John Gill Commentary Numbers 34

And the Lord spoke to Moses
At the same time that he ordered him to direct the children of Israel, when they had passed over Jordan, to drive out the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, and divide their land among them, he proceeded to give the limits and boundaries of the land:

saying
as follows.

Command the children of Israel, and say to them
Not to fix the borders, and settle the boundaries of the land, for that is done by the Lord himself, who has determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of men's habitations, and particularly of Israel, see (Deuteronomy 32:8) , but to observe and take notice of the limits he had fixed, that they might know how far they were to go on every side, whom they were to drive out, and what they were to divide and inherit, and see what was their right, and preserve it from the encroachments of their neighbours, as well as observe the goodness of God to them, in thus providing for them:

when you come into the land of Canaan ;
to take possession of it by virtue of a grant of it to them:

this is the land that shall fall to you for an inheritance ;
it is said to "fall", because it was divided by lot, each tribe having such a part of it assigned to them, according to the lot that came up to them: even

the land of Canaan ,
with the coasts thereof; or according to its borders, which are as follow.

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, (Numbers 20:1) (33:36) , and if this Kadesh was Kadeshbarnea, as Dr. Lightfoot seems to have proved ^F8 , from which 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, (Numbers 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 which it is thought it had its name; hence we read ^F9 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.

FOOTNOTES:

• F8: Works, vol. 2. p. 8, 9.
• F9: Misn. Succah. c. 3. sect. 1.

And your border
That is, the south border, which is still describing:

shall turn from the south to the ascent of Akrabbim ;
or Maalehacrabbim, as in (Joshua 15:3) so called from the multitude of serpents and scorpions in it, see (Deuteronomy 8:15) , so Kimchi says ^F11 , a place of serpents and scorpions was this ascent: Dr. Shaw ^F12 says Akrabbim may probably be the same with the mountains of Accaba, according to the present name, which hang over Eloth, where there is a "high steep road", well known to the Mahometan pilgrims for its ruggedness: and he thinks ^F13 it very probable, that Mount Hor was the same chain of mountains that are now called Accaba by the Arabs, and were the easternmost range, as we may take them to be, of Ptolemy's black mountains: Josephus ^F14 speaks of Acrabatene as belonging to the Edomites, which seems to be this same place:

and pass on to Zin ;
that is, which ascent goes on to it; the Targum of Jonathan is,

and the going forth thereof shall be from the south to Kadeshbarnea ;
from whence the spies were sent southward to search the land, (Numbers 13:17) (32:8)

and shall go on to Hazaraddar ;
called Adar, (Joshua 15:3) and where it seems to be divided into two places, Hezron and Adar, which very probably were near each other, and therefore here put together, as if but one place:

and pass on to Azmon ;
which the Targums call Kesam.

FOOTNOTES:

• F11: Sepher Shorash. "in voce" (brqe) .
• F12: Travels, tom. 2. ch. 1. p. 279.
• F13: Travels, tom. 2. ch. 1. p. 323.
• F14: Antiqu. l. 12. c. 8. sect. 1. see 1 Maccab. 5. 3.
• F15: De loc. Heb. fol. 94. H.

And the border shall fetch a compass
Not go on in a straight line, but turn about:

from Azmon to the river of Egypt ;
the river Nile, as both the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem; but Aben Ezra seems to deny that that river is meant: and some think that Rhinocolura, which flows into the Mediterranean sea, is meant; or the "valley of Egypt", Casiotis, which divided Judea from Egypt, as follows:

and the goings out of it ;
not of the river, but of the border:

shall be at the sea ;
the above sea, called in the next verse the great sea; all the Targums render it to the west.