The chapter of the territories of the tribe of Yehudah - our document, after all, is a Yehudan history book, so why would they bother to record the names of all the towns in, say, Asher, or Dan, or Naphtali? Would an English history book bother to mention villages in Wales or Scotland? And yet the claim is made that Yehoshu'a took "all the land", and shared it out among the tribes "according to the instruction received by Mosheh from YHVH" (for which see the whole of Numbers 34), and so this "should" have included all the tribes. And eventually it will - four chapters on, when the tribes gather at Shiloh, and lots are drawn for the division of the remainder of the land - but we shall see then just how little land there was, and how much remained for the tribes to have to conquer for themselves, which most never managed. Was Yehudah awarded its portion then, but the text preferred to record it now? Or is it, as it appears, that Re'u-Ven, Gad and half-Menasheh were resolved by Mosheh, Yehoshu'a has taken what he wants for Yehudah, as listed here, and the dolling out of the remainder, by lottery, is what takes place at Shiloh later on? We shall see.
Can we also assume, from the way this chapter is presented, that the art and science of cartography were as yet unknown to the Beney Yisra-El, even at the time of Ezra, whence the extraordinary tedium of this list? Or maybe there was a map, but what got published was the index. Not much more sophisticated here, but a good starting-point for a Bible class activity: fill in the rest yourself. About half-way through the assignment it should look like this. By the end you should be wishing you had known about these much earlier.
And just to aid the reading, verses 1-12 are a map of the borders; verses 13-19 are the account of Kalev and Chevron; verses 20-63 list the cities of Yehudah.
15:1 VA YEHI HA GORAL LE MATEH BENEY YEHUDAH LE MISHPECHOTAM EL GEVUL EDOM MIDBAR TSIN NEGBAH MI KETSEH TEYMAN
וַיְהִי הַגֹּורָל לְמַטֵּה בְּנֵי יְהוּדָה לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם אֶל גְּבוּל אֱדֹום מִדְבַּר צִן נֶגְבָּה מִקְצֵה תֵימָן
KJ: This then was the lot of the tribe of the children of Judah by their families; even to the border of Edom the wilderness of Zin southward was the uttermost part of the south coast.
BN: This was the share given to the tribe of the Beney Yehudah, by their clans; from the border of Edom, through the wilderness of Tsin to the Negev, to the furthest part of the south coast.
GORAL: See my notes at Joshua 14:2. The text certainly tells us that Yehudah acquired its territory by lot, but there is no description of how it was done - except for the military battles in which the entire Beney Yisra-El participated. Given that the map of Yisra-El will reflect the map of the constellations of the heavens, and that each tribe is already associated with one of those constellations, should we be reading GORAL to mean something different from "lot" in the sense of "lottery"?
EDOM: See the link.
TSIN: See the link, but also my notes at Exodus 16.
NEGBAH...TEYMAN: As noted many times before, both words mean "south" - what is unusual here is finding both used in the same sentence. Or should we understand NEGEV on this occasion to be the region rather than the compass-point? In the next verse it is definitely a compass-point. Or should we rethink Teyman as meaning south at all - Teyman is also the name for today's Yemen, which is south-east of Israel. There is definitely a sense throughout the texts that Teyman is south when you are east of the Yarden, but Negev is south when you are west of it - as someone in Washington state might say Texas-way, for south, where someone in Washington D.C. would say Florida-way, also meaning south.
15:2 VA YEHI LAHEM GEVUL NEGEV MIKTSEH YAM HA MELACH MIN HA LASHON HE PONEH NEGBAH
KJ: And their south border was from the shore of the salt sea, from the bay that looketh southward:
BN: And their southern border was from the shore of Yam ha Melach, from the bay that faces southward.
GEVUL NEGEV: The description appears to be drawing a metaphorical line, in much the way that calling up directions on the Internet today would do: start at, walk one mile, turn left... the attached map allows you to follow that route very precisely: click here and start by ARNON, in the north-west corner of Edom, at the Dead Sea.
YAM HA MELACH: See the link.
15:3 VA YATSA EL MI NEGEV LE MA'ALEH AKRABIM VE AVAR TSINAH VE ALAH MI NEGEV LE KADESH BARNE'A VE AVAR CHETSRON VE ALAH ADARAH VE NASAV HA KARKA'AH
BN: This was the share given to the tribe of the Beney Yehudah, by their clans; from the border of Edom, through the wilderness of Tsin to the Negev, to the furthest part of the south coast.
GORAL: See my notes at Joshua 14:2. The text certainly tells us that Yehudah acquired its territory by lot, but there is no description of how it was done - except for the military battles in which the entire Beney Yisra-El participated. Given that the map of Yisra-El will reflect the map of the constellations of the heavens, and that each tribe is already associated with one of those constellations, should we be reading GORAL to mean something different from "lot" in the sense of "lottery"?
EDOM: See the link.
TSIN: See the link, but also my notes at Exodus 16.
NEGBAH...TEYMAN: As noted many times before, both words mean "south" - what is unusual here is finding both used in the same sentence. Or should we understand NEGEV on this occasion to be the region rather than the compass-point? In the next verse it is definitely a compass-point. Or should we rethink Teyman as meaning south at all - Teyman is also the name for today's Yemen, which is south-east of Israel. There is definitely a sense throughout the texts that Teyman is south when you are east of the Yarden, but Negev is south when you are west of it - as someone in Washington state might say Texas-way, for south, where someone in Washington D.C. would say Florida-way, also meaning south.
15:2 VA YEHI LAHEM GEVUL NEGEV MIKTSEH YAM HA MELACH MIN HA LASHON HE PONEH NEGBAH
וַיְהִי לָהֶם גְּבוּל נֶגֶב מִקְצֵה יָם הַמֶּלַח מִן הַלָּשֹׁן הַפֹּנֶה נֶגְבָּה
KJ: And their south border was from the shore of the salt sea, from the bay that looketh southward:
BN: And their southern border was from the shore of Yam ha Melach, from the bay that faces southward.
GEVUL NEGEV: The description appears to be drawing a metaphorical line, in much the way that calling up directions on the Internet today would do: start at, walk one mile, turn left... the attached map allows you to follow that route very precisely: click here and start by ARNON, in the north-west corner of Edom, at the Dead Sea.
YAM HA MELACH: See the link.
15:3 VA YATSA EL MI NEGEV LE MA'ALEH AKRABIM VE AVAR TSINAH VE ALAH MI NEGEV LE KADESH BARNE'A VE AVAR CHETSRON VE ALAH ADARAH VE NASAV HA KARKA'AH
וְיָצָא אֶל מִנֶּגֶב לְמַעֲלֵה עַקְרַבִּים וְעָבַר צִנָה וְעָלָה מִנֶּגֶב לְקָדֵשׁ בַּרְנֵעַ וְעָבַר חֶצְרֹון וְעָלָה אַדָּרָה וְנָסַב הַקַּרְקָעָה
BN: And it went along and through the Negev to Ma'aleh Akrabim, and crossed Tsin, and went up out of the Negev at Kadesh Barne'a, and crossed Chetsron, and went up to Adar, and turned a full compass to Karka'ah.
MA'ALEH AKRABIM: The Heights of Akrabim - but should that not be Akravim? "The Hill of Scorpions" - and believe me, if you have visited the region, it is well-named; both black and yellow scorpions, in abundance; click the links.
KADESH BARNE'A: So our map of Yisra-El begins at precisely the two key final points in the Mosaic journey, this the one (Deuteronomy 2:14) where he watched them "cross over the Brook of Zered", the other the point at the summit of the mountain from which he watched.
CHETSRON: See the link, but also under Chatsor in Joshua 11:10.
ADAR: I wonder how much of this is even geographical. Is VE ALAH ADARAH a description of the map or the calendar - given that ADAR is the name of either the sixth or the twelfth month, depending on which calendar you are using (click here).
NASAV: Exactly how an ancient compass might have worked is unknown, but we do know that they employed the same 360 degrees of circle that we do, because they originated it (one degree for each day in the lunar year). From the map it looks like 12 degrees, which of course would be the equivalent of a decan - see the notes on this at Joshua 10:7 and 12:24.
KARKA'AH: Further to my question about ADAR, above - the commentators (click here) simply have no idea where Karka'ah might be, as there is no reference to it anywhere but here. The same applies to Adar actually. Funny that.
But maybe we can work it out. The root is... most unusual. Kuph-Reysh-Kaph-Ayin; four letters is very unusual, and usually indicates a foreign word that is being rendered phonetically; these four letters especially suggest that. And if it is foreign, our chances of working it out are limited. But this is not its only occurrence, so maybe we can find it by cross-comparison.
Numbers 5:17 has BE KARKA HA MISHKAN, "the floor of the Mishkan", the Mishkan being the sedan-chaired limo they built in the desert to chauffeur YHVH with his Ten Commandments on the rest of the journey. A "floor" in 1 Kings 6:15 and 6:30 as well, this time not the vehicle they brought YHVH in, but the palace they built when he finally arried, Shelomoh's Temple. Amos 9:3 has it meaning "floor" too, albeit the floor of the sea on this occasion. So can we assume that this is the "floor" of the valley, some village in its very depths, the way Cheddar is located at the foot of its gorge in Somerset?
15:4 VE AVAR ATSMONAH VE YATS'A NACHAL MITSRAYIM VE HAYAH TOTS'OT HA GEVUL YAMAH ZEH YIHEYEH LACHEM GEVUL NEGEV
וְעָבַר עַצְמֹונָה וְיָצָא נַחַל מִצְרַיִם [וְהָיָה כ] (וְהָיוּ ק) תֹּצְאֹות הַגְּבוּל יָמָּה זֶה יִהְיֶה לָכֶם גְּבוּל נֶגֶב
BN: From there it crossed towards Atsmon, and went out into the River of Mitsrayim; the terminus of that border was the sea: this shall be your southern border.
AVAR: Do boundary-lines "cross", or do they "run", or "pass", or... I only ask because, yet again, the writer seems to have found an opportunity to use the verb that happens to yield the name Ivrim (Hebrews), but without any of the negative connotations associated with the Habiru.
ATSMON: See the link.
NACHAL MITSRAYIM: From the location this cannot mean the Nile, though we may well think of that today as "the river of Egypt". Wadi Arish is much more likely (see my note to Siychor at Joshua 13:3).
YAMAH: The reason why we cannot translate GEVUL as coast but must use "border". The western border of Yehudah is the Mediterranean coast, as some of the eastern border is the banks of the Dead Sea, but the remainder is inland.
LACHEM: There was no sense of anyone speaking at this moment, and yet the text addresses "you"; is there a confusion of texts?
15:5 U GEVUL KEDMAH YAM HA MELACH AD KETSEH HA YARDEN U GEVUL LIPH'AT TSAPHONAH MI LESHON HA YAM MI KETSEH HA YARDEN
NACHAL MITSRAYIM: From the location this cannot mean the Nile, though we may well think of that today as "the river of Egypt". Wadi Arish is much more likely (see my note to Siychor at Joshua 13:3).
YAMAH: The reason why we cannot translate GEVUL as coast but must use "border". The western border of Yehudah is the Mediterranean coast, as some of the eastern border is the banks of the Dead Sea, but the remainder is inland.
LACHEM: There was no sense of anyone speaking at this moment, and yet the text addresses "you"; is there a confusion of texts?
15:5 U GEVUL KEDMAH YAM HA MELACH AD KETSEH HA YARDEN U GEVUL LIPH'AT TSAPHONAH MI LESHON HA YAM MI KETSEH HA YARDEN
וּגְבוּל קֵדְמָה יָם הַמֶּלַח עַד קְצֵה הַיַּרְדֵּן וּגְבוּל לִפְאַת צָפֹונָה מִלְּשֹׁון הַיָּם מִקְצֵה הַיַּרְדֵּן
BN: And the eastern border was Yam ha Melach, as far as the end of the river Yarden. And the northern border ran to the shores of the sea from the northernmost end of the Yarden.
The directions now take us back to our starting-point.
YAM HA MELACH: The Dead Sea.
