What Does Joshua 15:14 Mean in the King James?
And Caleb drove thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak.
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 Hebrew root behind “drove out” also means “inherit” or “take possession,” holding Caleb’s gain and the Anakim’s expulsion together.
THE MEANING
This verse keeps the violence of taking land in view: Caleb’s possession comes through forcing three named men out. The Hebrew verb also carries the sense of inheriting or taking possession, so the gain on one side and the loss on the other are inseparable in the sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that possession is always a clean gain: here the verb holds expulsion and inheritance together.
THE ROOT
וַיֹּרֶשׁ
vayyoresh
GROWS FROM
י־ר־שׁ
y-r-sh
The root names taking possession or inheriting; in the Hiphil form used here, it means to dispossess someone else.
English “drove out” shows the removal, while this root also carries the idea of taking possession or inheriting. The same root holds both sides of the transfer: what Caleb gains is bound to the expulsion of those named.
ALSO GROWS
yārash: Inherit; take possession.
יָרַשׁ
This is the acquiring sense of the root, the other side of the action named in the verse.
hôrîsh: Dispossess; drive out.
הוֹרִישׁ
This causative form names the removal expressed by “drove out.”
yerushah: Inheritance; possession.
יְרֻשָּׁה
This noun makes explicit the taking-possession meaning held within the root.
THE PATTERN
A claim to land can be seen as inheritance from one side and the expulsion of its prior occupants from the other.
A people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; but the LORD destroyed them before them; and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead:How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David;THE THREAD
A people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; but the LORD destroyed them before them; and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead:Deuteronomy uses the same ירשׁ (y-r-sh, “inherit” or “take possession”; here, “dispossess”) root while describing a people tall as the Anakim and those who settle in their place. The shared root makes “drove out” and “succeeded them” two faces of one transfer.
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