Primarily used as the introduction to paragraphs of letters. The use in the Ezra passages was misunderstood in the Pesh traditions: Note that three different interpretations are given ("as it answered", a place name, and omitted), one for each exemplar! (Note, too, that the form וּכְעֶת of the MT at the end of Ezra 4:17 was clearly this form and so garbled by the Pesh.) The evidence is suggestive that the earliest text tradition may have known and used a similar word whose meaning was lost before the fixing of the tradition.