What Does 1 Chronicles 6:68 Mean?
And Jokmeam with her pasturelands, and Beth-horon with her pasturelands.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Jokmeam with her suburbs, and Beth-horon with her suburbs,THE KEY
A city’s surrounding open ground belongs to the place as surely as its inhabited center.
THE MEANING
This verse holds each city together with the open ground around it: what lies beyond the settled center still belongs to the place. Jokmeam (יָקְמְעָם, Yoqmeʿām) is commonly read as “let the people rise,” giving the name a sense of a people standing up. Beth-horon (בֵּית־חוֹרֹן, Bêt-Ḥôrōn) means “house of Horon”; Horon’s name has no certain Hebrew derivation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A place is only its occupied center; the land beyond its walls does not belong to it.
THE ROOT
מִגְרָשֶׁיהָ
migrāšêhā
GROWS FROM
גרש
To drive out, expel, or send away.
“pasturelands” in this verse is migrāšêhā. The Hebrew noun מִגְרָשׁ (migrāš), open ground around a city, is linked to גָּרַשׁ (garash), “drive out.” The repeated phrase holds the city and its surrounding margin together as one allotted place.
ALSO GROWS
migrāš: Open ground or pastureland around a city.
מִגְרָשׁ
This is the singular form behind “suburbs,” naming the space at the city’s edge.
gerush: Expulsion or being driven out.
גֵּרוּשׁ
This related form preserves the root’s sense of what is sent beyond a boundary.
יָקְמְעָם
Yoqmeʿām
GROWS FROM
קום
To rise, stand, or become established.
Jokmeam is commonly understood as “let the people rise,” joining קוּם (qum, rise) with עָם (ʿam, people). Beside the city’s open ground, its name gives the place a nature of a people standing up.
ALSO GROWS
qum: To rise or stand.
קוּם
This is the root sense carried in the town’s name.
heqim: To raise up or establish.
הֵקִים
This causative branch adds the sense of a people being set upright.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling’s allotted life includes the open ground around its inhabited center.
The cities shall be theirs to settle in, and the pasturelands shall be for their cattle, for their goods, and for all their beasts.But the field of the pasturelands of their cities shall not be sold, for it is their holding of the ages.Of this there shall be for the sanctuary five hundred in length, and five hundred in breadth, square all around. And fifty cubits all around for its pasturelands.THE THREAD
But the field of the pasturelands of their cities shall not be sold, for it is their holding of the ages.Leviticus uses the same Hebrew word, מִגְרָשׁ (migrāš), for the open ground around the cities and says it cannot be sold. The margin is part of the community’s lasting possession, deepening “with her suburbs” into a picture of a whole place, not just its center.
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