What Does Joshua 15:1 Mean in the King James?
This then was the lot of the tribe of the children of Judah by their families; even to the border of Edom the wilderness of Zin southward was the uttermost part of the south coast.
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
“Southward” is more than a compass direction: נֶגֶב names both the south and its dryland.
THE MEANING
The verse presents a portion as something located, shared through families, and bounded. Its southern edge meets the wilderness of Zin and is named with the word for the dry southern land, so belonging here has both a place and a limit.
THE ROOT
נֶגְבָּה
negbāh
GROWS FROM
נגב
nāgab
To be dry; the dry southern land.
The word translated “southward” carries the name of the dry southern land itself. Direction and terrain meet in the verse: Judah’s boundary reaches toward the Negev, rather than pointing toward an abstract compass point.
ALSO GROWS
negev: The Negeb, the dry southern region.
נֶגֶב
This noun shares the root consonants and shows how the word for the south also names its characteristic terrain.
nāgab: To be dry or dry up.
נָגַב
This verb makes explicit the dryness carried in the name of the southern land.
THE PATTERN
A portion becomes concrete when its people, place, and limits are named.
The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.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
And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south.Joshua’s “southward” and Genesis’s “south” use the same Hebrew word-family for the dry southern land. Genesis makes the direction a destination; Joshua uses it to mark the reach of a boundary, so both verses locate the south in its terrain.
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