meri

מְרִי is a verbal noun from מרה, attested 23 times in 21 verses and concentrated overwhelmingly in Ezekiel, where בֵּית (הַ)מְּרִי serves as a fixed designation for the prophet's community. HALOT, BDB and DCH all treat it as a single lexeme meaning "rebellion, obstinacy", with no homonym. The distinction from מרד, which denotes political or military revolt against a suzerain, is standard in the lexica and borne out by usage: מְרִי is almost always defiance of the divine word, and Prov 17:11 alone applies it to sedition against a human ruler. Zimmerli and Greenberg both treat the Ezekielian formula as a deliberate Leitwort rather than incidental invective, noting its extension in 2:8 to the prophet himself. The Septuagint renders the Ezekielian phrase with οἶκος (ὁ) παραπικραίνων, and Heb 3:16 preserves that verb in its citation of Ps 95, which is why παραπικρασμός and παραπικραίνω are commonly taken as the nearest Greek analogues. Two textual cruces attach to the word. At Job 23:2 the versional evidence presupposes מַר, "bitter", against MT מְרִי, and BHS proposes the repointing, though the lexica still register the verse under מְרִי. At Neh 9:17 MT בְּמִרְיָם is read as בְּמִצְרַיִם by the Septuagint and by most modern translations; that variant is preserved in some lexical apparatus as a separate sub-entry glossed "Egypt", which accounts for the apparent homograph in the source data rather than for any second sense of the word.