Joshua 12:1

Joshua 12:1-6. Catalogue of the Kings conquered in Eastern Palestine

1. Now these This Chapter may be termed an official summary, suitable to a public record, of the whole territory conquered by Moses and by Joshua. "It contains no new matter, except that certain cities and their rulers are specified by name, which have previously been included in more general statements of Joshua's wars."

from the river Arnon The first province described is the south-eastern, previously the territory of the Amorite king, Sihon, "from the river Arnon unto Mount Hermon." The Arnon (the rushing river), now the Wady el-Mojeb, flows in part, through a deep rocky bed, into the Dead Sea. "As far as we could calculate by observation, the width of the ravine is about 3 miles from crest to crest; the depth by our barometers 2150 feet from the south side, which runs for some distance nearly 200 feet higher than the northern edge." Tristram's Land of Moab, p. 126.

unto mount Hermon Called by the Sidonians Sirion = "breastplate," a name suggested by its rounded glittering top, when the sun's rays are reflected by the snow that covers it (Deuteronomy 3:9; Song of Solomon 4:8). It was also called Sion = "the elevated," and is now known as Jebel-es-Sheikh, "the chief mountain," which rises over 9000 feet. "In whatever part of Palestine the Israelite turned his eye northward, Hermon was there terminating the view. From the plain along the coast, from the mountains of Samaria, from the Jordan valley, from the heights of Moab and Gilead, from the plateau of Bashan, the pale blue, snow-capped cone forms the one feature in the northern horizon." In Psalms 42:6 we have a vivid description of the mountain landscape on Hermon, but "the land of splendour, of heaven-towering mountains, and of glorious streams, offers no compensation to the heart of the Psalmist for the humbler hills of Zion where his God abides."

all the plain on the east "al the est coost that beholdith the wildernes," Wyclif; i.e. part of the great valley, now called the Ghor, from the Sea of Galilee to the Ælamitic Gulf, along the east bank of the Jordan.