Ezra — Linguistic Gap Analysis (Hmong Language Package)

Purpose. This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8. It (a) maps each of the six assigned Ezra doctrines against the Hmong vocabulary currently available (inherited from the Romans baseline plus the new Ezra-specific terms proposed in 08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json), (b) separates genuine missing-vocabulary gaps (comprehension problems with no natural Hmong word) from crowded semantic neighborhoods (existing Hmong words that already carry a competing traditional-religion sense and therefore require active fencing), (c) records every transliteration-vs-paraphrase decision made for this book, and (d) ranks the highest-risk ambiguities in Ezra for translator and reviewer attention. It extends, and never contradicts, the Romans baseline documents or the Ezra-specific glossary/registry already produced in this pipeline. Full-book coverage (chapters 1–10) is maintained throughout; no chapter is silently skipped.

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0. Method and Risk-Tier Inheritance

Risk tiers (Critical / High / Medium / Low) and their definitions are inherited unchanged from assets/bible_term_registry.json (Romans baseline) and applied identically here. “Fencing” means: a mandatory qualifier phrase, a structurally distinct alternate rendering, and/or a required catechetical/teaching note that must accompany every occurrence of a term to prevent it drifting into a competing traditional-religion sense. Every gap identified below is cross-referenced to its glossary/registry entry number where one already exists, and flagged [NEW GAP] where this document is the first to surface it.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

1.1 God’s Sovereignty over Pagan Nations and History

Available Hmong term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
Vajtswv (God) — [TM-REUSE]	None on its own; stable.	Use as-is.
tus Tswv (LORD/YHWH) — [TM-REUSE]	None on its own; stable.	Use as-is; never substitute a divine-name transliteration.
tus Tswv, Vajtswv uas kav saum ntuj ceeb tsheej (“LORD God of heaven”) — registry #3, Critical	Risk of collapsing into bare Ntuj (impersonal high-sky concept, no personal-deity sense, permanently forbidden as a name for God per Romans baseline entry #1’s rejected alternatives). Also risks implying Cyrus/Darius possessed genuine covenant faith when their acknowledgment is functional/political (Ezra 1:2, 6:10, 7:12).	Always build the phrase from the fixed Vajtswv root plus the descriptive genitive; never use bare Ntuj as a stand-alone divine title. Mandatory teaching note distinguishing pagan-court functional acknowledgment from Ezra’s own covenant relationship.
Vajtswv txhawb (Xailab) lub siab (“stirred up his spirit”) — registry #4, Critical	If rendered with ntsuj plig instead of siab, implies spirit-possession of the pagan king (parallel collision to the Romans baseline’s forbidden nkag-possession rendering of Rom. 5:12).	siab (will/heart) only, never ntsuj plig. God acts upon volition; He does not indwell/possess.
Vajtswv txhais tes zoo nyob saum (nws) (“hand of the LORD”) — registry #5, High	Shamanic healing/empowerment ritual invokes a spirit’s “hand”/touch conferring power on a txiv neeb medium; unmarked use risks a ritual-mediation reading.	Always teach as providential enablement received directly from God, not ritual mediation through a spiritual channel.
lawv tus Vajtswv qhov muag saib ntsoov lawv (“eye of God”) — registry #6, Medium	Hmong folk-belief holds that ancestral/spirit “watching” favor must be ritually maintained through appeasement or it lapses.	Teach as unconditional covenant faithfulness, not a maintained ritual relationship contingent on correct performance.
tej Nceeg Vaj hauv ntiajteb (“kingdoms of pagan rulers”) — registry #28, Low	Minimal; must stay lexically distinct from lub Nceeg Vaj ntawm Vajtswv (God’s own kingdom, Romans TM).	Keep the two phrases structurally distinct at every occurrence.
cov seem (remnant) — [TM-REUSE], Low	None.	Use as-is.

