What Does Deuteronomy 2:21 Mean?
A people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim; but the LORD destroyed them from before them, and they drove them out, and settled in their place.
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
A people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; but the LORD destroyed them before them; and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead:THE KEY
The word for taking their place also carries the meaning of dispossessing those who were there before.
THE MEANING
This verse holds a transfer of dwelling together with the violence that makes it possible: the LORD destroys the people before the newcomers, who then inhabit their place. The word translated “succeeded” keeps both sides of that transfer in view. The new dwelling remains bound to the removal that cleared it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that taking someone’s place is a clean succession dissolves here: the verb carries the displaced people inside the newcomers’ inheritance.
THE ROOT
וַיִּירָשׁוּם
vayyirashum
GROWS FROM
ירשׁ
To take possession, inherit, or dispossess.
“drove them out” in this verse is vayyirashum. The verb behind “succeeded them” can describe taking possession and dispossessing. English makes succession sound like simple sequence, while the Hebrew holds the transfer’s two sides in one word: the newcomers dwell where the former people have been removed.
ALSO GROWS
morashah: Inheritance; possession.
מוֹרָשָׁה
It names what is received, showing that inheritance and taking possession grow from the same root as dispossession.
yerushah: Inheritance; possession.
יְרֻשָּׁה
This noun makes the place itself an inheritance, linking the arrival of a new possessor to the removal carried by the verb.
THE PATTERN
Scripture describes inheritance as taking up a place that was not previously yours.
As he did to the children of Esau, who settled in Seir, when he destroyed the Horim from before them; and they drove them out, and settled in their place to this day.But the bowed ones will inherit the land, and they will soften themselves in the abundance of wholeness.Flourishing are the bowed, for they inherit the earth.THE THREAD
And he said to him, I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to take hold of it.“Inherit” here is also from ירשׁ (yarash), the root behind “succeeded them.” The shared root connects a land given to be inherited with a place taken after its former inhabitants are removed.
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