Bizjothjah

Bizjothjah is the AV form of an obscure southern site, listed among the towns of Judah's far south allotted out to Simeon. UPDV does not carry the name in its textual reconstruction of Joshua 15:28; the surviving anchors in UPDV are the parallel forms Balah and Baalath-beer, both names that fall within the same Simeonite cluster of villages around Beer-sheba.

A southern town in Simeon's inheritance

In the Judahite town list, the verse where the AV reads Bizjothjah opens with a different geography in UPDV: "and Hazar-shual, and Beer-sheba and its towns," (Jos 15:28). The name has dropped out, leaving only the surrounding towns of the Negev cluster.

The Simeonite parallel preserves a closely related form. The list of villages assigned to Simeon out of Judah's territory reads: "and Hazar-shual, and Balah, and Ezem," (Jos 19:3). Balah here stands in the same slot as the older transliteration Bizjothjah, occupying the position between Hazar-shual and Ezem in the southern Judahite ring.

The southern boundary at Baalath-beer

The Simeonite inheritance closes with a southern marker that completes the alias chain. After the named towns, "all the villages that were round about these cities to Baalath-beer, Ramah of the South" mark the limit of the territory, and the boundary statement summarizes: "This is the inheritance of the tribe of the sons of Simeon according to their families" (Jos 19:8). Baalath-beer ("Ramah of the South") names the same southern locale by its compound form.

The umbrella collects, then, a place known by overlapping names — Balah in the town list, Baalath-beer at the southern limit — both attested in UPDV, with the older AV form Bizjothjah surviving only in earlier editions of Joshua 15:28.