What Does Joshua 23:5 Mean?
And the LORD your God, he shall expel them from before you, and drive them from out of your sight; and you shall take hold of their land, as the LORD your God has spoken to you.
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 the LORD your God, he shall expel them from before you, and drive them from out of your sight; and ye shall possess their land, as the LORD your God hath promised unto you.THE KEY
The Hebrew uses one root for driving them out and possessing their land, binding inheritance to dispossession.
THE MEANING
The verse places you inside a stark transfer: a people is driven from before you, and their land becomes yours. It names this displacement as the LORD’s action and the fulfillment of a promise; the promise does not erase the dispossession.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that promised possession is only receiving something new: this verse binds it to the expulsion of those who already hold the land.
THE ROOT
וִירִשְׁתֶּם
virishtem
GROWS FROM
ירשׁ
To take possession or inherit; in the causative form, to dispossess or drive out.
“take hold of their land” in this verse is virishtem. The KJV’s “drive them out” and “possess their land” look like separate acts, but Hebrew joins them in one root: הוֹרִישׁ (horish, dispossess) and וִירִשְׁתֶּם (virishtem, possess). Gaining the land and removing its prior holders are two sides of the same verb-family here.
ALSO GROWS
vehorish: To drive out or dispossess.
וְהוֹרִישׁ
This is the causative form of the root in the clause about removing the people, linking their expulsion to the possession that follows.
lerishtah: To take possession of or inherit it.
לְרִשְׁתָּהּ
Genesis uses this form for inheriting the land, showing the same root at work in the language of promise.
THE PATTERN
A transfer of land or rule is named from both sides: removal from one holder and possession by another.
And when he had pulled down seven nations in the land of Canaan, he divided their land to them by lot.And you shall speak to him, saying, Thus says the LORD, Have you killed, and also taken hold? And you shall speak to him, saying, Thus says the LORD, In the place where dogs lapped the blood of Naboth, dogs shall lap your blood, even yours.Therefore I say to you, the governance of God will be lifted from you, and given to a nation making its fruits.THE THREAD
And he said to him, I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to take hold of it.Genesis uses the same ירשׁ (yarash, possess or inherit) root for inheriting the land, framing the promise in the language of possession. Joshua makes the other side of that inheritance visible: the land is possessed as its former holders are driven out.
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