KETSEH HA YARDEN: Slightly odd reversal of directions in mid-sentence, but the intent is the same, that the border starts where the Yarden (river Jordan) starts... but no, that cannot be right, because the Yarden starts way, way north of Yehudah, beyond Gad and most of eastern Menasheh too, around Banyas (Caesarea Philippi) in the foothills of Mount Chermon... but the point here is that it comes south, as far as the point at which it falls into Yam ha Melach (the Dead Sea), and then dies. So KETSEH here is not the "uttermost", as in the KJ, but the "nethermost".
15:6 VE ALAH HA GEVUL BEIT CHAGLAH VE AVAR MI TSEPHON LE VEIT HA ARAVAH VE ALAH HA GEVUL EVEN BOHAN BEN RE'U-VEN
וְעָלָה הַגְּבוּל בֵּית חָגְלָה וְעָבַר מִצְּפֹון לְבֵית הָעֲרָבָה וְעָלָה הַגְּבוּל אֶבֶן בֹּהַן בֶּן רְאוּבֵן
BN: And the border went up to Beit Chaglah, and crossed north of Beit ha Aravah; and the border went up to the stone of Bohan ben Re'u-Ven.
BEIT CHAGLAH: See also my notes to Joshua 17:3, which give more detail on Chaglah, the daughter of Tselaphchad.
BEIT HA ARAVAH: See the link.
BOHAN: The stone on this occasion a boundary marker of the type Ya'akov and Lavan employed in Genesis 31:45.
No one draws maps of this sort by lottery; as per the link (here), this is in part a way of keeping several key shrines inside Yehudah, but mostly it is about Gil-Gal, which was effectively Yehoshu'a's capital.
15:7 VE ALAH HA GEVUL DEVIRAH ME EMEK ACHOR VE TSAPHONAH PONEH EL HA GILGAL ASHER NOCHACH LE MA'ALEH ADUMIM ASHER MI NEGEV LA NACHAL VE AVAR HA GEVUL EL MEY EYN SHEMESH VE HAYU TOTS'OTAV EL EYN ROGEL
וְעָלָה הַגְּבוּל דְּבִרָה מֵעֵמֶק עָכֹור וְצָפֹונָה פֹּנֶה אֶל הַגִּלְגָּל אֲשֶׁר נֹכַח לְמַעֲלֵה אֲדֻמִּים אֲשֶׁר מִנֶּגֶב לַנָּחַל וְעָבַר הַגְּבוּל אֶל מֵי עֵין שֶׁמֶשׁ וְהָיוּ תֹצְאֹתָיו אֶל עֵין רֹגֵל
BN: And the border went up toward Devir from the valley of Achor, and then northward, turning toward Gil-Gal, and from there it went up to Adumim, which is on the south side of the river; and the border crossed toward the waters of Eyn Shemesh, egressing from them at Eyn Rogel.
Which places Gil-Gal, Yehoshua's base, in Yehudah, therefore making Yehudah the primary tribe. Note from the map that Yeru-Shala'im sits virtually on the border, but on the Bin-Yamini side, not the Yehudan - the place was of no significance at all to Yehoshu'a. On the other hand, Chevron is dead centre of Yehudah, and therefore, also being the major town in the area, the logical capital for the tribe - its state capital, in the American equivalent; and so it would become later, when David became king (2 Samuel 2). Yet Chevron has been given to Kalev as a human reward/land-grab rather than a "lottery", as we saw in the previous chapter.
DEVIR: But see my various notes in Joshua 10, particularly verses 3 and 38.
ACHOR: A town named "trouble"!
ADUMIM: Linked to the word ADAM, meaning "red" before it means "Man", let alone the individual of the Genesis story; the soil in these parts is decidedly red, a factor of rich iron oxides. The reason too why Edom is called Edom - "the red land", identified with Esav, the red-headed son of Yitschak; and why the earth itself is ADAMAH.
EYN SHEMESH: Eyn as in "well" or "fountain", rather than "there is not". Wouldn't it be very sad if a place was named Eyn Shemesh for the latter reason - parts of Finland for several months in the year do indeed merit that name. But Eyn, meaning "there is not", is written with an Aleph (אין), where Eyn here is spelled with an Ayin (ע), and the same root yields Ayin = "an eye", which is likewise both a deep well of light, and a dark hole made of nothingness unless it has been filled with illumination, which it can then pour forth fountainously.
EYN ROGEL: where Adoni-Yah went to stage his coup against David (1 Kings 1:9). The name means "the Well of the Fuller", Fullers being the people who take the raw cloth from the weaver, and first cleanse it, then thicken it; a process that involves soaking it, treading it like wine inside the vat, using grease-absorbent earth to cleanse it, then scouring it with either teasel or thistle-heads, in order to remove any loose particles and raise a nap. The material is then passed to the Shearmen, who cut the raised fibres, so that the final cloth is even and smooth. Given its physical location in the southern hills of Yeru-Shala'im, I wonder if the well was in the Fuller's Field, where the prophet Yesha-Yah went to meet King Achaz and warn him about the impending invasion from Ashur (Isaiah 7:3).
15:8 VE ALAH HA GEVUL GEY VEN HINNOM EL KETEPH HA YEVUSI MI NEGEV HI YERUSHALA'IM VE ALAH HA GEVUL EL ROSH HA HAR ASHER AL PENEY GEY HINNOM YAMAH ASHER BIKTSEH EMEK REPHA'IM TSAPHONAH
וְעָלָה הַגְּבוּל גֵּי בֶן הִנֹּם אֶל כֶּתֶף הַיְבוּסִי מִנֶּגֶב הִיא יְרוּשָׁלִָם וְעָלָה הַגְּבוּל אֶל רֹאשׁ הָהָר אֲשֶׁר עַל פְּנֵי גֵי הִנֹּם יָמָּה אֲשֶׁר בִּקְצֵה עֵמֶק רְפָאִים צָפֹנָה
BN: And the border went up through the valley of Ben Hinnom to the southern hillslopes of the Yevusi - this is what we now call Yeru-Shala'im - and then the border went up to the top of the mountain that lies at the western face of the valley of Hinnom, which is at the north end of the Valley of the Giants.
GEY VEN HINNOM: Usually known as Gey Hinnom, without the Ben, though we have seen it in this form elsewhere - and in English it is Gehenna, which is one of the manifestations of Hell, probably because it was into this valley that the worshippers of Moloch "dashed the little ones upon the rock" (Psalm 137:9), throwing them down the gully from the hilltop. See also Joshua 18:16.
Again this affirms the absolute insignificance of Yeru-Shala'im at this time - the division is effectively the one between West and East Jerusalem today, and any glance at any newspaper will tell you how significant that line is. But it wasn't then. Even though "the mountain that lies at the western face of the valley of Hinnom" was the mount on which the obelisk of Moloch was worshipped, the Tsi'un, Mount Tsi'on (Zion) - click here.
YEVUS: The name means "threshing-floor", and the one in question was dedicated to Ornah, or possibly Araunah, depending on which Biblical text you are reading. It was this threshing-floor that David acquired as the site for the Temple. But see verse 63, below.
EMEK REPHA'IM: See the link.
15:9 VE TA'AR HA GEVUL MEY ROSH HA HAR EL MA'YAN MEY NEPHTO'ACH VE YATS'A EL AREY HAR EPHRON VE TA'AR HA GEVUL BA'ALAH HI KIRYAT YE'ARIM
וְתָאַר הַגְּבוּל מֵרֹאשׁ הָהָר אֶל מַעְיַן מֵי נֶפְתֹּוחַ וְיָצָא אֶל עָרֵי הַר עֶפְרֹון וְתָאַר הַגְּבוּל בַּעֲלָה הִיא קִרְיַת יְעָרִים
BN: The border was then marked from the top of the hill to the fountain of the Waters of Nephto'ach, and went out to the cities of Mount Ephron; then the border was marked to Ba'alah, which is Kiryat Ye'arim.
This verse is HUGE and requires a whole book - we had a first hint of it at Joshua 14:12, but frankly I was doubtful. The mountains being known as Mount Ephron is of immense significance to the Av-Raham story of purchasing Machpelah, and the fact that there is a town named Ba'alah close by, and even more that Ba'alah (different link here) should become Kiryat Ye'arim, which is so significant to the hosting of the Ark in Davidic times. This is a priority verse to return to. Remember that Av-Raham bought Machpelah from Ephron of the Beney Chet (Hittites) and, as noted previously, to the Beney Chet Ephron was a sun-god (eastern Greek Phoroneus, western Greek Orpheus), consort and brother of Yah (Greek Io), the moon-goddess whose gave her name to the Ionian Sea, but who is best known in the Biblical world from the praises sung to her as the full moon in the Psalms - Hallelu-Yah.
NEPHTO'ACH: Is there a connection between the Naphtuchim of Genesis 10:13 and the Mey Nephtoach here?
BA'ALAH: See the link.
KIRYAT YE'ARIM: The tale of the naughty men of Giv-On, told in Joshua 9, ended with them being enservanted as hewers of wood, and then, later on, as the Guardians of the Ark of the Covenant at Kiryat Ye'arim, from the time of its return after the Battle of Aphek (1 Samuel 7 ff), until David's failed attempt to take it Yeru-Shala'im. Click here for the archeological work currently being undertaken there.
15:10 VE NASAV HA GEVUL MI BA'ALAH YAMAH EL HAR SE'IR VE AVAR EL KETEPH HAR YE'ARIM MI TSAPHONAH HI CHESALON VE YARAD BEIT SHEMESH VE AVAR TIMNAH
וְנָסַב הַגְּבוּל מִבַּעֲלָה יָמָּה אֶל הַר שֵׂעִיר וְעָבַר אֶל כֶּתֶף הַר יְעָרִים מִצָּפֹונָה הִיא כְסָלֹון וְיָרַד בֵּית שֶׁמֶשׁ וְעָבַר תִּמְנָה
BN: Then the border followed the compass westward from Ba'alah as far as Mount Se'ir, and crossed through the hillslopes of Mount Ye'arim - which we call Chesalon - on the north side, and went down to Beit Shemesh, and then passed on to Timnah.
NASAV: I am still uncomfortable about translating this as a compass, which was invented in Europe around 1300 CE, not BCE, which is Yehoshu'a's epoch. There is evidence that the Chinese used lodestones as a primitive compass, way back in the day, so perhaps it was something like this (click here). The idea is nonetheless right as a means of describing direction.
MOUNT SE'IR: See the link.
CHESALON: See the link.
BEIT SHEMESH: See the link.
TIMNAH! The same one where Yehudah met Tamar? But Timnah is deep in the Negev desert - or is that Timna, without a final Hey (ה)? Difficult to know, because the Timna(h) of Genesis 38 is always presented in the dative form, so we cannot be certain of its spelling - it may have been Timna, Timnah or Timnat; all three could yield Timnatah (תִּמְנָתָה). Whereas the Timnah of verse 57, below, has a final Hey, just like this one - though whether or not it is this one is alas rather too difficult to determine.
And just to make it more confusing, Timna without a Hey could also yield Teyman, one of our several direction-markers for "the south" (see my note to verse 1), and explain why Teyman is sometimes used for "south" even when the starting-point is west of the river Yarden.
15:11 VA YATS'A HA GEVUL EL KETEPH EKRON TSAPHONAH VE TA'AR HA GEVUL SHICHRONAH VE AVAR HAR HA BA'ALAH VE YATS'A YAVNE-EL VE HAYU TOTS'OT HA GEVUL YAMAH
15:11 VA YATS'A HA GEVUL EL KETEPH EKRON TSAPHONAH VE TA'AR HA GEVUL SHICHRONAH VE AVAR HAR HA BA'ALAH VE YATS'A YAVNE-EL VE HAYU TOTS'OT HA GEVUL YAMAH
וְיָצָא הַגְּבוּל אֶל כֶּתֶף עֶקְרֹון צָפֹונָה וְתָאַר הַגְּבוּל שִׁכְּרֹונָה וְעָבַר הַר הַבַּעֲלָה וְיָצָא יַבְנְאֵל וְהָיוּ תֹּצְאֹות הַגְּבוּל יָמָּה
BN: Then the border went along the northern hillslopes of Ekron; and the border was marked as far as Shichron, and crossed to Mount Ba'alah, continuing on through Yavne-El until it reached its terminus at the sea.
