Paragraph 21: 27–33
21:27a
The Hebrew conjunction that the Berean Standard Bible leaves untranslated indicates the next event in the story. It may be more natural in some languages to begin a new sentence and to omit this conjunction.
the Levite clans of the Gershonites: The Hebrew phrase which the Berean Standard Bible translates as Gershonites is more literally “the descendants of Gershon.” Gershon was one of the three sons of Levi, and the Gershonites were his descendants.
Here are some other ways to translate this part of the verse:
The families that descended from Gershon, who was one of the sons of Levi
-or-
The family groups that descended from Gershon also belonged to the clan of Levi
21:27b
From the half-tribe of Manasseh they were given: The phrase the half-tribe of Manasseh refers to the part of the Manasseh clan that lived on the east side of the Jordan River.
Golan in Bashan: The town of Golan was mentioned in 20:8. It was east of the Sea of Galilee, in the region of Bashan.
a city of refuge for the manslayer: This is the same Hebrew phrase as in verse 21:13 and 21. You should translate it as you did in those verses.
Here is another way to translate this part of the verse:
received the town of Golan in Bashan with its grazing lands from the half-clan of Manasseh ⌊that lived east of the Jordan River⌋ . It was a town where anyone who had killed someone by mistake could run and escape.
21:27c
and Beeshterah—two cities, together with their pasturelands: The town of Beeshterah is called Ashtaroth in I Chronicles 6:71. It was in the region of Bashan, east of the Jordan River.
Here are some other ways to translate this part of the verse:
They also received the town of Beeshterah with its grazing lands. They received two towns from this clan.
-or-
They were also given Beeshterah and the grasslands around it. The total was two towns.
© 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.