What Does Joshua 10:37 Mean?
And they took it, and struck it with the mouth of the sword, and its king, and all its cities, and all the living souls within it; he left none remaining, according to all that he had done to Eglon; but set it apart for destruction, and all the living souls within it.
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 they took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof, and all the souls that were therein; he left none remaining, according to all that he had done to Eglon; but destroyed it utterly, and all the souls that were therein.THE KEY
The repeated “all the souls” makes the conquest total at the level of living selves: the verse says no one remains, not only that the city is taken.
THE MEANING
The verse names a city’s capture and killing: its king and every living self within it are struck down, and no survivor remains. Repeating “all the souls that were therein” leaves no life outside the stated destruction.
THE ROOT
וַיַּחֲרִימוּ
wayyaḥărîmû
GROWS FROM
ח־ר־ם
To place under a ban; in this war context, to devote to destruction.
“set it apart for destruction” in this verse is wayyaḥărîmû. “Destroyed utterly” names the result, while the Hebrew root names the city as placed under the ban; here that ban is enacted through the killing of its inhabitants. The word’s force reaches from the city itself to every living self within it.
ALSO GROWS
cherem: A person or thing devoted under a ban.
חֵרֶם
This related noun names the status behind the verb; in Joshua, the ban is carried out as the destruction of the city and its people.
Hormah: A place-name from the same root, associated with being devoted to destruction.
חָרְמָה
Numbers 21:3 connects this root to a place marked by the destruction of its cities, showing the same severe meaning in a name.
הַנֶּפֶשׁ
han-nephesh
GROWS FROM
נ־פ־שׁ
The living self: a person or life-bearing being.
“living souls” in this verse is han-nephesh. The KJV’s “souls” here carries the sense of the whole living self. Its repetition makes the verse’s violence concrete: every life within the city is included in the destruction.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh: A living being or self; Genesis 2:7 calls the formed human a “living soul.”
נֶפֶשׁ
The same word can name a living person, so “all the souls” counts the people themselves within the verse’s total destruction.
naphash: To rest or be refreshed; Exodus 23:12 uses this verb for being refreshed.
נָפַשׁ
The same consonantal root also appears in language of restoration; here, by contrast, no living self remains to experience it.
THE PATTERN
Total destruction is made explicit by naming the lives included and closing the count of survivors.
And all flesh that crept upon the earth expired, the birds, the cattle, the living thing, and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all humankind.Now go and strike Amalek, and devote all that they have to destruction, and do not spare them; but put to death man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.And the rest are slain by the sword of the one who sits on the horse, the sword that goes out from his mouth, and all the birds are filled with their flesh.THE THREAD
Now go and strike Amalek, and devote all that they have to destruction, and do not spare them; but put to death man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.The same root ח־ר־ם appears in both verses: Joshua says the city is “destroyed utterly,” while Samuel commands “utterly destroy.” In both, the ban is carried out through killing, and Samuel spells out the people and animals included in its reach.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us