‏ Joshua 15:29

Jos 15:21-32

The towns in the south land. - Negeb (south-land) was the name given to the southernmost district of Canaan in its full extent, from the Arabah, at the southern end of the Dead Sea, right across to the coast of the Mediterranean, and from the southern border of Canaan, as described in Jos 15:2-4, as far north as Wady Sheriah, below Gaza, on the western side, and up to the mountains and desert of Judah on the east, stretching across the wadys of es Seba, Milh, and Ehdeib, above which that part of Palestine commences where rain is more abundant, and to which, as we have already observed at Num 13:17, the Negeb formed a kind of intermediate link between the fertile land and the desert. It was a line of steppe-land, with certain patches here and there that admitted of cultivation, but in which tracts of heath prevailed, for the most part covered with grass and bushes, where only grazing could be carried on with any success. The term which Eusebius and Jerome employ for Negeb in the Onom. is Daromas, but they carry it farther northwards than the Negeb of the Old Testament (see Reland, Pal. Ill. pp. 185ff). The numerous towns mentioned in Jos 15:21-32 as standing in the Negeb, may none of them have been large or of any importance. In the list before us we find that, as a rule, several names are closely connected together by the copula vav, and in this way the whole may be divided into four separate groups of towns. Jos 15:21-23 First group of nine places. - Jos 15:21. The towns “from,” i.e., at “the end of the tribe-territory of Judah, towards the territory of Edom.” Kabzeel: the home of the hero Benaiah (2Sa 23:20), probably identical with Jakabzeel, which is mentioned in Neh 11:25 in connection with Dibon, but has not been discovered. This also applies to Eder and Jagur.
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