EKRON: The southern hillslopes, and the town itself, being in the territory of the Pelishtim (see Joshua 13:3)
SHICHRON: And yet again we have a name that nobody in their right mind, or quite probably their left mind either, would give a town, unless perhaps they had been drinking: "the place of drunkenness".
YAVNE-EL: is that the same as Yavneh, where Yochanan ben Zachai created modern Talmudic Judaism in the wake of the destruction of the Temple by the Romans? The geographical location suggests that it probably is. Interesting if so - that the place was "pagan" first (but I guess all places were pagan first, at some time!).
The spelling of Yavne-El interests me, in relation to the Timna/Timnah conundrum, above. How does Yehudit spell Timna, rather than Timnah? If there is no Hey (ה), does it not then require an Aleph (א) or an Ayin (ע)? Or else it becomes Temen. Good question, and I should have asked it at the time, but waited, because it makes more sense to ask it with Yavne-El now. Yavneh surely requires a Hey too, or an Aleph, or an Ayin? And it has an Aleph, but that is part of the El. Does it then have a Hey, which has been dropped: Yavneh-El? Or should there be two Alephs? In which case one Aleph, medugash (with a dot inside it), would suffice.
15:12 U GEVUL YAM HA YAMAH HA GADOL U GEVUL ZEH GEVUL BENEY YEHUDAH SAVIV LE MISHPECHOTAM
וּגְבוּל יָם הַיָּמָּה הַגָּדֹול וּגְבוּל זֶה גְּבוּל בְּנֵי יְהוּדָה סָבִיב לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם
BN: And the western border was the Great Sea, all the way to the coast. These are the borders of the Beney Yehudah, according to their clans.
Why is it YAMAH rather than plain YAM? Called the Great Sea then, we would know it as the Mediterranean. And this was a truly vast territory, containing some of the very best land in Kena'an, (Menasheh, which was the only other tribe to cross the entire country east to west, having a claim to the other quality portion); with Shim'on landlocked inside it like a Bantustan in Apartheid South Africa. So much for Mosheh's "just weights, just balances" (Leviticus 19:36, and also Proverbs 16:11)! But of course it was a "lottery". Yehoshua's tribe didn't get this by power-abuse or land-grab. It was divine bequest, a gift of YHVH. Is a lottery then the same as an election - a place where independent verifiers need to be employed?
At this point the "map" ends, and returns to the tale of Kalev, which was the substance of the previous chapter; but in fact it is not the end of the "map" - see verses 20ff. Two questions that we will need to ask when we get there, especially when names come up that are already in the above list: a) do we actually have two different lists, from two different periods of history, that have been erroneously combined here by the Ezraic redactor?; b) isn't some of this actually the tribal territory of Shim'on, not Yehudah? And of course, the answer to b) may also provide the answer to a): that the above was the original territory of Yehudah, and the second is the reworked map after Shim'on became absorbed. We cannot know.
15:13 U LE KALEV BEN YEPHUNEH NATAN CHELEK BETOCH BENEY YEHUDAH EL PI YHVH LI YEHOSHU'A ET KIRYAT ARBA AVI HA ANAK HI CHEVRON
וּלְכָלֵב בֶּן יְפֻנֶּה נָתַן חֵלֶק בְּתֹוךְ בְּנֵי יְהוּדָה אֶל פִּי יְהוָה לִיהֹושֻׁעַ אֶת קִרְיַת אַרְבַּע אֲבִי הָעֲנָק הִיא חֶבְרֹון
BN: And to Kalev ben Yephuneh he gave a share among the Beney Yehudah, according to the instruction of YHVH to Yehoshu'a: the city of Arba the father of the Anakim, which city is Chevron.
NATAN CHELEK: "provided that he can clear them out", as he himself said (see Joshua 14:12).
ARBA AVI HA ANAK: Chevron was previously known as Kiryat Arba, and the Anakim were its original inhabitants.
15:14 VA YORESH MI SHAM KALEV ET SHELOSHAH BENEY HA ANAK ET SHESHAY VE ET ACHIMAN VE ET TALMAI YELIDEY HA ANAK
וַיֹּרֶשׁ מִשָּׁם כָּלֵב אֶת שְׁלֹושָׁה בְּנֵי הָעֲנָק אֶת שֵׁשַׁי וְאֶת אֲחִימַן וְאֶת תַּלְמַי יְלִידֵי הָעֲנָק
BN: And Kalev drove out the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Achiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak.
ANAK: Given that Anak was the eponymous father and founder, many centuries, quite possibly even many millennia before, this is either using the word "sons" in the broadest tribal sense, or like David and Arthur Anak was also a royal title - Henry and William and George serve the same function in the English, John Paul and Pius ditto in the Vatican. That there should have been three sons works within our cosmological explanation of these legends. And then, of course, there are the meanings of their names.
SHESHAI: The number six is discernible here, but more likely the intention is flax.
ACHIMAN: Is that in fact Achi-Man? See the link.
TALMAI: A variant of Shelomoh (Solomon) - we have seen that Aramaic regularly uses a Tav (ת) where Yehudit uses a Sheen (ש). The Greek Ptolemy comes from the same source.
The same three characters will crop up again at the beginning of the Book of Judges (1:10), and it is highly probable that they were millennia older than these pseudo-historic tales suggest, most likely the Kena'ani (Canaanite) equivalent of the four sons of the Greek Titan Iapetus, who appears in Judges 11 ff as Yiphtach (Jephthah) and who already appeared in the No'ach story as one of the latter's three sons, Yaphet (Japhet); and who will appear later in this chapter too - see verse 43. The description of them is as "giants", but distinguishes them from those other Titans the Nephilim, which may simply be a case of different language groups having different names - as we have Dieu and Gott and Dios and God, but mean the same thing.
15:15 VA YA'AL MI SHAM EL YOSHVEY DEVIR VE SHEM DEVIR LEPHANIM KIRYAT SEPHER
וַיַּעַל מִשָּׁם אֶל יֹשְׁבֵי דְּבִר וְשֵׁם דְּבִר לְפָנִים קִרְיַת סֵפֶר
KJ: And he went up thence to the inhabitants of Debir: and the name of Debir before was Kirjathsepher.
BN: And he went up from there to the inhabitants of Devir; and the name of Devir before that time was Kiryat Sepher.
KIRYAT SEPHER: "The village of the scroll"; which in a sense isn't really a change of name at all, given that DAVAR, the root of DEVIR, also means "word". We encountered it previously by this name (Joshua 10:3); and see the note attached then, because a town that has both the Devir, and the Book of Law that is supposed to be stored inside it, is an interesting piece of randomness and chance.
We have to ask: why is Kalev going there anyway; and not the answer given in the next verse, but the broader answer? He has been given his "share". By what right is he extending it? Or perhaps this is not a warlord expanding his territory; perhaps he will conquer it for the Beney Yisra-El, and hand it over.
15:16 VA YOMER KALEV ASHER YAKEH ET KIRYAT SEPHER U LECHADAH VE NATATI LO ET ACHSAH VITI LE ISHAH
וַיֹּאמֶר כָּלֵב אֲשֶׁר יַכֶּה אֶת קִרְיַת סֵפֶר וּלְכָדָהּ וְנָתַתִּי לֹו אֶת עַכְסָה בִתִּי לְאִשָּׁה
BN: And Kalev said: Anyone who attacks Kiryat Sepher, and takes it, to him will I give Achsah my daughter as his wife.
ACHSAH: Is that as in al-Achsah - or al-Aqsa, as it is usually phoneticised in English? How interesting to find that, behind the Devir! Especially when you discover what is the meaning of her name (click the link beneath it). We could be on Temple Mount today! All we need now is a small piece of meteoric rock and Caliph Omar could wrap it in a shrine. See my note to Judges 1:13 for a fuller account. But wait, all this is connected with Chevron, David's first capital, not Yeru-Shala'im, his second.
15:17 VA YILKEDAH ATNI-EL BEN KENAZ ACHI KALEV VA YITEN LO ET ACHSAH VITO LE ISHAH
וַיִּלְכְּדָהּ עָתְנִיאֵל בֶּן קְנַז אֲחִי כָלֵב וַיִּתֶּן לֹו אֶת עַכְסָה בִתֹּו לְאִשָּׁה
BN: Then Atni-El ben Kenaz, a kinsman of Kalev, took it, and he gave him Achsah his daughter as his wife.
Uncle marrying niece was not actually prohibited by Mosaic law (Leviticus 18); but Atni-El wasn't her uncle anyway, and this is an error of the King James translators rather than the Kohen who agreed to perform the marriage. In the biblical world, brothers are brothers because they share a common father, regardless of the mother, and Kalev is ben Yephuneh, where Atni-El is ben Kenaz, so they have different fathers, so they are not brothers. ACHI, as we have seen repeatedly, is used both narrowly and broadly, and clearly here it is the broad: "kinsman".
ATNI-EL: Usually rendered in English as Otni-El, but however you pronounce it, the meaning adds to the clearly mythological nature of this tale: "the appointed hour of El", which of course is the moment when the Kohen Gadol is invited to go behind the Devir and see through the veil of the deity... The first of the Judges will also be named Atni-El (Judges 3:9) and he too will be Ben Kenaz. Was he perhaps the same man, and this tale in Yehoshu'a should be read alongside that one? Probably not, because Judges 1:13 ff repeats the tale of him and Kalev's daughter that we are reading now, and if there were a connection it would surely make it. Then was Kenaz not his father's name after all, but the Kenizites his tribe - they are named as a tribe in Genesis 15:19. And, what's more, Kalev is himself identified with that tribe, rather than with Yehudah, in Numbers 32:12, and Joshua 14:6 and 14. Well worth looking again at my page on KENAZ, which is linked below.
Does that then require a change in the note to verse, and an apology to the KJ translators; because they may have been brothers and not kinsmen after all. No, because Kalev is always Ben Yephuneh ha Kenizi in those other references; the issue is not the incest, but whether or not Kalev was actually Beney Yisra-El in the first place. You can follow the scholarly debate over this issue by clicking here.
KENAZ: And no, there is no connection with the made-up Jewish region of Europe called Ashkenaz, though it would be amusing to find Ish-Kenaz ("a man from the Kenizites") as the source of that. Ashkenaz has a Kuph (ק), this Kenaz has a Kaph (כ).
15:18 VA YEHI BE VO'AH VA TESIYTEHU LISH'OL ME ET AVIYHA SADEH VA TITSNACH ME'AL HA CHAMOR VA YOMER LAH KALEV MAH LACH
Does that then require a change in the note to verse, and an apology to the KJ translators; because they may have been brothers and not kinsmen after all. No, because Kalev is always Ben Yephuneh ha Kenizi in those other references; the issue is not the incest, but whether or not Kalev was actually Beney Yisra-El in the first place. You can follow the scholarly debate over this issue by clicking here.
KENAZ: And no, there is no connection with the made-up Jewish region of Europe called Ashkenaz, though it would be amusing to find Ish-Kenaz ("a man from the Kenizites") as the source of that. Ashkenaz has a Kuph (ק), this Kenaz has a Kaph (כ).
15:18 VA YEHI BE VO'AH VA TESIYTEHU LISH'OL ME ET AVIYHA SADEH VA TITSNACH ME'AL HA CHAMOR VA YOMER LAH KALEV MAH LACH
וַיְהִי בְּבֹואָהּ וַתְּסִיתֵהוּ לִשְׁאֹול מֵאֵת אָבִיהָ שָׂדֶה וַתִּצְנַח מֵעַל הַחֲמֹור וַיֹּאמֶר לָהּ כָּלֵב מַה לָּךְ
KJ: And it came to pass, as she came unto him, that she moved him to ask of her father a field: and she lighted off her ass; and Caleb said unto her, What wouldest thou?
BN: And it fell out, when she came to him, that she encouraged him to ask her father for a field, and she got down from her ass; and Kalev said to her: "What would you?"
CHAMOR: Is it a donkey or an an ass? Click here.
