DEPORTATION, removal to another home — meta ('change') + oikos ('house'): a forced change of dwelling, the technical word for the Babylonian exile. ⚠ It is the hinge of Matthew's genealogy, named four times in the space of a few verses (1:11, 12, 17): the list is built in three panels of fourteen, and the deportation to Babylon marks the seam between the second and third — the nation's lowest point, from which the count toward the Messiah begins its climb. The word frames the exile not as an event in passing but as a structural pillar of the whole history from Abraham to Christ. KJV 'they were carried away to Babylon'; NIV 'the exile to Babylon'; NWT 'the deportation to Babylon'. → first discussed at Matt 1:11