Doctrinal summary risk: Critical. This doctrine’s entire persuasive force in Ezra 1 depends on holding two things simultaneously without collapsing either: (1) Cyrus is a genuine instrument of YHWH’s sovereign plan (1:1, “the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus”), and (2) Cyrus’s own religious framework (Marduk/astral deities per the Cyrus Cylinder analogues) is not itself salvific or covenantal. Hmong hearers, whose own cosmology readily accepts that any spirit/ancestor/fate-force can move a person’s will toward an outcome, must be taught that this is the personal, purposeful, covenant God acting — not an impersonal cosmic-force explanation of political events. This mirrors the Romans baseline’s Critical treatment of Election/Sovereignty (hmoov/fate collision) and must inherit the same fencing discipline.

1.2 Restoration of Temple Worship

Available Hmong term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
lub Tuam Tsev (ntawm tus Tswv) (Temple) — registry #7, Medium	Structural risk of conflation with thaj xwm kab (household ancestor-spirit altar shelf).	Keep Tuam Tsev structurally distinct from thaj-family vocabulary; qualifier (ntawm tus Tswv) recommended at first use per lesson.
lub thaj fij rau tus Tswv (altar) — registry #8, Critical	thaj is the exact word for the ancestor-spirit altar shelf central to Hmong household religion. Direct lexical identity, not mere resemblance.	Mandatory rau tus Tswv qualifier at every single occurrence, with no exception, mirroring the Law/Kevcai and hwjchim qualifier-enforcement pattern from the Romans baseline §2.2.
khoom fij kub hlawv (burnt offering) — registry #9, Critical	Reuses the Romans baseline’s flagged fij sacrificial domain, shared with spirit-appeasement offerings (fij dab).	Explicit marking as OT covenantal worship, distinct from appeasement; reuse the baseline’s existing fij disambiguation strategy verbatim.
khoom pub ntawm lub siab nyiam pub (freewill offering) — registry #10, Medium	Could be assimilated into coercive ancestral gift-giving at a thaj xwm kab to secure goodwill.	Keep lexically separate from the fij domain; frame explicitly as a building-fund gift, not a sacrifice.
tej twj siv hauv lub Tuam Tsev ntawm tus Tswv (temple vessels) — registry #11, Medium	No native category for “sacred ritual vessel” outside a shaman’s ritual implements.	Teaching note: worship implements consecrated to God, not ritual power-objects.
kev muab lub Tuam Tsev pub rau tus Tswv siv (dedication) — registry #12, High	Collides with Hmong house-inauguration ceremonies that install/appease protective household spirits in a new dwelling.	Explicit contrast teaching: consecration for covenant worship, not spirit-installation.
ua kom dawb huv (purified/consecrated) — registry #13, High, [TM-REUSE pattern]	Inherits the Romans baseline’s dawb huv ritual-purity collision exactly (folk spirit-contamination removal).	Teach as consecration for covenant service; never repeatable ritual-cleansing.
Kevcai Hla Dhau (Passover) — registry #14, Low	None; stable existing Hmong Christian usage.	Use as-is.
Kevcai Nyob Tsev Pheeb Suab (Tabernacles/Booths) — registry #15, Medium	Comprehension gap only (unfamiliar festival concept, no traditional-religion collision).	Explanatory note distinguishing from ordinary seasonal shelter-building.
Ulis thiab Tumis (Urim and Thummim) — registry #16, Medium	Retained loanword; risk if glossed with txiv neeb divination vocabulary (bone-casting, omen-reading).	Footnote gloss only; never use divinatory-shamanic vocabulary to explain function.

Doctrinal summary risk: High, driven almost entirely by the thaj/altar collision (#8) and the dawb huv purification collision (#13), both of which reuse Romans-baseline-documented collision patterns rather than introducing wholly new risk categories — but the altar collision is arguably sharper here than in Romans because Ezra 3 places a literal, physical cultic altar at the narrative center, where Romans’ fij usage was mostly metaphorical (living sacrifice, propitiation).

