Bible Strands
Joshua 13:4
to the south, all the land of the Canaanites, from Mearah of the Sidonians to Aphek, as far as the border of the Amorites;
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Joshua is addressing the remaining tribal leaders to delineate the unallocated western and northern territories of Canaan before the final tribal allotments are distributed.
The words — The text highlights מִתְּיָמָן (mitṭēyāmān), literally "from the south," and עַד (ʿaḏ), meaning "to" or "as far as," which establish the precise geographic boundaries being surveyed.
The thread — The boundary marker Aphek appears again in Joshua 19:30 as one of the twenty-two cities assigned to the tribe of Asher, while the Amorites are later noted in Judges 1:34 as restricting the Danites to the hill country.
Why it lands — The passage requires the reader to recognize that the conquest involved mapping and claiming specific territories according to divine assignment rather than leaving them as undefined wilderness.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
From the south, all the land of the Canaanites, and Mearah that is beside the Sidonians, unto Aphek, to the borders of the Amorites:
Cross-references
- Joshua 19:30 Ummah, Aphek, and Rehob. There were twenty-two cities, along with their villages.
- Judges 1:34 The Amorites forced the Danites into the hill country and did not allow them to come down into the plain.
- 1 Samuel 4:1 Thus the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now the Israelites went out to meet the Philistines in battle and camped at Ebenezer, while the Philistines camped at Aphek.
- Joshua 10:40 So Joshua conquered the whole region—the hill country, the Negev, the foothills, and the slopes, together with all their kings—leaving no survivors. He devoted to destruction everything that breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.
- Joshua 11:3 to the Canaanites in the east and west; to the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, and Jebusites in the hill country; and to the Hivites at the foot of Hermon in the land of Mizpah.
- Joshua 12:7 And these are the kings of the land that Joshua and the Israelites conquered beyond the Jordan to the west, from Baal-gad in the Valley of Lebanon to Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir (according to the allotments to the tribes of Israel, Joshua gave them as an inheritance
- Joshua 12:18 the king of Aphek, one; the king of Lasharon, one;
- Amos 2:10 And I brought you up from the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness, that you might take possession of the land of the Amorite.