What Does Joshua 21:18 Mean?
Anathoth with her pastures, and Almon with her pastures; four cities.
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
Anathoth with her suburbs, and Almon with her suburbs; four cities.THE KEY
The allotment does not end at the city walls: its open margin belongs to the place of dwelling.
THE MEANING
A dwelling comes with the ground around it: center and margin belong to one provision. The verse counts the cities together with their surrounding open land, holding the inhabited place and the space that sustains it together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the assumption that what lies beyond a city’s built center is surplus; the surrounding commons are part of the allotment itself.
THE ROOT
מִגְרָשׁ
migrash
GROWS FROM
גרש
garash
Drive out, expel; מִגְרָשׁ (migrash) means open or pasture land around a town.
“pastures” in this verse is migrash. The Hebrew word for the town’s open margin shares its consonants with גָּרַשׁ (garash), “to drive out” or “expel.” That root-family gives the word an echo of outward space: the city is named together with the land beyond its built center.
ALSO GROWS
migrash: Open land or pasture around a town.
מִגְרָשׁ
This is the word translated suburbs; it makes the surrounding ground part of the named allotment.
garash: To drive out or expel.
גָּרַשׁ
The shared root gives the margin an outward resonance, while the verse uses migrash for the open land belonging to the city.
עַלְמוֹן
ʿAlmōn
GROWS FROM
עלם
Conceal, hide; Almon is commonly connected with hiddenness.
The name עַלְמוֹן (ʿAlmōn), commonly linked to עָלַם (ʿālam), “to conceal,” carries the sense of a hidden place. Yet the verse names and counts Almon openly among the cities of the allotment, bringing the hidden-named place into view.
ALSO GROWS
ʿālam: To conceal or hide.
עָלַם
This verb supplies the hiddenness commonly heard in the place name Almon.
neʿlam: Hidden or concealed.
נֶעְלָם
This related form makes the name’s sense of hiddenness concrete.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling’s provision includes the open ground around it, joining the settlement and its sustaining space in one allotment.
The cities shall be theirs to settle in, and the pasturelands shall be for their cattle, for their goods, and for all their beasts.But the field of the pasturelands of their cities shall not be sold, for it is their holding of the ages.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
The cities shall be theirs to settle in, and the pasturelands shall be for their cattle, for their goods, and for all their beasts.This verse uses the same Hebrew word, מִגְרָשׁ (migrash), for the open ground around a city and names what that space serves. Joshua’s brief list opens into a whole place to dwell: the city and the land sustaining life around it are named together.
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