1.3 Rebuilding and Covenant Renewal

Available Hmong term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
cov uas raug ntes coj mus poob teb chaws / cov rov qab los (“exile community/returnees”) — registry #17, Medium	No single Hmong word for “exile-community-as-covenant-body”; risk of reading as mere biographical travel.	Use the full descriptive phrase consistently at every occurrence to preserve corporate/covenantal sense.
cov neeg sib sau ua ib pawg (assembly/congregation) — registry #18, Medium	Risk of confusion with NT-derived pawg ntseeg (church).	Keep structurally distinct from pawg ntseeg; this is an OT covenant-census/gathering term.
cov npe raws caj ceg (genealogical registers) — registry #20, Low	Positive bridge to Hmong keeb kwm caj ceg (clan genealogy); risk only if purpose is conflated with ancestor-veneration.	Teaching note distinguishing priestly-legitimacy purpose from ancestor-honor purpose.
kev cog lus (ua kev sib raug zoo nrog Vajtswv) (covenant, human response) — registry #21, High, [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED]	Genuinely distinct nuance from the Romans baseline’s promise entry (lus cog tseg = God’s unilateral pledge); Ezra 10’s berit is the people’s renewed commitment. No prior TM entry governs this human-response sense.	See §3 below (Missing Vocabulary). Flagged for formal TM-revision review; do not silently merge with lus cog tseg.
tej Nceeg Vaj hauv ntiajteb (pagan kingdoms, cross-reference to 1.1)	Relevant here insofar as rebuilding occurs within, and is authorized by, a pagan political structure.	No additional fencing needed beyond §1.1.

Doctrinal summary risk: High. The central linguistic gap is the covenant-vocabulary asymmetry described in §3.1 below: Hmong (via the Romans TM) already has a settled word for God’s promise to people, but no settled word for the people’s covenantal recommitment to God — a directionality Ezra 9-10 requires and Romans, being mostly about God’s unilateral grace, never needed to develop.

1.4 Confession and Corporate Repentance

Available Hmong term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
kev tsis ncaj rau tus Tswv (thiab txhaum tsis tuav rawv Txoj Kevcai) (trespass/ma’al) — registry #29, High	Hmong customary wrongdoing-repair (taboo breach, restitution to elders/spirits) has no ready category for “covenant treachery against God” as distinct from ordinary social fault.	Explicit contrast teaching: this is covenant-breaking sacrilege, stronger than the baseline’s txhaum (sin_act_and_condition, Romans TM).
kev muaj txim (guilt/ashmah) — registry #30, Medium	Comprehension-level; parallels ma’al.	Teach in the same God-ward covenantal frame as #29, not as ordinary social culpability.
lees paub tej kev txhaum rau tus Tswv (corporate confession) — registry #31, High	Hmong communal-wrongdoing resolution proceeds via negotiated clan/elder reparation or ritual spirit-appeasement, not verbal confession directed to God as wronged covenant party.	Mandatory contrast teaching to prevent assimilation into a clan-reparation framework.
yoo mov thov Vajtswv pab tsom kwm (fasting) — registry #32, High	Shamanic ritual fasting accumulates/accesses spiritual power before a rite performed by a txiv neeb.	Teach as humble petition to the sovereign God, never an ascetic power-generation technique.
khoom fij theej kev txhaum (guilt/reparation offering, asham) — registry #33, Critical, [TM-REUSE pattern]	Reuses the Romans baseline’s Critical fij/hilastērion disambiguation strategy exactly.	Mark explicitly as OT ritual-legal reparation, distinct from Christ’s atonement and from shamanic appeasement.

Doctrinal summary risk: High, converging on a single underlying gap: Hmong has robust vocabulary for interpersonal/clan fault-repair and ritual spirit-appeasement, but no native category for corporate, verbal, God-directed confession of covenant treachery that results in restitution rather than appeasement. Ezra 9-10 is the most concentrated site of this gap in the whole book.

1.5 The Role of Scripture in Community Renewal

Available Hmong term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes) (Torah/Law) — registry #22, Critical, [TM-REUSE]	Exact reuse of Romans baseline entry #27; shares root kevcai with kev cai dab qhuas (religion = spirit-worship customs).	Mandatory qualifier never dropped, identical enforcement to Romans baseline §2.2.
Vaj Lug Kub (Scripture) — registry #23, Low, [TM-REUSE]	None.	Use as-is.
tus kws ntawv txawj Txoj Kevcai (scribe) — registry #24, Medium	No exact Hmong social role for “authoritative Scripture scholar” outside the forbidden shamanic (txiv neeb) category.	Teaching note, not lexical fix; never draw on shamanic vocabulary.
nrhiav / coj raws / qhia Txoj Kevcai (“seek-do-teach”, Ezra 7:10) — registry #25, Medium	Risk of collapsing the three-part discipline into a flattened “obey the law,” losing the study/transmission emphasis.	Preserve the tripartite structure intact in every teaching paraphrase.

