He spoke to the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?
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The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
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He spoke to the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?
And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?
And he spoke to the sons of Israel, saying, “When your sons ask their fathers tomorrow, saying, ‘What are these stones?’
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.
He spoke to the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?
Then Joshua said to the Israelites, “In the future, when your children ask their fathers, ‘What is the meaning of these stones?’
Then Joshua said to the Israelites, “In the future, when your children ask their fathers, ‘What is the meaning of these stones?’
And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?
And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?
And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?
And he spake vnto ye childre of Israel, saying, When your children shall aske their fathers in time to come, and say, What meane these stones?
And said to the children of Israel: When your children shall ask their fathers, to morrow, and shall say to them: What mean these stones?
And he speaketh unto the sons of Israel, saying, `When your sons ask their fathers hereafter, saying, What `are' these stones?
And he speaks to the sons of Israel, saying, “When your sons ask their fathers hereafter, saying, What [are] these stones?
He said to the people of Israel, “When your descendants ask their fathers in times to come, 'What are these stones?'
And he spoke to the sons of Israel, saying, “When your sons ask their fathers tomorrow, saying, ‘What are these stones?’
And he spoke to the children of Israel, saying, When your children hereafter ask their fathers, saying, What [mean] these stones?
He spoke to the children of Israel, saying, “When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, ‘What do these stones mean?’
And he spoke to the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?
He told the Israelites, “When some day your children ask you their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’
And he said to the children of Israel, When your children say to their fathers in time to come, What is the reason for these stones?
And he spoke unto the children of Israel, saying: 'When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying: What mean these stones?
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
מָחָר֙ tomorrow H4279 occurs in 52 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 24 words from the Hebrew and 11 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the Septuagint runs noticeably shorter 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 15 Hebrew tokens and 13 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.
Topical passages linked to Joshua 4:21 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
Here the Septuagint runs noticeably shorter than the Hebrew — LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) 11 words vs World English Bible 24. 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.
וַיֹּ֛אמֶר אֶל בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לֵאמֹ֑ר אֲשֶׁר֩ יִשְׁאָל֨וּן בְּנֵיכֶ֤ם מָחָר֙ אֶת אֲבוֹתָ֣ם לֵאמֹ֔ר מָ֖ה הָאֲבָנִ֥ים הָאֵֽלֶּה
He spoke to the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?
World English Bible · Public Domain
λέγω ὅταν ἐρωτάω σύ ὁ υἱός σύ λέγω τίς εἰμί ὁ λίθος οὗτος
saying, When your sons ask you, saying, What are these stones?
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 →
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.
וַאֲמַר לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לְמֵימָר דְיִשְׁאֲלוּן בְּנֵיכוֹן מְחָר יַת אֲבָהַתְהוֹן לְמֵימָר מָה אַבְנַיָא הָאִלֵין:
(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 15 words (12 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is mâchâr (“tomorrow”). The Greek Septuagint runs shorter here. A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on Joshua 4:21 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 →
Trapp's Complete Commentary
John Trapp
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
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.
The Pulpit Commentary
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.