What Does Joshua 15:47 Mean?
Ashdod with her daughters and courtyards, Gaza with her daughters and courtyards, to the streambed of Egypt, and the great sea, and its border.
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
Ashdod with her towns and her villages, Gaza with her towns and her villages, unto the river of Egypt, and the great sea, and the border thereof:THE KEY
The stream at the inheritance’s edge shares a Hebrew root with the word for inheritance, binding the boundary to what is possessed.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of a defined inheritance as a populated whole: Ashdod and Gaza stand with their towns and villages, while a stream and the great sea mark its reach. The border gives that community a visible shape, with its settlements inside the same described whole.
THE ROOT
נַחַל
naḥal
GROWS FROM
נחל
The verb means to inherit or possess; the noun also names a stream or wadi.
“the streambed of Egypt” in this verse is naḥal. The stream at the edge shares its consonantal root with נַחֲלָה (naḥalah), meaning inheritance. The watercourse and the allotted possession are joined at the word level.
ALSO GROWS
naḥal: Stream or wadi
נַחַל
This is the watercourse that marks the territory’s reach.
naḥalah: Inheritance or allotted possession
נַחֲלָה
The same root links the boundary stream to the inheritance whose extent it helps define.
גְּבוּל
gevul
GROWS FROM
גבל
To border, bound, or set an extent.
“its border” in this verse is gevul. Gevul can name a border and the territory it bounds, so the edge gives shape to a whole. Here, settlements and natural markers together make that extent legible.
ALSO GROWS
gābal: To border or bound
גָּבַל
The verbal form shows the boundary as something that marks an extent.
gevulah: Territory or boundary
גְּבוּלָה
This related form holds both the edge and the bounded land in view.
עַזָּה
Azzah
GROWS FROM
עזז
To be strong or mighty.
Gaza’s Hebrew name echoes strength. The verse places this strong-named city among its towns and villages, within a larger landscape marked by stream and sea.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaz: Strong or fierce
עַז
This adjective carries the strength echoed in Gaza’s Hebrew name.
ʿoz: Strength or might
עֹז
This noun gives the name’s strength a concrete sense of power.
THE PATTERN
The extent of an inheritance becomes legible through named bounds that hold habitation within them.
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.When the One Above allotted the nations their inheritance, when he split apart the sons of Adam, he stationed the borders of the peoples by the count of the children of Israel.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
And the border of the children of Reuben was Jordan, and the border. This was the inheritance of the children of Reuben according to their families, the cities and their villages.Here the Jordan marks a border, and the territory is called an inheritance. נַחֲלָה (naḥalah), “inheritance,” shares the root נחל with the stream word in Joshua 15:47, joining the watercourse and the received portion in one word-family.
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