Doctrinal summary risk: Critical, inherited wholesale from the Romans baseline’s Law entry, but intensified here because Ezra 7 makes Scripture-centered community renewal method (not merely Law-as-moral-diagnostic, as in Romans) the doctrinal point — a nuance the Romans TM entry was never built to carry and which requires the added #25 tripartite-structure fencing.

1.6 Separation from Syncretism

Available Hmong term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
cov tawm tsam (adversaries) — registry #34, Low	None.	Use as-is.
cov neeg nyob hauv thaj av (“peoples of the land”) — registry #35, High	Must not be confused with the Romans baseline’s positive missional category lwm Haiv Neeg (nations/Gentiles).	Keep the two phrases lexically and conceptually distinct; this is a negative syncretism-warning category, not an evangelistic-target category.
cais tawm ntawm tej kev qias tsis huv ntawm cov neeg tsis hwm Vajtswv nyob hauv thaj av (separation from uncleanness) — registry #36, High	Risk of an ethnic-exclusion misreading rather than a religious-practice-separation reading.	Mandatory teaching note: separation is from idolatrous practice, not from persons as such.
noob dawb huv ntawm Vajtswv (“holy seed”) — registry #37, Critical	Double collision: (1) dawb huv ritual-purity baggage; (2) Hmong clan-lineage-purity/exogamy customs (rules on which clans may/must not intermarry) could make this sound like ethnic-purity nationalism.	Mandatory teaching note: covenant loyalty and worship purity, never ethnic superiority — this is the single most dangerous phrase in the book if mis-taught.
tej kev qias vuab tsuab uas Vajtswv ntxub (abomination) — registry #38, High	Parallels the register of the Romans baseline’s idol (dab mlom) entry.	Must not be softened; the term’s force is the point of the intermarriage warning.

Doctrinal summary risk: Critical. This is the doctrine most likely to be doctrinally inverted by a Hmong audience if mishandled, because Hmong culture already possesses a strong, positively-valued native category (clan-exogamy/lineage-purity law) that is structurally adjacent to but theologically different from “holy seed” separation. A careless translator could make Ezra 9-10 sound like it endorses Hmong-style ethnic/clan purity thinking — precisely the opposite of the text’s own concern for correcting a specific act of covenant unfaithfulness (idolatrous intermarriage), not ancestry as such.

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2. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

These are Hmong lexical items where more than one biblical referent, or one biblical and one traditional-religion referent, compete for the same word — the inverse problem from missing vocabulary. Each requires an explicit “fence” (a mandatory qualifier, a structurally distinct alternate phrase, or a teaching note) to keep referents from bleeding into one another.

