A NATIVE, home-born — the legal counterpart of the ger, and almost always paired with it. The root is the one behind a tree that is native to its soil (Psalm 37:35 uses it of a green tree in its own ground), so the image is of somebody rooted where they grew rather than of a status conferred. ⚠ The word matters because of the company it keeps: the Torah reaches for it precisely when it is about to say that the distinction makes no difference — 'one law for the ezrach and for the ger' (Exodus 12:49), 'as the ezrach among you' (Leviticus 19:34), and five times over in Numbers 15:13-30, where native and sojourner get the same offering, the same atonement for error, and the same sentence for defiance. It is a term that exists in these texts mainly in order to be levelled. → first discussed at Num 15:13