Deuteronomy 1:7 - Exposition

Go to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all that dwell thereon ; literally, its dwellers or inhabitants ( שְׁכֵנָיו ). The mountain range of the Amorites, afterwards called the hill country of Judah and Ephraim, was the object which would first strike the view of one advancing from the south; and so, it stands here for the whole land of Canaan, with which it is in this context identified. Those "that dwell thereon" are the inhabitants of the whole of Canaan. The Amorites (Hebrew Emori , so called from Amor, or Emor) oftener than once appear as standing for the Canaanites generally (cf. Genesis 15:16 ; Deuteronomy 1:20 , Deuteronomy 1:21 , etc.). That all the inhabitants of Canaan are intended here is evident from the specification of the different districts of the land of Canaan which immediately follows. In the plain : the 'Arabah (see Deuteronomy 1:1 ). In the hills : the hill country of Judah ( Numbers 13:17 ). In the vale : the shephelah , or lowland, the country lying between the mountain range of Judah and the Mediterranean Sea, and stretching northwards from the parallel of Gaza to that of Carmel. In the south : the negeb , or southland (literally, dryness ), the district which formed the transition from the desert to the cultivated land, extending from the south of the Dead Sea westwards to Gaza, a vast steppe or prairie, for the most part pasture land. The seashore: the narrow strip of land on the coast of the Mediterranean from Joppa to Tyre (in the New Testament, "the coast of Tyre and Sidon," