What Does Joshua 21:42 Mean?
These cities were every one with their pastures round about them; thus were all these 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
These cities were every one with their suburbs round about them: thus were all these cities.THE KEY
The verse counts the open ground beyond a city’s built center as part of the city itself.
THE MEANING
A dwelling is more than its inhabited center: the open space around it belongs to its shape. What surrounds the place is counted as part of what it is.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that the ground beyond the inhabited center is extra or unclaimed; the surrounding space is included in the allotment.
THE ROOT
מִגְרְשֵׁיהֶן
migrasheihen
GROWS FROM
גרש
Drive out, expel; send outward.
“pastures” in this verse is migrasheihen. The word for the open land around a city belongs to a root family carrying the motion of driving outward. Here that outward space is counted as part of every city’s allotment, not as land beyond its concern.
ALSO GROWS
garash: Drive out, expel.
גָּרַשׁ
This verb makes the root’s outward movement audible in the word for the open ground around the city.
gerushah: A divorced woman; one sent away.
גְּרוּשָׁה
This form carries the root’s sense of being sent out, while the verse uses its related noun for the land extending beyond a city’s built center.
סְבִיבֹתֵיהֶן
sevivoteihen
GROWS FROM
סבב
Turn, circle, go around.
“round about” in this verse is sevivoteihen. The Hebrew word for what lies around the cities grows from a root of circling. Each city is presented together with the space that surrounds it, so its shape includes more than its center.
ALSO GROWS
sābab: Turn, circle, go around.
סָבַב
The verb names the movement expressed by the surrounding space in the verse.
sāvîv: Around, surrounding.
סָבִיב
This related form makes clear that the allotment extends around each city.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling’s shape includes the surrounding space assigned to it.
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.As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people, from now to the ages.And he made from one blood every nation of humankind to settle upon all the face of the earth, marking out their fitted seasons and setting the boundary stones of their dwelling.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.Numbers names the same pair: cities for dwelling and suburbs around them. Joshua’s phrase “every one” gathers that full provision into a single count: each city comes with its surrounding ground.
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