Joshua 12:16

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

the king of Makkedah, one; the king of Bethel, one;

World English Bible · Public Domain

Highlights

Septuagint runs shorter here — compare

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מַקֵּדָה֙

Maqqêdâh

H4719

“Makkedah”

Noun, Proper

Appears 9× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Joshua 10:10

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from the same as H5348 in the denominative sense of herding (compare H5349 )

TWOT: None

Makkedah = "place of shepherds" - the location of a cave in Judah where Joshua captured and executed five Canaanite kings during the conquest; located near Bethhoron and Libnah

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

7: words
4: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is מַקֵּדָה֙ Makkedah H4719 — appearing just 9 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

מַקֵּדָה֙ Makkedah H4719 occurs in 8 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

5 nouns
2 adjectives

Repetition

Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

מֶ֤לֶךְ king H4428 ×2
אֶחָ֔ד one H259 ×2
בֵּֽית Bethel H1008 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 10 words from the Hebrew and 4 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the Septuagint runs noticeably shorter here. See the side-by-side →

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Joshua 12:16 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Joshua 10:28 Joshua took Makkedah on that day, and struck it with the edge of the sword, and the king of it: he utterly destroyed them and all the souls who were therein; he left none remaining; and he did to the king of Makkedah as he had done to the king of Jericho.
Joshua 8:17 There was not a man left in Ai or Beth El, who didn't go out after Israel: and they left the city open, and pursued after Israel.
Judges 1:22 The house of Joseph, they also went up against Bethel; and Yahweh was with them.
Genesis 12:8 He left from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to Yahweh, and called on the name of Yahweh.
Genesis 28:19 He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

Here the Septuagint runs noticeably shorter than the Hebrew — LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) 4 words vs World English Bible 10. A rough length comparison of the two English translations, not a word-level alignment — read both below.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Joshua 12:16 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

מֶ֤לֶךְ מַקֵּדָה֙ אֶחָ֔ד מֶ֥לֶךְ בֵּֽית אֵ֖ל אֶחָֽד

the king of Makkedah, one; the king of Bethel, one;

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Joshua 12:16 Septuagint · lemma form

βασιλεύς μακηδα

the king of Elath,

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

מַלְכָּא דְמַקֵדָה חָד מַלְכָּא דְבֵית אֵל חָד:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Joshua 12:16 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

16. Makkedah] See Jos_10:10; Jos_10:16-17; Jos_10:21.

Beth-el] Earlier, Luz, famous for (i) Jacob’s dream (Gen_28:11-19); (ii) the worship of the calves in Jeroboam’s reign (1Ki_12:28-33), hence called Beth-aven = “the house of naught.”

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

The king of Makkedah, one,.... In a cave near to which five kings hid themselves, and were taken out and hanged, and the city afterwards was taken by Joshua, Jos 10:16; which fell to the lot of the tribe of Judah, Jos 15:41,

the king of Bethel, one; a city near to Ai, about a mile from it, and yet had a king over it: it was taken at the same time that Ai was, Jos 7:2; and fell to the lot of Benjamin, Jos 18:22.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

Bethel. Josue perhaps slew the king, but did not take the city, Judges i. 22. (Menochius)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

16. Makkedah — See Jos_10:10.

Beth-el — See Jos_7:2. [Whether the kings of Beth-el and Makkedah here mentioned were slain at the taking of Ai (compare Jos_8:17, note) and the battle of Beth-horon (Jos_10:28) is somewhat doubtful. It is expressly said that Joshua took Makkedah and destroyed its king in connexion with the great battle of Beth-horon, and it is also said that the men of Beth-el fought against Israel with the men of Ai. But the order of this list would seem to indicate that these kings fell after Joshua had conquered Southern Palestine and was returning northward. It is possible, however, that Beth-el and Makkedah may have recovered somewhat from their fall while Joshua was in the far south, and when he returned northward gave him battle again.

The same may be said of Libnah in the preceding verse compared with Jos_10:30. But on the whole it seems more probable that this list does not mean to chronicle the names of the cities in the exact order of their conquest.]

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Pulpit Commentary

Bethel. This city is here mentioned as smitten by Joshua. See notes on the capture of Ai, and Jud_1:22-25.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Joshua, in the Historical, opens this verse with 7 words (4 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Maqqêdâh (“Makkedah”). The Greek Septuagint runs shorter here. A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word Maqqêdâh carries the sense “Makkedah.” How does it shape the verse?
Joshua 10:10 shares the word «Makkedah» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
“king” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
Compared with the Hebrew, the Septuagint runs shorter here. What questions does that raise?
Reading how The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges and John Gill's Exposition read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

“king” occurs 2× in this single verse.
4 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 7 words in this verse.