What Does Joshua 21:29 Mean?
Jarmuth with her pastures, En-gannim 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
Jarmuth with her suburbs, En-gannim with her suburbs; four cities.THE KEY
Provision for a dwelling includes open ground around it, and even the name En-gannim holds a spring beside its gardens.
THE MEANING
Here, a place to dwell includes the land around the city, not only its enclosed center. En-gannim means “spring of gardens,” joining a water source with cultivated life. The verse holds dwelling, surrounding room, and a source of life together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A dwelling is more than its walls: the surrounding room and resources are part of its provision.
THE ROOT
מִגְרָשֶׁיהָ
migrasheha
GROWS FROM
גרש
Drive out or expel; מִגְרָשׁ (migrash), the open land around a city, is linked to this root.
“suburbs, open land around a city” in this verse is migrasheha. English “suburbs” suggests a settled district, while the Hebrew word is linked to garash, “drive out.” That connection suggests open land beyond the city’s enclosure, bringing the unbuilt margin into the provision named here.
ALSO GROWS
garash: Drive out, expel
גָּרַשׁ
This verb carries the root sense behind the word for the open land around a city.
gerush: Expulsion; divorce
גֵּרוּשׁ
The same root can describe someone being driven away, revealing the spatial force held alongside the word for open land.
עֵין גַּנִּים
Ein-Gannim
GROWS FROM
עין
Eye; spring or source of water.
“En-gannim, “spring of gardens”” in this verse is Ein-Gannim. The name En-gannim joins a spring with gardens. The same Hebrew word עין (ayin) means both “eye” and “spring,” connecting an opening in the landscape with the source from which water flows.
ALSO GROWS
ayin: Eye
עַיִן
It shares its spelling with the word for a spring, linking the name’s water source with an opening or source.
ein: Spring, source of water
עֵין
This is the form heard in En-gannim, whose full name means “spring of gardens.”
יַרְמוּת
Yarmuth
GROWS FROM
רום
Rise; be high.
Jarmuth is commonly understood as “height” or “elevation,” and is associated with רום (rum), “to be high.” Its name carries elevation into this list of places, beside En-gannim’s spring and gardens.
ALSO GROWS
ram: High, elevated
רָם
This adjective grows from the same root and echoes the height carried in Jarmuth’s name.
marom: Height, high place
מָרוֹם
This noun shares the root and makes the name’s sense of elevation explicit.
THE PATTERN
A place given for service is provisioned beyond its central dwelling, with the space and material support its life requires.
The cities shall be theirs to settle in, and the pasturelands shall be for their cattle, for their goods, and for all their beasts.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.So also the Lord has arranged that those who proclaim the good news should live from the good news.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.The Hebrew word מִגְרָשׁ (migrash), “open land around a city,” appears in both passages. Numbers names what that surrounding land provides, letting the “suburbs” here read as part of the dwelling’s practical provision.
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