Joshua 15:26

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Amam, and Shema, and Moladah,

World English Bible · Public Domain

Highlights

2 hapax legomena — only here in the Hebrew Bible
3 first appearances in the Hebrew Bible

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Word by word

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אֲמָ֥ם

ʼĂmâm

H538

“Amam”

Noun, Proper

Appears 1× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears here

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H517

TWOT: None

Amam = "their mother" - a city in southern Judah

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 →

3: words
3: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Notable vocabulary

2 hapax legomena — words that appear only here in the entire Hebrew Bible:

אֲמָ֥ם Amam H538
וּשְׁמַ֖ע Shema H8090

First appearance in Scripture

These words make their first canonical appearance in the Hebrew Bible here:

אֲמָ֥ם Amam H538
וּשְׁמַ֖ע Shema H8090
וּמוֹלָדָֽה Moladah H4137

Shared distinctive vocabulary

וּמוֹלָדָֽה Moladah H4137 occurs in 4 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

3 nouns

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 5 words from the Hebrew and 6 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

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 15:26 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

1 Chronicles 4:28 They lived at Beersheba, and Moladah, and Hazarshual,

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.

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

Hebrew Joshua 15:26 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

אֲמָ֥ם וּשְׁמַ֖ע וּמוֹלָדָֽה

Amam, and Shema, and Moladah,

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Joshua 15:26 Septuagint · lemma form

καί σην καί σαλμαα καί μωλαδα

and Sen, and Salmaa, and Molada,

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)

אֲמָם וּשְׁמָע וּמוֹלָדָה:

(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 15:26 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

26. Amam (c) Third group of nine cities:—

(1) Amam, unknown; (2) Shema, a place of the Simeonites (ch. Jos_19:2); (3) Moladah, called Malatua by the Greeks and Romans = the modern El-Milh, four English miles from Tell Arad and nine or ten due east of Beersheba; (4) Hazar-gaddah, unknown; (5) Heshmon, unknown; (6) Beth-palet, unknown; (7) Hazar-shual = “village of jackals,” inhabited after the Captivity by men of Judah (Neh_11:27); (8) Beer-sheba = either (a) “Well of Seven” or (b) “Well of the Oath” (Gen_21:28-32). We find Beer-sheba visited by Abraham, who dug the well (Gen_21:31); the place where Samuel’s sons judged Israel (1Sa_8:2); constituting, with Dan in the north, the established formula for the whole of the Promised Land—“Dan to Beer-sheba” (2Sa_24:2); the seat of an idolatrous worship in the time of Amos (Amo_5:5; Amo_8:14). It still retains as nearly as possible its ancient name, Bîr-es-Sebâ. There are at present two principal wells and five smaller ones. The curb-stones round the mouth are worn into deep grooves by the action of the ropes of so many centuries, and look as if “frilled or fluted all round”; (9) Bizjothjah, unknown.

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

And Hazargaddah,.... The first of these, it is probable, is the same, Jerom (g) calls Gadda, in the tribe of Judah, which was in his day a village in the extreme borders of Daroma to the east, hanging over the dead sea:

and Heshmon is met with nowhere else:

and Bethpalet is in Neh 11:26, where it is called Bethphelet.

(g) Ut supra, (De loc. Heb.) fol. 92. B.

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

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

26. Moladah, afterwards given to Simeon, is the modern el Milh, about twenty miles south of Hebron. [This place was identified by Dr. Robinson. It has two wells about forty feet deep, and the ruins of a former city cover a space around of nearly half a mile square. It was inhabited again after the exile. Neh_11:26. The sides of the wells are, according to Tristram, “of hard marble, polished and deeply fluted all round by the ropes of the water drawers, perhaps for four thousand years. Eight ancient water-troughs stand irregularly around, some oblong, many cup-shaped, and others apparently the scooped pedestals of ancient columns, which have once supported a portico over the well.”]

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — 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 3 words (3 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʼĂmâm (“Amam”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

How does “Amam” (ʼĂmâm) shape what this verse is saying?
This verse holds 2 words here found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. What might the rare words draw attention to?
3 words here appear for the first time in Scripture. What is being introduced at this debut?
Joshua 19:2 shares the word «Moladah» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
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

2 words in this verse appear nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
3 words make their first canonical appearance in Scripture here.
3 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 3 words in this verse.