Hmong lexical item	Competing referents crowding it	Fence required
thaj (altar/shelf)	(a) thaj xwm kab — household ancestor-spirit altar shelf (traditional religion); (b) lub thaj fij rau tus Tswv — the rebuilt sacrificial altar to YHWH (Ezra 3)	Mandatory rau tus Tswv qualifier at every occurrence of the Ezra 3 altar; never allow bare thaj to stand for the biblical altar.
fij (sacrifice/offering)	(a) fij dab — spirit/ancestor appeasement offering; (b) burnt offering (khoom fij kub hlawv, Ezra 3); (c) guilt/reparation offering (khoom fij theej kev txhaum, Ezra 10); (d) [cross-book] Christ’s atonement and the living-sacrifice ethic (Romans baseline)	Every fij-family term must carry an explicit marker of which offering-category it names and to whom it is directed; never leave fij bare or ambiguous between categories.
dawb huv (pure/holy/clean)	(a) folk ritual-purity from spirit-contamination; (b) sanctification (Romans baseline, Critical); (c) Temple/priestly consecration (Ezra 6, 8); (d) “holy seed” lineage-purity (Ezra 9, Critical)	Each occurrence must be anchored to its specific referent (consecration-for-service vs. covenant-set-apartness vs. moral sanctification) via context or teaching note; never allow a single unqualified reading to silently transfer folk ritual-purity sense onto any of the biblical senses.
Tuam Tsev / thaj structural pairing (Temple vs. household shrine)	The Temple (lub Tuam Tsev) and the domestic ancestor-shrine shelf (thaj xwm kab) are structurally analogous “sacred locus” concepts in Hmong religious geography.	Keep Tuam Tsev vocabulary and thaj xwm kab vocabulary in entirely separate lexical families; never use shrine-descriptive vocabulary (e.g., placement/orientation idiom used for household shrines) when describing the Jerusalem Temple.
hu (call/summon a soul or spirit)	Used in Hmong ritual for calling back a wandering soul or summoning a spirit; risk if applied to “calling on the name of the LORD” idiom-adjacent contexts (not directly present in Ezra 1-10’s core narration, but relevant to prayer/petition vocabulary in ch. 8-9).	Per the Romans baseline’s existing forbidden-substitution rule (§3.1), never use hu for petitionary prayer/invocation; use descriptive thov Vajtswv phrasing throughout Ezra as well.
kevcai (custom/rite root)	(a) kev cai dab qhuas — religion/spirit-worship customs; (b) Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv/Mauxes) — the Mosaic Law; (c) Kevcai Hla Dhau — Passover; (d) Kevcai Nyob Tsev Pheeb Suab — Tabernacles; (e) kev cai raus dej — baptism [Romans]	Every compound built on kevcai must retain its full fixed qualifier/compound form; never allow a shortened or paraphrased form to drop the distinguishing second element.
hwjchim (power) [cross-reference, Romans baseline]	Shamanic ritual power vs. Vajtswv hwjchim (God’s power) vs. cov muaj hwjchim kav teb chaws (civil authority)	Not independently re-triggered by Ezra’s core text but relevant if any lesson connects Cyrus’s decree-issuing political power to divine hwjchim language; if used, must follow the Romans baseline’s mandatory qualifier rule without exception.
siab (liver/heart — seat of will)	(a) God’s will_of_god idiom [Romans]; (b) “stirred up the king’s siab” (Ezra 1:1, sovereignty doctrine); (c) ordinary human volition/preference in everyday speech	Ezra 1:1’s usage must be anchored explicitly to God as the actor upon the king’s siab, not merely reported as the king’s autonomous preference, to preserve the sovereignty doctrine.

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3. Missing Vocabulary Gaps (No Crowding, Genuine Absence)

Unlike §2, these are cases where Hmong simply lacks any existing lexical item — safe or unsafe — for the biblical concept, requiring either a new descriptive compound or a transliteration decision (see §4).

3.1 Covenant as human covenantal response (berit, Ezra 10) vs. God’s promise (epangelia, Romans TM)

The Romans baseline TM fixed lus cog tseg for epangelia — God’s own unilateral, solemn pledge to His people (a one-directional divine-to-human speech-act). Ezra 9-10’s berit usage is structurally different: it is the people’s corporate, penitent recommitment to covenant obedience, a human-to-God directional act occurring in response to confessed failure. No existing Hmong Bible-tradition term cleanly marks this human-covenantal-response sense apart from either (a) reusing lus cog tseg (wrong direction — implies God is pledging, not the people) or (b) reusing generic cog lus (any solemn promise, too weak to carry covenant weight).

Current interim rendering: kev cog lus (ua kev sib raug zoo nrog Vajtswv) — glossed literally as “an act of covenant-making, restoring right relationship with God.” Status: flagged [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED: berit vs. epangelia] in both the glossary and registry; this document confirms the gap is genuine (not a crowding problem) and recommends formal TM-revision review to decide whether future OT curricula need a permanently dedicated “covenant (human response)” TM entry distinct from “promise (divine pledge),” given that this asymmetry will recur in every subsequent OT book (Nehemiah, Chronicles, etc.) built on this pipeline.

