The Pulpit Commentary
Vers. 2. Ch. zxxiv. 2. — Into the land of Canaan. Canaan has here its proper signification as the land (roughly speaking) between Jordan and the sea (so m ch. xxxiL 82 ; Josh. zxii. 11, 32). Nor is there any clear instance of OH. xxxin. 60— XXXIV. 29.] THE BOOK OE' NUMBERS. 436 ■ its including the, trans-Jordanic territories. In the prophets the word reverts to its proper (etymological) m eaning, as the "flat country " along the Mediterranean coast (cf. Isa. ziz. 18 ; Zeph. ii. 6 ; Matt. xy. 22). This is the land that shall fall unto yon. These words should not be placed in a parenthesis ; it is a simple statement in the tautological style so common in these hooks. With the coasts thereof, or, " according to its boundaries," i. e. within the limits which nature and the Divine decree had set to the land of Canaan.

The Pulpit Commentary
Yer. 3. — Then your south auarteT. Rather, "and your south side. From the wilderness of Zin along by the coast of Edom. This general preliminary definition of the southern frontier marks the "wilderness of Zin " as its chief natural feature, and asserts that this wilderness rested " upon the sides " (^7^J?) of Edom. The wilderness of Zin can scarcely be anything else than the Wady Murreh, with more or less of the barren hills which rise to the south of it, for this wady undoubtedly forms the natural southern boundary of Canaan. AH travellers agree both as to the remarkable character of the depression itself and as to the contrast between its northern and southern mountain walls. To the south lies the inhospitable and uncultivatable desert ; to the north the often arid and treeless, but still partially green and habitable, plateau of Southern Palestine. The expression, "on the sides of Edom," can only mean that beyond the Wady Murreh lay territory belonging to Edom, the Mount Seir of Deut. L 2, the Seir of Deut. L 44 ; it does not seem possible that Edom proper, which lay to the east of the ArabaJb, and which barely marched at all with the land of Canaan, should be intended here (see on Josh, zv. 1, and the note on the site of Kadesh). And your south border. This begins a fresh paragraph, in which the southern boundary, already roughly fixed, is described in greater detail. Shall be the utmost coast of the salt sea eastward. Rather, "shall be from the extremity (ilVj?)?) of the salt sea eastward " (cf. Josh. xv. 2). The easternmost point in this boundary was to be fixed at the lonthemmost extremity of the Salt Sea.

The Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 4. — Shall turn from the south to the ascent of Akrabbim. It is not at all clear what n^yiy? -^i^P ^^^ mean in this sentence. The A. v., which foUows the Septuagint and the Targums, does not seem to give any sense, while the rendering, " to the south side of the ascent," does not seem grammatically defensible. Moreover, it is quite uncertain where the "ascent of Akrabbim," t. e. the " Scorpion -pass," or " Scorpionatsiri," is to be placed. So^ie travellers have recognised both place and name in a precipitous road which ascends the northern cliffs towards the western end of the Wady Murreh, and which the Arabs call Nakb Eareb ; others would make the ascent to be the steep pass of es Sufah, over which runs the road from Fetra to Hebron ; others, again, identify the Scorpion-stairs with the row of white cliffs which obliquely cross and close in the Ghor, some miles south of the Salt Sea, and separate it from the higher level of the Arabah. Kone of these identifications are satisfactory, although the first and last have more to be said in their favour than the second. Possibly the ascent of Akrabbim may have been only the Wady Eikreh, along which the natural frontier would run from the point of the Salt Sea into the Wady Murreh. Pass on to Zin. It is only here and in Josh. xv. 3 that the name Zin stands by itself; it may have been some place in the broadest part of the Wady Murreh which gave its name to the neighbouring wilderness. From the south to Eadesh-bamea. Here again we have the expression "? 3.J3P, of which we do not know the exact force. But if Kadesh was in the neighbourhood of the present Ain Kudes, then it may be understood that the frontier, after reaching the western end of the Wady Murreh, made a <Ut<nir to the south so as to include Kadesh, as a place of peculiarly sacred memory in the annals of Israel. It is indeed very difficult, with this description of the southern frontier of Canaan before us, to believe that Kadesh was in the immediate neighbourhood of the Arabah, where many commentators place it ; for if that were the case, then the boundaiy line has not yet made any progress at all towards the west, and the only points given on the actual southern boundary are the two unknown places which follow. Hazar-addar. In Josh. XV. 3 this double name is apparent^ divided into the two names of Hezron and Addar, but possibly the latter only is the place intended here. A Kar^aa is also mentioned there, which is equally unknown with the rest. ,

The Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 5. — The river of Egypt, or " brook (pTO) of Egypt." Septuagint, x"/«'/°P<""' AlyvvTov. It was a winter torrent which drained the greater part of the western half of the northern desert of the Sinaitic peninsula. It was, however, only in its lower course, where a single channel receives the intermittent outflow of many wadys, that it was known as the "brook of Egypt," because it formed the well-marked boundary between Egypt and Canaan (cf. 2 Chron. vii. 8, and Isa. xzvii. 12, where the Septuagint has i'u; 'PivoKopovpui/, from the name of the frontier fort, Rhinocomra, afterwards built tl^^re). So &r as we ate able to folloTif 436 THE BOOK OF NUMBERS, [oh. xxziu. 60— xxxiv. the line drawn in these verses, it wonld appear to have held a course somewhat to the south of west for ahont half its length, then to hare made a southerly deflection to Kadesh, and from thence to have struck north-west nntil it reached the sea, almost in the same latitude as the point from which it started.

The Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 6. — Ani as for the western border. The Hebrew word for "west" (D^) is simply that for "sea," because the Jews in their own land always had the sea on their west. Thus the verse reads literally, "And the sea boundary shall be to yon the great sea and boundary ; this shall be to you the sea boundary." It would seem very unlikely that the Jews familiarly used the word "yam" for " west " after a residence of several centuries in a country where the sun set not over the ■ea, but over the desert. Ifothing can of course be jn-oved from the use of the word here, but it cannot be overlooked as one small indication that the language of this passage at any rate is the language of an age subsequent to the conquest of Canaan (see on Ezod. z. 19 ; xxvi. 22, and ch. ii. 18) The line of coast from the brook of Egypt to the Leontes was upwards of 160 miles in length.

The Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 7. — ^Ye shall point out for you, t. e. ye shall observe and make for, in tracing the boundary. Septuagint, KaTa/UTpriaiTt , . irapd. Mount Hor. !Kot of course the Mount Hor on which Aaron died, but another far to the north, probably in Lebanon. The Hebrew ^^^ ^^, which the Septuagint had rendered 'Qp ri opoc in ch. xx., it renders here r6 opoc <"& opoc, taking ID as simply another form of ^^, as it probably is. Hor Ha-har is therefore equivalent to the English " Mount Mountain ;" and just as there are many "Avon rivers" on the English maps, so there were probably many mountains locally known among the Jews as Hor Hahar. We do not know what peak this was, although it must have been one clearly distinguishable from the sea. There is, however, no reason whatever for supposing (contrary to the analogy of all such names, and •f the other Mount Hor) that it included the whole range of Lebanon proper,

The Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 8. — ^From Mount Hor ye shall point out your border unto the entranoe of Hamath. Literally, "from Mount Hor point out (IXrin, as in the previous verse) to come to Hamath," which seems to mean, "from Mount Hor strike a line for the entrance to Hamath." The real difficulty lies in the expression JlDn iOp, which the Septuagint tendsTB (iairopivoniviiv j'lt 'E/idS, "as men enter into Hamath." The same expression •Acnrs in ch. ziii. 31, and is siinilarly rendered by the Septuagint. A comparison with Judges iii. 3 and other passages will show that "I'bo Chamath" had a definite geographical meaning as the accepted name of a locality in the extreme north of Canaan. When we come to inquire where "the entrance to Hamath " was, we have nothing to guide us except the natural features of the country. Hamath itself, afterwards Epiphaneia on the Orontes, lay far beyond the cxtiemest range of Jewish settlement ; nOr does it appear that it was ever conquered by the greatest of the Jewish kings. The Hamath in which Solomon built store-cities (2 Chron. viiL 4), and the Hamath which Jeroboam II. " recovered" for Israel (2 Kings xiv. 28), was not the city, but the kingdom (or part of the kingdom), of that name. We do not know how far south the territory of Hamath may have extended, but it is quite likely that it included at times the whole upper valley of the Leontes (now the Lit&ny). The "entrance to Hamath" then must be looked for at some point, distinctly marked by the natural features of the country, where the traveller from Palestine would enter the territory of Hamath. This point has been usually fixed at the pass through which the Orontes breaks out of its upper valley between Lebanon and anti- Lebanon into the open plain of Hamath. This point, however, is more than sixty miles north of Damascus (which confessedly never belonged to Israel), and nearly a hundred miles north-north-west from Dan. It would require some amount of positive evidence to make it even probable that the whole of the long and narrow valley between Lebanon and anti-Lebanon, widening t wards the north, and separated by mountainous and difficult country from the actual settlements of the Jews, was yet Divinely designated as part of their inheritance. No such positive evidence exists, and therefore we are perfectly free to look for "the entrance to Hamath " much further to the south. It is evident that the ordinary road ftom the land of Canaan or from the cities of Phoenicia to Hamath must have struck the valley of the Leontes, have ascended that river to its sources, and crossed the watevshe to the upper stream of Orontes. The whole of this road, until it reached the pas already spoken of leading down to the Emesa ot after days, and so to Hamath, lay through a narrow valley of which the nariowest part is at the southern end of the mod rn district of el Bokaa, almost in a straight line between Sidon and Mount Hermon. Here the two ranges approach most nearly t 'the bed of the Litany (Leontes), forming a natural gate by which the traveller to Hamat must needs have entered from the soutli. Hei» then, very nearly in lat 83° 30', we may OH. xxxm. 60— XXXIV. 29.] 4»7 feagonably pifice the " entrance to Hamath " 80 often spoken of, and so escape the necesiity of imagining an artificial and impracticable frontier for the northern boundary of the promised land. Zedad. Identified by some with the present village of Sadad or Sudad, to the south-east of Emesa (Hums) ; but this identification, which is at best very problematic, is wholly out of the question if the argument of the precedingnote be accepted.

The Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 9.— Ziphron. A town called Sibraim is mentioned by Ezekiel (xlvii. 16) as lying on the boundary between Damasciis and Hamath, and there is a modem village of Zifr&n about forty miles north-east of Damascus, but there is no probable ground for supposing that either of these are the Ziphron of this verse. Hazar-enan, i. e. " fountain court." There are of course many places in and_ about the Lebanon and anti-Lebanon ranges to which such a name would be suitable, but we have no means of identifying it with any one of them. It must be confessed that this "north border" of Israel is extremely obscure, because we are not told whence it started, nor can we fix, except by conjecture, one single point upon it. A certain amount of light is thrown upon the subject by the description of the tribal boundaries and possessions as given in Josh. xix. , and by the enumeration of places left unconquered in Josh. xiii. and Judges iii. The most northerly of the tribes were Asher and Naphtali, and it does not appear that their allotted territory extended beyond the lower valley of the Iieontes where it makes its sharp turn towards the west. It is true that a portion of the tribe of Dan afterwards occupied a district fiirther north, but Dan- Laish itself, which was the extreme of Jewish settlement in this direction, as Beersheba in the other, was southward of Mount Hermon. The passage in Josh. xiiL 4 — 6 does indeed go to prove that the Israelites never occupied all their intended territory in this direction, but as far as we can tell the line of promised conquest did not extend further north than Zidon and Mount Hermon. "AU Lebanon toward the sunrising" cannot well mean the whole range from south to north, but all the mountain country lying to the east of Zidon. One other passage promises to throw additional light upon the question, viz., the ideal delimitation of the Holy Land in Ezek. xlvii. ; and here it is true that we find a northern frontier (vers. 15 — 17) apparently fer beyond the line of actual settlement, and yet containing two names at least (Zedad and Hazar-enan) which appear in the present list. It is, however, q_uite uncertain whether the prophet is describmg any possible boundary line at all, or whether he is only mentioning (humanly speaking at random) certain points m the for north ; his very object would seem to be to picture an enlarged Canaan extending beyond its utmost historical limits. Even if it should be thought that these passages require a frontier further to the north than the one advocated abpve, it will yet be impossible to carry it to the northern end of the valley between Lebanon and anti-Lebanon, For in that case the northern frontier will not he a northern frontier at all, but will actually descend from the " entrance of Hamath " in a southerly or south-westerly direction, and distinctly form part of the eastern boundary, Ver. ll.-^Shepha?i is unknown. Biblftli cannot possibly be the Eiblah in the land of Hamath (Jer. xxxix. 6), now apparently Ribleh on the Orontes. This one example wiU serve to show how delusive are these identifications with modern places. Even if Ribleh represents wn ancient Eiblah, it is not t)ie Eiblah which is mentioned here. Oa the east side of Ain, i. e. of the fountain. The Targums here imply that this Ain was the source of Jordan below Mount Hermon, and that would agree extremely well with what follows. The Septnagint has Im wt/yae, and there is in fact more than one fountain from which this head-water of Jordan takes its rise. Immediately before the Septuagint has Bj)\a where we read Eiblah. It has been supposed that the word was originally 'Ap(3i)Xa, a transliteration of " Har-bel," the mountain of Bel or Baal, identical with the Harbaal-Hermon (our Mount Hermon) of Judges iii. 3. The Hebrew H^^IH being differently pointed, and the final n taken as the suffix of direction, we get 73~in $ but this is extremely precarious. Shall reach unto the side of the sea of Chinnereth eastward. Literally, "shall strike (nnp) the shoulder of the sea," &e. The line does not seem to have descended the stream from its source, but to have kept to the east, and so to have struck the lake of Galilee at its north-eastern comer. From this point it simply followed the water-way down to the Salt Sea. The lands beyond Jordan were not reckoned as within the sacred limits.

The Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 15. — On this side Jordan near Jericho. Literally, " on the side paStl?) of the Jordsm of Jericho," It was not of course true that the territory which they had received lay eastward of Jericho, but it was thi case that the tribe leaders had there asked and received permission to occupy that territory, and it was in this direction that the temporary settlements of Eeuben and Gad lay, perhaps also those of half Manasseh.

The Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 17. — Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun. As the ecclesiastical and military heads respeotiTely of the theocMC|' (se« on oh. zxzii. 88). tHE BOOK OP NUMflEES. [oh. fflCsni. SO— XXXIV. 29.

The Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 18. — One prince of every tribe.. This was arranged no doubt in order to insure fairness in fixing the boundaries between the tribes, which had to be done after the situation of the tribe was determined by lot ; the further subdivision of the tribal tenitory was probably left to be managed by the chiefs of the tribe itself. Of these tribe princes (see on oh. xiii. 1 ; Josh. xiv. 1), Caleb is the only one whose name is known to us, and he had acted in a somewhat similar capacity forty years before. This may of itself account for the tribe of Judah being named first in the list, especially as Eeuben was not represented ; but the order in which the other names follow ia certainly remarkable. Taken in pairs (Judah and Simeon, Manasseh and Ephraim, &c.), they advance regularly from south to north, according to their subsequent position on the map. Differing as this arrangement does so maikedly from any previously adopted, it is impossible to suppose that it is accidental. We must conclude either that a coincidence so apparently trivial was Divinely prearranged, or that the arrangement of the names is due to a later hand than that of Moses.

The Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 20. — Shemnel. This is the same name as SamueL' Of the rest, every one except the last occurs elsewhere in the Old Testament as the name of some other Israelit