SIL Translator’s Notes on Joshua 17:2

17:2a

So this allotment was for the rest of the descendants of Manasseh: The Hebrew clause that the Berean Standard Bible translates as allotment was for is more literally “was to.” Both the subject and the object of this clause are missing. In some languages it will be necessary to make them clear. For example:

Joshua⌋ gave ⌊land⌋ to the other descendants of Manasseh according to the lot

the rest of the descendants of Manasseh: The Hebrew phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as the rest of the descendants of Manasseh is more literally “the remaining sons of Manasseh.” This phrase refers to the descendants of Manasseh who did not receive land east of the Jordan River. These people were descendants of Machir and his son Gilead.

Here are some other ways to translate this part of the verse:

the rest of the clan of Manasseh also received land ⌊by lot
-or-
the other descendants of Manasseh were also assigned land
-or-
they gave land also to other descendants of Manasseh

17:2b

the clans: The Hebrew phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as the clans was used in Joshua 16:5a. It is recommended that you translate it in the same way as you did in that verse. The Hebrew word is translated in the display as “sub-clans.” See the note at Joshua 7:14.

Abiezer, Helek, Asriel, Shechem, Hepher, and Shemida: These are the names of the sub-clans that received land.

Here are some other ways to translate this part of the verse:

according to their sub-clans. These are the names of the sub-clans: Abiezer, Helek, Asriel, Shechem, Hepher, and Shemida
-or-
The names of the sub-clans that received land were Abiezer and Helek and Asriel and Shechem and Hepher and Shemida

17:2c

These are the other male descendants of the clans of Manasseh son of Joseph: The writer wanted to make clear that these were male descendants of Manasseh, because in the next verse he talked about the female descendants of Manasseh.

Here are some other ways to translate this part of the verse:

The people named above were the male descendants of Manasseh
-or-
Those people were the other sons of Manasseh, and the heads of their sub-clans

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Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.

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