אֶת חֶלְקָת֙ וְאֶת מִגְרָשֶׁ֔הָ וְאֶת רְחֹ֖ב וְאֶת מִגְרָשֶׁ֑הָ עָרִ֖ים אַרְבַּֽע
Helkath with its suburbs, and Rehob with its suburbs; four cities.
World English Bible · Public Domain
Joshua 21:31
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Joshua 21:31 appears in the Hebrew Old Testament. The text above is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Each word links to its Strong’s number, a concise gloss, and parsing drawn from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology. Click any word for its full Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) entry.
English Translation
Helkath with its suburbs, and Rehob with its suburbs; four cities.
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Compare translations 3
The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
Each is an independent rendering of the whole verse — the interlinear is not word-aligned to these translations.
Highlighted words mark where these versions differ — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment.
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World English Bible Public Domain
Helkath with its suburbs, and Rehob with its suburbs; four cities.
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King James Version Public Domain
Helkath with her suburbs, and Rehob with her suburbs; four cities.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Helkath and its pasturelands, and Rehob and its pasturelands: four cities.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Show all 18 translations
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
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World English Bible Public Domain
Helkath with its suburbs, and Rehob with its suburbs; four cities.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Helkath, and Rehob—four cities, together with their pasturelands.
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
Helkath, and Rehob—four cities, together with their pasturelands.
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King James Version Public Domain
Helkath with her suburbs, and Rehob with her suburbs; four cities.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
Helkath with its suburbs, and Rehob with its suburbs; four cities.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
Helkath with her suburbs, and Rehob with her suburbs; four cities.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
Helkah with her suburbs, and Rehob with her suburbes: foure cities.
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
,31And Helcath, and Rohob, with their suburbs, four cities.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
Helkath and its suburbs, and Rehob and its suburbs -- four cities.
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
Helkath and its outskirts, and Rehob and its outskirts—four cities.
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
Helkath with its pasturelands, and Rehob with its pasturelands—four cities in all.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Helkath and its pasturelands, and Rehob and its pasturelands: four cities.
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Darby Bible Public Domain
Helkath and its suburbs, and Rehob and its suburbs: four cities;
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
Helkath with its pasture lands, and Rehob with its pasture lands: four cities.
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
Helkath with its suburbs, and Rehob with its suburbs; four cities.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
Helkath, and Rehob.
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
Helkath and Rehob with their grass-lands, four towns.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
Helkath with the open land about it, and Rehob with the open land about it; four cities.
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
Word by word
More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →
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חֶלְקָת֙
Chelqath
H2520
“Helkath”
Noun, Proper
- Appears 2× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Joshua 19:25
- Part of Speech
- Noun
- Type
- Proper
Full BDB Definition
Helkath = "smooth"
- the town named as the starting point for the boundary of the tribe of Asher and allotted with its suburbs to the Gershonite Levites
- אֶת ʼêth H853 “-” Particle, Direct Object
- חֶלְקָת֙ Chelqath H2520 “Helkath” Noun, Proper
- וְאֶת ʼêth H853 “and · -” Conjunction + Particle, Direct Object
- מִגְרָשֶׁ֔הָ migrâsh H4054 “common lands · her” Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular
- וְאֶת ʼêth H853 “and · -” Conjunction + Particle, Direct Object
- רְחֹ֖ב Rᵉchôb H7340 “Rehob” Noun, Proper
- וְאֶת ʼêth H853 “and · -” Conjunction + Particle, Direct Object
- מִגְרָשֶׁ֑הָ migrâsh H4054 “common lands · her” Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular
- עָרִ֖ים ʻîyr H5892 “cities” Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute
- אַרְבַּֽע ʼarbaʻ H702 “four” Adjective, Cardinal number, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
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
The rarest word here is חֶלְקָת֙ Helkath H2520 — appearing just 2 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
חֶלְקָת֙ Helkath H2520 occurs in 2 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
3Topical passages linked to Joshua 21:31 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
- Judges 1:31 Asher didn't drive out the inhabitants of Acco, nor the inhabitants of Sidon, nor of Ahlab, nor of Achzib, nor of Helbah, nor of Aphik, nor of Rehob;
- Judges 18:21 So they turned and departed, and put the little ones and the cattle and the goods before them.
- 1 Chronicles 6:75 and Hukok with its suburbs, and Rehob with its suburbs;
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.
καί χελκατ καί ὁ ἀποὁρίζω αὐτός καί ρααβ καί ὁ ἀποὁρίζω αὐτός πόλις τέσσαρες
and Chelcat and its suburbs; and Raab 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.
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Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)
יַת חֶלְקַת וְיַת רְוָחָהָא וְיַת רְחוֹב 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.
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 Chelqath (“Helkath”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- How does “Helkath” (Chelqath) shape what this verse is saying?
- How does Joshua 19:25, which shares the word «Helkath», read alongside this verse?
- What does the repetition of “common land” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
- These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
- Compare how The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges and John Gill's Exposition read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?
Things to notice
- 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.
- 6 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on Joshua 21:31 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
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
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.