Ezra 4:14

Now because we have maintenance from the king's palace,.... Have posts under the king, to which salaries were annexed, by which they were supported, and which they had from the king's exchequer; or

Now because we have maintenance from the king's palace, and it was not meet for us to see the king's dishonour, therefore have we sent and certified the king; We have maintenance from the king's

Thus they pretend the king’ s service to their own malicious designs and private interests.

Ezra 4:14 Now because we have maintenance from [the king’ s] palace, and it was not meet for us to see the king’ s dishonour, therefore have we sent and certified the king; Ver. 14. Now because we have maintenance from the king’ s palace] Chaldee, are salted with the salt of the palace, Salarium de regis palatio pereipimus, have our salary from the court, as Junius rendereth it. The great use of salt makes it here put for all kind of commodity; like as bread is called pants, as if it were ôï ðáí, the all and whole of our sustenance, Deuteronomy 8:3. And it was not meet for us to see the king’ s dishonour] Chaldee, nakedness, privities, which uncovered, cause contempt, as it befell Noah in his drunkenness; and the king of Spain, when by Queen Elizabeth proclaimed bankrupt. Therefore have we sent and certified the king] As knowing that Beneficium postulat officium, Bounty commands duty. Ingratitude is a monster in nature, a solecism in good manners, &c. Lycurgus would make no law against it, because he held that none could be so unreasonable as to be guilty of it. Yet Alphonsus complained of his ungrateful courtiers; and so did Frederick III, emperor of Germany. Queen Elizabeth also said, that in trust she had oft found treason. That traitor Parry had vowed her death, although he had been condemned for burglary, and saved by her pardon (Speed).

(14) Maintenance.—more exactly, we eat the salt of the palace. This seems to be a general expression for dependence on the king, whose dishonour or loss they profess themselves unwilling to behold.

Verse 14. Now because we have maintenance from the king's palace] More literally: Now because at all times we are salted with the salt of the palace; i.e., We live on the king's bounty, and must be faithful to our benefactor. Salt was used as the emblem of an incorruptible covenant; and those who ate bread and salt together were considered as having entered into a very solemn covenant. These hypocrites intimated that they felt their conscience bound by the league between them and the king; and therefore could not conscientiously see any thing going on that was likely to turn to the king's damage. They were probably also persons in the pay of the Persian king.

14. have maintenance from the king’s palace] R.V. eat the salt of the palace; which preserves the metaphor of the original. The LXX. omitted the clause: Vulg. ‘memores salis, quod in palatio comedimus’: 1Es 2:20, ‘forasmuch as the things pertaining to the Temple are now on hand’, which substitutes a different sentence for one that was not intelligible. The old Jewish translation ‘because we aforetime destroyed the Temple’, adopted by many former commentators (cf. Luther, ‘Nun wir alle dabei sind, die wir den Tempel zerstφret haben’), seems to have been based upon the old symbolical custom of ‘sowing with salt’ the site of a town or place that had been destroyed, e.g. Judges 9:45, and upon the idea of unfruitfulness associated with salt (cf. ‘a salt land and not inhabited’, Jeremiah 17:6; Deuteronomy 29:23; Zephaniah 2:9; cf. Heb. Job 39:6; Psalms 107:34). Others, with the same conception, ‘we have salted (Jerusalem) with the salt of the palace’, i.e. assisted the Imperial armies in its destruction. ‘The palace’ in the original is the same word (‘heycβl’) as that used for ‘the temple’ in Ezra 3:6, Ezra 5:14. The ambiguity of this word and the use of a rare metaphor has given rise to the difficulty of translation. Literally, the words mean ‘because we have salted the palace’s salt’. The explanation then will be not, as has been suggested, ‘because we have been entertained (guest friends, i.e. are the king’s friends), at the palace’, but ‘because we are in the king’s service’. The writers as representatives of colonies and dependent districts were very probably officials, and therefore members of the great network of Persian government. The English word ‘salary’ from salarium or salt-money is generally compared with this phrase. and it was not meet] R.V. and it is not meet. dishonour] literally ‘nakedness’. A strong metaphor, which the LXX. ἀσχημοσύνη reproduces. Cf. Leviticus 18:7, &c. The order is emphatic, ‘and the shame of the king it is not meet for us to see’. The Vulg. ‘lζsiones’ gives the technical Latin word for ‘damage’ in a general sense.

We have maintenance - See the margin. The phrase “to eat a man’s salt” is common in the East to this day; and is applied not only to those who receive salaries, but to all who obtain their subsistence by means of another.

14. We have maintenance from the king’s palace — Omit the interpolation, kings, of the translators. This version gives the sense, but the margin gives the Chaldee more correctly: We are salted with the salt of the palace.