What Does Joshua 24:23 Mean?
Now therefore turn aside the foreign gods that are among you, and bend your heart toward the LORD, God of Israel.
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
Now therefore put away, said he, the strange gods which are among you, and incline your heart unto the LORD God of Israel.THE KEY
The verse makes allegiance a two-part movement: turn rival gods out of your midst, then stretch your heart toward the LORD.
THE MEANING
Rival claims can remain within your life even as your heart turns in another direction. The verse joins removing those claims with extending your inner self toward the LORD God of Israel; allegiance involves both release and orientation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that devotion can coexist unchanged with rival gods kept among you: the verse joins their removal to the heart’s reorientation.
THE ROOT
הַטּוּ
haṭṭû from nāṭâ
GROWS FROM
נ-ט-ה
n-ṭ-h
To stretch, extend, or turn.
“bend” in this verse is haṭṭû from nāṭâ. The word translated “incline” carries the image of extending something in a direction. The verse presents the heart not just as feeling, but as an inner life being actively turned toward the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
nāṭāh yād: Stretch out a hand.
נָטָה יָד
The same verb makes an inward turn an act of extension, like reaching toward something.
nāṭāh ʾōhel: Spread or pitch a tent.
נָטָה אֹהֶל
The verb can describe spreading out a dwelling; here the heart, too, is extended in a direction.
הָסִירוּ
hāsîrû from sûr
GROWS FROM
ס-ו-ר
s-w-r
To turn aside or depart; in its causative form, to make something depart or remove it.
“turn aside” in this verse is hāsîrû from sûr. “Put away” also carries the movement of turning aside or departing. Beside the verb for extending the heart, it makes the verse’s paired motions visible: one thing departs, and the heart turns toward another.
ALSO GROWS
sûr: Turn aside or depart.
סוּר
This branch shows the direction already contained in the idea of putting something away.
hēsîr: Remove; cause to depart.
הֵסִיר
This causative form links removal with making something turn away from its place among you.
THE PATTERN
A heart’s orientation takes shape as rival claims are removed and the inner life is turned toward God.
That he may bend our hearts toward him, to walk in all his ways, and to guard his commandments, and his statutes, and his judgments, which he commanded our fathers.Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD, Turn, and turn yourselves from your idols, and turn your faces away from all your recoiling things.THE THREAD
That he may bend our hearts toward him, to walk in all his ways, and to guard his commandments, and his statutes, and his judgments, which he commanded our fathers.The same Hebrew verb, nāṭâ (נָטָה), means to stretch or extend and appears for the heart’s inclination in both verses. Here the heart is extended toward the LORD; in 1 Kings, that same orientation unfolds into a way of walking.
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