What Does Joshua 5:6 Mean in the King James?
For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the LORD: unto whom the LORD sware that he would not shew them the land, which the LORD sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that floweth with milk and honey.
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
Leaving constriction does not itself mean arrival in spaciousness; this verse locates the difference in whether the voice becomes response.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now in the gap between hearing and response: leaving the narrow place does not guarantee arrival in the wide one. It names the cost without softening it, the people are consumed before entering the promised land. Refusal and loss sit inside the same oath.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that leaving constriction and enduring the wilderness guarantee arrival; the verse keeps forfeiture in view.
THE ROOT
שָׁמְעוּ
shamʿu
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
Hear, listen, heed; hear and respond when obedience is implied.
“obeyed not” in this verse is shamʿu. The verse says they did not hear and respond to the LORD’s voice. The root holds hearing and heeding together, locating the fracture before the journey’s end: the voice never becomes a response.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: Hear, listen, heed; hear and respond when the context implies obedience.
שָׁמַע
This verb carries the passage’s hidden link between receiving the voice and responding to it.
shemuʿah: Report, tidings; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch shows hearing as something received as a message, illuminating the unanswered voice at the center of the verse.
THE PATTERN
A voice becomes a path when it is received as response; refusing it can leave the promise unreached.
Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.THE THREAD
For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,The same root, שָׁמַע (shamaʿ, hear and respond), appears in the Hebrew of Psalm 95:7, where “To day” places the response in the reader’s present. Joshua names what follows when that voice remains unanswered: the wilderness ends not in arrival but in loss.
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