What Does Joshua 2:13 Mean?
And that you will keep alive my father, and my mother, and my brothers, and my sisters, and all they have, and snatch our living souls from death.
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 that ye will save alive my father, and my mother, and my brethren, and my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death.THE KEY
The plea joins two acts of rescue: keeping a whole household alive and pulling its living selves out of death’s reach.
THE MEANING
The plea reaches beyond the speaker to parents, siblings, and all that belongs to them. It names death plainly and asks that this whole circle be kept alive and pulled clear.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that rescue concerns only the one who asks: the plea explicitly reaches parents, siblings, and all that is theirs.
THE ROOT
וְהִצַּלְתֶּם
wehiṣṣaltem
GROWS FROM
נצל
natsal
To snatch away, take away, or rescue from danger.
“snatch” in this verse is wehiṣṣaltem. The verb carries a sense of removal, so deliverance is not merely reaching a safe outcome; it is being pulled out of death’s reach. The verse places that extraction alongside keeping the household alive.
ALSO GROWS
hiṣṣîl: Rescue, deliver.
הִצִּיל
This is the same rescue verb family: the plea asks for the threatened household to be brought out of danger.
wayyaṣṣēl: And he took away or recovered.
וַיַּצֵּל
The root’s taking-away sense makes the deliverance here feel like removal from death’s reach.
וְהַחֲיִתֶם
wehaḥayitem
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥāyâ
To live or be alive; in the causative form, to make or keep alive.
“keep alive” in this verse is wehaḥayitem. “Save alive” is a causative form of “live”: the plea is that the family be kept in life. The same root names the living and life itself, keeping preservation attached to actual lives rather than an abstract outcome.
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Alive, living.
חַי
This adjective names the state the plea asks the family to remain in.
ḥayyim: Life, living.
חַיִּים
This noun shares the root of “save alive,” showing that the verb asks for life to continue.
ḥayyah: Living creature.
חַיָּה
The root can name a living being, making the plea’s concern concrete: the lives of real people.
נַפְשֹׁתֵינוּ
nafshotenu
GROWS FROM
נפש
naphash
The living soul or self, a person in their living state.
The plural names a group of living souls, not an abstract tally of survival. The word “our” gathers those threatened lives into a shared fate.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: Living soul; a person as a living being.
נֶפֶשׁ
This singular form shows the living person at the heart of the plural plea.
naphash: Be refreshed, rest.
נָפַשׁ
This related verb describes a living self being refreshed; here the urgent plea is for those selves to be preserved from death.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance in Scripture can widen from one endangered person to the people and household bound up with them.
And the LORD said to Noah, Come, you and all your house into the ark, for I have seen you aligned before my face in this generation.And they said, Lean your weight on the Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, and you will be delivered, you and your house.THE THREAD
And Rahab the harlot, and her father's house, and all that she had, Joshua kept alive. And she has settled in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers that Joshua sent to walk through Jericho.The request’s “keep alive” and the later “saved ... alive” use the same root, חיה (ḥāyâ, live or keep alive). The household named for preservation in the plea is named again among those preserved.
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