Genesis 10:30

Summary

Genesis 10:30 closes the list of Joktan's descendants (part of the Table of Nations) by describing the geographic extent of their settlement, marking its boundaries from one place to another. The verse gives a spatial reference using two place names, Mesha and Sephar, and locates the latter near an eastern highland region.

Key words

• mosha "vam ("dwelling place", H4186) — masculine singular noun in construct form, meaning it is grammatically linked to the following suffix "their," yielding "their dwelling place."
• mi ("from", H9006) — preposition attached directly to the place name Mesha, marking the starting point of the described territory.
• bo"akhah ("going", H0935I) — qal infinitive with a second-person masculine singular suffix ("your"), literally "your going" or "in your going," an idiomatic way of expressing direction toward a destination.
• har ("[the] hill country of", H2022H) — masculine singular noun in construct form, linking it to the following word "the east" to form "hill country of the east."
• haKedem ("the east", H6924G) — masculine singular noun with definite article, naming the eastern region that qualifies the hill country.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around the verb yehi ("it was", H1961), a qal narrative form that introduces a statement of fact — "and it was" — followed by the subject moshavam ("their dwelling place"). This noun is in construct state, meaning it does not stand alone grammatically but connects to the pronominal suffix "their," producing "the dwelling-place of them." The preposition mi ("from") attaches to Mesha, establishing the starting boundary point.

The phrase bo'akhah Separah uses an infinitive construct, bo'akhah ("in your going", H0935I), with a second-person suffix. This is an idiomatic Hebrew construction for indicating direction "as one goes toward" a place — here, Sephar — even though no second person is otherwise present in the verse; it functions as a fixed directional expression rather than a literal address to a "you."

The final phrase, har haKedem ("hill country of the east"), uses construct chain grammar: har ("hill country of") is grammatically bound to haKedem ("the east"), producing a single geographic designation, "the eastern hill country" or "hill country of the east" — describing where Sephar is situated relative to that region.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders bo'akhah ("in your going") with the infinitive phrase ἕως ἐλθεῖν ("until going/coming"), smoothing the idiomatic second-person form into a general directional clause. The Vulgate similarly uses pergentibus ("for those proceeding/going"), a participial construction, rather than reflecting the second-person suffix present in the Hebrew infinitive. Both LXX and Vulgate thus obscure the grammatical peculiarity of the Hebrew "your going" idiom, rendering it as a general expression of movement toward Sephar.