What Does Joshua 13:20 Mean?

And Bethpeor, and Ashdothpisgah, and Bethjeshimoth.

Joshua 13:20 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And Beth-peor, and Ashdoth-pisgah, and Beth-jeshimoth,

THE KEY

These names turn a list of places into a landscape of houses, openings, slopes, and wastes.

THE MEANING

This list makes the land legible through the images carried by its names. Two places begin with beth, “house of”: one holds Peor, whose name echoes an opening, and one holds Jeshimoth, the wastes; Ashdoth-Pisgah marks the slopes of the summit. The reader’s own landscape, too, carries meaning in what it houses and in the terrain between.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The belief that place-names are only labels fades here: these names carry images of dwelling, opening, slope, and waste.

THE ROOT

פְּעוֹר

Pəʿōr

GROWS FROM

פער

p-ʿ-r

To open wide or gape.

Peor echoes paʿar, “to gape” or “open wide,” so Beth-peor carries an image of an opening within its name. The sound remains in English, while the root makes that image visible.

ALSO GROWS

paʿar: Open wide or gape.

פָּעַר

This verb shows the opening-image carried by the name Peor.

paʿărah: Opened wide.

פָּעֲרָה

This form of the same root makes the image in Peor an action: something gaping open.

בֵּית

Bēt the construct

GROWS FROM

בית

b-y-t

House or dwelling.

“Beth” is the house-word appearing at the start of both Beth-peor and Beth-jeshimoth. The repeated word gathers an opening and a wasteland into named dwellings.

ALSO GROWS

Bēt-Pəʿōr: House of Peor.

בֵּית־פְּעוֹר

The house-word encloses the opening-image carried by Peor.

Bēt hayəšīmōt: House of the wastes.

בֵּית הַיְשִׁימֹת

The same house-word gathers the wastes into a named dwelling.

הַיְשִׁימֹת

Hayəšīmōt

GROWS FROM

ישם

y-sh-m

To be desolate or become waste.

Jeshimoth holds the language of desolation inside a place-name. Paired with Beth, it becomes “house of the wastes,” so the name carries a landscape rather than a bare location.

ALSO GROWS

Yəšīmōn: Wilderness or wasteland.

יְשִׁימוֹן

This related form makes the desolate landscape within Jeshimoth clearer.

Hayəšīmōt: The wastes; the place-name Jeshimoth.

הַיְשִׁימֹת

The name in this verse preserves the same association with desolation.

THE PATTERN

A place-name can hold the character of what is found there, so geography also speaks in meaning.

And he called the name of that place Bethel, house of God; but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.

Genesis 28:19 · SDVBethel names a place as “house of God,” making its name carry an interpretation of the encounter there.

And they came to Marah, and could not drink its waters, for they were bitter; so its name was called Marah, bitterness.

Exodus 15:23 · SDVMarah names a place through the bitterness of its waters, so the landscape holds its quality in its name.

And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is the camp of God. And he called the name of that place Mahanaim, the two camps.

Genesis 32:2 · SDVMahanaim names the place through the image of a host, showing how a name can hold what the reader perceives there.

THE THREAD

Therefore the grave has widened her throat, and opened her mouth without measure. Their finery, their crowd, their roar, and the one who leaps, go down into her.

Isaiah 5:14 · SDV

Joshua preserves Peor as a place-name; Isaiah uses the same ⁨פער⁩ (p-ʿ-r) root in ⁨פָּעֲרָה⁩ (paʿărah, “opened wide”) for a mouth opened without measure. That verb makes the opening carried by Peor audible as an image of what gapes.

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