te'em

This is the ordinary working word for royal authority in the parts of Ezra and Daniel written in Aramaic, the everyday language of the Persian empire's paperwork. It names the binding word that comes down from someone in power, whether it authorizes the rebuilding of the temple, forbids bowing to a statue, or threatens punishment on anyone who disobeys.

Because it was a term of the imperial bureaucracy, it settled into a few fixed phrases. The commonest by far is "to make a decree," repeated again and again as kings issue their orders. A closely tied phrase means "by decree of" or "by the authority of" someone, naming the power behind an action. It even hardens into a job title: the master of the order, that is, the commanding officer or chancellor of a province.

The same idea shows up from the other side as well: to pay heed or give proper regard to a ruler and his orders. When Daniel's accusers say his friends have paid the king no regard, they mean the men have not treated his command as binding on them.

In one place the word steps away from the language of decrees and means the good judgment of a person rather than the order of a king. When Daniel is about to be swept up in the execution of the wise men, he replies to the king's officer with wisdom and good sense, choosing his words carefully to buy time and turn the moment.

It sits here beside the ordinary word for counsel or advice, so the two together paint a picture of someone who not only knows what to say but knows how and when to say it.

The plainest and oldest sense of the word is simply taste, tied to the ordinary verb for tasting food. It surfaces once, at Belshazzar's feast, where the phrase describes the king and the wine as he gives the fateful order to bring in the sacred cups looted from the temple.

The force of the phrase there is debated. Most take it as the physical taste of the wine, whether "while he tasted the wine" or "under the influence of the wine." That taste sense is the root from which the word's other, more official meanings appear to have grown.