Hebrew word · H3674
כְּנָת
kenavotov
associate
'Colleague, associate', especially a fellow official of the same rank or office. It is an Aramaic administrative term and appears in Hebrew only here. Its Aramaic equivalent comes repeatedly in Ezra 4:9, 17, 23; 5:3, 6; 6:6, 13.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
associate, colleague, companion
Aramaic equivalent: ke.nat (כְּנָת "associate" H3675)
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
'Colleague, associate', especially a fellow official of the same rank or office. It is an Aramaic administrative term and appears in Hebrew only here. Its Aramaic equivalent comes repeatedly in Ezra 4:9, 17, 23; 5:3, 6; 6:6, 13.
- Against the English
The KJV has 'companions', the BSB 'associates', the ESV 'associates'. 'Companions' sounds like friends; the word actually means official colleagues, a bureaucratic group acting together.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Common in the Elephantine papyri (5th century BC), e.g. 'Yedaniah and his colleagues the priests' in the petition to the governor Bagavahya (TAD A4.7). It is a standard way of listing a lead official 'and his colleagues' in a letter heading.
Where it appears
Ezra · 1
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Ezra 4:7 כְּנָוֹתָ֔יו colleagues his
And in the days of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of his associates wrote a letter to Artaxerxes. It was written in Aramaic and then translated.
Here: A technical Aramaic word from Persian administration: fellow officials of the same office or rank. 'His' points back to one leading man, probably Mithredath or Tabeel. Found only here in Hebrew; common in the Aramaic part of Ezra and the Elephantine papyri.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.