What Does Joshua 11:9 Mean?
And Joshua did to them as the LORD commanded him, and he hamstrung their horses, and burned their chariots with fire.
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 did unto them as the LORD bade him: he houghed their horses, and burnt their chariots with fire.THE KEY
The verse names Joshua as Yehoshua, “YHWH delivers,” then shows this deliverance as uprooting the enemy’s mobility and burning its chariots.
THE MEANING
This verse shows victory carried through in material terms: the horses are hamstrung, and the chariots are burned. The Hebrew verb for “houghed” grows from a root meaning “uproot,” so the scene removes the army’s mobility at its source and consumes the machines that carry it.
THE ROOT
עִקֵּר
ʿiqqēr
GROWS FROM
עקר
ʿ-q-r
To uproot or pull up by the roots; in this verb form, to hamstring.
“hamstrung” in this verse is ʿiqqēr. The verb for hamstringing grows from the root for uprooting, picturing the horse’s capacity for war as pulled out at its source. The same root family includes barrenness: here, the horses are rendered unable to serve the army’s purpose.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāqar: To uproot, pull up by the roots.
עָקַר
This is the root’s basic image: something is removed at its source, as the horses’ military use is cut away.
ʿāqār: Barren; unable to produce offspring.
עָקָר
This branch carries the sense of being made unproductive, echoing how the horses are rendered unable to carry the army forward.
יְהוֹשֻׁעַ
Yehoshua
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-š-ʿ
To deliver or bring out from danger; Yehoshua means “YHWH delivers.”
“Joshua” in this verse is Yehoshua. The name is more than a label: Yehoshua carries the nature of deliverance from YHWH. The verse sets that name beside a severe act, here, deliverance includes disabling the horses and burning the chariots.
ALSO GROWS
yāšaʿ: To deliver, bring out from danger.
יָשַׁע
This is the action carried in Yehoshua’s name, placed here beside the removal of the opposing army’s means of movement.
yešūʿāh: Deliverance.
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun shares the name’s root and makes the verse’s concrete, costly form of deliverance visible.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes the end of military power concrete by disabling, breaking, burning, or reshaping the instruments that carry it.
And David seized from him a thousand chariots, and seven hundred horsemen, and twenty thousand men on foot; and David hamstrung all the chariot horses, but left a hundred chariots from among them.He halts wars to the edge of the earth; he breaks the bow, and cuts the spear in two; he burns the wagons in the fire.And he shall judge among the nations, and shall set right many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they train for war anymore.THE THREAD
And David seized from him a thousand chariots, and seven hundred horsemen, and twenty thousand men on foot; and David hamstrung all the chariot horses, but left a hundred chariots from among them.David’s account uses the same Hebrew root, עקר (ʿāqar), rendered “houghed,” for disabling chariot horses. That repeated root turns Joshua’s unusual English word into a recurring image: the horses are uprooted from military use while the chariots are burned.
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