am

• The ordinary word for a people as a corporate body, used of the covenant people of Judah carried into exile and of Israel freely returning to Jerusalem.Ezr 5:12Ezr 7:13
• Names the population of a province, and the people to whom a kingdom is given or from whom it will never pass away.Ezr 7:25Dan 2:44Dan 7:27

• Both stand together in the imperial roll call of "peoples, nations, and languages," the stock phrase that sweeps up all humanity subject to a world empire.Dan 3:4
• In that triad the two words are near-interchangeable partners naming the totality of subject populations, whether commanded to worship or trembling before the king.Dan 5:19

• Names a nation as an ethnic bloc among the peoples of the earth, a distinct group defined by descent and homeland rather than by covenant or civic standing.Ezr 4:10

• It stands on its own, with no list around it, as the word for one particular nation with a history: the population Nebuchadnezzar carried off to Babylon, and the Israelites given royal leave to travel back to Jerusalem.Ezr 5:12Ezr 7:13
• It names a body that can act and be acted on in politics and law: a group that might lay a hand on the temple and be torn down for it, a group that might be handed a kingdom, a group given lasting rule.Ezr 6:12Dan 2:44Dan 7:27
• It can mean the ordinary members of a community as set apart from its officials, giving alongside the priests, or simply everyone living in a province who is placed under judges.Ezr 7:16Ezr 7:25

• Both name a whole body of human beings rather than a single person, and the royal proclamations in Daniel stack them together to say everyone under the king.Dan 3:4Dan 4:1
• Both can be what a crowd does as one: bowing to the golden statue when the music sounds, or shaking with fear in front of a king.Dan 3:7Dan 5:19
• Both fall under the same sweeping decrees and the same promise of worldwide service, so a threat or a grant aimed at one covers the other equally.Dan 3:29Dan 7:14

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