What Does Joshua 9:15 Mean in the King James?
And Joshua made peace with them, and made a league with them, to let them live: and the princes of the congregation sware unto them.
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
Here peace takes the concrete shape of a sworn covenant that preserves life.
THE MEANING
A covenant is made so the people across from Joshua live, and the leaders’ oath makes that promise shared and binding. Peace carries consequences here: it protects lives.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that peace is only a quiet feeling or a pause in hostility: here peace is an oath-bound protection of life.
THE ROOT
שָׁלוֹם
shalom
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be whole, complete, or sound.
Shalom belongs to a word family that also speaks of completeness and making something good. Here the covenant gives peace a concrete form: a pledged relation that keeps people alive.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This branch shows the wholeness carried within shalom and deepens the verse’s peace beyond a mere lack of conflict.
shillem: To make good, repay, or restore what is owed.
שִׁלֵּם
The same root can describe making something good or complete; it brings the sense of settlement and repair into the covenant’s peace.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
karat berit
GROWS FROM
כרת
To cut or cut off.
“made a league” in this verse is karat berit. The Hebrew phrase is literally “cut a covenant”; the noun berit has no certain derivation, so the image comes from the verb. Its root can also mean to cut off, making a striking tension with the covenant’s stated purpose: to let these people live.
ALSO GROWS
karat: To cut.
כָּרַת
This is the verb in the phrase “cut a covenant,” giving the agreement the image of a bond established through a decisive act.
karet: Excision; being cut off.
כָּרֵת
This branch sharpens the verse’s tension: a covenant formed through the language of cutting is made so these people are not cut off from life.
THE PATTERN
Peace becomes tangible when a commitment holds divided parties in shared relation and safety.
And they said, We saw certainly that the LORD was with thee: and we said, Let there be now an oath betwixt us, even betwixt us and thee, and let us make a covenant with thee;And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods.For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;THE THREAD
For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee.Isaiah brings the same words together directly: covenant and shalom, the root behind “peace.” It opens Joshua’s verse further by showing peace as a pledged relation that holds even as the landscape shifts.
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