All [these were] the cities of the children of Merari according to their families, even the rest of the families of the Levites; and their lot was twelve cities.
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All [these were] the cities of the children of Merari according to their families, even the rest of the families of the Levites; and their lot was twelve cities.
So all the cities for the children of Merari by their families, which were remaining of the families of the Levites, were by their lot twelve cities.
All of the cities for the sons of Merari according to their clans, the remaining ones from the clans of the Levites, were 12 cities their lot.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
All [these were] the cities of the children of Merari according to their families, even the rest of the families of the Levites; and their lot was twelve cities.
In all, twelve cities were allotted to the clans of Merari, the remaining Levite clans.
In all, twelve cities were allotted to the clans of Merari, the remaining Levite clans.
So all the cities for the children of Merari by their families, which were remaining of the families of the Levites, were by their lot twelve cities.
All `these were' the cities of the children of Merari according to their families, even the rest of the families of the Levites; and their lot was twelve cities.
All these were the cities of the children of Merari according to their families, even the rest of the families of the Levites; and their lot was twelve cities.
So all the cities of the children of Merari according to their families (which were the rest of the families of the Leuites) were by their lot, twelue cities.
With their suburbs, each distributed by the families.
All the cities for the sons of Merari, for their families, who are left of the families of the Levites -- their lot is twelve cities.
All the cities for the sons of Merari, for their families, who are left of the families of the Levites—their lot is twelve cities.
All these were the cities of the several clans of Merari, who were from the tribe of Levi—twelve cities in all were given to them by the casting of lots.
All of the cities for the sons of Merari according to their clans, the remaining ones from the clans of the Levites, were 12 cities their lot.
[These were] all the cities of the children of Merari according to their families, which remained of the families of the Levites, and their lot was twelve cities.
All these were the cities of the children of Merari according to their families, even the rest of the families of the Levites. Their lot was twelve cities.
So all the cities for the children of Merari by their families, which were remaining of the families of the Levites, were by their lot twelve cities.
So in total twelve towns were allotted to the families of Merari, those remaining from the tribe of Levi.
All these towns were given to the children of Merari by their families, that is, the rest of the families of the Levites; and their heritage was twelve towns.
All these were the cities of the children of Merari according to their families, even the rest of the families of the Levites; and their lot was twelve 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).
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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 →
Shared distinctive vocabulary
מְרָרִי֙ Merari H4847 occurs in 38 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
Verb forms
Repetition
Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 29 words from the Hebrew and 98 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the Septuagint runs noticeably longer here. See the side-by-side →
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 13 Hebrew tokens and 21 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.
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
Here the Septuagint runs noticeably longer than the Hebrew — LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) 98 words vs World English Bible 29. A rough length comparison of the two English translations, not a word-level alignment — read both below.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
כָּל הֶ֨עָרִ֜ים לִבְנֵ֤י מְרָרִי֙ לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָ֔ם הַנּוֹתָרִ֖ים מִמִּשְׁפְּח֣וֹת הַלְוִיִּ֑ם וַיְהִי֙ גּוֹרָלָ֔ם עָרִ֖ים שְׁתֵּ֥ים עֶשְׂרֵֽה
All [these were] the cities of the children of Merari according to their families, even the rest of the families of the Levites; and their lot was twelve cities.
World English Bible · Public Domain
πᾶς πόλις ὁ υἱός μεραρι κατά δῆμος αὐτός ὁ καταλείπω ἀπό ὁ φυλή λευι καί γίγνομαι ὁ ὅριον πόλις δέκα δύο
and their suburbs round about these cities: a city and the suburbs round about the city to all these cities: and Joshua ceased dividing the land by their borders: and the children of Israel gave a portion to Joshua because of the commandment of the Lord: they gave him the city which he asked: they gave him Thamnasachar in mount Ephraim; and Joshua built the city, and lived in it: and Joshua took the knives of stone, wherewith he circumcised the children of Israel that were born in the desert by the way, and put them in Thamnasachar.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
On this verse, Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary discusses the Septuagint’s reading. Read the note in Commentary ↓
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 →
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.
כָּל קִרְוַיָא לִבְנֵי מְרָרִי לְזַרְעֲיַתְהוֹן דִי אִשְׁתָּאֲרוּ מִזַרְעֲיַת לֵיוָאֵי וַהֲוָה עַדְבְהוֹן קִרְוִין תַּרְתֵּי עַסְרֵי:
(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.
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 13 words (11 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Mᵉrârîy (“Merari”). The Greek Septuagint runs longer here. A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on Joshua 21:40 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.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).