Hebrew word · H3246
יְסֻד
yesud
beginning
From the root y-s-d, "to lay a foundation, establish". The usual noun is yesod, "foundation". This exact vowel pattern occurs only here, and BDB lists it as "foundation, beginning".
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
a beginning, foundation, that being founded
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
From the root y-s-d, "to lay a foundation, establish". The usual noun is yesod, "foundation". This exact vowel pattern occurs only here, and BDB lists it as "foundation, beginning". In late biblical Hebrew the verb also means "to appoint, ordain, fix": the king "had ordained" (yissad) an order for his officials (Esth 1:8), and David and Samuel "established" gatekeepers in office (1 Chr 9:22).
- Against the English
Most English versions say "began" (KJV, ESV, NASB, WEB: "began to go up"; BSB and NIV: "had begun the journey"). YLT keeps the root: "he hath founded the ascent". Some versions lean toward "arranged". "Began" is not wrong, but it implies the caravan moved off on 1 Nisan, which 8:31 contradicts (departure on the 12th).
- How it drifted
Translators smoothed a rare and difficult form into ordinary English. That hides the question of what exactly happened on 1 Nisan.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The noun yesod and the verb are common for foundations, including the founding of the Second Temple in Ezra 3:10–12. The sense "appoint, fix" belongs to the Persian-period Hebrew of Esther and Chronicles. The Greek Septuagint renders the word with a verb, "he founded" (ethemeliōsen). The Latin Vulgate has "he began (coepit) to go up". The supplied morphology tags it as a passive participle, which is another way of making sense of the unusual vowels.
Where it appears
Ezra · 1
-
Ezra 7:9 יְסֻ֔ד [was] [the] beginning of
He had begun the journey from Babylon on the first day of the first month, and he arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month, for the gracious hand of his God was upon him.
Here: Literally "foundation of", meaning the start or set date of the journey. The root means to lay a foundation, and in late Hebrew also to appoint or ordain. So the word may mean the date Ezra fixed and organised the departure, not necessarily the day the caravan moved off (compare 8:31, where they leave the Ahava canal on the 12th).
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.