Numbers 34:3
Ver. 3. Then your south quarter,.... Or border of the land; which, as Jarchi observes, was from east to west:
shall be from the wilderness of Zin; which is Kadesh, where Miriam died, Nu 20:1, and if this Kadesh was Kadeshbarnea, as Dr. Lightfoot seems to have proved {h}, from whence the spies were sent, that was clearly on the south of the land of Canaan, for they were bid to go up their way southward, Nu 13:17, and so Kadeshbarnea is hereafter mentioned, as being in the southern border: the Targum of Jonathan paraphrases it,
"from the wilderness of the palm trees of the mountain of iron;''
there is a smaller palm tree, which by Jewish writers is called Zin, of which there were great quantities on a mountain famous for iron mines, in this wilderness, from whence it is thought it had its name; hence we read {i} of palm trees of the mountain of iron, as fit to make the bunch of branches of trees, called the "lulab", carried in the hand on the feast of tabernacles:
along by the coast of Edom; the land of Canaan, to the south, bordered on three countries, Egypt, Edom, and Moab; according to Jarchi, some part of Egypt, the whole land of Edom, and the whole land of Moab; the part of the land of Egypt was in the south west corner of it; the land of Edom by it to the east; and the land of Moab by the land of Edom, at the end of the south to the east:
and your south border shall be the outmost coast of the salt sea eastward; the same that is sometimes called the Dead sea, the sea of Sodom, or the lake Asphaltites, as Heathen writers generally call it.
{h} Works, vol. 2. p. 8, 9. {i} Misn. Succah. c. 3. sect. 1.