What Does Joshua 1:13 Mean?
Remember the word that Moses, the servant of the LORD, commanded you, saying, The LORD your God has given you a place to rest, and has given you this land.
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
Remember the word which Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, saying, The LORD your God hath given you rest, and hath given you this land.THE KEY
The verse makes rest a form of arrival: God gives both settledness and the ground where it can take root.
THE MEANING
The word addresses you now: rest is a settledness you receive, joined to a place you can inhabit. The verse holds rest and ground together as one gift, so rest is not merely an interval between demands but the beginning of being at home.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that rest is only the absence of activity; here rest includes being given a place to belong.
THE ROOT
מֵנִיחַ
mēnîaḥ
GROWS FROM
נוח
To rest, settle, or come to rest; in this form, to cause to rest or give rest.
“a place to rest” in this verse is mēnîaḥ. The Hebrew word for “gives rest” grows from the root נוח, which carries the sense of settling. Rest here is not just a pause: it is being brought into settledness, alongside the gift of a land.
ALSO GROWS
nûaḥ: To rest or settle.
נוּחַ
This verbal form makes the movement inside “rest” visible: settling into rest.
menûḥāh: Rest or a resting place.
מְנוּחָה
The same root names both the state of rest and a place where one can settle.
דָּבָר
dāvar
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; the related noun can mean a word, matter, or thing.
Dāvar can name both what is spoken and the matter or thing at hand. The remembered word is thus bound to what it declares: rest and land are not abstract ideas but gifts presented as reality.
ALSO GROWS
dibbēr: He spoke.
דִּבֵּר
This verb from the same root connects the “word” to spoken speech.
devarim: Words or matters.
דְּבָרִים
This plural preserves the root while showing how “words” can also refer to matters or things.
מֹשֶׁה
Mōšeh
GROWS FROM
משה
To draw out, as in drawing someone out of water.
The name Moses is linked in the text to being drawn out of water. That image of emergence sits inside this verse too: the one who speaks of rest and given ground bears a name connected with being drawn out.
ALSO GROWS
māšāh: To draw out.
מָשָׁה
This verb shares the name’s root and gives its central image.
mešîtihû: I drew him out.
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
This form appears in Exodus 2:10, where Pharaoh’s daughter explains Moses’ name through drawing him out of the water.
THE PATTERN
Rest is given as settled belonging, joined to God’s provision and presence.
But when you go over the Jordan and settle in the land which the LORD your God gives you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all your enemies round about, so that you settle in safety;And he said, My face will go with you, and I will give you rest.Therefore a Sabbath settling remains for the people of God.THE THREAD
And he said, My face will go with you, and I will give you rest.“I will give thee rest” uses the same Hebrew root נוח as “hath given you rest” here. Exodus joins that gift to God’s presence going with you, opening rest as both accompaniment and settledness.
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