What Does Joshua 21:15 Mean?
And Holon with her pastures, and Debir with her pastures,
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 Holon with her suburbs, and Debir with her suburbs,THE KEY
The verse gives each city its surrounding open ground, making room part of what belonging includes.
THE MEANING
A place is more than its named center; the land around it is part of its shape as a dwelling. Holon and Debir appear together with their suburbs, holding settled place and open ground side by side.
THE ROOT
מִגְרָשׁ
migrash
GROWS FROM
גרש
garash
drive out, expel, send away
“pastures” in this verse is migrash. The word translated “suburbs” names the open ground around a city. Its consonants connect it with the idea of what is driven out beyond a boundary, so the city’s margin is part of its given space.
ALSO GROWS
migrash: pastureland or open ground around a city
מִגְרָשׁ
This is the land named twice in the verse, alongside both towns.
legaresh: to drive out or expel
לְגָרֵשׁ
This verb shares the root and gives the surrounding open ground an image of space beyond the city’s enclosure.
דְּבִיר
Debir
GROWS FROM
דבר
davar
speak, word, utterance
Debir carries the sense of an inner sanctuary or oracle, a place associated with speech. Its connection to the dabar word-family suggests an inward place where a word is held; here that named place sits beside open ground.
ALSO GROWS
davar: word, matter, utterance
דָּבָר
The shared consonants connect Debir’s sanctuary sense with the Hebrew word-family of speech.
debir: inner sanctuary or oracle
דְּבִיר
This word carries the sanctuary sense also heard in the town’s name.
חֹלֹן
Holon
GROWS FROM
חול
ḥol
sand; in a related form, what is common or ordinary
Holon is commonly associated with ḥol, meaning sand. Its name keeps the place close to ordinary earth, while the repeated suburbs name the open land around it.
ALSO GROWS
ḥol: sand
חוֹל
This is the word commonly connected with the place-name Holon.
ḥol: common or ordinary, as distinct from what is set apart
חֹל
The shared consonants add the sense of ground in its everyday, unadorned state.
THE PATTERN
A place is given with the surrounding space that lets it be inhabited.
Command the children of Israel to give the Levites cities to settle in from the inheritance of their holding, and you shall also give the Levites pasturelands for the cities round about them.Of this there shall be for the sanctuary five hundred in length, and five hundred in breadth, square all around. And fifty cubits all around for its pasturelands.THE THREAD
Command the children of Israel to give the Levites cities to settle in from the inheritance of their holding, and you shall also give the Levites pasturelands for the cities round about them.Both verses use the same Hebrew noun, מִגְרָשׁ (migrash), meaning the open pastureland around a city. Numbers makes explicit what this verse shows by naming each town with that surrounding space.
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