What Does Deuteronomy 3:4 Mean?
And we took all his cities at that time. There was no city we did not take from them, sixty cities, all the measuring cord of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.
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 we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city which we took not from them, threescore cities, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.THE KEY
The word translated “region” is חֶבֶל (ḥevel, cord or district), so the claim of capture reaches the whole bounded tract, not merely the listed cities.
THE MEANING
This verse lays before you a conquest measured in sixty cities, with no city outside the claim and the entire region of Argob named. Its language does not soften what happens: these cities are captured and taken from their ruler.
THE ROOT
וַנִּלְכֹּד
vannilkod
GROWS FROM
לכד
l-k-d
To catch, seize, or capture.
The first “took” is a concrete verb of capture, not merely a general word for gaining territory. The verse then repeats the claim by saying no city was left untaken, closing off any exception.
ALSO GROWS
lakad: To capture or seize.
לָכַד
Joshua 10:1 uses this form for Joshua’s taking of Ai, showing the same root naming a city’s capture.
nilkad: To be captured or caught.
נִלְכַּד
This passive form, used of Babylon in Jeremiah 50:24, shows the same root can name those caught as well as those doing the capturing.
חֶבֶל
ḥevel
GROWS FROM
חבל
ḥ-b-l
Cord or rope; also a district or tract.
“measuring cord” in this verse is ḥevel. The same word can name a cord and a district, giving “region” a more bounded, tangible edge than the English map term carries. Here, “all the region” extends the claim across the whole tract, not just its named city walls.
ALSO GROWS
ḥevel: Cord or rope.
חֶבֶל
This concrete sense sits inside the word translated “region,” linking the territory to the idea of a bounded tract.
ḥavalim: Lines or cords (Psalm 16:6).
חֲבָלִים
This plural form makes the cord sense visible and echoes the marked-out boundaries implied by a district.
THE PATTERN
The text closes a claim’s perimeter by naming its full scope and stating what remains outside, or that nothing does.
So Joshua struck all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the lowland, and of the slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but devoted all that had breath to destruction, as the LORD God of Israel commanded.And they will lay you flat to the ground, you and your children within you, and will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time you were looked upon."Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus the Anointed One, our Lord.THE THREAD
Now it came to pass, when Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem had heard how Joshua had taken Ai and devoted it to destruction, as he had done to Jericho and her king, so he had done to Ai and her king; and how those who had settled in Gibeon had made wholeness with Israel, and were among them;The verb for “had taken” is לָכַד (lakad, capture), the same root as the first “took” in Deuteronomy 3:4. The repeated root connects the passages through the specific act of capture.
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