What Does Joshua 24:26 Mean?
And Joshua wrote these words in the scroll of the instruction of God, and took a great stone, and raised it up there under the oak that was by the set-apart place of the LORD.
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 Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak, that was by the sanctuary of the LORD.THE KEY
דְּבָרִים (devarim, words) can also mean matters, while סֵפֶר (sefer, book) belongs to the root of counting and recounting: memory becomes something with a place.
THE MEANING
Words can take durable form in your world: they are written and set beside a great stone under an oak, near the sanctuary. אֶבֶן (even, stone) carries the wordplay אָב (av, father) + בֵּן (ben, son), holding father and son together in the image of a witness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
What is spoken vanishes unless someone keeps repeating it.
THE ROOT
דְּבָרִים
devarim
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; word or matter
דָּבָר (davar, word or matter) holds speech and the matter spoken under one consonantal seed. Here the words are written in a book and anchored beside a physical stone.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word; matter or thing
דָּבָר
The same word can name both what is said and the matter being spoken about.
dibber: Spoke; uttered
דִּבֵּר
The spoken act and the words preserved in writing grow from the same root.
סֵפֶר
sefer
GROWS FROM
ספר
To count, enumerate, or recount
“scroll” in this verse is sefer. סֵפֶר (sefer, book) shares its consonants with סָפַר (safar, count or recount) and סוֹפֵר (sofer, scribe), binding a book to the acts of counting and telling. The verse’s סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה (sefer torah, book of instruction) gives what is preserved a form that can stand beside a stone.
ALSO GROWS
safar: Count, recount, tell
סָפַר
The written record preserves what can be recounted.
sofer: Scribe; one who records
סוֹפֵר
The scribe makes words durable by giving them written form.
mispar: Number; count
מִסְפָּר
The same root connects a written record with what can be enumerated and kept in order.
THE PATTERN
Words become a public witness when they are preserved in a tangible form that can remain in view.
Take this book of instruction, and set it at the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there as a witness against you.And Joshua said to all the people, Look, this stone shall be a witness for us, for it has heard all the words of the LORD that he spoke with us. It shall be a witness among you, lest you deny your God.And he answered and said, "I tell you, if these should hold their tongues, the stones will cry out."THE THREAD
And Joshua said to all the people, Look, this stone shall be a witness for us, for it has heard all the words of the LORD that he spoke with us. It shall be a witness among you, lest you deny your God.The next verse makes explicit what this one stages: the stone is a witness because it has “heard all the words.” Both passages use the Hebrew root דבר (d-b-r), joining the written record to the words the stone bears witness to.
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