Commentary on Joshua - Keil & Delitzsch - David Cox

Keil and Delitzsch <strong>Commentary</strong> on the Old Testament
Verse 38-39. Jireon ( Iron ) is probably the present village of Jarûn , an hour to the
south-east of Bint-Jebeil, with the ruins of an ancient Christian church ( Seetzen , ii.
pp. 123-4; Van de Velde , R. i. p. 133). Migdal-el , so far as the name is concerned,
might be Magdala (Matt 15:39), on the western shore of the Lake of Gennesareth,
between Capernaum and Tiberias ( Rob. iii. pp. 279ff.); the only difficulty is, that the
towns upon this lake have already been mentioned in v. 35. Knobel connects Migdalel
with Chorem , so as to form one name, and finds Migdal el Chorem in the present
Mejdel Kerum , on the west of Rameh ( Seetzen , ii. p. 130; Van de Velde , i. p.
215), a common Mahometan village. But there is nothing to favour this combination,
except the similarity in sound between the two names; whereas it has against it not
only the situation of the village, which was so far to the west, being not more than
three hours from Acca, that the territory of Naphtali can hardly have reached so far,
but also the very small resemblance between Chorem and Kerum , not to mention the
fact that the accents separate Chorem from Migdal-el , whilst the omission of the
copula ( vav ) before Chorem cannot have any weight, as the copula is also wanting
before Zer and Rakkath. Chorem and Beth-anath have not yet been discovered.
From the latter place Naphtali was unable to expel the Canaanites (Judg 1:33). Bethshemesh
, a different place from the town of the same name in Issachar (v. 22), is also
still unknown. The total number of towns is given as nineteen, whereas only sixteen
are mentioned by name. It is hardly correct to seek for the missing places among the
border towns mentioned in vv. 33 and 34, as the enumeration of the towns themselves
is introduced by mibªtsaar (OT:4014) wª`aareey (OT:5892) in v. 35, and in this way
the list of towns is separated from the description of the boundaries. To this we may
add, that the town of Karthan or Kirjathaim, which Naphtali gave up to the Levites
(Josh 21:32; 1 Chron 6:61), does not occur either among the border towns or in the
list of towns, from which we may see that the list of towns is an imperfect one.
Joshua 19:40-48
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