What Does Joshua 21:22 Mean in the King James?

And Kibzaim with her suburbs, and Beth-horon with her suburbs; four cities.

Joshua 21:22 · KJV

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

Kibzaim’s name is linked to the root for gathering, so the verse makes belonging concrete: the gathered have a place and room around it.

THE MEANING

This verse holds the towns and their surrounding open land together: four cities, each named and counted. Kibzaim echoes qavats (⁨קָבַץ⁩, qavats), meaning to gather or collect, so belonging takes shape as a place with room around it.

THE ROOT

קִבְצַיִם

Qibtsayim

GROWS FROM

קבץ

To gather or collect together.

Kibzaim is linked to qavats (⁨קָבַץ⁩, qavats), “to gather or collect”; the place-name is often glossed as “double heap.” The root makes gathering more than an inward feeling: here it echoes in named places and the open land around them.

ALSO GROWS

gathereth: One who gathers or collects.

מְקַבֵּץ

Isaiah 56:8 uses this form for the one who gathers Israel’s outcasts, bringing the root’s gathering sense into the open.

qibbetzam: Gathered them together.

קִבְּצָם

Psalm 107:3 uses this form for people gathered from distant lands, echoing how Kibzaim’s root carries the sense of bringing scattered ones together.

THE PATTERN

Gathering brings people into belonging with a place and room to dwell.

Command the children of Israel, that they give unto the Levites of the inheritance of their possession cities to dwell in; and ye shall give also unto the Levites suburbs for the cities round about them.

Numbers 35:2 · KJVThe verse names both a dwelling place and the surrounding open land as part of what is given.

And gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south.

Psalm 107:3 · KJVThe gathered are brought from every direction into shared belonging.

And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.

John 11:52 · KJVThe scattered are gathered into one, carrying the same movement from dispersion toward belonging.

THE THREAD

The Lord GOD which gathereth the outcasts of Israel saith, Yet will I gather others to him, beside those that are gathered unto him.

Isaiah 56:8 · KJV

Kibzaim echoes qavats (⁨קָבַץ⁩, qavats), “to gather or collect”; Isaiah uses that same root for gathering the outcasts. The place-name’s echo opens this list of cities into a picture of gathering that gives the scattered a place.

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