What Does Joshua 11:22 Mean?
None of the Anakim were left in the land of the children of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod were they left.
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
There was none of the Anakims left in the land of the children of Israel: only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod, there remained.THE KEY
The Hebrew says “none were left” with one root, then “they remained” with another, making the exception a second, precise truth.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a sweeping absence and a specific remainder together: the Anakim are gone from the land of the children of Israel, yet remain in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod. Their remaining is not vague; the verse names its boundaries.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that if something is absent from most of a place, it must be absent everywhere.
THE ROOT
נותר
notar
GROWS FROM
יתר
yathar
To remain over, to be left as a remainder.
The first clause uses notar, from yathar: no Anakim are left over in the land. The verse then shifts to a different root for those who remain in three named cities, separating the broad absence from the surviving residue.
ALSO GROWS
yeter: Remainder; what is left over or in excess.
יֶתֶר
It makes the idea of being left concrete: something remains beyond what has been removed.
yitron: Surplus, advantage, or gain.
יִתְרוֹן
This branch carries the sense of what remains over into what is left after accounting for the rest.
נשארו
nisharu
GROWS FROM
שאר
sha'ar
To remain or be left behind.
“were left” in this verse is nisharu. Nisharu comes from sha’ar, a root also used for a remnant or surviving portion. Here the verse locates that remainder precisely: Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod.
ALSO GROWS
she'ar: A remnant; what remains.
שְׁאָר
It names the surviving portion that the verse locates in three cities.
she'erit: Remnant; surviving portion.
שְׁאֵרִית
It carries the same root idea of what persists after the rest is gone.
THE PATTERN
A sweeping absence can still leave a named remnant, and the text keeps both claims in view.
"Yet I have left seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not knelt to Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed him."For though your people Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant of them will turn back. The running out, decreed, will overflow with alignment.So also now, in this present season, there is a remnant left behind, picked out by favor.THE THREAD
"Yet I have left seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not knelt to Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed him."The verb “remained” here and “I have left” in 1 Kings 19:18 share the Hebrew root שאר (sha’ar), meaning to remain or be left behind. The people and circumstances differ, but the root connects both verses through the language of a remainder that survives.
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