What Does Joshua 19:38 Mean?
And Iron, and Migdalel, Horem, and Beth-anath, and Beth-shemesh; nineteen cities with their villages.
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 Iron, and Migdal-el, Horem, and Beth-anath, and Beth-shemesh; nineteen cities with their villages.THE KEY
Even in a city list, Migdal-el says “tower of God”, and its word for tower grows from the root that also means becoming great.
THE MEANING
The verse presents nineteen cities with their villages as a named, counted landscape. Migdal-el means “tower of God”; Beth-anath and Beth-shemesh mean “house of Anath” and “house of the sun.” The names keep the places’ associations visible within the inheritance.
THE ROOT
מִגְדַּל־אֵל
Migdal-El
GROWS FROM
גדל
To grow, become great, or increase.
Migdal-El means “tower of God,” and its word for tower comes from גדל, the root of growing or becoming great. The name lets a tower and greatness echo within the same word-family.
ALSO GROWS
gādal: To grow or become great.
גָּדַל
This verb makes the root’s sense of increasing audible beneath the place-name.
gādōl: Great or large.
גָּדוֹל
This familiar adjective shares the root with migdal, linking the tower’s height to the idea of greatness.
migdal: Tower.
מִגְדָּל
This is the first element of Migdal-El and the same Hebrew word used for the tower in Genesis 11:4.
THE PATTERN
A name can compress an association of a person or place into a word the text preserves.
And he called the name of that place Bethel, house of God; but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.And he built an altar there, and called the place Elbethel, God of the house, because there God was uncovered to him when he fled from the face of his brother.And he led him to Jesus. And Jesus, fixing his gaze on him, said, You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas, the rock.THE THREAD
And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower with its head in the heavens; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered across the face of the whole earth.The tower here is migdal, the same Hebrew word held in Migdal-El. Genesis joins that tower to making a name and resisting scattering; Joshua’s place-name joins a tower to El.
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