What Does Numbers 21:32 Mean in the King James?
And Moses sent to spy out Jaazer, and they took the villages thereof, and drove out the Amorites that were there.
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 Hebrew verb for driving out is also a verb for possessing or inheriting land: one people’s gain is another people’s dispossession.
THE MEANING
A search for a way into a place becomes the taking of its settlements and the expulsion of its inhabitants. You see possession whole here: the land one people gain is the land another people lose.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that an inheritance is only a gift: here, possession comes through removing those already living there.
THE ROOT
וַיּוֹרֶשׁ
wayyōreš
GROWS FROM
י־ר־שׁ
y-r-sh
To possess or inherit; in a causative form, to dispossess.
The verb rendered “drove out” belongs to the same root used for possessing and inheriting land. Hebrew holds both sides in one root: the place enters one people’s possession as its occupants are dispossessed.
ALSO GROWS
yārash: Possess, inherit; in a causative form, dispossess.
יָרַשׁ
This root’s different forms show how taking a place as one’s own can also mean driving out its prior occupants.
môrāshāh: Inheritance, possession.
מוֹרָשָׁה
This noun names an inherited holding, showing that inheritance in this root can mean occupying a place, not only receiving a promise.
THE PATTERN
Biblical inheritance is concrete possession of land, and some passages name its gain alongside the expulsion of those already living there.
Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.THE THREAD
Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.The verb rendered “drove out” here is from י־ר־שׁ (y-r-sh), the root used for “possess” in Deuteronomy. Together, the verses make the transfer plain: Israel’s entry into possession is the Amorites’ removal.
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