3.2 “Exile-community-as-covenant-body” (golah)

No single Hmong noun captures the corporate, quasi-legal, covenant-continuity sense of golah — the exile/return not as biography but as a defined theological status-group. The interim descriptive phrase (cov uas raug ntes coj mus poob teb chaws / cov rov qab los, registry #17) is workable but verbose and must be used with total consistency to avoid readers hearing it as merely “some people who traveled.”

3.3 “Covenant treachery” (ma’al) as distinct from ordinary sin (chatta’t/hamartia)

Hmong moral vocabulary distinguishes degrees of wrongdoing by social consequence (minor taboo breach vs. major clan offense) but has no term keyed specifically to sacrilege against a covenant relationship with a deity, since traditional Hmong religious practice does not feature a covenant-structured deity-relationship at all (spirits/ancestors are appeased, not covenanted with). This is a genuine conceptual gap, not merely lexical, and is the deepest linguistic problem in Ezra 9 — deeper than the dawb huv crowding problem, because there is no existing word to even fence.

3.4 “Chesed” — covenant-loyal love (Ezra 3:11)

As already flagged in the registry (#41), chesed is richer than the Romans-package mercy (txoj kev khuv leej, eleos-flavored compassion-toward-the-miserable) and richer than plain kev hlub (love, Romans TM). The interim compound txoj kev hlub ruaj khov mus ib txhis (“steadfast, unfailing love”) is a reasonable paraphrase but is a new compound not yet tested across a full OT corpus; flagged for TM-revision review alongside §3.1, since both gaps stem from the same root cause — the Romans TM was built entirely from NT covenant-fulfillment vocabulary and never had occasion to develop OT covenant-initiation/maintenance vocabulary.

3.5 Persian imperial administrative vocabulary (decree, satrap-adjacent officials, royal treasury terms)

Ezra 1, 4-7 contain multiple administrative/bureaucratic terms (e.g., “the treasurer,” provincial officials named in the Aramaic correspondence) that have no native Hmong civil-administration equivalent beyond generic descriptive phrases already used for cov muaj hwjchim kav teb chaws (governing authorities, Romans TM). These are Low-risk comprehension gaps, not doctrinal collisions, and may be handled with descriptive paraphrase without TM-revision review, consistent with §12 of the Romans requirements document’s “ad hoc, log for future review” provision for minor non-doctrinal vocabulary.

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4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Cyrus, Darius, Artaxerxes, Ahasuerus (proper names)	Transliterate using established Hmong Bible-tradition phonetic conventions (e.g., Xailab for Cyrus, consistent with existing Hmong OT usage where available)	Proper names are transliterated throughout the existing Hmong Bible tradition (cf. Yexus Khetos, Povlauj in the Romans baseline); no paraphrase is appropriate for personal names.
Urim and Thummim	Transliterate (Ulis thiab Tumis) with mandatory first-use footnote	The device/concept is untranslatable and culturally opaque; paraphrasing risks importing false content (e.g., glossing it as a divinatory practice would falsely imply parity with shamanic bone-casting/omen-reading, which is explicitly forbidden). Transliteration plus footnote isolates the term as a proper technical name without inviting a false functional analogy.
Abba-style retained loanword pattern (cf. Romans baseline Abba, Leej Txiv)	Not applicable in Ezra — no comparable Aramaic/Hebrew devotional-intimacy loanword occurs in the core narrative chapters.	Noted for completeness; no action required.
Torah / Law	Paraphrase using the fixed compound, not transliterate	Already settled in the Romans baseline (Txoj Kevcai ntawm Vajtswv/Mauxes); a transliterated loanword here would sever Ezra from the existing cross-book TM and defeat the entire qualifier-enforcement strategy built around the native compound.
Pesach (Passover)	Paraphrase using the fixed compound Kevcai Hla Dhau	Already stable and settled in existing Hmong Christian usage; transliteration would be a regression from an existing good rendering.
Chag HaSukkot (Tabernacles)	Paraphrase: Kevcai Nyob Tsev Pheeb Suab	Descriptive compound (“festival of dwelling in temporary shelters”) is comprehensible via the shared human experience of temporary field/harvest shelters in Hmong agrarian life; no transliteration needed, no collision risk to fence.
Nethinim (temple servants)	Paraphrase: cov raug muab pub ua haujlwm hauv lub Tuam Tsev	A transliterated loanword would create an opaque, unteachable technical term for a minor hereditary office; the descriptive phrase carries adequate meaning and deliberately avoids both the qhev (slavery) and txiv neeb (shamanic-servant) collision zones.
chesed, ma'al, berit, ashmah (Hebrew theological technical terms)	Paraphrase with descriptive Hmong compounds, retaining the Hebrew transliteration only in teaching-note citations (per the Romans baseline’s Greek-citation convention in §7 of 12_ai_translation_requirements.md)	These terms need to function as living, memorable vocabulary in community teaching, not as opaque loanwords; the transliteration is preserved only in the “Lus Henplais/Aramais: [transliteration] — Hmong: [rendering]” citation-note format, mirroring the Romans baseline’s Lus Kilis convention.
Aramaic royal-title formulas (Ezra 4:8-6:18, 7:12-26 court correspondence)	Paraphrase into formal Hmong epistolary register, not transliterated wholesale	The Aramaic administrative letters must read as formal official correspondence in Hmong register (consistent with §5 of the Romans requirements document’s register rule), not as an exotic transliterated curiosity; only proper names/titles within the letters are transliterated.

