What Does Joshua 10:5 Mean in the King James?
Therefore the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon, gathered themselves together, and went up, they and all their hosts, and encamped before Gibeon, and made war against it.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Five kings become one threat when they gather: the danger here is coordinated power, not a lone ruler.
THE MEANING
This verse puts you before a force made by accumulation: five rulers, all their hosts, one camp, one target. The attack on Gibeon is concrete, and the group’s unity gives the threat its shape.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief is that power remains separate because it belongs to separate rulers; gathered together, these five kings act as one attacking force.
THE ROOT
וַיֵּאָסְפוּ
wayye'asefu
GROWS FROM
אסף
ʾ-s-p
To gather, collect, or bring in.
English can make “gathered themselves together” sound like a passing detail, but אָסַף (asaph, gather or collect) shows the mechanism: distinct rulers are brought into one mass. The same root can gather scattered people or describe something being taken away, so the violence comes from what this coalition gathers to do.
ALSO GROWS
ve'asaph: To gather dispersed people.
וְאָסַף
The same root gathers Judah’s dispersed people in Isaiah, showing that gathering can serve restoration as well as war.
asaph: To take away or remove.
אָסַף
The root can describe reproach being taken away; its shared sense of collecting or removing reveals the range hidden by a single English gloss.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
Wholeness or completeness.
Jerusalem carries the root sense of wholeness, yet its king joins the rulers making war. The verse holds the name’s wholeness beside the city’s ruler’s violence without making that violence disappear.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness or completeness.
שָׁלוֹם
This branch brings the sense carried in Jerusalem’s name into view beside the war in the verse.
shalem: Whole, complete, intact.
שָׁלֵם
This branch shares the same root and sharpens the tension between wholeness and the coalition’s attack.
THE PATTERN
Separate powers become one instrument of violence when they gather around a target.
So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, knit together as one man.The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.THE THREAD
And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.Joshua’s וַיֵּאָסְפוּ (wayye’asefu, they gathered) and Isaiah’s וְאָסַף (ve’asaph, he will gather) share the root אסף (asaph, gather or collect). Here gathering forms a siege; in Isaiah it brings scattered people together, revealing how the same act of gathering can carry opposite outcomes.
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