What Does Joshua 16:3 Mean?

And it went down seaward to the border of Japhleti, to the border of lower Beth-Horon, and to Gezer, and its goings out were at the sea.

Joshua 16:3 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And goeth down westward to the coast of Japhleti, unto the coast of Beth-horon the nether, and to Gezer: and the goings out thereof are at the sea.

THE KEY

The boundary faces the sea from the start: what the KJV calls “westward” is literally “sea-ward,” and its “goings out” arrive at that same sea.

THE MEANING

Here a portion becomes legible as a route: the border descends through named places, faces sea-ward, and reaches the sea. Its endpoint is called a going-out, so the boundary has both a limit and an outlet.

THE ROOT

תֹצְאֹתָיו

totsa'otav

GROWS FROM

יצא

y-ṣ-ʾ

To go out, come forth, emerge; its derivatives can name what comes forth or the point of exit.

English “goings out” can sound like endpoints, but ⁨תֹצְאֹתָיו⁩ is built from ⁨יָצָא⁩, “to go out”: the border is described by its going-forth. The same root names the people’s going out from Egypt, so an outward edge and an emergence from confinement share one Hebrew seed.

ALSO GROWS

yatsa: To go out, come forth.

יָצָא

This verb supplies the seed of the border’s “goings out,” making the endpoint a movement outward.

motsa: An outlet; what comes forth.

מֹצָא

This noun from the same root can name a point of emergence, illuminating the border’s ending at the sea.

THE PATTERN

Scripture’s language of going out treats an edge as a point where movement opens outward.

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was split and became four heads.

Genesis 2:10 · SDVThe river’s going out begins a course that spreads beyond its point of origin.

And the border turned from there, and went around the edge of the sea southward, from the hill that lies before Bethhoron southward. And its goings out were at Kirjathbaal, which is Kirjathjearim, a city of the children of Judah. This quarter was the west side.

Joshua 18:14 · SDVA neighboring boundary passage also names its endpoint as its “goings out.”

I am the door. Through me, if anyone enters, he shall be delivered, and shall go in and out, and shall find pasture.

John 10:9 · SDVThe door frames an edge as a passage through which movement continues.

THE THREAD

And it came to be at the end of four hundred and thirty years, and on this very bone of the day it came to be, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.

Exodus 12:41 · SDV

The border’s “goings out” come from ⁨יָצָא⁩ (yatsa, “to go out”), the same root used when the hosts of the LORD “went out” from Egypt. Here the root marks a sea-facing endpoint; there it names a going-out from constriction, joining a geographic edge to an emergence into freedom.

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