What Does Joshua 15:25 Mean?
And Hazor, Hadattah, and Kerioth, Hezron, which is Hazor,
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 Hazor, Hadattah, and Kerioth, and Hezron, which is Hazor,THE KEY
Hazor and Hezron share the root for an enclosed settlement, so the place names carry an echo of habitation inside the map.
THE MEANING
This verse makes place particular through names with meaning beneath the map. Hazor and Hezron share the consonants of a Hebrew word for a courtyard or village enclosure, while Hadattah carries the sense “new.” The line holds a named place and the language of settlement together.
THE ROOT
חָצוֹר
Ḥāṣôr
GROWS FROM
ח־צ־ר
ḥ-ṣ-r
Enclosure, courtyard, or settled village.
“Hazor / Hezron” in this verse is Ḥāṣôr. Hazor and Hezron share the consonants ח־צ־ר, the word-family of an enclosed place or village. The verse’s “which is Hazor” makes the naming itself part of the map: one place is identified through another name.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṣēr: Courtyard or village enclosure.
חָצֵר
This ordinary word carries the same settled-place sense found in the names Hazor and Hezron.
ḥăṣērîm: Villages or enclosures.
חֲצֵרִים
The plural keeps the root’s sense of bounded, inhabited places visible across the word-family.
חֲדַתָּה
Ḥădattāh
GROWS FROM
ח־ד־שׁ
ḥ-d-š
Newness; to be new or renewed.
Hadattah carries the sense “new,” from the Semitic word-family of newness. Beside a name rooted in settled enclosure, it gives the list a small but striking layer: a place can be named through both its established character and its newness.
ALSO GROWS
ḥādāš: New.
חָדָשׁ
This is the Hebrew adjective in the same newness word-family as Hadattah.
ḥōdeš: New moon or month.
חֹדֶשׁ
The word for a month shares the root, carrying newness into the recurring renewal of the calendar.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes habitation tangible by naming places and marking their bounds.
And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as you come to Gerar, to Gaza; as you come, to Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even to Lasha.And the lot of the tribe of the children of Benjamin came up according to their families, and the border of their lot came out between the children of Judah and the children of Joseph.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
My living soul pines, even runs out, for the courts of the LORD. My heart and my flesh ring out for the living God.The Hebrew חָצֵר (ḥāṣēr, courtyard or village) word-family behind Hazor and Hezron also appears in חַצְרוֹת (ḥaṣērôt, courts) here. A root that names settlements on the map also names the courts longed for in the psalm.
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