What Does Joshua 15:50 Mean?
And Anab, and Eshtemoh, and Anim,
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 Anab, and Eshtemoh, and Anim,THE KEY
A bare list becomes a living landscape when its names carry fruit and hearing inside them.
THE MEANING
Anab (עֲנָב, ʿAnav) is the Hebrew word for “grape”; Eshtemoh (אֶשְׁתְּמֹה, ʾEshtemoh) is commonly linked with hearing or obedience, while Anim (עֲנִים, ʿĀnîm) has an uncertain derivation. The names let fruit and attentive hearing sound through a landscape that stands before you without explanation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
These place-names are empty labels with no meaning beyond locating a place.
THE ROOT
עֲנָב
ʿAnav
GROWS FROM
ענב
Grape; grape cluster.
Anab is also the ordinary Hebrew word for a grape, so a place-name in this list is also a fruit word. The English name conceals that the landscape carries the same seed that appears as a cluster of grapes elsewhere.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēnāḇ: Grape.
עֵנָב
This singular form is the word carried in the place-name Anab.
ʿănāḇîm: Grapes.
עֲנָבִים
The plural appears in the cluster of grapes in Numbers 13:23, turning the name’s fruit into something visible and shared.
אֶשְׁתְּמֹה
ʾEshtemoh
GROWS FROM
שמע
Hear, listen, heed; respond to what is heard.
Eshtemoh is commonly associated with שמע, the root of hearing and heeding. This association holds attentive response inside a place-name: listening is more than sound arriving; it receives and answers.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
The word’s responsive sense gives Eshtemoh’s association with hearing the force of attention that takes in what it hears.
shemuʿah: Report; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
A report is received and carried onward, extending the root’s movement from hearing to response.
THE PATTERN
Scripture compresses the nature of a person or place into its name.
And out of the ground the LORD God shaped every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called every living soul, that was its name.And God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM. And he said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.And she will bring forth a son, and you will call his name Jesus, the LORD's deliverance, for he will deliver his people from their missing.THE THREAD
And they came to the brook of Eshcol, and cut from there a branch with one cluster of grapes; and they lifted it between two on a staff, and they took of the pomegranates and of the figs.Anab shares the Hebrew grape word ענב (ʿanav) with the “grapes” in this verse, עֲנָבִים (ʿănāḇîm). The place-name opens into a visible cluster: the name and the fruit share one seed.
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