What Does Joshua 24:29 Mean?
And it came to pass after these words, that Joshua, son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, being a hundred and ten years old.
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 it came to pass after these things, that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, being an hundred and ten years old.THE KEY
Joshua’s name carries deliverance, yet the verse calls him a servant and names his death: the bearer of deliverance is still mortal.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to you now as a finite person: devotion does not make a life deathless. Joshua’s name carries the language of deliverance, yet the verse states plainly that he dies at 110. His identity as the LORD’s servant and his mortality occupy one sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that being the LORD’s servant makes a person immune to death dissolves here: Joshua is named as the LORD’s servant, and he dies.
THE ROOT
יְהוֹשֻׁעַ
Yehoshua
GROWS FROM
ישע
yasha
To deliver, to bring out.
“Joshua” in this verse is Yehoshua. The name Yehoshua joins the divine name with the root yasha, carrying the sense “the LORD delivers.” Here that name belongs to a servant whose life ends: deliverance is carried by a person, but the person is not made deathless.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: Deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun from the same root makes the deliverance carried in Joshua’s name visible.
moshia: One who delivers
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This root can name the one who carries out deliverance; the verse places Joshua’s name beside his service and mortality.
עֶבֶד
eved
GROWS FROM
עבד
avad
To work, to serve.
English “servant” can sound like a status label, but the root עבד carries active service and work. Here it names Joshua’s relation to the LORD in the same sentence that names his death.
ALSO GROWS
avad: To serve, to work
עָבַד
The verb shows the active relationship beneath the title “servant.”
avodah: Service, work
עֲבוֹדָה
This noun keeps the root’s sense of sustained service visible beneath the title given to Joshua.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can hold a servant’s devotion and bodily mortality together without treating one as a denial of the other.
So Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, and was laid beside his fathers, and saw decay.THE THREAD
Now after the death of Moses, the servant of the LORD, it came to pass that the LORD said to Joshua, son of Nun, who attended Moses, saying,The Hebrew title עֶבֶד (eved, servant) names Moses here and Joshua at the end of his life. The shared root links their service across the succession, while each remains a mortal person.
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