What Does Joshua 13:9 Mean?
From Aroer, which is upon the lip of the stream Arnon, and the city that is in the midst of the stream, and all the level ground of Medeba to Dibon.
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
From Aroer, that is upon the bank of the river Arnon, and the city that is in the midst of the river, and all the plain of Medeba unto Dibon;THE KEY
The river’s bank is called a “lip” in Hebrew, the same word that can name the edge of speech.
THE MEANING
The territory takes shape through the Arnon’s lip, a city within its channel, the open plain of Medeba, and the endpoint at Dibon. Edge, interior, and expanse all belong to one traceable boundary.
THE ROOT
שְׂפַת
sefat
GROWS FROM
שפה
sh-p-h
Lip; by extension, the edge of a body of water, and language.
The river’s bank is literally its “lip.” The same Hebrew word connects a water’s edge with the lips that form speech, so the boundary is pictured as a contour rather than an abstract line.
ALSO GROWS
sefatayim: Lips.
שְׂפָתַיִם
This plural form makes the bodily image explicit: the river’s bank shares its word with the edges of the mouth.
safah: Lip; language or speech.
שָׂפָה
The word for the river’s edge also names the human capacity to speak, joining the landscape’s contour to the edge that shapes words.
מִישֹׁר
mishor
GROWS FROM
ישר
y-sh-r
To be straight, level, or upright.
“level ground” in this verse is mishor. The “plain” carries the sense of levelness found in the root’s other forms. The boundary is described not only by the river’s edge but by the character of the ground it crosses.
ALSO GROWS
yashar: Straight, level, or upright.
יָשָׁר
This adjective shares the plain’s root of straightness and levelness, revealing the terrain’s quality beneath the English place description.
mishor: A level place or plain.
מִישׁוֹר
This form names the level expanse itself, showing how the root’s sense of straightness becomes a description of land.
THE PATTERN
A territory becomes traceable through named edges, limits, and landmarks.
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.You set a boundary they may not cross; they do not return to cover the earth.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
That I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand on the lip of the sea; and your seed will possess the gate of his enemies.The riverbank here and the “sea shore” there use the Hebrew word for lip. Both passages picture a water’s edge as a contour, linking this boundary to the very word that can also mean speech.
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