TESITEYHU: I think we have to assume that this is simply a very badly told story, and that what it tells is actually very banal and simple. Atni-El won the girl by winning the town, but he doesn't get to keep the town, and no other dowry has been mentioned. In patrilocal Biblical marriages there is always a dowry - in matrilocal marriages there is no need for a dowry, because the man gets everything the woman has by joining her tribe. So Kalev is arranging her dowry: one of his fields first, then the springs at either end of them: a large dowry, but he is now an important warlord and wants to show off his importance.
So we have in part answered my question at the end of verse 15.
15:19 VA TO'MER TENAH LI VERACHAH KI ERETS HA NEGEV NETATANI VE NATATAH LI GULOT MAYIM VA YITEN LAH ET GULOT ILIYOT VE ET GULOT TACHTIYOT
וַתֹּאמֶר תְּנָה לִּי בְרָכָה כִּי אֶרֶץ הַנֶּגֶב נְתַתָּנִי וְנָתַתָּה לִי גֻּלֹּת מָיִם וַיִּתֶּן לָהּ אֵת גֻּלֹּת עִלִּיֹּות וְאֵת גֻּלֹּת תַּחְתִּיֹּות
BN: And she answered: "Give me a blessing. You have given me land that faces south; now give me springs of water as well. And he gave her the upper springs, and the lower springs."
ERETS HA NEGEV: I take this to mean south-facing, rather than simply southern-located, because that latter is irrelevant. In that part of Yehudah the weather is very hot, and the soil very dry, for much of the year - this is the land which modern Israel has famously made "green" by cultivating what has not been considered capable of cultivation for most of the past 2000 years. So it will be hard to farm anyway; but being south-facing, it will get the direct sun, and irrigation will therefore be even more essential, and those springs will make all the difference
pey break
15:20 ZOT NACHALAT MATEH VENEY YEHUDAH LE MISHPECHOTAM
זֹאת נַחֲלַת מַטֵּה בְנֵי יְהוּדָה לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם
BN: This is the inheritance of the tribe of the Beney Yehudah according to their clans.
Many ways that we can find to date texts. This verse provides one of them - though I could, and probably should, have stated it earlier. Question: in what order would you expect the distribution to be inventoried? The logical answer is: whatever way the lots came out. Let us look at that first:
The first lot to Yehudah, as in this chapter.
The second lot will fall to the Beney Yoseph, in chapter 16, but with a clear separation of Ephrayim and Menasheh west of the Yarden, and the other half of Menasheh to the east.
Bin-Yamin gets its inheritance at 18:11, but 19:1 makes clear that Bin-Yamin's was the first lot, because Shim'on, getting his now, is stated as being the second: so Yehudah and the Beney Yoseph were not by lot at all. I shall return to that inner contradiction in a moment.
19:9 then confirms that Shim'on was given a portion of Yehudah - no lottery involved there either.
19:10 then gives the third lot to Zevulun, 19:17 gives the fourth to Yisaschar, 19:24 gives the fifth to Asher, 19:32 gives the sixth to Naphtali, and 19:40 gives the seventh and last to Dan, though it is Mediterranean coastland on the northern edge of the lands of the Pelishtim, from which Dan will move into the Chermon later.
If this has been done by lots, then the lots have been determined on a south-north compass, starting in the Negev, ending at Chermon; though there is a seeming discrepancy here, with the placing of the tribe of Dan in its original rather than its later position.
But the real discrepancy lies in the separating out of Yehudah and the Beney Yoseph, who have either received lands by a different system of lots, or not by lots at all - or the numbering system that follows is simply erroneous. And why, davka, Yehudah and the Beney Yoseph? Is Yehudah first because it was Yehoshu'a's tribe, and he had to be placed first for egotistical reasons? And the Beney Yoseph in honour of... but he isn't even regarded as a patriarch. More likely it was because:
a) this was written at a moment of history when Yehudah, with Bin-Yamin and Shim'on absorbed, was all that was left, which would make it post 700 BCE, after the fall of the northern kingdom; or:
b), and this I think is much more likely: based on the positioning on the list of the Beney Yoseph before the absorbed territories of Shim'on and Bin-Yamin, it dates to the epoch after the civil war that divided the land into two kingdoms, circa 900 BCE, when Rechav-Am and Yerav-Am disputed the succession to king Shelomoh. The two and a half tribes had long ago assimilated into Edom, Mo-Av and Amon, so Beney Yoseph meant Ephrayim and the only remaining half of Menasheh - for which see the tribal map at Joshua 13 - but that kingdom acquired the name Ephrayim, and its capital was at Shomron, in the tribal territory of Menasheh - right on the border of that combination, just as Yeru-Shala'im in Bin-Yamin was right on the border of its combination with Yehudah. Political maps, drawn at the time, given historical status through retroactive validation!
After which you can watch the list moving ever northwards, once the key parts of the two kingdoms have been defined - into the parts that frankly no one in Yehudah or among the Beney Yoseph ever really cared about, to the extent that they virtually disappear from the Bible from this point onwards: Zevulun, Yisaschar, Asher, Naphtali, Dan getting ever further from the political centre (Asher will soon be absorbed into the realm of the kings of Tsur and Tsidon; Dan will take over northern Naphtali and likewise be subsumed into Tsur and Tsidon; Zevulun and Yisaschar, with southern Naphtali, will be conquered by Shalman-Ezer around 700 and disappear into oblivion).
15:21 VA YIHEYU HE ARIM MI KETSEH LE MATEH VENEY YEHUDAH EL GEVUL EDOM BA NEGBAH KAVTSI-EL VE EDER VE YAGUR
KJ: And the uttermost cities of the tribe of the children of Judah toward the coast of Edom southward were Kabzeel, and Eder, and Jagur.
BN: And these were the furthermost cities of the tribe of the Beney Yehudah, towards the southern border of Edom: Kavtsi-El, and Eder, and Yagur;
And for all the reasons explained above, the inheritance of Yehudah is about to require rather more detail, and therefore more verses, than any other tribe.
MI KETSEH: Is a relative term, which requires a context. London is among the furthermost cities of Britain, if you are drawing your map in Aberdeen. If this map is being drawn in Yehoshu'a's own time, it will presumably be looking outwards from Gil-Gal, which is as north-east as you can get in Yehudah; if it is post-Solomonic, it is most likely to have been drawn in Yeru-Shala'im, which is also on the northern border, though not quite so far north as Gil-Gal - click here for the map. But if map had been drawn while David was king in Chevron...
וַיִּהְיוּ הֶעָרִים מִקְצֵה לְמַטֵּה בְנֵי יְהוּדָה אֶל גְּבוּל אֱדֹום בַּנֶּגְבָּה קַבְצְאֵל וְעֵדֶר וְיָגוּר
BN: And these were the furthermost cities of the tribe of the Beney Yehudah, towards the southern border of Edom: Kavtsi-El, and Eder, and Yagur;
And for all the reasons explained above, the inheritance of Yehudah is about to require rather more detail, and therefore more verses, than any other tribe.
MI KETSEH: Is a relative term, which requires a context. London is among the furthermost cities of Britain, if you are drawing your map in Aberdeen. If this map is being drawn in Yehoshu'a's own time, it will presumably be looking outwards from Gil-Gal, which is as north-east as you can get in Yehudah; if it is post-Solomonic, it is most likely to have been drawn in Yeru-Shala'im, which is also on the northern border, though not quite so far north as Gil-Gal - click here for the map. But if map had been drawn while David was king in Chevron...
EDOM BA NEGBAH: This time, though it looks like yet another definite article + dative curiosities, it is not; this is an entirely different grammatical construction.
KAVTSI-EL: See the link.
EDER: See the link.
YAGUR: See the link.
15:22 VE KIYNAH VE DIYMONAH VE AD'ADAH
וְקִינָה וְדִימֹונָה וְעַדְעָדָה
BN: And Kiynah, and Diymonah, and Ad'adah;
KIYNAH: I noted above that Genesis 15:19 named the Kenizites as an ancient tribe of Kena'an; is it just coincidence that the tribe named alongside them in the same verse should be the Keynim (Kenites), whose tribal capital (so to speak) was Kiynah?
Or is it from a different root altogether? Kinah is tought by some to be the Yehudit word from which the English took "keening", the act of weeping and wailing in grief; though many others insist that it actually comes from the Irish word "caoineadh", which has the same meaning; and I would argue that, if it were correct, both would have come from the same "common source", which would be Beney Chet or Hittite. However, it cannot be correct, because the KIYNAH here has no Aleph (א), whereas the KINAH that is understood to mean "grief" etc does; and anyway KINAH in Yehudit is mostly used for jealousy and passionate rage, and not for mourning, as in that most famous verse in Exodus (20:4) which proclaims that "I, YHVH your god, am a jealous god", the Yehudit text being "ANOCHI YHVH ELOHEYCHA EL KANA - אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֵל קַנָּא", KANA with an Aleph.
DIYMONAH: The Yud is probably unnecessary, and this should really be pronounced Dimonah (and written Dimonah, whereas most modern renderings drop the "h"). The name means "dunghill", which is more likely an association with Ba'al-Zevuv (Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies) than a suggestion of a ruined land, though today's Dimona could create many a ruined land - click here to follow Ba'al-Zevuv's latest evil manifestation in that part of the world.
AD'ADAH: The same link for Ad'adah as for Diymonah, which might surprise you; the explanation is in the link. I happen to think the link is wrong, and that the two are named as different towns because they were different towns.
15:23 VE KEDESH VE CHATSOR VE YITNAN
וְקֶדֶשׁ וְחָצֹור וְיִתְנָן
BN: And Kedesh, and Chatsor, and Yitnan;
KEDESH: In a military world like that of the Romans, dozens of towns are left behind where garrisons (castrae) were built: Lancaster and Manchester and Leicester... in a religious world like that of the Beney Yisra-El, dozens of towns grow up where a shrine was first established, a "holy place" where pilgrims come, and need hostelling, feeding, a place to stable their camel or re-shoe their donkey...
CHATSOR: Or Chetsron. As in verse 25.
YITNAN: See the link.
15:24 ZIPH VA TELEM U VE'ALOT
זִיף וָטֶלֶם וּבְעָלֹות
BN: Ziph, and Telem, and Be'alot;
ZIPH: See the link, and also verse 55.
TELEM: 1 Samuel 15:4 has Tela'im (טְּלָאִ֔ים), and the root there is the one that gives "young lambs", the inference from the numbers being that Shemu-El gathered the people on a hill in sheep-country, and not in any town. Ezra 2:42, on the other hand, includes the Beney Talmon among the returnees from exile, as does Nehemiah in 7:45; while the latter has a man named Talmon in 12:25 - but these are most probably the Chaldean T replacing the Yehudit Sheen, as in Ptolemy and Shelomoh, or Tammuz and Shimshon (think of the English equivalent, that Guy and Bill are actually the same name; the one abbreviated from the Norman French Guillaume, the other from its Saxon variant William). Gesenius asks us to consider Ezekiel 10:24 as well, but unfortunately there isn't one, and I can't figure out which verse he was intending when he made that error. The root, TALAM, generally means "wrong-doing", in the sense of "oppression", another unlikely name for a town, or indeed a man.
BE'ALOT: The plural of Ba'al, albeit a feminine variant, so yet again a shrine-town.
15:25 VE CHATSOR CHADATAH U KERIYOT CHETSRON HI CHATSOR
וְחָצֹור חֲדַתָּה וּקְרִיֹּות חֶצְרֹון הִיא חָצֹור
BN: And Chatsor, Chadatah, and Keriyot (Chetsron is Chatsor);
CHATSOR: See under Chetsron, but isn't it odd that two towns should be listed, and then the second said to be the first?
CHADATAH: See the link.
KERIYOT: Literally means "villages", though I think the pointing is wrong and it should be Kerayot - see my note to Joshua 9:17. The name is also the source of Judas Iscariot, which would be Yehudah Ish ha Kerayot, "a Jew from the villages" possibly, or his name was Yehudah and he came from a group of towns known as "the villages". If it was today, I would direct you to Haifa on the Mediterranean coast, where there is a mini-conurbation that bears the name Kerayot, founded in the 1930s on the outskirts of the city: the five villages that comprise it are Kiryat Ata, Kiryat Bialik, Kiryat Chaim, Kiryat Motzkin and Kiryat Yam.
