What Does Joshua 16:2 Mean?
And it went out from Bethel to Luz, and crossed over to the border of Archi, to Ataroth.
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 goeth out from Beth-el to Luz, and passeth along unto the borders of Archi to Ataroth,THE KEY
A place is mapped not by naming its center alone, but by tracing what goes out from it and where that movement meets an edge.
THE MEANING
You see a line leaving Bethel (בֵּית־אֵל, Bēt-ʾĒl, “house of God”) toward Luz, then tracing the Archite border to Ataroth. Your place becomes legible through the path that leaves it and the edges that path follows.
THE ROOT
וַיֵּצֵא
wayyēṣēʾ
GROWS FROM
יצא
yatsa
To go out, emerge, or issue forth.
“went out” in this verse is wayyēṣēʾ. The root also yields מוֹצָא (mōṣāʾ, “outgoing; source”) and תּוֹצָאָה (tōṣāʾāh, “result; outcome”): what goes out and what comes out share the same seed. Here the border is drawn as a sequence of emergence and passage, so the route itself helps define the place.
ALSO GROWS
mōṣāʾ: A going out or a point from which something issues.
מוֹצָא
It names departure as a source-point, making the border’s route readable as an emergence from Bethel.
tōṣāʾāh: What issues from an action; a result.
תּוֹצָאָה
The same seed links going out with what comes out, so the route is both movement and the shape it yields.
THE PATTERN
What issues from a source gives the surrounding place its shape.
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was split and became four heads.The LORD watches over your going out and your coming in, from now and to the ages.And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob. He will aim us in his ways, and we will walk in his paths, for the instruction shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.THE THREAD
The LORD watches over your going out and your coming in, from now and to the ages.The verb behind “goeth out” shares the root יָצָא (yatsa, “to go out, issue forth”) with the psalm’s “going out.” Joshua traces a route outward through the land; the psalm extends that movement into the reader’s passage out and return.
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