Joshua 15:54

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

and Humtah, and Kiriath Arba (the same is Hebron), and Zior; nine cities with their villages.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Highlights

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

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וְחֻמְטָ֗ה

Chumṭâh

H2547

“and · Humtah”

Conjunction + Noun, Proper

Appears 1× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears here

Full BDB Definition

Origin: feminine of H2546

TWOT: None

Humtah = "place of lizards" - a town in the mountainous region of Judah, the one next to Hebron

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 →

9: words
8: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Notable vocabulary

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

וְחֻמְטָ֗ה Humtah H2547
וְצִיעֹ֑ר Zior H6730

First appearance in Scripture

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

וְחֻמְטָ֗ה Humtah H2547
וְצִיעֹ֑ר Zior H6730

Shared distinctive vocabulary

וְקִרְיַ֥ת Kirjath-arba H7153 occurs in 9 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

6 nouns
2 adjectives
1 pronoun

Repetition

A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

וְקִרְיַ֥ת Kirjath-arba H7153 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 16 words from the Hebrew and 16 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the same length.

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.

In the original languages it is 9 Hebrew tokens and 16 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Joshua 15:54 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Joshua 15:13 To Caleb the son of Jephunneh he gave a portion among the children of Judah, according to the commandment of Yahweh to Joshua, even Kiriath Arba, [which Arba was] the father of Anak (the same is Hebron).
Genesis 23:2 Sarah died in Kiriath Arba (the same is Hebron), in the land of Canaan. Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.
Joshua 14:15 Now the name of Hebron before was Kiriath Arba; [which Arba was] the greatest man among the Anakim. The land had rest from war.

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 15:54 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְחֻמְטָ֗ה וְקִרְיַ֥ת אַרְבַּ֛ע הִ֥יא חֶבְר֖וֹן וְצִיעֹ֑ר עָרִ֥ים תֵּ֖שַׁע וְחַצְרֵיהֶֽן

and Humtah, and Kiriath Arba (the same is Hebron), and Zior; nine cities with their villages.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Joshua 15:54 Septuagint · lemma form

καί ευμα καί πόλις αρβοκ οὗτος εἰμί χεβρων καί σωρθ πόλις ἐννέα καί ὁ ἔπαυλις αὐτός

and Euma, and the city Arboc, this is Chebron, and Soraith: nine cities and their villages:

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)

וְחֻמְטָה וְקִרְיַת אַרְבַּע הִיא חֶבְרוֹן וְצִיעֹר קִרְוִין תְּשַׁע וּפַצְחֵיהֶן:

(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 15:54 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 →

Adam Clarke's Commentary

Verse 54. Kirjath-arba] See Clarke on Jos 14:15.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(54) Of this total of nine, six have been found.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

Cain,.... Cain, or Hakain, "that Cain", we nowhere else read of; whether the name was given it by the old Canaanites, in memory of Cain, the son of Adam, is not certain:

Gibeah; there were other places that went by the name of Gibeah; there was a Gibeah in Benjamin, Jdg 20:4, and another in the same tribe called Gibeah of Saul, Sa1 11:4, to distinguish it from that; but this was in the tribe of Judah. Masius conjectures it is the same with that in Sa1 23:19 which was near Ziph; and not amiss. Jerom (u) makes mention of Gabaha and Gabatha, little villages to the east of Daroma; and of another Gabatha, near Bethlehem, in the tribe of Judah; but whether either of these are meant it is doubtful:

Timnah, of this city; see Gill on Jos 15:10,

ten cities with their villages; the number agrees with the names of them.

(u) Ut supra, (De loc. Heb.) fol. 92. C.

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

54. Hebron — See Jos_10:3, note.

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 9 words (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Chumṭâh (“Humtah”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “Humtah” (Chumṭâh) contribute to the verse as a whole?
2 words here appear nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Why might the author reach for such rare wording?
2 words make their first appearance in Scripture here. What does this debut establish?
How does Genesis 23:2, which shares the word «Kirjath-arba», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “Kirjath-arba” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
These translations render this verse differently; the difference is in the English rendering, not the original. What questions does that raise?
Compare how Adam Clarke's Commentary and Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

2 words in this verse appear nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
2 words make their first canonical appearance in Scripture here.
This verse counts 9 Hebrew ↔ 16 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 5 words in this verse.
“Kirjath-arba” occurs 2× in this single verse.