What Does Joshua 8:8 Mean?
And when you have taken the city, you shall kindle it. According to the mouth of the LORD you shall do. Look, I have commanded 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 it shall be, when ye have taken the city, that ye shall set the city on fire: according to the commandment of the LORD shall ye do. See, I have commanded you.THE KEY
The English “commandment” conceals that the Hebrew says “according to YHWH’s word,” then repeats “I have commanded you,” making the city’s burning the stated fulfillment of the order.
THE MEANING
Here, taking the city is not the command’s endpoint; setting it on fire is. The repeated appeal to YHWH’s word places that destruction within the explicit order, rather than leaving it as an accidental aftermath.
THE ROOT
דְּבַר
dĕvar
GROWS FROM
דבר
D-B-R
To speak; a word, matter, or affair.
The Hebrew phrase translated “commandment of the LORD” is “the word of YHWH.” Dābār can mean both a spoken word and a matter or thing, joining the utterance to what is carried out; here, that matter is the city’s burning.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: Word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
This noun is the word in the phrase “according to the word of YHWH,” tying the act directly to what is spoken.
dibber: Spoke or declared.
דִּבֵּר
This verbal branch makes the spoken quality of the order visible beneath the English rendering “commandment.”
צִוִּיתִי
tsivviti
GROWS FROM
צוה
Tz-V-H
To command or charge.
The verse closes with the first-person “I have commanded you,” from צוה. That repetition names the burning as part of the order itself, not as an incidental result of taking the city.
ALSO GROWS
mitzvah: Command or instruction.
מִצְוָה
This noun comes from the same root and shows the command as a specific charge.
tsav: Command or order.
צַו
This related form keeps the root’s force of an issued order, which the verse explicitly attaches to the burning.
THE PATTERN
A command becomes concrete through the specific action it names, and fulfillment takes that stated form.
But you shall utterly devote them to destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded you.As the LORD commanded Moses his servant, so did Moses command Joshua, and so did Joshua; he did not remove one word of all that the LORD commanded Moses.Jesus said to them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them to the brim.THE THREAD
But you shall utterly devote them to destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded you.The Hebrew verb translated “commanded” in both passages comes from צוה (tsavah, “to command or charge”). Deuteronomy states destruction as a command; Joshua specifies the city’s burning and closes by repeating that same command root.
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