What Does Joshua 10:20 Mean?
And it was so, when Joshua and the children of Israel had finished striking them with a very great blow, until they were used up, that the remnant which was left of them entered into walled cities.
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 it came to pass, when Joshua and the children of Israel had made an end of slaying them with a very great slaughter, till they were consumed, that the rest which remained of them entered into fenced cities.THE KEY
The verse names the slaughter as complete, then locates survivors behind city walls: devastation reaches its limit without erasing every life.
THE MEANING
You are placed in the aftermath of a very great slaughter, with the killing described as reaching completion. Yet people remain and enter fortified cities; the verse holds the extent of the violence beside the fact of survival.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a decisive slaughter leaves no one alive is undone by the verse’s own remainder: some survive and reach the fortified cities.
THE ROOT
מַכָּה גְדוֹלָה
makkah gedolah
GROWS FROM
נכה
To strike or smite.
“striking” in this verse is makkah gedolah. The Hebrew phrase behind “very great slaughter” is literally a very great blow. This keeps the violence stark while showing how the verse sets the blow against the people who remain alive afterward.
ALSO GROWS
nakah: To strike or smite.
נָכָה
This is the verb behind the blow: the violence is named as an act of striking.
makkah: A blow, strike, or plague.
מַכָּה
This is the noun used in the verse, gathering the attack into a “very great blow.”
הַשְּׂרִידִים
ha-seridim
GROWS FROM
שרד
To survive or escape.
The survivors are not an abstract remainder; their word belongs to a root that means to survive or escape. The verse places their continued life directly beside the slaughter’s claimed completion.
ALSO GROWS
sarad: To survive or escape.
שָׂרַד
The verb makes survival an active continuation through danger.
sarid: A survivor or remnant.
שָׂרִיד
This singular form names the person left alive; the verse uses its plural for those who remain.
עָרֵי הַמִּבְצָר
arei ha-mibtsar
GROWS FROM
בצר
To fortify or make inaccessible.
“fenced cities” in this verse is arei ha-mibtsar. The cities are not merely places where the survivors happen to arrive; their name describes a defended boundary. The movement from slaughter to fortified walls makes refuge part of the verse’s account of survival.
ALSO GROWS
batsar: To fortify or secure.
בָּצַר
The verb names the act of making a place defensible.
mibtsar: A fortress or fortified place.
מִבְצָר
This is the kind of defended city the survivors enter.
THE PATTERN
Under violence, survival in the biblical text is often pictured as movement toward a defensible refuge.
And the hand of Midian grew strong against Israel, and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made for themselves the hollows that are in the mountains, and the caves, and the strongholds.When the men of Israel saw that they were in a narrow place, for the people were pressed, then the people hid themselves in caves, and in the thorns, and in the rocks, and in the high places, and in the pits.Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains.THE THREAD
The nature of the LORD is a strong tower; the aligned one runs into it and is set on high.Joshua’s survivors enter fortified cities; here, safety is pictured as entering a strong tower. The image opens refuge from stone defenses to the LORD’s name as nature, a place of safety in the character the name carries.
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