15:26 AMAM U SHEMA U MOLADAH
אֲמָם וּשְׁמַע וּמֹולָדָה
KJ: Amam, and Shema, and Moladah,
BN: Amam, and Shem'a, and Moladah;
AMAM: Why is this not Imam?
SHEM'A: Strange names some towns do have! Keriyot was curious enough, but Shem'a, as in "Shem'a Yisra-El..."? And then Moladah, as in "birthplace"? Yet again, I remain to be convinced that these lists are any more "real geography" than the accounts of the wilderness-crossing and the conquest were "real history".
MOLADAH: Meaning "birthplace", as MOLEDET means "motherland" (it always interests me that some nations have motherlands, while others have fatherlands, and I am quite certain that their behaviour as a nation reflects this). See also El-Tolad in verse 30.
15:27 VE CHATSAR GADAH VE CHESHMON U VEIT PELET
וַחֲצַר גַּדָּה וְחֶשְׁמֹון וּבֵית פָּלֶט
BN: And Chatsar Gadah, and Cheshmon, and Beit Pelet;
CHATSAR GADAH: Gad, the tribe, means "fortune", and like Greek Pan was probably a god before he became the name of a tribe, which is to say all the tribes have cosmological associations, and this is Gad's. More and more I am becoming convinced that this is a map of the individual stars that make up the constellations, being superimposed on a map of Kena'an, so that the human can serve as a mirror for the divine.
CHESHMON: One of the stopping-places on the Mosaic journey, for which see Numbers 33:29. But was this also the home of the Maccabees, or Hasmoneans as they were properly known, Chashmonim in Yehudit? The spelling is identical.
BEIT PELET: Were the original Pelsihtim, the refugees from ruined Knossos (Heraklion), known as the Beney Pelet? Much scholarly debate on this one, and in my novel "City of Peace" I chose that version, because it does seem highly likely to have been a name, if not the name, around the time of King Shelomoh (Solomon). Pelishtim works the same as Hebrew, Wales, Gypsy, and the N-word on a slave plantation in America: originally a term of derogation, abuse and unwantedness. As indeed the English version of Pelishtim - Philistines - does too.
15:28 VA CHATSAR SHU'AL U VE'ER SHEVA U VIZYOT-YAH
וַחֲצַר שׁוּעָל וּבְאֵר שֶׁבַע וּבִזְיֹותְיָה
BN: And Chatsar Shu'al, and Be'er Sheva, and Vizyot-Yah;
CHATSAR SHU'AL: See the link.
BE'ER SHEVA: See the link.
VIZYOT-YAH: The first Yah name to have appeared, overtly anyway. See Be'alot et al above,and Ba'alah below.
We need to count how many of these have CHATSAR or CHATSOR in their name. Is this the Yehudit equivalent of "ville" or "ham"? See verse 47, below. And then add in all the Chatsreyhen from verse 32 onwards!
15:29 BA'ALAH VE IYIM VA ATSEM
בַּעֲלָה וְעִיִּים וָעָצֶם
BN: Ba'alah, and Iyim, and Atsem;
BA'ALAH: Be'alot previously; this one too feminine. And Yah in the previous verse; so clearly this was a region in which the mother-goddess had high status.
IYIM: Iyim are islands, however small, whether off-shore in the ocean or in a lake or river or stream. Scholars like to identify these with known islands elsewhere, but there is no rationale for doing that. But at the same time, the towns mentioned around IYIM, and in the immediate verses before and after, are all in the western Negev, an area not exactly well-known for its rivers, lakes, or even ponds. Oases possibly, or wells, dug into the sand. I wonder if IYIM is being used metaphorically to describe those vital but scanty liquid resources: islands in the desert, in the way that camels are described as the ships of the desert.
ATSEM: See the link. An ETSEM is a bone, and this is definitely the bony region of the Kena'ani body; as in "dry as a...".
15:30 VE EL-TOLAD U CHESIL VE CHARMAH
וְאֶלְתֹּולַד וּכְסִיל וְחָרְמָה
BN: And El-Tolad, and Chesil, and Charmah;
EL-TOLAD: Another verbal pairing, this one with MOLADAH in verse 26.
CHESIL: Which some scholars, based on 1 Chronicles 4:30 insist is really BETU-EL, when it is perfectly obvious that the Chronicles verse is simply naming a different town.
15:31 VE TSIKLAG U MADMANAH VE SANSANAH
וְצִקְלַג וּמַדְמַנָּה וְסַנְסַנָּה
KJ: And Ziklag, and Madmannah, and Sansannah,
BN: And Tsiklag, and Madmanah, and Sansanah;
TSIKLAG: which was technically David's first throne. See the link.
MADMANAH: See the link.
SANSANAH: See the link.
15:32 U LEVA'OT VE SHILCHIM VE AYIN VE RIMON KOL ARIM ESRIM VA TESHA VE CHATSREYHEN
וּלְבָאֹות וְשִׁלְחִים וְעַיִן וְרִמֹּון כָּל עָרִים עֶשְׂרִים וָתֵשַׁע וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: And Leva'ot, and Shilchim, and Ayin, and Rimmon: twenty-nine cities in total, with their suburbs.
Back in Joshua 12 there were issues as to whether the number of kings whose cities were overthrown in the conquest was twenty-nine, thirty, or thirty-one, and that it depended on whether Gil-Gal was included, and it looked like one for every day of the lunar month, but of course some lunar months have thirty and others thirty-one days, depending on all manner of cosmological diurnations... so I find myself wondering if the number twenty-nine here is of the same order.
LEVA'OT: See the link.
SHILCHIM: See the link.
AYIN: See the link.
RIMON: Just as we have seen numerous towns dedicated to El, and Ba'al, and even Ba'alah and Yah, so now there is Rimon, usually rendered as Rimmon in English, which is also the word for a pomegranete, so if you know your Greek and Roman mythology you can probably guess which god this is: Assyriac Ba'al, connected specifically to Ba'al-Hadad, the storm-god, because RAMANU in Akkadian is the word for the rumbling and crashing that accompanies the storm. But through the pomegranete to the Underworld as well.
CHATSREYHEN: I am placing the note here, and will not comment again, but I am bewildered by the pointing. Here it is Chatsreyhen (חַצְרֵיהֶן), and we will also see the singular equivalent of that, Chatsreyha (חֲצֵרֶיהָ); but there will also be - you can check all 14 occasions for yourself: verses 32, 36, 41, 44, 45 (the first variant), 46, 47 (twice, both variants), 51, 54, 57, 59, 60, 62. I can see no grammatical logic to the variants; I presume they are errors.
samech break (I have the sense that the samech breaks in this chapter enable us to connect the verses in each section by regions, but this will need to be verified as we go on).
בַּשְּׁפֵלָה אֶשְׁתָּאֹול וְצָרְעָה וְאַשְׁנָה
BN: And in the Shephelah, Eshta'ol, and Tsar'ah, and Ashnah;
SHEPHELAH: Yes, it means "plain" or "valley", but it was also the name used to denote a very specific region, and it is that region which is intended here.
ESHTA'OL: See the link.
TSAR'AH: I am really not sure how KJ reached Zoreah as a reading for Tsar'ah (there is a tendency among the English to render a Tsade - צ - as though it were a Zayin - ז); but neither is it: the Christian websites offer explanatory pages on both Zorah and Zoreah, though neither are what is written in the Yehudit. It means "troubles" - though differently from ACHOR in verse 3. Yiddish "tsurus" stems from it, which is personal turmoil, where ACHOR causes the trouble, rather than being its victim. Still, yet another name that you would never give to a town, unless by sobriquet: "City of Woes". See also Joshua 19:41 and particularly 24:12 for some connections with both hornets and plagues of leprosy. The sun-god of the Pelishtim, Shimshon, was born at Tsar'ah, according to Judges 13:2.
ASHNAH: See the link.
15:34 VE ZANO'ACH VE EYN GANIM TAPU'ACH VE HA EYNAM
וְזָנֹוחַ וְעֵין גַּנִּים תַּפּוּחַ וְהָעֵינָם
KJ: And Zanoah, and Engannim, Tappuah, and Enam,
BN: And Zano'ach, and Eyn Ganim, Tapu'ach, and Ha Eynam;
ZANO'ACH: See the link.
EYN GANIM: See the link.
TAPU'ACH: Not to be confused with Eyn Tapu'ach, mentioned in Joshua 17:7; this is the Tapu'ach that we encountered in Joshua 12:17.
HA EYNAM: Another of the towns with a definite article. As noted above, EYN can mean a fountain, as in water springing from the rocks, and is sometimes used for a well, though Be'er is more common, and an AYIN, which is an eye, comes from the same root, all a consequence of them being deep holes into potential nothingness, or a source of enrichment. So EYN also means "nothing", as in EYN HASBARAH SOPHIT LA MILAH HA HI (there is no final explanation for this word); and it is entirely possible that this is yet another sobriquet for a place, rather than a name: "Emptyville".
15:35 YARMUT VA ADUL-AM SOCHOH VA AZEKAH
יַרְמוּת וַעֲדֻלָּם שֹׂוכֹה וַעֲזֵקָה
BN: Yarmut, and Adul-Am, Sochoh, and Azekah;
YARMUT: See also Joshua 10:3, 12:11 and several more appearances still to come.
ADUL-AM: See also Joshua 12:15.
SOCHOH: See my note to CHEPHER in Joshua 12:17.
AZEKAH: See Joshua 10:10.
So many of these places are central to the King David tales. Adul-Am was the cave he used as his HQ during his bandit years; Sochoh was where he slew Gol-Yat.
15:36 VE SHA'ARAYIM VA ADITAYIM VE HA GEDERAH U GEDEROTAYIM ARIM ARBA ESREH VE CHATSREYHEN
וְשַׁעֲרַיִם וַעֲדִיתַיִם וְהַגְּדֵרָה וּגְדֵרֹתָיִם עָרִים אַרְבַּע עֶשְׂרֵה וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: And Sha'arayim, and Aditayim, and Gederah, and Gederotayim; fourteen cities with their suburbs;
SHA'ARAYIM: "Gates", but in the multiple plural, rather than the regular one (as with Mayim for water and Shamayim for skies, Elohim for the pantheon of the gods...); it would be SHE'ARIM in the regular plural, so there must be lots and lots of gates here. All towns have them, if they also have walls; they just don't usually get named for them (the exception is that very orthodox area of modern Yeru-Shala'im known as "The Hundred Gates", the Me'ah She'arim.
ADITAYIM: Again the multiple plural; we are accustomed to it in Mitsrayim (Egypt), where the multiple plural denotes multiple tribes and ethnic groups comprising a single nation, and in Yeru-Shala'im, where a conurbation was formed from seven hillside villages; and it is in this verse as Gederotayim as well (Repha'im, earlier in the chapter, is not a multiple plural - you can tell by the Aleph - א). "Group" is the key word, though whether it takes the form of molecules (mayim and shamayim), or gates, or peoples, or villages - and my assumption is that CHATSREYHEN, which are "villages" but also "suburbs", are construed from a similar type of grouping: the city-state which has the king in its capital, and then all the other smaller towns and villages that fall within its/his domain.
GEDERAH: "Fence" - if you don't have a wall... Is this a pairing in the same way that we have Hampton and Hampton Wick side-by-side, and Peckham next to Peckham Rye? Gederah then the first fenced town in the region, and the bigger town of Gederotayim later on? Or is this a separation of county from county town? But see also Gederot in verse 41.
GEDEROTAYIM: "Many fences", and presumably many gates too. I wonder if the fences were not just multiple, but conjoined to enable an eruv?
But note that there is also a Gederot, the same word but in the plural, in verse 41. Which gives us all three forms: the singular, the plural and the multiple plural. So Ham as well as Hampton Wick, and no doubt Hampton Court as well, not far away! Do Haggerston, Hackney and Hoxton derive in the same manner?
ARBA ESREH: fourteen cities; but the list actually has fifteen!
