to finish a building: to carry construction work through to the point where the structure stands complete.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Every use of this word sits inside the Aramaic letters and official reports preserved in the book of Ezra, and every one of them is about construction. It is not a general word for finishing anything. It names the last stretch of a building project, the moment a wall or a house stops being a work site and stands done.
It normally travels with the ordinary Aramaic verb for building (בְּנָה). Ezra 6:14 sets the two side by side: the elders built and finished the temple. The pair covers the whole arc, from laying the first stone to standing back from a house that needs no more work. The Jewish builders use the same pair in Ezra 5:11 about the original temple, saying that a great king of Israel built it and finished it.
Because a finished wall changes a city's standing, the word carries political weight in Ezra 4. The officials writing to the Persian king are not alarmed that work is going on in Jerusalem. They are alarmed that the walls will actually be brought to completion, since a walled city is a city that can stop paying tribute. So the same verb that celebrates the temple in Ezra 6:14 sounds like a warning in Ezra 4:13.
Nuances
1ato finish a building: for builders to carry a project through to its completed state
Ezr 4:12*Ezr 5:3*Ezr 5:9*Ezr 5:11Ezr 6:14
1bto be finished: said of a wall or building that reaches its completed state, with no builder named
Both belong to the same construction project in Jerusalem, and the officials who challenge it name them together as one demand: who authorized you to put this house up, and who authorized you to bring the work to completion.Ezr 5:3Ezr 5:9
The builders themselves run the two together to cover one whole arc of work, from the first stone to a structure nobody needs to return to. A great king of Israel put the first temple up and finished it, and the returned exiles put the second one up and finished it.Ezr 5:11Ezr 6:14
Both are used of a walled city and not only of a house of worship, and both carry the political charge of the hostile letters to the Persian king: a rebuilt Jerusalem with completed walls is a city that can stop paying tribute.Ezr 4:12Ezr 4:13Ezr 4:16
Names the work while it is still going on, with the materials and the method in plain view: huge stones going up and timber set into the walls, a site the officials can walk onto and ask who the men doing the work are, a project that has been under way for years and still does not stand done.Ezr 5:8Ezr 5:4Ezr 5:16
Covers the beginning of a project as readily as the rest of it, as when Zerubbabel and Jeshua get up and start putting the house of God back up in Jerusalem.Ezr 5:2
This is the word the royal paperwork turns on. Every decree that grants the work, funds it out of the king's revenue, or orders it stopped is worded around building, and none of them mentions completion.Ezr 6:3Ezr 6:8Ezr 4:21Ezr 5:13
Reaches outside the Jerusalem story altogether, and outside the temple: Nebuchadnezzar uses it to boast that he raised the whole of great Babylon as his royal seat.Dan 4:30
שְׁלֵםa broader Aramaic word for being whole or settled, used in Ezra 5:16 to say the temple was still not finished, and elsewhere of handing something over in full
Every use is about carrying building work through to its finish, and the only things ever finished by it are the walls of Jerusalem and the house of God.Ezr 4:12Ezr 5:11Ezr 6:14
It names something people actively do, so the builders are the ones who finish the structure, and the officials who show up demand to know who authorized them to do it.Ezr 5:3Ezr 5:9
It also looks ahead to a finished structure as something others dread, the moment when a rebuilt city with completed walls would stop paying the king his tribute.Ezr 4:13Ezr 4:16
Both
Both are used of the very same building, the house of God in Jerusalem, within one report sent to Darius: the elders say a great king of Israel built and finished it long ago, and a few lines later that the rebuilt house is still not complete. One word supplies the finishing, the other the state of being finished.Ezr 5:11Ezr 5:16
It can simply report the condition of being finished or unfinished rather than the labor of finishing, as when the reply to the governor says the house of God has been going up since Sheshbazzar laid its foundations and is still not complete.Ezr 5:16
It reaches past buildings to handing something over in full, when Artaxerxes tells Ezra to deliver the temple vessels complete before the God of Jerusalem with nothing held back.Ezr 7:19
It can also mean bringing a thing to its end rather than to its perfection, which is why the writing on Belshazzar's wall is read as God having counted his kingdom and brought it to a finish.Dan 5:26
kelal in the other biblical languages
כָּלַלHebrew“to perfect”the Hebrew verb from the same root, used not of finishing a building but of making something perfect in beauty
