What Does Joshua 7:9 Mean in the King James?
For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?
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 threatened “name” is the nature made visible, so Israel’s possible erasure becomes a question about what the world will see of God.
THE MEANING
The verse puts your fear of being erased beside the question of what the world sees in God’s name. It does not dismiss the danger: when a people are surrounded, their very continuity is at stake, and that loss touches the public perception of the LORD. The question remains urgent, what does God do when his nature is implicated in the fate of those who bear his name?
THE ROOT
שֵׁם
shem
GROWS FROM
שׂים
sim
Put, set, or place; Hebrew lexicons traditionally link shem, “name,” with this root.
Shem is the nature set before others to perceive. “Our name” and “thy great name” place the people’s threatened erasure beside what the surrounding nations will see of God.
ALSO GROWS
sam: sets, places
שָׂם
The name is what is set in view; the threat to Israel’s name concerns more than losing a label.
sim: put, place
שִׂים
This root’s concrete sense of placing illuminates how God’s nature is made visible through the people’s fate.
וְהִכְרִיתוּ
vehikhrithu
GROWS FROM
כרת
karat
Cut; cut off.
“cut off” in this verse is vehikhrithu. The same root describes cutting a covenant, so the word can carry both severing and covenant-making. Here it is starkly destructive: the threat is to sever Israel’s name from the earth altogether.
ALSO GROWS
karat: to cut
כָּרַת
The basic action is a cut that divides or severs.
karat berit: to cut a covenant
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The language of cutting can also mark a binding relation, sharpening the force of a name being cut away.
יִשְׁמְעוּ
yishme’u
GROWS FROM
שמע
shama
Hear, listen.
The hearing here is not isolated from what follows: the nations hear of the defeat, then surround the people. The report becomes an action that tightens the threat.
ALSO GROWS
shama: hear, listen
שָׁמַע
This is the root behind the nations hearing of the event.
shemu’ah: report, news
שְׁמוּעָה
The word for a report shows how what is heard can travel outward and shape what others do.
THE PATTERN
A name makes its bearer’s nature visible, so what happens to the bearer shapes how that nature is perceived.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.THE THREAD
Nevertheless he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known.Joshua’s question asks what becomes of the LORD’s great name if the people are erased; this verse connects deliverance with making that name known. The shared word שֵׁם (shem, name as nature) frames rescue as the public revealing of God’s nature.
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