15:37 TSENAN VA CHADASHAH U MIGDAL GAD
15:37 TSENAN VA CHADASHAH U MIGDAL GAD
צְנָן וַחֲדָשָׁה וּמִגְדַּל גָּד
KJ: Zenan, and Hadashah, and Migdalgad,
BN: Tsenan, and Chadashah, and Migdal Gad;
TSENAN: Why does this link think that Tsenan is Shephir? This link does not, but does make the connection to Micah 1:11, which is the error of the first link: Tsenan here is spelled without an Aleph, Tsa'anan there with one (צַֽאֲנָ֔ן), and it is not an Aramaic variation - they are different towns.
CHADASHAH: The trouble with naming a town "Newtown" is that it becomes old very quickly.
MIGDAL GAD: Just seeing this name should raise questions, because we are listing the towns in Yehudah, not Gad. But Gad as a deity can be honoured anywhere, and is, by many names (click here). We need to be able to make that sort of distinction throughout these texts.
15:38 VE DIL'AN VE HA MITSPEH VE YAKTE-EL
וְדִלְעָן וְהַמִּצְפֶּה וְיָקְתְאֵל
BN: And Dil'an, and Ha Mitspeh, and Yakte-El;
DIL'AN: An outcrop of rock, or possibly a ledge, though DAL'AH in the Arabic is a cucumber, from which Gesenius suggests that Dil'an must have been a cucumber field. (Why the error? Perhaps because the root of both means "something protruding", which a tongue might do, or a mountain-ledge, and a cucumber suggests a similar shape? I have speculated that with a question-mark!) Tell en-Najileh has been suggested as its site, about 8 miles south-west of Tell el-Hesi, the first major archeological dig in the region, by Flinders Petrie, in the 1890s. T.E. Lawrence made a passing contribution to that dig a few years later, though mostly he was with Leonard Woolley in the Wilderness of Tsin (verses 1 and 3 above).
HA MITSPEH: See Joshua 11:3 and 8, as well as 13:26. Each of the above, and this one again, appear to be a different place with the same name, which is not surprising, as a Mitspeh was a watchtower.
YAKTE-EL: 2 Kings 14:7 tells us that King Amats-Yah (Amaziah), almost four hundred years after Yehoshu'a, captured a town named Sel'a (סֶּלַע ) in the plains around the Dead Sea, and renamed it Yakte-El; so calling it by that name in this verse would be something of an anachronism, if it was the same Sel'a; but alas, from the geographical locations of the other towns in this verse, it isn't. That Sel'a was important to Amats-Yah because it was the capital city of Edom; it would be important to Muhammad and Islam later on, for reasons you can discover by searching for the much-repeated word "Sela" at this link; it then became still more famous in history later on under yet another name: Petra (a Sel'a is a rock, and in Greek and Roman, as per the renaming of Apostle Shim'on by Jesus....). But it still isn't this Yakte-El.
15:39 LACHISH U VATSKAT VE EGLON
לָכִישׁ וּבָצְקַת וְעֶגְלֹון
KJ: Lachish, and Bozkath, and Eglon,
BN: Lachish, and Vatskat, and Eglon;
LACHISH: We are revisiting the very first places conquered by Yeoshu'a. See Joshua 10:3 and 23; also 12:11.
VATSKAT: or Batskat more likely, but the Prefictual Vav, serving as the conjunction "and", requires a softening of the Bet into Vet.
EGLON: See my notes at Joshua 10:3, and also Joshua 12:12.
15:40 VE CHABON VE LACHMAS VE CHITLISH
וְכַבֹּון וְלַחְמָס וְכִתְלִישׁ
KJ: And Cabbon, and Lahmam, and Kithlish,
BN: And Chabon, and Lachmas, and Chitlish;
CHABON: See the link.
LACHMAS: KJ has seen the Samech (ס) and mistaken it for a final Mem (ם), rendering the town as Lachmam, though as Bible Hub points out (click here), the Revised Version corrects it to Lahman in the margin; though unfortunately that is simply a a different incorrectness, because it is Lachmas, not Lahmas or Lahman.
CHITLISH: See the link.
15:41 U GEDEROT BEIT DAGON VE NA'AMAH U MAKEDAH ARIM SHESH ESREH VE CHATSREYHEN
וּגְדֵרֹות בֵּית דָּגֹון וְנַעֲמָה וּמַקֵּדָה עָרִים שֵׁשׁ עֶשְׂרֵה וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: And Gederot, Beit Dagon, and Na'amah, and Makedah; sixteen cities with their suburbs.
GEDEROT: see my notes to verse 36. Note that a GADER could also be a hedge, though I don't think they went in for hedges much in Biblical times.
BEIT DAGON: Dagon was the corn-god of the Pelishtim (Philistines), and the word DAGAN in Yehudit means "corn".
NA'AMAH: Odd coincidence that there should be a Na'amah so close to a corn-god shrine, given that the tale of Rut (Ruth) starts with her mother-in-law Na'amah (Naomi), who she followed to Yisra-El, and met Bo'az when she was gleaning his field at the end of the corn-harvest, and became his wife: a mythological tale of old moons and new moons, with Bo'az himself ending up as one of the doorway pillars of the Temple in Yeru-Shala'im. But really it is no coincidence at all; we are in the Shephelah, and finding shrines related to the corn industry is about as likely as finding wineries in the Napa Valley or pasta in Padua.
MAKEDAH: See my note to Joshua 10:10, and also 12:16.
samech break
15:42 LIVNAH VA ETER VE ASHAN
KJ: Libnah, and Ether, and Ashan.
BN: Livnah, and Eter, and Ashan;
LIVNAH: Another moon-goddess shrine. See my note to Joshua 10:29 ff; also 12:15.
ETER: The map at the link shows most of the places named in these latter verses
ASHAN: See the link.
Are these repetitions, or did the same name get re-used in many places; there are, for example, 34 towns in the USA named Springfield, not including the one where the Simpsons live, plus a further 36 townships that bear the name, and this across just 25 of the states.
לִבְנָה וָעֶתֶר וְעָשָׁן
BN: Livnah, and Eter, and Ashan;
LIVNAH: Another moon-goddess shrine. See my note to Joshua 10:29 ff; also 12:15.
ETER: The map at the link shows most of the places named in these latter verses
ASHAN: See the link.
Are these repetitions, or did the same name get re-used in many places; there are, for example, 34 towns in the USA named Springfield, not including the one where the Simpsons live, plus a further 36 townships that bear the name, and this across just 25 of the states.
15:43 VE YIPHTACH VE ASHNAH U NETSIV
וְיִפְתָּח וְאַשְׁנָה וּנְצִיב
KJ: And Jiphtah, and Ashnah, and Nezib,
BN: And Yiphtach, and Ashnah, and Netsiv;
YIPHTACH: How many of these towns are also the names of people? If they grew from the name of a god, but the shrine-name was dropped, then it would be logical enough - think of Leicester, for example, which was a shrine to the sun-god Leir (Lir in some cultures; Lear is a pseudo-history by Shakespeare and his contemporaries), but then became a Roman garrison, whence Castra Leir and Leicester. See verse 14. And why do the translators render the identical word in Yehudit as Jiphtah here, but Jephthah previously? A different member of the translation team perhaps, with a different understanding of the phonetic system being employed? Or simply a failure to connect the two?
ASHNAH: Ashan in the previous verse, its feminine equivalent now? No - Ashan with an Aleph (א), Ashnah with an Ayin (ע), two completely different words. Like Yiphtach, one of the primary responsibilities of a translator-commentator is to look fastidiously at the letters that make up the words, and to make the connections that are there to be made, and at least to try not to miss out some of the other connections (not always easy with the Tanach, I do appreciate that).
NETSIV: See the link.
15:44 U KE'ILAH VE ACHZIV U MAR'E'SHAH ARIM TESH'A VE CHATSREYHEN
וּקְעִילָה וְאַכְזִיב וּמָרֵאשָׁה עָרִים תֵּשַׁע וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: And Ke'ilah, and Achziv, and Mareshah; nine towns with their suburbs;
KE'ILAH: See the link. Another of the key places in the David tale - but all this area was, and remember that David was the great-grandson of Rut and Bo'az, so you would expect to find mythological tales of the flight of the earth-god (David) from the Underworld god (Sha'ul) taking place in the heartland of the corn industry.
ACHZIV: No 2 in the attached link; No 1 is one of contemporary Israel's finest beaches, known also for a small patch of land which became the autonomous and independent fiefdom of Achziviland in the 1970s; and also for this being the beach where the Israelis landed their tanks from naval vessels, in order to keep secret until the last minute the invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
MARESHAH: See the link. The name comes from the same root that gives "inheritance" or "possession", one of the two words used by both Mosheh and Yehoshu'a to describe the taking of the land by the tribes - the other being NACHALAT, for which see verse 20. Cf Deuteronomy 2:9.
ARIM TESH'A: "villages nine" - scribal error, or just a failed attempt to sound poetic? The same phrase recurs in verse 54, and again later, and again later still, so it is clearly not an error.
15:45 EKRON U VENOTEYHA VA CHATSEREYHA
עֶקְרֹון וּבְנֹתֶיהָ וַחֲצֵרֶיהָ
BN: Ekron, with her sub-towns and her suburbs;
EKRON: The territory of the Pelishtim was sub-divided into five city-states, known by scholars in its Greek form as the Pentapolis, and consisting of Azah (Gaza), Ascalon (Ashkelon), Ashdod, Gat (Gath), and Ekron - two at least in the verses that follow. As expained previously, the city was the domain of the king, and therefore the administrative centre, but all towns and villages in the region formed its domain. The main city also expanded beyond its walls into the local countryside, and so there are sub-towns, but there are also suburbs. I am intrigued to find Ekron included in the inheritance of Yehudah, because it was probably territory of the Pelishtim by that time; but these chapters are an idealisation of the map of Yisra-El, imagining everything eventually successfully conquered: "inheritances" in theory, though never fully achieved in practice.
VENOTEYHA: An important moment in the usage of this term. BEN mean "son", BAT "daughter", and BENOT "children". But we have seen innumerable instances of BEN as "apprentice", "clan-member", "student", "kinsman", "guild-member", and even, as here, "suburb". Anything that comes out of something else appears to be eligible for the description, and therefore requires us to translate it with forethought. And this is doing the same thing, but in the feminine. And having seen it in practice, now go back to all the genealogical tables in the Book of Genesis, the implausible list of Keturah's children in Genesis 25 in particular, and tell me: are they really her biological sons, or is that too a map of towns and villages?
15:46 ME EKRON VE YAMAH KOL ASHER AL YAD ASHDOD VE CHATSREYHEN
מֵעֶקְרֹון וָיָמָּה כֹּל אֲשֶׁר עַל יַד אַשְׁדֹּוד וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: From Ekron as far as the sea, everything in the neighbourhood of Ashdod, including its sub-towns;
As above, these Chatsreyhen are the small towns attached to the larger city-states, in the later Greek sense. And of course the tribal structure for Yisra-El will itself mirror the Greek city-state structure, both divided per the constellation into 12, the Greek known as an amphictyony.
ASHDOD: See Joshua 11:22 and 13:3.
15:47 ASHDOD BENOTEYHA VA CHATSEREYHA AZAH BENOTEYHA VA CHATSEREYHA AD NACHAL MITSRAYIM VE HA YAM HA GADOL U GEVUL
אַשְׁדֹּוד בְּנֹותֶיהָ וַחֲצֵרֶיהָ עַזָּה בְּנֹותֶיהָ וַחֲצֵרֶיהָ עַד נַחַל מִצְרָיִם וְהַיָּם [הַגָּבֹול כ] (הַגָּדֹול ק) וּגְבוּל
BN: Ashdod with her sub-towns and her suburbs; Azah with her sub-towns and her suburbs, as far as the river of Egypt, and the great sea, and its coast.
BENOTEYHA: See my note to verse 45; it was VENOTEYHA there, but BENOTEYHA here, because of the prefictual conjunction Vav.
CHATSREYHA: One more list for my list in verse 28!
AZAH: Gaza.
The parentheses here reflect the traditional recognition that the verse appears to be textually incomplete.
samech break
15:48 U VA HAR SHAMIR VE YATIR VE SOCHOH
וּבָהָר שָׁמִיר וְיַתִּיר וְשֹׂוכֹה
BN: And in the mountains, Shamir, and Yatir, and Sochoh;
SHAMIR: See the link.
