What Does Joshua 13:9 Mean in the King James?
From Aroer, that is upon the bank of the river Arnon, and the city that is in the midst of the river, and all the plain of Medeba unto Dibon;
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
The river’s bank is called a “lip” in Hebrew, the same word that can name the edge of speech.
THE MEANING
The territory takes shape through the Arnon’s lip, a city within its channel, the open plain of Medeba, and the endpoint at Dibon. Edge, interior, and expanse all belong to one traceable boundary.
THE ROOT
שְׂפַת
sefat
GROWS FROM
שפה
sh-p-h
Lip; by extension, the edge of a body of water, and language.
The river’s bank is literally its “lip.” The same Hebrew word connects a water’s edge with the lips that form speech, so the boundary is pictured as a contour rather than an abstract line.
ALSO GROWS
sefatayim: Lips.
שְׂפָתַיִם
This plural form makes the bodily image explicit: the river’s bank shares its word with the edges of the mouth.
safah: Lip; language or speech.
שָׂפָה
The word for the river’s edge also names the human capacity to speak, joining the landscape’s contour to the edge that shapes words.
מִישֹׁר
mishor
GROWS FROM
ישר
y-sh-r
To be straight, level, or upright.
The “plain” carries the sense of levelness found in the root’s other forms. The boundary is described not only by the river’s edge but by the character of the ground it crosses.
ALSO GROWS
yashar: Straight, level, or upright.
יָשָׁר
This adjective shares the plain’s root of straightness and levelness, revealing the terrain’s quality beneath the English place description.
mishor: A level place or plain.
מִישׁוֹר
This form names the level expanse itself, showing how the root’s sense of straightness becomes a description of land.
THE PATTERN
A territory becomes traceable through named edges, limits, and landmarks.
In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;THE THREAD
That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;The riverbank here and the “sea shore” there use the Hebrew word for lip. Both passages picture a water’s edge as a contour, linking this boundary to the very word that can also mean speech.
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