What Does Joshua 13:1 Mean?
Now Joshua was old and had come into his days, and the LORD said to him, You are old and have come into your days, and there remains yet very much land to be possessed.
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
Now Joshua was old and stricken in years; and the LORD said unto him, Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.THE KEY
The years can be nearly spent while the inheritance remains materially unpossessed.
THE MEANING
Your years can be advanced while a great deal remains unfinished. Here the remainder is concrete land still to be possessed; the verb also carries the force of dispossession, so the unfinished task is not made gentle or abstract. Age and incompletion stand together without one canceling the other.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that reaching old age means the work must already be complete is undone here: Joshua is old, and very much land remains to be taken.
THE ROOT
לְרִשְׁתָּהּ
le-rishtah to possess
GROWS FROM
ירשׁ
y-r-sh
To take possession of, inherit, or dispossess.
This root can name inheriting land and dispossessing those who hold it, so “possessed” is not passive ownership. The sentence keeps the conquest concrete: the land still to be taken has not become a completed inheritance merely because Joshua’s days are advanced.
ALSO GROWS
morashah: Heritage or inheritance.
מוֹרָשָׁה
It shows possession as an inheritance, not only as control.
hōrîsh: To dispossess or drive out.
הוֹרִישׁ
This branch preserves the taking from those already in the land; conquest remains visible in the word’s range.
נִשְׁאֲרָה
nish’arah remained
GROWS FROM
שׁאר
sh-ʾ-r
To remain or be left over.
“remaineth” in this verse is nish’arah remained. This verb shares its root with words for a remainder and a remnant. The land is still there as what remains outside possession; Joshua’s age does not make it disappear or declare it complete.
ALSO GROWS
she’ar: The rest or remainder.
שְׁאָר
It makes the remaining land sound like what is still left in the field.
she’erit: What remains; a remnant.
שְׁאֵרִית
It echoes the verse’s insistence that something is still present and unfinished.
THE PATTERN
A person’s present limit and an unfinished future can be true at once.
They still bear fruit in gray hair; they are fat and green.Not that I have already taken hold, or have already been made complete. But I pursue, if somehow I may seize that for which I was also seized by Jesus the Anointed One.In trust all these died, not having brought home the promises, but seeing them from far off, and embracing them, and saying together that they were strangers and those passing through on the earth.THE THREAD
And he said to him, I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to take hold of it.“To inherit it” and “to be possessed” use the same root, ירשׁ (y-r-sh), meaning to take possession of, inherit, or dispossess. Genesis names the land as an inheritance; Joshua names how much of it still remains outside possession.
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