What Does Joshua 15:36 Mean?
And Shaaraim, and Adithaim, and Gederah, and Gederothaim; fourteen cities with their courtyards.
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 Sharaim, and Adithaim, and Gederah, and Gederothaim; fourteen cities with their villages:THE KEY
The place names preserve a landscape of gates and enclosures, where belonging has both passages and boundaries.
THE MEANING
Your inheritance is not an unnamed expanse: it has thresholds, enclosures, cities, and villages. The verse holds the central places together with the smaller settlements around them, giving belonging a distinct shape. Its names still let you see a landscape marked by passage and boundary.
THE ROOT
גְּדֵרָה
gederah
GROWS FROM
גדר
To fence or wall in; to form an enclosure.
Gederah and Gederothaim share the same root, with Gederothaim carrying the sense of paired enclosures. English presents separate place names, while Hebrew keeps the image of bounded space audible in both.
ALSO GROWS
gader: A fence or wall.
גָּדֵר
The basic boundary word shows the image carried by these place names.
gederah: An enclosure or pen.
גְּדֵרָה
This is the form behind one of the named settlements.
gederothayim: Two enclosures.
גְּדֵרוֹתַיִם
The related name repeats the enclosure image in a paired form.
שַׁעֲרַיִם
sha'arayim
GROWS FROM
שער
A gate or entrance; a passage through a boundary.
Sharaim is commonly understood as “two gates,” from sha’ar with a dual ending. Its name makes passage part of the landscape: an enclosure is not only a boundary, but also a place with an entrance.
ALSO GROWS
sha'ar: A gate or entrance.
שַׁעַר
This singular form reveals the threshold inside the place name.
she'arim: Gates.
שְׁעָרִים
The plural form echoes Sharaim’s image of multiple entrances.
THE PATTERN
A place is held together by boundaries that protect it and gates that allow passage.
For he has braced the bars of your gates; he has blessed your children within you.A city broken through, with no wall, is a man who has no hold on his breath.And its gates are never shut by day, for there is no night there.THE THREAD
Open to me the gates of alignment; I enter them, and I extend my hands to the LORD.Sharaim carries the Hebrew word for gate in its name; the psalm uses that same word at the threshold of entry. Joshua’s list names gates as part of the shape of inhabited land, while the psalm shows a gate being opened.
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