What Does Genesis 10:19 Mean?
And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as you come to Gerar, to Gaza; as you come, to Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even to Lasha.
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 the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest, unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha.THE KEY
The boundary is traced with one repeated verb for coming, even where the KJV shifts from “comest” to “goest,” so the map is experienced as a route of arrival.
THE MEANING
You meet the edge of a place by moving through it: named places show where the territory reaches. The verse traces the Canaanite border from Sidon through Gerar and Gaza, then past the cities named toward Lasha. The same Hebrew word for coming marks both turns in that route.
THE ROOT
בֹּאֲכָה
boʾăḵā
GROWS FROM
בוא
b-w-ʾ
to come, enter, arrive
The Hebrew repeats בֹּאֲכָה (bo’akha, “as you come”) at both turns; the KJV renders the first “comest” and the second “goest,” hiding the repeated arrival verb. The border is narrated through coming toward named places, as a route encountered by entering the landscape.
ALSO GROWS
boʾ: to come, enter, arrive
בּוֹא
The root verb makes clear that both English directions in the verse share the same Hebrew action.
mavo: entrance, approach
מָבוֹא
An entrance is a place of coming in, reinforcing how the border is encountered by approach.
tevuʾah: produce, yield, income
תְּבוּאָה
This branch names what comes in from a field, extending the root’s sense of arrival into what a place yields.
THE PATTERN
A people’s territory becomes legible through named edges and appointed bounds.
Then your south corner shall be from the wilderness of Zin, beside the hand of Edom, and your south border shall be the outermost edge of the salt sea eastward.This then was the falling of the tribe of the children of Judah by their families, reaching to the edge of Edom. The wilderness of Zin southward was the far end of the south edge.And he made from one blood every nation of humankind to settle upon all the face of the earth, marking out their fitted seasons and setting the boundary stones of their dwelling.THE THREAD
And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the round plain of Jordan, for all of it was watered, before the LORD ruined Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as you come to Zoar.The same Hebrew verb בוא (boʾ, “come, enter”) appears in “as thou comest unto Zoar.” Genesis 10 uses that arrival language to trace a border, while this verse uses it to locate the plain near Sodom and Gomorrah through the approach to Zoar.
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