What gets completed here is masonry: the city walls, the house of God, and the structure going up beside it. The finishing is physical work that an inspector could walk out and check.Ezr 4:12Ezr 5:3Ezr 5:11
It is the language of official paperwork. Persian officers use it when they report to the king and when they demand to know who authorized the builders "to finish" the structure they found going up.Ezr 5:3Ezr 5:9
It can look ahead to work not yet done and treat that prospect as a danger. The complaint to the king is that once the walls are finished, the taxes will stop coming in.Ezr 4:13Ezr 4:16
Both
Both name the finishing of what builders started, the point at which a work is carried all the way through instead of being left half done. In Ezekiel it is Tyre's builders who complete her beauty; in Ezra it is the elders of the Jews who build and finish the temple.Ezk 27:4Ezr 6:14
In both, the completing is done by people working on a landmark whose finished state mattered to a whole nation: the sea power of Tyre in one, the rebuilt house of God in Jerusalem in the other.Ezk 27:11Ezr 5:11
What gets completed here is beauty, not a building. Tyre's builders are said to have brought her beauty to its full, so the word names the finishing that leaves nothing lacking in how something looks.Ezk 27:4Ezk 27:11
Both of its uses sit inside one poem of praise over the merchant city pictured as a splendid ship, where shields hung on the walls are part of what makes her complete. The tone is admiration, not a progress report.Ezk 27:11
καταρτίζωGreek“to complete”the closest Greek verb, meaning to put something into full working order, and broad enough to cover mending nets or restoring a person as well as finishing a structure
Belongs to one project only: the temple and the city walls in Jerusalem, always a physical structure brought to its finished state.Ezr 5:11Ezr 6:14Ezr 4:12
Lives in official letters and interrogations, where the whole question is who authorized the builders to finish the work at all.Ezr 5:3Ezr 5:9
The finishing itself is the political turning point: opponents warn the empire that once the walls are done the province will stop paying its taxes.Ezr 4:13Ezr 4:16
Both
Both name the moment a work under construction stands fully put together, with the Aramaic word used of the finished temple and the Greek word of the world itself assembled at God's command.Ezr 6:14Heb 11:3
Both look at what is still missing and speak of filling it in until nothing is lacking, whether unfinished walls or an unfinished faith.Ezr 4:121Th 3:10
Both are commonly rendered "complete" or "finish" in English, which is why the Greek verb is the natural counterpart when the Aramaic one is put into Greek.Ezr 5:9Heb 13:21
Covers repair, not just completion: fishermen bent over torn nets, putting them back into working shape before the next catch.Mat 4:21Mrk 1:19
Works on people rather than objects, whether gently setting right someone who has slipped or steadying a believer again after suffering.Gal 6:11Pe 5:10
Reaches inside a person or a group: a divided church knit back into one mind, and a student finished off until he is like his teacher.1Co 1:10Luk 6:402Co 13:11
Describes God getting something ready ahead of time for the purpose he intends, whether a body made ready for his Son or containers already shaped for their end.Heb 10:5Rom 9:22
What scholars say about kelal
The verb occurs only in the Aramaic portions of Ezra, in the causative shaphel stem (šaklel) and its reflexive-passive ishtaphel counterpart, a pattern the lexica connect with Akkadian šuklulu, the causative of kalālu "to be complete". HALOT's Aramaic volume and BDB's Biblical Aramaic section both gloss the active as "to complete, finish" with a building as its object and the reflexive-passive as "to be completed". STEPBible's lexicon carries two sub-entries (כְּלַל and שַׁכְלֵל); these reflect the base form and the causative stem of one verb, not two homonyms, and are merged here. Rosenthal treats the shaphel as a stem borrowed into Aramaic under Akkadian influence and attested with only a handful of verbs. Commentators on Ezra (Williamson, Blenkinsopp) read the Aramaic of these letters as authentic imperial chancery style, in which the pairing of "build" and "finish" functions as a set formula for a completed public works project, which is why the pair recurs in both the accusation of Ezra 4 and the report of Ezra 5 and 6.
Sources
HALOT (Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Aramaic section, s.v. כללlexicon
BDB (Brown, Driver, Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Biblical Aramaic section, s.v. כללlexicon
Franz Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, 7th ed. (2006)grammar
H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, Word Biblical Commentary 16 (1985)commentary
Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary, Old Testament Library (1988)commentary