כָּל עָרֵ֥י הַגֵּרְשֻׁנִּ֖י לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָ֑ם שְׁלֹשׁ עֶשְׂרֵ֥ה עִ֖יר וּמִגְרְשֵׁיהֶֽן
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities with their suburbs.
World English Bible · Public Domain
Joshua 21:33
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Joshua 21:33 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
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities with their suburbs.
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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
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities with their suburbs.
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King James Version Public Domain
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities with their suburbs.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
All of the cities of the Gershonite according to their clans 13 cities and their pasturelands.
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
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities with their suburbs.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
In all, thirteen cities, together with their pasturelands, were given to the Gershonite clans.
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
In all, thirteen cities, together with their pasturelands, were given to the Gershonite clans.
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King James Version Public Domain
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities with their suburbs.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities with their suburbs.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities with their suburbs.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
Al the cities of the Gershonites according to their families, were thirteene cities with their suburbes.
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
All the cities of the families of Gerson, were thirteen, with their suburbs.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
all the cities of the Gershonite, for their families, `are' thirteen cities and their suburbs.
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
all the cities of the Gershonite, for their families, [are] thirteen cities and their outskirts.
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
There were thirteen cities in all, out of the clans of Gershon, including their pasturelands.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
All of the cities of the Gershonite according to their clans 13 cities and their pasturelands.
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Darby Bible Public Domain
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities and their suburbs.
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities with their pasture lands.
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
All the cities of the Gershonites, according to their families, were thirteen cities with their suburbs.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
So in total thirteen towns and their pastures were allotted to the families of Gershon.
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
All the towns of the Gershonites with their families were thirteen with their grass-lands.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families were thirteen cities with the open land about them.
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 →
Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →
הַגֵּרְשֻׁנִּ֖י
Gêrᵉshunnîy
H1649
“the · Gershonite”
Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- Appears 13× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Numbers 3:21
- Part of Speech
- Particle + Noun
- Type
- Gentilic
- Gender
- Masculine
- Number
- Singular
- State
- Absolute
Full BDB Definition
Gershonite = see Geshur
- a descendant of Gershon, firstborn son of Levi
- כָּל kôl H3605 “all of” Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct
- עָרֵ֥י ʻîyr H5892 “cities of” Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct
- הַגֵּרְשֻׁנִּ֖י Gêrᵉshunnîy H1649 “the · Gershonite” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָ֑ם mishpâchâh H4940 “to/for · families · their” Preposition + Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural
- שְׁלֹשׁ shâlôwsh H7969 “three” Adjective, Cardinal number, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- עֶשְׂרֵ֥ה ʻâsâr H6240 “teen” Adjective, Cardinal number, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- עִ֖יר ʻîyr H5892 “city” Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- וּמִגְרְשֵׁיהֶֽן migrâsh H4054 “and · common lands · their” Conjunction + Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Feminine, Plural
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 →
- 8
- words
- 7
- distinct lemmas
- Historical
- section
Notable vocabulary
The rarest word here is הַגֵּרְשֻׁנִּ֖י Gershonite H1649 — appearing just 13 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
הַגֵּרְשֻׁנִּ֖י Gershonite H1649 occurs in 12 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 6 nouns
- 2 adjectives
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
- עָרֵ֥י city H5892 ×2
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 16 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 8 Hebrew tokens and 11 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.
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.
πᾶς ὁ πόλις ὁ γεδσων κατά δῆμος αὐτός πόλις δέκα τρεῖς
All the cities of Gedson according to their families were thirteen 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)
כָּל קִרְוֵי בְּנֵי גֵרְשׁוֹן לְזַרְעֲיַתְהוֹן תְּלַת עַסְרֵי קִרְוִין וּרְוָחֵיהֶן:
(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 8 words (7 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Gêrᵉshunnîy (“Gershonite”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- How does “Gershonite” (Gêrᵉshunnîy) shape what this verse is saying?
- How does Numbers 3:21, which shares the word «Gershonite», read alongside this verse?
- What does the repetition of “city” (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?
Things to notice
- This verse counts 8 Hebrew ↔ 11 Greek words.
- These translations choose different wording for 8 words in this verse.
- “city” occurs 2× in this single verse.
- 7 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on Joshua 21:33 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 →
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.