Commentary on Joshua - Keil & Delitzsch - David Cox

Keil and Delitzsch <strong>Commentary</strong> on the Old Testament
glorious sight" ( Ritter , Erdk. xvi. pp. 567-8).
Verse 15. Joshua therefore sent them back with their petition, and said, "If thou art a
strong people, go up into the wood and cut it away," i.e., make room for houses,
fields, and meadows, by clearing the forests, "in the land of the Perizzites and
Rephaim, if the mountain of Ephraim is too narrow for thee." The name "mountain of
Ephraim" is used here in a certain sense proleptically, to signify the mountain which
received its name from the tribe of Ephraim, to which it had only just been allotted.
This mountain, which is also called the mountain of Israel (Josh 11:16,21), was a
limestone range running from Kirjath-jearim, where the mountains of Judah terminate
(see at Josh 11:21), to the plain of Jezreel, and therefore embracing the greater part of
the tribe-territory of Benjamin. The wood, which is distinguished from the mountain
of Ephraim, and is also described in v. 18 as a mountainous land, is either the
mountainous region extending to the north of Yasir as far as the mountains at Gilboa,
and lying to the west of Beisan, a region which has not yet been thoroughly explored,
or else, as Knobel supposes, "the broad range of woody heights or low woody hills,
by which the mountains of Samaria are connected with Carmel on the north-west (
Rob. iii. p. 189), between Taanath and Megiddo on the east, and Caesarea and Dor on
the west." Possibly both may be intended, as the children of Joseph were afraid of the
Canaanites in Beisan and in the plain of Jezreel (v. 16). The Rephaim were dwelling
there, a tribe of gigantic stature (see at Gen 14:5), also the Perizzites (see at Gen
13:7).
Verse 16. The children of Joseph replied that the mountain (allotted to them) would
not be enough for them ( maatsaa' (OT:4672), as in Num 11:22; Zech 10:10); and
that all the Canaanites who dwelt in the land of the plain had iron chariots, both those
in Beth-shean and its daughter towns, and those in the valley of Jezreel. 'eretshaa`eemeq
, the land of the plain or valley land, includes both the valley of the
Jordan near Beisan, and also the plain of Jezreel, which opens into the Jordan valley
in the neighbourhood of Beisan ( Rob. iii. p. 173). The plain of Jezreel , so called
after the town of that name, is called the "great field of Esdrelom" in Judith 1:4, and
to' me'ga pedi'on by Josephus. It is the present Merj (i.e., pasture-land) Ibn Aamer ,
which runs in a south-westerly
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