reasone.bly pfoce the "entrance to He.math" would seem to be to picture an enlarged so often spoken of, and so esce.pe the neces- Canaan extending be)'.ond its utmost his- sity of imagining an e.rtificie.l e.nd imprac- torical limits. Even if it should be thought ~ice.ble frontier for the northern boundary that these passe.ges require e. frontier further of the promised le.nd. Zedad. Identified to the north than the one advocated e.bove, by some with the present village of Se.dad or it will yet be impossible to carry it to the Sude.d, to the south-east of Emesa (Hums); northern end of the valley between Le be.non but this identifice.tion, which is e.t best very and e.nti-Lebanon. For in that case the problematic, is wholly out of the question if northern frontier will not be a northern the argument of the preceding note be accepted. fr?ntier at all, but will e.ctually descend Yer. 9.-Ziphron. A town called Sibraim from the " entre.nce of Hamath" in a south- is mentioned by Ezekiel (xlvii. 16) as lying erly or south-westerly direction, and dis- on the boundary between Damascus and tinctly form part of the eastern boundary. Hamath, and there is a modem village of Ver. 11.-Bhepham is unknown. Rible.h Ziuin about forty miles north-east of Da- cannot possibly be the Riblah in the land oC me.scus, but there is no probable ground for Hamath (Jer. x.xxix. 5), now apparently supposing that either of these are the Ziphron Ribleh on the Orontes. This one example of this verse. Razar-enan, i. e. " fountain will serve to show how delusive are these court." There are of course many places in identifications with modem places. Even if and about the Lebanon and anti-Lebanon Riblch represents an ancient Riblah, it is ranges to which such a name would be suit- not the Rible.h which is mentioned here. On able, but we have no means of identifying it the east aide of A.in, i. e. of the fountain. with any one of them. It must be confes.sed The Targums here imply that this Ain was that this '' north border " of Israel is ex- the source of Jordan below Mount Hermon, tremely obscure, because we are not told and that would agree extremely well with whence it started, nor can we fix, except by what follows. The Septuagint has hri 1n1ycic, conjecture, one single -eoint upon it. A and there is in fact more than one fountain certain amount of light 1s thrown upon the from which this head-water of Jordan takes subject by the description of the tribal its rise. Immediately before the Septuagint boundaries and possessions as given in Josh. has B71;\.a where we read Riblah. It has xix., and by the enumeration of places left been supposed that the word wa.s originally unconquered in Josh. xiii. and Judges iii. 'Ap/31J;\.a, a transliteration of" Har-bel," tho The most northerly of the tribes were Asher mountain of Bel or Baal, identical with the and Naphtali, and it does not appear that Harbaal-Hermon (our Mount Hermon) of their allotted territory extended beyond the 0
Judges iii S. The Hebrew i1~~7y being lower valley of the Leontes where it makes its sharp turn towards the west. It is true differently pointed, and the final i1 taken as that a portion of the tribe of Dan afterwards the suffix of direction, we get ~;;,.-ic,; but occupied a district further north, but Dan- this is extremely precarious. Bh&l.1 reach Laish itself, which was the extreme of Jewish Ullto the aide of the sea of Chinnereth east• settlement in this direction, as Beersheba in ward. Literally, "shell strike (ilC,J?) the the other, was southward of Mount Hermon. shoulder of the sea," &c. The line does not The passage in Josh. xiii. 4-6 does indeed seem to he.ve descended the stream from its go to prove that the Israelites never occupied source, but to have kept to the east, and so all their intended tenitory in this direction, to he.ve struck the lake of Galilee at its but as fe.r as we can tell the line of promised north-eastem comer. From this point it conquest did not extend further north than simply followed the water-way down to the Zidon and Mount Hermon. "All Lebanon Salt Sea. The lands beyond Jordan were not toward the sunrising" cannot well mean reckoned e.s within the se.cred limits. the whole range from south to north, but all the mountain country lying to the east of Ver. 15. - On this aide .Jordan near Zidon. One other passe.ge promises to throw .Jericho, Literally, "on the side C,~Jq;?) of additional light upon the question, viz., the the Jorde.nor Jericho." It was not of course ideal delimitation of the Hcily Land in Ezek. true that the territory which they had re- xlvii. ; and here it is true the.t we find a ceived lay ee.stward of Jericho, but it was northern frontier (vers. 16-17) apparently the ce.se that the tribe leaders had there fe.r beyond the line of e.ctual settlement, and asked and received permission to occupy that yet conte.ining two names at least (Zede.d territory, and it was in this direction that and Ha.zar-ene.n) which appear in the present the temporary settlements of Reuben and list. It is, however, g_uite uncertain whether Gad lay, perhe.ps also those of ho.II Manasseh. the prophet is describmg any possible bound- Ver, 17.-Eleuar the priest, and .Joshua ary line at all, or whether he is only men- the son of 1'11ll. As the ecclesie.atical and tioning (humanly speaking at i:3ndom) cert;am military heads respectively of the theocracy points in the far north ; his very obJect (see on eh. uxii. 28). 438 THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. [oH, xum. 60-xx:xrv. 29.
Ver. 18. -One prince of every tribe. able. Taken in pairs (Judah and Simeon, This was arranged no doubt in order to Manasseh and Ephraim, &c.), they advance insure fairness in fixing the boundaries be- regularly from south to north, according to tween the tribes, which had to be done after their subsequent position on the map. Dif- the situation of the tribe was determined by fering as this arrangement docs so ma1kedly lot ; the further subdivision of the tribal from any previously adopted, it is impossible territory was probably left to be managed by to suppose that it is accidental. We must the chiefs of the tribe itself. Of these tribe conclude either that a coincidence so ap- princes (see on eh, xiii. 1 ; Josh. xiv. 1), parently trivial was Divinely prearranged, or Caleb is the only one whose name is known that the arrangement of the names is due to to us, and he had acted in a somewhat similar a later hand tlian that of Moses. capacity forty years before. This may of Ver. 20. - Shemuel. This is the same itself account for the tribe of Judah being name as Samuel.'· Of the rest, every one named first in the list, especially as Reuben except the last occurs elsewhere in the was not represented ; but the order in which Old Testament as the name of some other the other names follow i11 certainly remark- Iara.al.it