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5. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Ezra

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision specificity × likelihood of silent misreading if unfenced):

1. noob dawb huv — “holy seed” (Ezra 9:2, Separation from Syncretism, Critical). Double collision (ritual purity + clan-exogamy nationalism) makes this the single highest-risk phrase in the book; a mistaught rendering could turn Ezra’s covenant-fidelity warning into an endorsement of ethnic-purity ideology, the exact inverse of appropriate application.

2. lub thaj fij rau tus Tswv — the altar to the LORD (Ezra 3:2-3, Restoration of Temple Worship, Critical). Direct lexical identity (not mere resemblance) with the household ancestor-spirit altar shelf (thaj xwm kab); omission of the rau tus Tswv qualifier even once in oral teaching risks a hearer picturing a domestic spirit-shrine.

3. Vajtswv txhawb (Xailab) lub siab — God stirring Cyrus’s spirit (Ezra 1:1, Sovereignty over Pagan Nations, Critical). This is the core passage’s opening theological claim; a slip from siab to ntsuj plig would turn sovereign providential influence into shamanic spirit-possession of a pagan king, misrepresenting the very doctrine the core passage exists to teach.

4. tus Tswv, Vajtswv uas kav saum ntuj ceeb tsheej — “LORD God of heaven” in Cyrus’s decree (Ezra 1:2, Sovereignty over Pagan Nations, Critical). Highest-frequency title in the book placed in a pagan king’s mouth; risk of both the Ntuj-collapse error and the implied-genuine-conversion error simultaneously.

5. lees paub tej kev txhaum rau tus Tswv — corporate confession (Ezra 10:1-11, Confession and Corporate Repentance, High). No native Hmong category for God-directed (rather than clan/elder-directed or spirit-appeasement-directed) corporate verbal confession; without sustained teaching, the entire Ezra 9-10 climax risks being assimilated into a clan-reparation ritual pattern that omits repentance-before-God altogether.

6. kev cog lus (ua kev sib raug zoo nrog Vajtswv) — covenant renewal (Ezra 10, Rebuilding and Covenant Renewal, High, [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED]). Genuine TM gap (§3.1) with no formally reviewed permanent rendering yet; currently the single largest unresolved terminological question in this Language Package and must not be finalized without theologian review.

7. kev tsis ncaj rau tus Tswv (thiab txhaum tsis tuav rawv Txoj Kevcai) — ma’al/covenant treachery (Ezra 9:1-15, Confession and Corporate Repentance, High). Deepest conceptual (not merely lexical) gap identified in this analysis (§3.3): Hmong wrongdoing-categories have no covenant-relationship axis at all, making this harder to fence than a simple word-collision problem.

