(2) Their south border.--The southern boundary of Judah is thus described by Conder (Bible Handbook, p. 257):--"The south boundary of Judah is described from east to west, and became afterwards that of Simeon (see Joshua 19:1). Although the points mentioned along the border are not all certainly known, there is no doubt that the great mountain wall which extends from the Dead Sea to the water-shed south of Rehoboth (Er-Ruheibeh) formed the natural and recognised boundary of Palestine, while the river of Egypt (Joshua 15:4) is generally supposed to be the present Wady-el'-Arish, the northern boundary between Syria and Egypt. The north branch of this valley ( Wady-el-Abiad) rises near 'Abdeh (Ebodah), south of Rehoboth, and thus carries on the boundary from the mountain rampart. A new identification of importance may be here mentioned, namely, Hezron (Joshua 15:3), the next point to Kadesh-barnea on the west side. Kadesh has been shown to lie probably in the neighbourhood of Wady-el-Yemen, and immediately west of that valley is the mountain called Hadireh, a name radically identical with Hezron."

Verse 2. - The shore of the salt sea. Literally, the extremity, i.e., the south extremity. From the bay. Literally, tongue (so margin). The LXX. translates by λοφία, ridge. The whole southern portion of the sea is cut off from the rest by a peninsula near Kerak, the ancient Kit of Moab. It is called the Lisan. Whoever was the writer of the Book of Joshua, these details prove him to have had an accurate acquaintance with the geography of Palestine. He was no priestly inventor of fables attached to the temple at Jerusalem. Canon Tristram gives a vivid description of the neighbourhood in his 'Land of Israel,' ch. 15. The ridge of Jebel Usdum - one large mass of rock salt - on the west of this "tongue" of water, the salt marsh of the Sebkha on the southwest, with its treeless waste - "not a plant or a leaf could be seen save just under the hills" - and its mirage like that of Sahara, the barren outline of the Lisan itself, to the eastward rising to an elevation of from five to six hundred feet, and the fertile oasis of the Ghor-es-Safieh at the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, give an unique character to this remarkable region.

15:1-12 Joshua allotted to Judah, Ephraim, and the half of Manasseh, their inheritances before they left Gilgal. Afterwards removing to Shiloh, another survey was made, and the other tribes had their portion assigned. In due time all God's people are settled.And their south border was from the shore of the salt sea,.... Sometimes called the dead sea, the sea of Sodom, and the lake Asphaltites, which, as Jarchi observes, was southeast of the land of Israel:

from the bay that looketh southward; or the "tongue", as the Hebrew, which the Targum and Kimchi interpret of a rock or promontory, the point that ran out into the sea, looking to the southeast.