דֶּ֫רֶךְ
de.rekh
(King's) Highway
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# Analysis of דֶּ֫רֶךְ (H4428I) – The King's Highway Based on the lexical data provided, this Hebrew word specifically denotes a "King's Highway"—a major thoroughfare that held official status and importance in ancient Israelite infrastructure. The designation "king's" indicates this was not merely any road, but rather a route of particular significance to royal authority and governance. With only two biblical occurrences, this term represents a specialized vocabulary item rather than common usage. The rarity of this specific form (appearing only twice) suggests it was employed in particular contexts where the formal, official nature of a highway required explicit acknowledgment. Unlike more general words for roads or paths that appear frequently throughout biblical texts, this lemma was reserved for circumstances where the connection to royal authority or state-level infrastructure needed to be emphasized. This linguistic selectivity reflects the ancient Near Eastern reality that major highways were often maintained and controlled by the crown, serving both military and commercial purposes that extended beyond local travel.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
2 total occurrences across the text
“Please let us pass through your land. We will not pass through field or through vineyard, neither will we drink from the water of the wells. We will go along the king’s highway. We will not turn away to the right hand nor to the left, until we have passed your border.”
Numbers 21:22“Let me pass through your land. We will not turn away into field or vineyard. We will not drink of the water of the wells. We will go by the king’s highway, until we have passed your border.”