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.
Verses 21-23
Jos 15:21-23First 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.
Verse 22
Jos 15:22Kinah: also unknown. Knobel connects it with the town of the Kenites, who settled in the domain of Arad, but this is hardly correct; for which the exception of Jdg 1:16, where the Kenites are said to have settled in the south of Arad, though not till after the division of the land, the Kenites are always found in the western portion of the Negeb (1Sa 15:6; 1Sa 27:10; 1Sa 30:29), whereas Kinah is unquestionably to be looked for in the east. Dimonah, probably the same as Dibon (Neh 11:25); possibly the ruins of el Dheib, on the south side of the wady of the same name, to the north-east of Arad (V. de Velde, Mem. p. 252), although Robinson (Pal. ii. p. 473) writes the name Ehdeib. Adadah is quite unknown.
Verse 23
Jos 15:23Kedesh, possibly Kadesh-barnea (Jos 15:3). Hazor might then be Hezron, in the neighbourhood of Kadesh-barnea (Jos 15:3). Ithnan is unknown.
Verses 24-25
Jos 15:24-25Second group of five or six places. - Of these, Ziph and Telem are not met with again, unless Telem is the same as Telaim, where Saul mustered his army to go against the Amalekites (1Sa 15:4). Their situation is unknown. There was another Ziph upon the mountains (see Jos 15:55). Knobel supposes the one mentioned here to be the ruins of Kuseifeh, to the
