What Does Joshua 17:12 Mean in the King James?
Yet the children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants of those cities; but the Canaanites would dwell in that land.
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 verb for dispossess is also the verb for inherit: the same action that clears the place is what makes it possessed.
THE MEANING
An assigned inheritance can remain occupied while the power to clear it is absent. The verse holds both realities at once: the occupants are willing to remain, and the heirs cannot yet dispossess them. A claim and completed possession are not the same state.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a rightful share is already an unoccupied possession: a claim can be real while resistance remains.
THE ROOT
לְהוֹרִישׁ
lehorish
GROWS FROM
ירש
To inherit, possess, or take possession; in the causative form here, to dispossess.
“drive out” in this verse is lehorish. לְהוֹרִישׁ (lehorish, to dispossess) is a causative form of ירש (yarash, to inherit or possess). This root holds displacement and inheritance in one word-family: the act of clearing the place is also the act by which it becomes possessed. The Canaanites’ willingness to dwell makes the incompletion concrete, the inherited space remains occupied.
ALSO GROWS
yārash: Inherit, possess, or take possession.
יָרַשׁ
This is the root’s basic sense; in the verse’s causative form, taking possession entails displacing the current occupants.
mōrāshāh: Inheritance or possession.
מוֹרָשָׁה
The word names what is received, showing how the unfinished dispossession and the incomplete possession belong to the same root-family.
THE PATTERN
What remains embedded in a space continues to shape the life unfolding there.
But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.Neither did Manasseh drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shean and her towns, nor Taanach and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Dor and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Megiddo and her towns: but the Canaanites would dwell in that land.A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.THE THREAD
But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.Numbers uses the same ירש (yarash, inherit or dispossess) root in its warning about failing to drive out the inhabitants. Joshua 17:12 shows that unfinished displacement directly: the occupants remain willing to dwell in the land.
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