What Does Joshua 21:35 Mean?
Dimnah with her pastures, Nahalal 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
Dimnah with her suburbs, Nahalal with her suburbs; four cities.THE KEY
The “suburbs” are open land around each city, so a dwelling includes space for life to extend beyond its center.
THE MEANING
A place to dwell comes with open ground around it. Belonging here includes both an inhabited center and the space beyond it.
THE ROOT
מִגְרָשֶׁיהָ
migrāshehā
GROWS FROM
ג־ר־שׁ
g-r-sh
Drive out, send away, expel.
“suburbs” in this verse is migrāshehā. The Hebrew מִגְרָשׁ (migrash) means the open land around a city, especially pastureland. Its root also carries the sense of driving outward, giving the verse a picture of dwelling that reaches beyond the city’s center.
ALSO GROWS
gārash: Drive out, expel.
גָּרַשׁ
This verb shows the root’s outward movement; in מִגְרָשׁ, that movement is associated with the open land extending around a city.
gerūshāh: A divorced or put-away woman.
גְּרוּשָׁה
This word also belongs to the root’s family of sending away, showing its concrete sense of movement outward.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling includes the open ground set around it, so habitation reaches beyond its built center.
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.Unto those left behind among the sons of Merari were given out of the tribe of Zebulun, Rimmono with her pasturelands, and Tabor with her pasturelands.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 מִגְרָשׁ (migrash), meaning the open land around a city, rendered “suburbs.” Numbers states the pairing directly: a place to dwell and the surrounding open ground belong together.
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