivity to particular towns.
Nehemiah hears that survivors in the province remain vulnerable and answers with grief and prayer. A teacher can learn to attend to power's reach and the condition of the people without inventing a modern political correspondence. Ecclesiastes' mention of oppression and denied justice in a province further prevents administrative order from being confused with righteousness or from excusing harm simply because higher officials exist.
Neh.1.3
The licensed Hebrew range supports a province, district or jurisdiction. In these witnesses the noun identifies an administered region; it does not state that its rulers are righteous, specify a modern nation or assign one shared character to every resident.
Acts 24:24-27 describes an official repeatedly hearing Paul while hoping for a bribe and leaving him imprisoned. This separate Greek narrative is not an occurrence of the Hebrew province noun. Alongside Esther's harmful orders and Ecclesiastes' denied justice, it keeps an officeholder's actual conduct visible rather than making governmental position its own moral approval.