What Does Joshua 15:30 Mean?
And Eltolad, and Chesil, and Hormah,
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 Eltolad, and Chesil, and Hormah,THE KEY
Three place names turn a bare list into a map of generations, folly, and what is devoted to destruction.
THE MEANING
Your ground holds what brings forth life, what clouds discernment, and what is set apart for destruction. These meanings share one geography; the names make the places you inhabit carry more than coordinates.
THE ROOT
חָרְמָה
Ḥormāh
GROWS FROM
חרם
To place under a ban or devote, often to destruction.
Hormah carries the force of being set apart under a ban. The same root appears in the phrase translated “utterly destroyed,” tying the place name to an act of irrevocable devotion.
ALSO GROWS
ḥērem: A ban; something devoted or placed under the ban.
חֵרֶם
This noun shows the root’s sense of a thing set apart beyond ordinary use.
ḥāram: To place under a ban or devote to destruction.
חָרַם
This verb is used in Numbers 21:3, where the place is named Hormah after the act.
אֶלְתּוֹלַד
Eltolad
GROWS FROM
ילד
To give birth, beget, or bring forth.
Eltolad is commonly glossed “God of generations,” with its second element linked to ילד, birth and begetting. The root gathers birth, children, and generations into one seed, giving the place name the sense of life that comes forth.
ALSO GROWS
yalad: To bear or beget.
יָלַד
The verb names the act of bringing forth that lies beneath the name’s generational sense.
toledot: Generations or descendants.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This form expands birth into the generations that proceed from it.
yeladim: Children.
יְלָדִים
The root’s most concrete branch makes the name’s generative sense personal.
כְּסִיל
Kesil
GROWS FROM
כסל
To be foolish or dull in discernment.
“Chesil” in this verse is Kesil. Kesil is the ordinary Hebrew word for a fool, and the same form also names the constellation Orion. The town name therefore carries folly as a possible Hebrew sense, though the verse does not say why the place bears it.
ALSO GROWS
kesil: A fool.
כְּסִיל
This common noun gives the place name its direct association with folly.
kesilut: Foolishness.
כְּסִילוּת
This abstract form turns the same quality into a condition, extending the root’s sense beyond a person.
THE PATTERN
Scripture’s names can compress the nature or defining event of a place or person into a word.
And he called the name of that place Bethel, house of God; but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.And he called the name of the place Massah, the testing, and Meribah, the striving, because of the striving of the children of Israel, and because they tested the LORD, saying, Is the LORD in our midst, or not?And he led him to Jesus. And Jesus, fixing his gaze on him, said, You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas, the rock.THE THREAD
And the LORD heard and responded to the voice of Israel, and gave the Canaanites into their hand, and they devoted them and their cities to destruction, and the name of that place was called Hormah, the devoted place.Hormah shares the root חרם with “utterly destroyed” in this verse. Here the place is named after the act, so its name preserves the root’s sense of being set apart under the ban.
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