Bible Strands
Joshua 15:32
Lebaoth, Shilhim, Ain, and Rimmon—twenty-nine cities in all, along with their villages.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Joshua records the territorial allotment to Judah, enumerating the twenty-nine cities and their surrounding villages granted in the southern region. The narrator concludes this district allocation before transitioning to the next list of foothills settlements.
The words — The Hebrew כָּל־עָרִים (kol-'arim) literally means "all the cities," while עֶשְׂרִים וָתֵשַׁע ('esrim va-tesha) translates to "twenty and nine." These terms function as a precise administrative tally rather than a geographical description.
The thread — The location Ain appears in Numbers 34:11 as an eastern boundary marker, and Rimmon surfaces in Nehemiah 11:29 among the repopulated towns. These cross-references show the names persisting across Israel's territorial and post-exilic settlement records.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of the specific, enumerated inheritance given to Judah without embellishment. It requires the reader to account for the concrete reality of the promised land's distribution.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And Lebaoth, and Shilhim, and Ain, and Rimmon: all the cities are twenty and nine, with their villages:
Cross-references
- Numbers 34:11 then go down from Shepham to Riblah on the east side of Ain and continue along the slopes east of the Sea of Chinnereth.
- Nehemiah 11:29 in En-rimmon, Zorah, Jarmuth,