What Does Joshua 13:19 Mean?
And Kirjathaim, and Sibmah, and Zareth Shahar in the mountain of the valley.
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 Kirjathaim, and Sibmah, and Zareth-shahar in the mount of the valley,THE KEY
קִרְיָתַיִם (Qiryathayim, “two cities”) names a paired settlement, while “mount of the valley” holds height and depth together.
THE MEANING
This inheritance takes shape through named places and landforms: the verse places towns beside a mountain and a valley. The Hebrew word עֵמֶק (ʿemeq, “valley”) shares its root with the word for depth, so the lowland is also named by its depth.
THE ROOT
הָעֵמֶק
ha’emeq
GROWS FROM
עמק
ʿ-m-q
To be deep; depth.
English names the landform, but Hebrew’s עמק (ʿ-m-q) also yields עֹמֶק (ʿomeq, “depth”) and עָמֹק (ʿamoq, “deep”). The valley here is not only a shape in the landscape: the same root names depth itself.
ALSO GROWS
ʿomeq: Depth.
עֹמֶק
This noun shares its root with עֵמֶק (ʿemeq, “valley”), showing that the terrain’s name is also a depth word.
ʿamoq: Deep.
עָמֹק
This adjective carries the root into anything deep, not only a geographic hollow.
THE PATTERN
An inheritance becomes legible through named places and the terrain or boundaries that hold them.
The cords fall to me in sweet places; indeed, my inheritance is beautiful.And he made from one blood every nation of humankind to settle upon all the face of the earth, marking out their fitted seasons and setting the boundary stones of their dwelling.THE THREAD
They search out crookedness; they finish a close search, and the inward of each one, and the heart, is deep.The root עמק (ʿ-m-q, “to be deep”) names the valley in Joshua and describes the heart as deep here. The same root opens from the depth of the land into the depth of the inward thought.
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