What Does Judges 2:21 Mean?
I also will no longer drive out any from their faces, of the nations which Joshua let go of when he died.
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
I also will not henceforth drive out any from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he died:THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “drive out” also means “inherit,” joining dispossession and possession in a single word.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks into the moment when what remains is not removed: God says plainly that he will no longer drive out the nations left before the people. The refusal is deliberate, and the line holds its severity without promising that every obstacle will be cleared. Its verb also carries the sense of inheriting, joining the removal of what holds land to the act of possessing it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that whatever remains in the way must be an oversight. This verse names a deliberate refusal to remove what remains.
THE ROOT
לְהוֹרִישׁ
lehorish
GROWS FROM
ירש
To take possession; depending on the verb form, to inherit or dispossess.
The same root names both sides of taking possession: dispossessing a holder and receiving what is held as an inheritance. So “drive out” and “inherit” are joined beneath the English, and the verse’s refusal to expel leaves possession incomplete.
ALSO GROWS
yarash: Possess, take possession, inherit.
יָרַשׁ
This form shows the receiving side of the root, linking the verse’s “drive out” to the land that is to be possessed.
horish: Cause to possess; dispossess or drive out.
הוֹרִישׁ
This causative form is used in the verse: removing those who hold the land clears the way for another to possess it.
THE PATTERN
What remains under pressure reveals whether trust holds when the path is not cleared.
And they were to test Israel by them, to know whether they would hear and respond to the commands of the LORD, which he had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.And you shall remember the whole road the LORD your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, to bend you low and to test you, to perceive what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.Knowing that the proving of your trust works out a bearing up under.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.The verb translated “inherit” is יָרַשׁ (yarash), the same root carried by “drive out” in Judges 2:21, where the form means to dispossess. One root holds both the removal of a holder and the receiving of what is held.
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