What Does Joshua 10:26 Mean?
And afterward Joshua struck them, and put them to death, and hanged them on five trees; and they were hanged upon the trees until the evening.
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 afterward Joshua smote them, and slew them, and hanged them on five trees: and they were hanging upon the trees until the evening.THE KEY
Hebrew repeats the root for “hang,” making the bodies’ exposure until evening a distinct act after the killing.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the violence in plain sequence: Joshua strikes them, kills them, and leaves their bodies hanging on five trees until evening. The repeated Hebrew verb keeps the focus on what is done to their bodies after death.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The violence ends once the victims are dead. This verse shows their bodies remain exposed afterward, so death is followed by public display.
THE ROOT
וַיִּתְלֵם
wayyitlem
GROWS FROM
תלה
t-l-h
To hang or suspend.
“hanged them on five trees” in this verse is wayyitlem. “Hanged” and “hanging” are forms of the same root: the verse repeats the action and holds attention on the bodies after death. Its final detail, “until the evening,” gives that exposure a clear limit.
ALSO GROWS
talui: Hanging, suspended
תָּלוּי
This participle shares the root with the verse’s description of the bodies’ continuing state.
teliya: Hanging, suspension
תְּלִיָּה
This noun names the act or condition the repeated verb keeps in view.
יְהוֹשֻׁעַ
Yehoshua
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-sh-ʿ
Deliver; bring out of constriction into spaciousness.
“Joshua” in this verse is Yehoshua. Yehoshua joins the divine name with the root of deliverance. Here that name belongs to the one carrying out the killing and hanging, so its deliverance-language stands beside the violence without concealing it.
ALSO GROWS
yasha: Deliver, bring out
יָשַׁע
This is the action root carried in Yehoshua’s name.
yeshuah: Deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun from the same root makes the deliverance-language in the name visible.
THE PATTERN
A body hung on a tree is a public sign with time-bound exposure, and the text names that hanging as a curse.
And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until evening. And as soon as the sun went down, Joshua commanded that they should take his corpse down from the tree, and throw it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raise over it a great heap of stones, which remains to this day.His corpse does not lodge on the tree through the night, but you surely bury him on that day, for the hanged one is a curse of God; so that your ground, which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, is not defiled.The Anointed One bought us out of the curse of instruction, becoming a curse for us, for it stands written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.THE THREAD
His corpse does not lodge on the tree through the night, but you surely bury him on that day, for the hanged one is a curse of God; so that your ground, which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, is not defiled.Joshua’s “hanged” and Deuteronomy’s “hanged” come from the same Hebrew root, תלה (t-l-h), and both pair it with עֵץ (ets, tree or wood). Deuteronomy makes the dusk boundary explicit: the body must not remain overnight, and the hanging is named as accursed.
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