What Does Joshua 19:4 Mean in the King James?
And Eltolad, and Bethul, and Hormah,
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
Even this bare list makes inheritance concrete, and places the name of destruction inside the land given as a portion.
THE MEANING
The verse locates inheritance in named ground: Eltolad, Bethul, Hormah. Hormah carries the hard force of what is devoted under a ban or destroyed, and that name remains within the portion being named.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that these names are mere coordinates: Hormah carries the language of devotion under a ban and destruction within the place-name.
THE ROOT
חָרְמָה
ḥormāh a place-name
GROWS FROM
ח־ר־ם
ḥ-r-m
To devote or place under a ban; by extension, to destroy utterly.
Hormah is more than a geographic label: its name belongs to the ḥ-r-m family of devoting something under a ban, even to destruction. A place carrying that word appears within the named inheritance, so the list preserves a severe meaning inside its map of belonging.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāram: To devote under a ban or destroy utterly.
חָרַם
The same root appears in the verb used when the place Hormah is named in Numbers 21:3.
ḥērem: A devoted thing, a ban, or something placed beyond ordinary use.
חֵרֶם
This noun shows the root’s range: what is devoted can be set apart under a ban, with destruction as one stark outcome.
THE PATTERN
Biblical names preserve a nature or event in a compact word, so a proper name can carry meaning beyond identification.
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Ben-oni: but his father called him Benjamin.And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.THE THREAD
And the LORD hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and he called the name of the place Hormah.Numbers 21:3 uses the verb from the same ḥ-r-m root when it says the Canaanites and their cities were “utterly destroyed,” then says the place was named Hormah. That link reveals the force carried by the town-name in this allotment: its name preserves the language of the act.
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