8. kev muab lub Tuam Tsev pub rau tus Tswv siv — Temple dedication (Ezra 6:16-18, Restoration of Temple Worship, High). Collides with Hmong house-inauguration spirit-installation ceremony; risk is high specifically because both rites share a structurally similar “moving into readiness for occupation/use” narrative shape.

9. yoo mov thov Vajtswv pab tsom kwm — fasting at the Ahava river (Ezra 8:21-23, Confession and Corporate Repentance, High). Collision with shamanic power-generation fasting; risk heightened because the narrative context (preparing for a dangerous journey) closely parallels traditional contexts in which ritual fasting is performed for protective spiritual power.

10. cov neeg nyob hauv thaj av — “peoples of the land” (Ezra 4, 9, 10, Separation from Syncretism, High). Risk of conflation with the positive missional category lwm Haiv Neeg inherited from Romans; a translator unfamiliar with the Ezra-specific registry entry could accidentally import Romans’ evangelistic-openness framing into a context that is instead warning against syncretistic entanglement.

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6. Chapter Coverage Log

Chapter	New terms/gaps surfaced in this analysis	Status
1	Sovereignty/“stirred up spirit,” “LORD God of heaven,” kingdoms-of-pagan-rulers, freewill offering, temple vessels, proclamation	Reviewed — full treatment above (§1.1, §1.2, §4)
2	Exile community/golah, assembly/qahal, temple servants/Nethinim, genealogical registers, Urim and Thummim	Reviewed — full treatment above (§1.3, §3.2, §4)
3	Altar, burnt offering, freewill offering, Tabernacles festival, chesed	Reviewed — full treatment above (§1.2, §2, §3.4)
4	Adversaries, peoples of the land	Reviewed — full treatment above (§1.6, §5 item 10)
5	”Eye of God” idiom, prophet	Reviewed — full treatment above (§1.1)
6	Temple/House, dedication, purified/consecrated, Passover, Law, Scripture	Reviewed — full treatment above (§1.2, §1.5)
7	Scribe, “seek-do-teach,” hand of the LORD, favor/chen, kingdoms (recap)	Reviewed — full treatment above (§1.1, §1.5)
8	Hand of the LORD (recap from ch.7), golah (recap from ch.1-2), fasting	Reviewed — no new load-bearing terms beyond fasting (§1.4, §5 item 9); hand-of-the-LORD and golah vocabulary explicitly logged as reused, per the coverage-note convention in 08_core_glossary.md
9	Trespass/ma’al, guilt/ashmah, holy seed, abomination, remnant	Reviewed — full treatment above (§1.4, §1.6, §3.3, §5 items 1 and 7)
10	Confession, covenant renewal, guilt/reparation offering, assembly (recap from ch.2), peoples of the land (recap from ch.4), holy seed (recap from ch.9)	Reviewed — full treatment above (§1.3, §1.4, §5 items 5 and 6); assembly, peoples-of-the-land, and holy-seed vocabulary explicitly logged as reused from earlier chapters, per the coverage-note convention

No chapter of Ezra is silently omitted from this gap analysis; chapters 8 and 10 in particular are explicitly logged as reusing vocabulary established in earlier chapters (mirroring the reuse-logging convention already established in analysis/08_core_glossary.md’s Coverage Note) rather than being treated as contributing nothing.

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7. Governing Note

This gap analysis identifies no instance where an existing Romans-baseline TM entry should be altered — all Romans TM entries reused in Ezra (Vajtswv, tus Tswv, Txoj Kevcai, dawb huv/sanctification pattern, fij/hilastērion pattern, remnant, Scripture) retain their baseline renderings and risk tiers unchanged. Two genuine new-term gaps are flagged for formal TM-revision review before this package may be finalized as a permanent baseline: covenant (human response), §3.1, and chesed/steadfast love, §3.4. All other Ezra-specific terms proposed in 08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json are treated in this document as provisionally sound pending the standard human-theologian/native-speaker review routing established in the Romans doctrine_risk_registry.json and carried forward unchanged into this Ezra package.