Joshua 15:37 — Word Study

Context — The Cities of Judahgenerated

Cross References

The Key Word — צְנָן, tze.Nangenerated

How Translations Differ — measured against the Berean Standard Biblegenerated

Sentence Structuregenerated

Septuagint Backgroundgenerated

In plain words — the whole versegenerated

Frequently Asked Questionsgenerated

Reflection Questionsgenerated

1. What do the names of these towns tell us about the geography of ancient Judah?
2. How does the meaning of Hadashah reflect the history of its establishment?
3. In what ways might the names of these towns influence our understanding of the region?
4. What can we learn from the historical context of Migdal-gad as a fortified city?

Commentators on this verse — 4 expositors, verse by verse

Each of these wrote on Joshua 15:37 itself, not merely on the chapter around it.

John Gill1697–1771Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Zenan,.... Here begins another list or catalogue of the cities in the valley or plain.

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Robert Jamieson1802–1880Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown's Commentary

Zenan, and Hadashah, and Migdalgad, Zenan , [ Tsªnaan (H6799) or Tsa'ªnaan (H6630), place of flocks (Micah 1:11; Reland, 'Palaestina' p. 1058); Septuagint, Senna].

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CambridgeThe Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

37. Zenan] Group II. comprises the cities of the actual plain in its whole extent from north to south, between the hilly region on the west and the Philistine coast on the east. It includes sixteen cities:—

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Daniel Denison Whedon1808–1885Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

37-41. This second group of the cities in the Shephelah, sixteen in number, are now nearly all unknown. On Lachish and Eglon, see Joshua 10:3.

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The verse in English, compared — 17 translations, and where they part company

Every translation on this page is a decision someone had to make and commit to. Read down a column and you see one translator's judgement; read across a row and you see the range the Greek actually allows. The BSB is the wording the rest of this page is measured against, so it is listed first.

Counted from the translations carried on this site, not from a survey of every English Bible. A rendering shared by many versions is usually inherited rather than independently arrived at — the Tyndale line in particular runs through most of them.

The sentence as the grammar sees it — from the MACULA Hebrew treebank

This is not our own analysis: it is the scholarly syntax tree for the verse, showing how the clause actually holds together.

Boxes are the grammarian's groupings — clause, noun phrase, prepositional phrase.

The four witnesses to this verse — Masoretic, Septuagint, Samaritan, Qumran

The Masoretic Text and the Septuagint largely agree on the names listed in this verse, with three of the four words matched. The Septuagint's word order and articles differ, but the essential names remain consistent.

Four traditions, not one. “On the leather” means the letters physically survive on the scroll, as against letters an editor has supplied to fill a hole in it — a restoration is a scholar’s reading, not a reading of the manuscript. Words in [square brackets] are supplied; the notes count them apart from what survives.

The map of this verse — what each word keeps company with

This is a map of two things, both counted rather than judged. Company kept: which words stand within three words of each of these, anywhere in the Hebrew Bible — the thicker the line, the more often the pair meet compared with chance. Built from: the words a word is made out of, taken from its own Strong’s entry. It is not a map of meaning: nothing here claims two words mean the same thing. Click any circle to see the numbers behind it.

Lexicons — every word in Joshua 15:37

One dossier per word, with every reference work grouped by kind — Hebrew lexicons, morphology, Bible dictionaries, topical chains and the English of the translators themselves. The verse sits at the head of each block with the word under study lit, so you never lose your place. The panel above gives the short answer; this is the long one, and it is the part of the page worth indexing.

Every entry below is the lexicographer's own text. On the Hebrew: Brown-Driver-Briggs entire and its gloss set, Strong's Hebrew Dictionary, and Tyndale House's Translators Brief lexicon. Where a cell says a work has no entry, that work genuinely has none for this word.