What Does Joshua 13:5 Mean?
And the land of the Giblites, and all Lebanon toward the sunrising, from Baalgad under Mount Hermon to the entering into Hamath.
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 the land of the Giblites, and all Lebanon, toward the sunrising, from Baal-gad under mount Hermon unto the entering into Hamath.THE KEY
The eastern boundary carries motion in its name: it faces the place where the sun rises.
THE MEANING
Named places give the land a visible shape, while the rising sun marks its eastern face. What is held out as inheritance has contours, not an undefined expanse.
THE ROOT
מִזְרָח
mizrach
GROWS FROM
זרח
to rise, shine, break forth
“sunrising” in this verse is mizrach. מִזְרָח (mizrach), “sunrise; east,” grows from זָרַח (zarach), “to rise, shine.” The border faces the sun’s appearing, so its eastern edge carries a sense of emergence.
ALSO GROWS
zarach: to rise, shine
זָרַח
The verb names the sun’s action; the direction is named from where that action begins.
mizrach: sunrise; east
מִזְרָח
The verse’s direction retains the event inside its name: east is the rising place.
THE PATTERN
A named inheritance becomes visible through its edges and directions.
Every place where the sole of your foot treads will be yours. From the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, to the sea at your back will be your border.You station all the borders of the earth; you shape summer and winter.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
From the rising of the sun to its going in, the name of the LORD is praised.Joshua’s מִזְרָח (mizrach), “sunrise; east,” and Psalm 113’s word for “rising” share the root זרח (zarach), “to rise, shine.” Here that rising marks a land’s eastern edge; in the psalm, it stretches across the whole day.
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