YATIR: See the link.
SOCHOH: A second town bearing that name - but given that it means "tents", and was therefore probably a Bedouin caravanserai, we should expect to find many with the same name, as we do with Sukot ("loose-framed wooden cabins" rather than "cloth tents"; but equivalent to the difference today between a motel and a hotel, Sochoh being the motel) in the Mosaic tales. See my note to Chepher at Joshua 12:17.
15:49 VE DANAH VE KIRYAT SANAH HI DEVIR
וְדַנָּה וְקִרְיַת סַנָּה הִיא דְבִר
BN: And Danah, and Kiryat Sanah, which is Devir;
DANNAH: See the link.
KIRYAT SANAH: See the link, and especially the paragraph from Easton's Bible Dictionary. Kiryat means "village" and a SENEH was a thorn-bush; it is unclear how a SENIR is specifically different from a SHAMIR, which we visited in the previous verse, but clearly we are now in the gorse of the midlands rather than the corn of the lowlands. The alternate name, DEVIR, implies that the "Hittite place of learning" was a priestly seminary, and that there would therefore have been a shrine, with its veil separating the Holy of Holies where the ikon of the deity was kept - not difficult to imagine the word becoming colloquialised, and then treated as the alternate name for the town: the obvious example for this is Yatrib in Saudi Arabia, which became known as "the city of the Prophet" because Muhammad went into exile there, and eventually "the" and "of the Prophet" got dropped, and the place is known today as Medina, "city".
15:50 VA ANAV VE ESHTEMOH VE ANIM
וַעֲנָב וְאֶשְׁתְּמֹה וְעָנִים
BN: And Anav, and Eshtemoh, and Anim;
ANAV: Grapes. The names of towns enabling us to conduct an agricultural as well as a religious tour of the land!
ESHTEMOH: is this simply ESHTEMO'A by a different spelling? It will recur in Joshua 21:14, with an Ayin (ע) rather than a Hey (ה) ending. The answer usually lies in meaning, and this one is tricky. Logic says the root must be SHEM'A, and this the Hitpa'el form, which would make it another religious shrine; and of course every town would have had its equivalent of the parish church, just as every farm, every house, in those days, would have had its ikon or its teraph, and plenty of towns get named for that shrine (Shadwell, by the Tower of London, was St Chad's Well originally, that sort of thing) because what other obvious mnemonic is there for a mere hamlet in the hills that nobody has thought to name?
ANIM: I think it should probably be Aynim, as the plural of Ayin, meaning a "spring" or "fountain".
15:51 VE GOSHEN VE CHOLON VE GILOH ARIM ACHAT ESREH VA CHATSREYHEN
וְגֹשֶׁן וְחֹלֹן וְגִלֹה עָרִים אַחַת עֶשְׂרֵה וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
KJ: And Goshen, and Holon, and Giloh; eleven cities with their villages,
BN: And Goshen, and Cholon, and Giloh; eleven cities with their suburbs;
GOSHEN: Which of course is where this entire journey started, it being the name of the region of the Nile Delta in which Yoseph settled Ya'akov (Genesis 47:1) - the area of preference of the aristocrats of the Hyksos, if you prefer that version. No one seems to know what the word means, in Egyptian or in Yehudit, but clearly the name was used for more than one place, because this Goshen is not in the Nile Delta. See my notes to Joshua 10:41; also 11:16 and 13:3.
CHOLON: See the link. The name is probably derived from CHOL = "sand".
GILOH: See the link. GULAH is yet another word for a fountain or a spring, though it seems also to be connected with the word GOLAH, and thence GALUT, the former being the flight, the latter the exile when you get there. It probably isn't this, but there is also Yanum at verse 53, which does give weight to the possibility; see my note there.
15:52 ARAV VE RUMAH VE ESH'AN
אֲרַב וְרוּמָה וְאֶשְׁעָן
BN: Arav, and Rumah, and Eshan;
ARAV: See the link. But also click here for an absolutely fascinating account of the origins of the word "Arab" - which, guess what, turns out to be yet another derogatory expression, just like Hebrew, Philistine, Welsh... and I mention it because ARAV here is spelled with an Aleph (א), and is reckoned to be connected with ARBEH, which is the type of locust mentioned in the Egyptian plagues (Exodus 10:4 ff), though it might just as well be connected with OREV, which we saw in earlier battles was a form of "ambush"; whereas "Arab" is spelled with an Ayin (ע), and so it cannot be connected, can it? But read that essay, and you will see that it was precisely as a description of a "plague of locusts" that the Assyrians first came up with the insulting name for the desert tribes who were refusing to bow down to their authority.
RUMAH: See the link. The name denotes that it was high up in the hills.
ESHAN: We now have an Ashan, an Eshan and an Ashnah. Nor is there any reason why towns shouldn't have the same names; but for archaeologists and historians and translators and commntators it is essential that we recognise this plurality, and do not assume that London must be in England when in fact it is also in Ontario, Canada, or that Ithaca must be in Greece when in fact it is also in up-state New York.
15:53 VE YANUM U VEIT TAPU'ACH VA APHEKAH
וינים (וְיָנוּם) וּבֵית תַּפּוּחַ וַאֲפֵקָה
KJ: And Janum, and Bethtappuah, and Aphekah,
BN: And Yanum, and Veit Tapu'ach, and Aphekah;
YANUM: See the link. As with Giloh at verse 51, this has two meanings, of which "sleepy" is the most likely for a village this high up in the Judean mountains; but Gesenius also notes a Keri version of the text, which reckons that the final Mem (ם) is really a Samech (ס) - they are remarkably similar in appearance - and therefore this should be YANUS, which means "flight" - and logical enough for a runaway to choose a small town in the high mountains for such a purpose.
BEIT TAPU'ACH: There was a Tapua'ch previously, in Joshua 12:17, and an Ein Tapu'ach before that, in Joshua 5:34, but being as how Tapuchim are apples and this is a Beit Tapu'ach, it is perfectly feasible.
Is Aphekah Aphek, the Kena'ani (Canaanite) royal city, with yet another exceptional dative suffix? Probably not to the former (that was much further north and west); possibly yes to the latter, though it might just as correctly be a feminine ending and not a dative suffix. Aphek simply means "strong" and could denote any "garrison town" or "fortress", like castra in Latin.
15:54 VE CHUMTAH VE KIRYAT ARBA HI CHEVRON VE TSI'OR ARIM TESH VE CHATSREYHEN
וְחֻמְטָה וְקִרְיַת אַרְבַּע הִיא חֶבְרֹון וְצִיעֹר עָרִים תֵּשַׁע וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
KJ: And Humtah, and Kirjatharba, which is Hebron, and Zior; nine cities with their villages,
BN: And Chumtah, and Kiryat Arba, which is Chevron, and Tsi'or; nine cities with their suburbs;
CHUMTAH: "Place of lizards" - see the link.
KIRYAT ARBA: See the link.
CHEVRON: See the link; and also the giving of this to Kalev, which was recounted in chapter 14.
TSI'OR: See the link. But also see the link to TSO'AR, the equally small village in the very nearby mountains, where Lot and his daughter "fled" and sought "refuge" at the time of the volcanic eruption that destroyed the Cities of the Plain (Genesis 19:22 ff), and then look again at Giloh and Yanum, above.
samech break
TSI'OR: See the link. But also see the link to TSO'AR, the equally small village in the very nearby mountains, where Lot and his daughter "fled" and sought "refuge" at the time of the volcanic eruption that destroyed the Cities of the Plain (Genesis 19:22 ff), and then look again at Giloh and Yanum, above.
samech break
15:55 MA'ON KARM-EL VA ZIPH VE YUTAH
מָעֹון כַּרְמֶל וָזִיף וְיוּטָּה
KJ: Maon, Carmel, and Ziph, and Juttah,
BN: Ma'on, Karm-El, and Ziph, and Yutah;
MA'ON: The way this is written, especially the absence of a conjunction, is the town in fact Ma'on-Karm-El, rather than two separate towns? A Ma'on simply means a "habitation".
KARM-EL: "El's vineyard"
ZIPH: See also verse 24.
YUTAH: Is this the source of the American state? I presume, from the desert conditions, the proximity to a very salty lake, and the fact that it is Biblical, that yes, it must be. The root is NATAH, which means "stretch out" or "extend", though it is also used for "bend" and "lean", as in a person bending over to put down a bucket (Genesis 24:14), or the rays of the sun-god bestowing light on the Earth (Psalm 144:5), or somebody or something "turning aside" (Numbers 22:23), or getting someone else to turn aside, as in Isaiah 44:20.
15:56 VE YIZRE-EL VE YAKDE'AM VE ZANO'ACH
וְיִזְרְעֶאל וְיָקְדְעָם וְזָנֹוחַ
KJ: And Jezreel, and Jokdeam, and Zanoah,
BN: And Yizre-El, and Yakde'am, and Zano'ach;
YIZRE-EL: usually rendered as Jezreel in English, it is the Yehudit pronunciation which is actually the problem here, because an Ayin (ע) adjacent to an Aleph (א) is unprecedented, unless there is a suffix. The "pointer" has made it even more difficult, by placing a pronounced sheva under the Reysh (ר), but an even more strongly pronounced segol under the Ayin, and then the semi-silent Aleph - really this should be Yizre'e'l, which is simply implausible. In "City of Peace" I removed the nekudot altogether, identified the root as YAZAR, meaning "to help", with the god-name as the suffix, and went for Yazar-El. I am not sure that is any less correct than either the pointed or the KJ here.
As to its location, this is far too far south to be the Jezreel Valley, and must be another occasion of two or more places having the same name.
YAKDE'AM: See the link. The root is YAKAD, which is one of several words for "to burn"; cf Deuteronomy 32:22, Isaiah 10:16, but especially Leviticus 6, which has several occurrences, verses 2, 5, 6... the association is always with the burning of offerings on a sacred altar, where other forms of "burning", such as YATSAT in Jeremiah 49:2, or the root SARAPH (cf Amos 6:10), from which come the angelic Seraphim, may have a secular as well as a religious usage.
ZANO'ACH: And even though this is not the Jezreel Valley, which became famous at the end of the 19th century (CE) when the immigrant Jews successfully drained its malarial swamps and turned it into rich agricultural land, here is nearby Zano'ach, likewise a long way further south, but clearly of the same order of land, because the name means "marshy".
15:57 HA KAYIN GIV'AH VE TIMNAH ARIM ESER VE CHATSREYHEN
YAKDE'AM: See the link. The root is YAKAD, which is one of several words for "to burn"; cf Deuteronomy 32:22, Isaiah 10:16, but especially Leviticus 6, which has several occurrences, verses 2, 5, 6... the association is always with the burning of offerings on a sacred altar, where other forms of "burning", such as YATSAT in Jeremiah 49:2, or the root SARAPH (cf Amos 6:10), from which come the angelic Seraphim, may have a secular as well as a religious usage.
ZANO'ACH: And even though this is not the Jezreel Valley, which became famous at the end of the 19th century (CE) when the immigrant Jews successfully drained its malarial swamps and turned it into rich agricultural land, here is nearby Zano'ach, likewise a long way further south, but clearly of the same order of land, because the name means "marshy".
15:57 HA KAYIN GIV'AH VE TIMNAH ARIM ESER VE CHATSREYHEN
הַקַּיִן גִּבְעָה וְתִמְנָה עָרִים עֶשֶׂר וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: Kayin, Givah, and Timnah; ten cities with their suburbs;
HA KAYIN: Is this the same town that we saw as Kinah in verse 22. Strange among all these mountain-refuges to have a town named for the man who never found one, but was forced to wander forever in the "Land of Nod", from LENADED meaning "to wander". Do nomads have sedentary villages?!
GIV'AH: Several villages reflect the name of the Egyptian earth-god Geb, usually in the form of a tumulus; the name entered the Yehudit language as "a hill", even when it wasn't a tumulus, so we cannot be certain if towns bearing the name are natural or man-made mounds. See my fuller note on this, here.
TIMNAH: See my notes to verse 10.
