Joshua 21:18

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Anathoth with its suburbs, and Almon with its suburbs; four cities.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Highlights

1 hapax legomenon — only here in the Hebrew Bible
2 first appearances in the Hebrew Bible

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עַלְמ֖וֹן

ʻAlmôwn

H5960

“Almon”

Noun, Proper

Appears 1× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears here

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H5956

TWOT: None

Almon = "concealed" - a town in Benjamin allotted to the priests

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 →

10: words
6: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Notable vocabulary

1 hapax legomenon — a word that appears only here in the entire Hebrew Bible:

עַלְמ֖וֹן Almon H5960

First appearance in Scripture

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

עֲנָתוֹת֙ Anathoth H6068
עַלְמ֖וֹן Almon H5960

Shared distinctive vocabulary

עֲנָתוֹת֙ Anathoth H6068 occurs in 15 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

5 nouns
1 adjective
4 particles

Repetition

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

מִגְרָשֶׁ֔הָ common land H4054 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 11 words from the Hebrew and 12 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.

In the original languages it is 10 Hebrew tokens and 14 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 21:18 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

1 Kings 2:26 To Abiathar the priest said the king, Get you to Anathoth, to your own fields; for you are worthy of death: but I will not at this time put you to death, because you bear the ark of the Lord Yahweh before David my father, and because you were afflicted in all in which my father was afflicted.
1 Chronicles 6:60 and out of the tribe of Benjamin, Geba with its suburbs, and Allemeth with its suburbs, and Anathoth with its suburbs. All their cities throughout their families were thirteen cities.
Isaiah 10:30 Cry aloud with your voice, daughter of Gallim! listen, Laishah! You poor Anathoth!
Jeremiah 1:1 The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin:

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 21:18 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

אֶת עֲנָתוֹת֙ וְאֶת מִגְרָשֶׁ֔הָ וְאֶת עַלְמ֖וֹן וְאֶת מִגְרָשֶׁ֑הָ עָרִ֖ים אַרְבַּֽע

Anathoth with its suburbs, and Almon with its suburbs; four cities.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Joshua 21:18 Septuagint · lemma form

καί αναθωθ καί ὁ ἀποὁρίζω αὐτός καί γαμαλα καί ὁ ἀποὁρίζω αὐτός πόλις τέσσαρες

and Anathoth and its suburbs; and Gamala and its suburbs; four cities.

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)

יַת עֲנָתוֹת וְיַת רְוָחָהָא וְיַת עַלְמוֹן וְיַת רְוָחָהָא קִרְוִין אַרְבַּע:

(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 21:18 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 18. Anathoth.] Celebrated as the birthplace of Jeremiah, about three miles northward of Jerusalem, according to St. Jerome.

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

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

18. Anathoth] lay on or near the great road from the north to Jerusalem. Its modern name is Anâta, on a broad ridge 1¼ hours N.N.E. of the Holy City, (a) Hither Abiathar was banished by Solomon, after the failure of his attempt to raise Adonijah to the throne (1Ki_2:26); (b) here Jeremiah the prophet was born (Jer_1:1; Jer_11:21-23; Jer_29:27; Jer_32:7-9).

Almon] or Alemeth, according to the parallel list in 1Ch_6:60; now ’Almît or Almuta, about a mile N.E. of Anathoth.

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

Anathoth with her suburbs,.... This is not mentioned among the cities of Benjamin, Jos 18:11; it was the native place of the Prophet Jeremiah; see Gill on Jer 1:1; it lay about two or three miles north of Jerusalem; three, says, Jerom (k). Rauwolff (l) speaks of it as a small village, when he travelled into those parts, and as lying on a height or eminence, and which was within twenty furlongs of Jerusalem, as Josephus writes (m):

and Almon with her suburbs; this also is not mentioned among the cities of Benjamin, Jos 18:11; it is called Alemeth, Ch1 6:60. Jarchi and Kimchi say it is the same with Bahurim, Sa2 3:16; where the Targum renders it by Almeth, and both words signify the same thing, "youth":

four cities; which were a large number for so small a tribe as little Benjamin to give.

(k) De loc. Heb. fol. 88. H. (l) Travels, par. 3. c. 2. p. 216. (m) Antiqu. l. 10. c. 7. sect. 3.

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

18. Anathoth was the place to which King Solomon banished Abiathar, (1Ki_2:26,) and the birthplace of Jeremiah. Jer_1:1. It is represented by the modern village Anata, four miles northeast of Jerusalem. It is now a small village, but contains remains of the walls and foundations of the ancient city.

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

Anathoth. The birthplace of Jeremiah, where we find that Anathoth was still a priestly city. (Jos_1:1) No doubt it was for this reason that it was chosen (1Ki_2:26) as the place of Abiathar"s banishment. Here again we see to how close an examination the writers of the Old Testament may be submitted without in the least degree shaking their testimony. Observe, too, the geographical accuracy of Isaiah"s mention of Geba and Anathoth in his description of an Assyrian invasion through the passes at Ai or Aiath and Michmash. (Isa_10:29, Isa_10:30)

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

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

And Almon. In Sefer Divrei haYomim it is rendered: and Olemes this is similar to Bachurim which Yonason translates as Alomos.

and their open spaces around it. Two thousand amos on each side.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

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 10 words (6 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʻAlmôwn (“Almon”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

How does “Almon” (ʻAlmôwn) shape what this verse is saying?
This verse holds 1 word here found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. What might the rare word draw attention to?
2 words here appear for the first time in Scripture. What is being introduced at this debut?
1 Kings 2:26 shares the word «Anathoth» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
“common land” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
Reading how Adam Clarke's Commentary and The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

1 word in this verse appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
2 words make their first canonical appearance in Scripture here.
This verse counts 10 Hebrew ↔ 14 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 2 words in this verse.
“common land” occurs 2× in this single verse.