19:50a

as the LORD had commanded. They gave him the city of Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim, as he requested: The command that is referred to here is not recorded anywhere in the book of Joshua.

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

Yahweh had said that Joshua could have whatever town he wanted. So, they gave him the town that he chose
-or-
Yahweh had commanded them to give Joshua whatever town he chose

the city of Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim: The town of Timnath-serah was southwest of the town of Shechem.

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

which was Timnath-serah in the mountain country that belonged to the clan of Ephraim
-or-
He chose the town of Timnath-serah which was in the hill country that belonged to the clan of Ephraim

19:50b

He rebuilt the city and settled in it: Archaeology shows that the town of Timnath-serah was abandoned at the time that Joshua settled there. That is why he rebuilt the town.

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

Joshua rebuilt that town and lived in it
-or-
He built up the town and lived there

© 2001, 2011, 2020, 2022, 2023 by SIL International®
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.