What Does Joshua 10:38 Mean?
And Joshua turned back, and all Israel with him, to Debir; and fought against 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 Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir; and fought against it:THE KEY
The campaign moves forward by returning to the place that still resists.
THE MEANING
Return and conflict occupy the same moment: Joshua comes back to Debir with all Israel, and they fight against it. The work continues by facing the place that remains contested.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that returning is retreat: here, the return carries the campaign into its next confrontation.
THE ROOT
וַיָּשָׁב
vayyashav
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
To turn back, return, or bring back.
“turned back” in this verse is vayyashav. Here, the verb means Joshua came back to Debir. The same root can also describe restoration, so return carries more than a change of location: it can be a turning back toward what is to be brought back.
ALSO GROWS
yeshovev: He restores, brings back
יְשׁוֹבֵב
In Psalm 23:3, this form describes restoring the living soul; it shows how the root of Joshua’s return can also name restoration.
meshuvah: Turning away, backsliding
מְשׁוּבָה
This branch names a turning in the opposite direction, revealing that the root’s central image is a change of direction.
THE PATTERN
The next movement goes toward what remains contested or missing.
And he took it, and its king, and all its cities; and they struck them with the mouth of the sword, and set apart for destruction all the living souls within it; he left none remaining; as he had done to Hebron, so he did to Debir, and to its king; as he had done also to Libnah, and to her king.What man among you, holding a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after the one that has lost its way until he finds it?THE THREAD
He turns back my living soul; he leads me in the tracks of alignment for the sake of his nature.“Restoreth” comes from the same root, שׁוּב (shuv), as Joshua’s “returned.” In Joshua the root describes coming back to a contested place; here it names the bringing back of the living soul.
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