“Dukes of Sihon,” properly vassals of Sihon; נסיכים does not signify anointed, however, but means literally poured out, i.e., cast, moulded, enfeoffed. The word points to the “creation of a prince by the communication or pouring in of power” (Gusset, s. v.). “And (this)was the boundary of the sons of Reuben, the Jordan and its territory,” i.e., the Jordan, or rather land adjoining it. The meaning is, that the territory of Reuben, viz., with the places mentioned last (Jos 13:20), reached to the territory of the Jordan; for so far as the principal part was concerned, it was on the east of the Dead Sea, as it only reached from the Arnon to Heshbon, i.e., up to the latitude of the northern extremity of the Dead Sea. “The towns and their villages.” חצר, farm premises, used, as in Lev 25:31, to denote places not enclosed by a wall.
Verses 24-26
Inheritance of the tribe of Gad. - This tribe received Jaëzer (probably es Szyr: see at Num 21:32) and “all the towns of Gilead,” i.e., of the southern half of Gilead, which belonged to the kingdom of Sihon; for the northern half, which belonged to the kingdom of Og, was given to the Manassites (Jos 13:31), “and the half of the land of the sons of Ammon, to Aroër before Rabbah,” i.e., that portion of the land of the Ammonites between the Arnon and the Jabbok, which the Amorites under Sihon had taken from the Ammonites, namely, the land on the east of Gilead, on the western side of the upper Jabbok (Nahr Ammân: Deu 2:37; Deu 3:16; cf. Jdg 11:13); for the land of the Ammonites, i.e., the land which they still held in the time of Moses, on the eastern side of Nahr Ammân, the Israelites were not allowed to attack (Deu 2:19). Aroër before Rabbah, i.e., Ammân (see Deu 3:11), is Aroër of Gad, and must be distinguished from Aroër of Reuben on the Arnon (Jos 13:16). It is only mentioned again in Jdg 11:33 and 2Sa 24:5, and was situated, according to 2 Sam., in the valley of Gad, that is to say, in a wady or valley through which Gesenius supposes an arm of the Jabbok to have flowed, and Thenius the Jabbok itself, though neither of them has sufficient ground for his conjecture. It is also not to be identified with the ruin of Ayra to the south-west of Szalt, as this is not in a wady at all; but in all probability it is to be sought for to the north-east of Rabbah, in the Wady Nahr Ammân, on the side of the Kalat Zerka Gadda, the situation of which suits this verse and Jdg 11:33. - In Jos 13:26 the extent of the territory of Gad is first of all described from north to south: viz., from Heshbon (see Jos 13:17)
