18:15a

On the south side the border began at the outskirts of Kiriath-jearim: Joshua 18:15-19 describes the south border of Benjamin’s land.

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

The south border began at the edge of Kiriath-jearim
-or-
The boundary of Benjamin’s land on the south started at the limits of the town of Kiriath-jearim

18:15b

and extended westward: The Hebrew text is difficult. The Hebrew text reads “and the boundary goes westward.” However, that contradicts verse 14. In verse 14 the western boundary came to an end. The description of the southern boundary begins here and is described from west to east. The English versions have handled this difficulty in several ways:

(1) Some versions omit the word westward. For example:

and projected… (New American Bible, Revised Edition)

(New American Bible, Revised Edition, Good News Translation)

(2) Some versions follow the Hebrew text. For example:

and extended westward (NET Bible)

(Berean Standard Bible, NET Bible, God’s Word, New American Standard Bible, Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures)

(3) Some versions change the text to follow Joshua 15:9, which describes the same border, going from east to west. For example:

and the boundary goes from there to Ephron (Revised Standard Version)

(Revised Standard Version, English Standard Version)

(4) Some versions move the word “west” to a different place in the sentence. For example:

The southern side began at the outskirts of Kiriath Jearim on the west (New International Version)

(New International Version)

It is recommended that you follow option (1). This makes the least change to the text, while still making sense. If you do this, it is recommended that you add a footnote to explain the Hebrew text. For example:

FOOTNOTE: The Hebrew text says: “and the boundary goes westward.”

to the spring at the Waters of Nephtoah: This is the spring mentioned in Joshua 15:9b. You should translate this phrase as you did there.

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

The border went on to the spring of Nephtoah
-or-
Then the border continued to the spring of water called Nephtoah

© 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.