15:58 CHALCHUL, BEIT TSUR U GEDOR
חַלְחוּל בֵּית צוּר וּגְדֹור
BN: Chalchul, Beit Tsur, and Gedor;
CHALCHUL: Ḥalḥūl in today's pronunciation, with dots under each of the "h"s, denoting that upper-throaty place somewhere between a breathy Hey (ה) and a decidedly phlegmatic Chet (ח). As to its meaning, it probably wasn't a Yehudit word, so we are limited in our ability to say; as to its other occurrences, there is CHALCHALAH at Isaiah 21:3, which describes the physical trembling involved when a woman is giving birth, so maybe this hints at whatever the equivalent of a maternity hospital might have been at that time - a room in a women's shrine where the priestesses provided assistance. Otherwise it could be a doubling of the root CHUL, meaning "sand" (see CHOLOL at verse 51), in the same way that we have seen YAROKROK for "greenish" and ADAMDAM for "reddish"; and therefore the description of a place on the cusp of the sand and scrub desert.
BEIT TSUR: Tsur is the correct name for Tyre in what is now southern Lebanon; clearly it isn't that. But a Tsur is simply a rock, so yet again we can expect to find dozens of places bearing that name. This one, from the BEIT, must have been a shrine.
GEDOR: Yet another for our inventory of fences (see again my notes to verse 36).
15:59 U MA'ARAT U VEIT ANOT VE EL-TEKON ARIM SHESH VE CHATSREYHEN
וּמַעֲרָת וּבֵית עֲנֹות וְאֶלְתְּקֹן עָרִים שֵׁשׁ וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
KJ: And Maarath, and Bethanoth, and Eltekon; six cities with their villages,
BN: And Ma'arat, and Beit Anot, and El-Tekon; six cities with their suburbs;
MA'ARAT: See the link for this town named "Desolation"
BEIT ANOT: The Vav is surprising; the goddess was named Anat, though her ikons do have the Vav, because they are feminiine plural: Anatot, as in the town where Yirme-Yah's father was a priest, Beit Anatot (Bethany) - cf Jeremiah 1:1. It may be that Anot here also indicates the ikons, thereby explaining the Vav.
EL-TEKON: See the link. Several possible explanations, though the EL-prefix goes with all of them. Joshua 19:44 has EL-TEKEH; and I did a lot of work on that last time I was working on these pages, so follow the link and read it there, rather than me repeating it all here. Everything there applies here.
But there is also EL-TEK'E at Joshua 21:23, which is probably the Aramaic spelling of the same word; and the likelihood then that TEKON is an ON suffix (on is regularly used to mean "place of"), and all three are in fact the same name, all three a Kena'ani shrine (EL being the head of Kenaa'ni pantheon), and the only thing left to determine is the TEK part, which might be the one that became TEK'E in laterArabic, and means "fear" or "trembling", and thereby connects it with CHALCHUL in the previous verse, or it might be that TEKON comes from TIKUN, which means "healing", which... thereby connects it with CHALCHUL in the previous verse... funny that!
15:60 KIRYAT BA'AL HI KIRYAT YE'ARIM VE HA RABAH ARIM SHETAYIM VE CHATSREYHEN
15:60 KIRYAT BA'AL HI KIRYAT YE'ARIM VE HA RABAH ARIM SHETAYIM VE CHATSREYHEN
קִרְיַת בַּעַל הִיא קִרְיַת יְעָרִים וְהָרַבָּה עָרִים שְׁתַּיִם וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
KJ: Kirjathbaal, which is Kirjathjearim, and Rabbah; two cities with their villages
BN: Kiryat Ba'al, which is Kiryat Ye'arim, and Ha Rabah; two cities with their suburbs.
KIRYAT BA'AL: Two options for this, hyphenated (click here) and unhyphenated (click here), and they may well be the same place, though both here and at Joshua 18:14, it/they claim to be the original name for Kiryat Ye'arim, which would become a very important place, as we learned from the tale of the Beney Giv-Yon in Joshua 9. Ba'al is the spouse and consort of Anat, so no surprise to find them both having shrines so close together.
HA RABAH: West of the Yarden, so this cannot be the city that we now think of as Amman, the capital of today's Jordan - but see my notes at Joshua 13:25 anyway, to save me repeating them here? Rabah means "great", and calling it "Ha Rabah" suggests "the great", as a synonym for "capital". But the encyclopaedic link here, which lists all the Biblical references, does not include this verse - an oversight, or a different Ha Rabah? My first link in this paragraph does include it.
samech break
15:61 BA MIDBAR BEIT HA ARAVAH MIDIN U SECHACHAH
בַּמִּדְבָּר בֵּית הָעֲרָבָה מִדִּין וּסְכָכָה
KJ: In the wilderness, Betharabah, Middin, and Secacah,
BN: In the wilderness, Beit Ha Aravah, Midin, and Sechachah;
BEIT HA ARAVAH: Which was already mentioned at 15:8, above. Again the Christian commentators struggle with two possible names, and get both of them wrong. Click here, and here. Ha is the definite article, the town is Beit Ha Aravah, "The Shrine in the Aravah Desert". The modern site has similar problems, unable to decide if its English spelling should be Beit Haarava or Beit haArava or Beit Ha'arava.
MIDIN: See the link. Midin are"measures", so can we assume something agricultural, the town that held the main market for the region, or granaries, or the custom-house for working out whattithes and taxes were due?
SECHACHAH: One of the great problems that all academics face, Bible commentators amongst them, is the amount of wishful thinking that goes on, generally unsubstantiated. So surf Sechachah on the Internet and you will find that it is really Khirbet Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Why is that so? Because there is no other mention of Sechachah in the Tanach, but we know from the context that it was close to the Dead Sea, and it is mentioned in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found at Qumran...
15:62 VE HA NIVSHAN VE IR HAMELACH VE EYN GEDI ARIM SHESH VE CHATSREYHEN
וְהַנִּבְשָׁן וְעִיר הַמֶּלַח וְעֵין גֶּדִי עָרִים שֵׁשׁ וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: And Nivshan, and the City of Salt, and Ein Gedi; six cities with their suburbs.
NIVSHAN: As with Sechachah, so with Nivshan. Because there was a conflagration, probably a volcanic eruption billennia ago which caused the crater that is now the Dead Sea, Wellhausen, unable to locate Nivshan because it disappeared three thousand years ago, decides that Nivshan must be an error for Kivshan (כבשן), which means "furnace", and specifically a "lime kiln", (the floor of the Dead Sea contains a whole strata of limestone, so it is feasible: click here). But the Kivshan mentioned in the Sedom and Amorah tale (Genesis 19:28) is a simile, not a place, and the one in Exodus 9:8 is a genuine furnace, not a town. Why can it not just be what it says, Nivshan, but lost?
IR HA MELACH: See the link.
EYN GEDI: No need for a commentary; just enjoy the video.
15:63 VE ET HA YEVUSI YOSHVEY YERU-SHALA'IM LO YACHLU VENEY YEHUDAH LEHORIYSHAM VA YESHEV HA YEVUSI ET BENEY YEHUDAH BI YRU-SHALA'IM AD HA YOM HA ZEH
וְאֶת הַיְבוּסִי יֹושְׁבֵי יְרוּשָׁלִַם לֹא [יוּכְלוּ כ] (יָכְלוּ ק) בְנֵי יְהוּדָה לְהֹורִישָׁם וַיֵּשֶׁב הַיְבוּסִי אֶת בְּנֵי יְהוּדָה בִּירוּשָׁלִַם עַד הַיֹּום הַזֶּה
KJ: As for the Jebusites the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out: but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day.
BN: As for the Yevusi, the inhabitants of Yeru-Shala'im, the Beney Yehudah could not drive them out; but the Yevusi dwell with the children of Yehudah at Yeru-Shala'im to this day.
Which "day" is this? We know that David took the city, but did he throw out the Yevusim or absorb them - so we cannot use this to date the annals.
pey break
A final list then of the cities of Yehudah, starting at verse 20:
21: Kavtsi-El, Eder, Yagur;
22: Kiynah, Diymonah, Ad'adah;
23: Kedesh, Chatsor, Yitnan;
24: Ziph, Telem, Be'alot;
25: Chatsor, Chadatah, and Keriyot (Chetsron is Chatsor);
26: Amam, Shem'a, Moladah;
27: Chatsar Gadah, Cheshmon, Beit Pelet;
28: Chatsar Shu'al, Be'er Sheva, Vizyot-Yah;
29: Ba'alah, Iyim, Atsem;
30: El-Tolad, Chesil, Charmah;
31: Tsiklag, Madmanah, Sansanah;
32: Leva'ot, Shilchim, Ayin, Rimmon: twenty-nine cities in total, with their suburbs (= region 1)
except that the above list has thirty-seven!
33: And in the Shephelah, Eshta'ol, Tsar'ah, Ashnah;
34: Zano'ach, Eyn Ganim, Tapu'ach, Ha Eynam;
35: Yarmut, Adul-Am, Sochoh, Azekah;
36: And Sha'arayim, Aditayim, Gederah, Gederotayim; fourteen cities with their suburbs; (= region 2)
except that this list has fifteen!
37: Tsenan, Chadashah, Migdal Gad;
38: Dil'an, Ha Mitspeh, Yakte-El;
39: Lachish, Vatskat, Eglon;
40: Chabon, Lachmas, Chitlish;
41: Gederot, Beit Dagon, Na'amah, Makedah; sixteen cities with their suburbs (= region 3)
Got it right this time!
42: Livnah, Eter, Ashan;
43: Yiphtach, Ashnah, Netsiv;
44: Ke'ilah, Achziv, Mareshah; nine towns with their suburbs; (= region 4)
Right again!
45: Ekron, with her sub-towns and her suburbs; (= region 5)
46: From Ekron as far as the sea, everything in the neighbourhood of Ashdod, including its sub-towns;
47: Ashdod with her sub-towns and her suburbs; Azah with her sub-towns and her suburbs, as far as the river of Egypt, and the great sea, and its coast (= region 6)
48: And in the mountains, Shamir, Yatir, Sochoh;
49: Danah, Kiryat Sanah, which is Devir;
50: Anav, Eshtemoh, Anim;
51: Goshen, Cholon, Giloh; eleven cities with their suburbs; (= region 7)
52: Arav, Rumah, Eshan;
53: Yanum, Veit Tapu'ach, Aphekah;
54: Chumtah, Kiryat Arba, which is Chevron, and Tsi'or; nine cities with their suburbs; (= region 8)
55: Ma'on, Karm-El, Ziph, Yutah;
56: Yizre-El, Yakde'am, Zano'ach;
57: Kayin, Givah, Timnah; ten cities with their suburbs; (= region 9)
58: Chalchul, Beit Tsur, Gedor;
59: Ma'arat, Beit Anot, El-Tekon; six cities with their suburbs; (= region 10)
60: Kiryat Ba'al, which is Kiryat Ye'arim, Ha Rabah; two cities with their suburbs. (= region 11)
61: In the wilderness, Beit Ha Aravah, Midin, Sechachah;
62: Nivshan, the City of Salt, Ein Gedi; six cities with their suburbs (= region 12)
Which makes twelve regions, just as we would have predicted if we had accepted the hypothesis that everything on Earth has to mirror the template of the heavens. And you may well dispute whether Ekron is a separate region from the other cities of the Pelishtim; the language could go either way. But you may also want to consider whether verse 63 infers an additional region, but one that cannot yet be included. I might even suggest that the phrasing of Ekron was deliberately ambiguous, to allow it and the other cities of the Pelishtim to become a single region, once Yevus was conquered and Yeru-Shala'im established as the Ir Rabbah, the King of Kings and the City of Cities, which would only happen when it became Ir Shelomoh, the City of Solomon, ther City of Universal Harmony (shalom).
And the total number of towns: difficult to determine, because a) "do we include the un-named and un-numbered suburbs and sub-villages?"; to which the answer is "no, because in a city-state only the Rabbah counts; b) the numbers don't add up!; c) Ascalon and Gat are not listed. But based on the 12 regions it appears to be: 29 (37) + 14 (15) + 16 + 9 + 1 + 2 (4) + 11 + 9 + 10 + 6 + 2 + 6 = 115 (without the bracketed numbers), and what you will with the brackets (max 126). And make what Gematria you can out of them.
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