1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Charge the Israelites, and you shall say to them, ‘When you come into the land of Canaan, this is the land that will fall to you in estate, the land of Canaan by its borders. 3And your southern limit shall be from the Wilderness of Zin by Edom, and your southern border from the edge of the Dead Sea to the east. 4And your border shall swing round south of the Ascent of Akrabbim and pass through Zin, and its farthest reaches shall be south of Kadesh-Barnea, and it shall extend out to Hazar-Addar and pass through to Azmon. 5And the border shall swing round from Azmon toward the Wadi of Egypt, and its farthest reaches to the Sea. 6And the western border—the Great Sea shall be your border, this shall be your western border. 7And this shall be your northern border, from the Great Sea you shall trace a line to Hor the Mountain. 8From Hor the Mountain you shall trace a line to Lebo-Hamath, and the farthest reaches of the border to Zedad. 9And the border shall extend to Ziphron, and its farthest reaches, Hazar-Enan. This shall be your northern border. 10And you shall trace for yourselves a line for the eastern border from Hazar-Enan to Shepham. 11And the border shall go down from Shepham to the Riblah, east of Ain, and the border shall go down and touch the slope of Lake Chinnereth to the east. 12And the border shall go down to the Jordan, and its farthest reaches at the Dead Sea. This shall be your land by its borders all around.’”
13And Moses charged the Israelites, saying, “This is the land of which you will take possession by lot, as the LORD has charged to give to the nine and a half tribes. 14For the tribe of the Reubenites by their fathers’ houses and the tribe of the Gadites by their fathers’ houses and the half-tribe of Manasseh have taken their estate. 15The two and a half tribes have taken their estate beyond the Jordan across from Jericho to the east.” 16And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 17“These are the names of the men who will share out estates of the land for you: Eleazar the priest and Joshua son of Nun. 18And one chieftain, one chieftain from each tribe you shall take to share out the estates of the land. 19And these are the names of the men: For the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh. 20For the tribe of the Simeonites, Samuel son of Ammihud. 21For the tribe of Benjamin, Elidad son of Chislon. 22And for the tribe of the Danites, chieftain Bukki, son of Jogli. 23For the Josephites of the tribe of the Manassites, chieftain Hanniel son of Ephod. 24And for the tribe of the Ephraimites, chieftain Kemuel son of Shiphtan. 25And for the tribe of the Zebulunites, chieftain Elizaphan son of Parnach. 26And for the tribe of the Issacharites, chieftain Paltiel son of Azzan. 27And for the tribe of the Asherites, chieftain Ahihud son of Shelomi. 28And for the tribe of the Naphtalites, chieftain Pedahel son of Ammihud. 29These are the ones whom the LORD charged to share out estates to the Israelites in the land of Canaan.”
CHAPTER 34 NOTES
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2. fall to you. As Rashi aptly notes, this verb is used because the apportionment of the land is to be carried out by lot.
3–12. As the Book of Numbers draws to a close, with the Israelites ready to begin the conquest of the land (a sequence of events that will not be reported until the Book of Joshua), the reality of the land in which Israel will dwell is concretized through this mapping out of its borders. Those borders are only partly consistent with the delineation of the borders in Joshua and Ezekiel, and it is questionable whether they completely correspond to any historical contours of Israelite dominion. The northern borders extend far into Syria, well north of Sidon. Though the Mediterranean as western border seems neat, it does not reflect the fact that for several centuries much of the coastal plain was Philistine territory. Some scholars have argued that these borders are substantially those of the Egyptian province of Canaan agreed on with the Hittites after the battle of Kedesh in 1270 B.C.E., but that proposal has not been universally accepted and it remains to be explained why a later writer would adopt those borders.
4. the Ascent of Akrabbim. The Hebrew means “Scorpion Ascent.”
6. the western border. The Hebrew term for “west,” yam, actually means “sea.” That word, whether by itself or with the qualifier “great,” always refers to the Mediterranean, unless it is otherwise specified in the name (e.g., yam suf, Sea of Reeds).
15. have taken their estate beyond the Jordan. The decision of the two and a half tribes to settle east of the Jordan in the Gilead region was reported in detail in chapter 32. Although this was a recognized area of Israelite settlement, there is a sense here that it lies outside the land of Canaan proper, whose eastern border is marked by Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) and the Jordan and the Dead Sea below it.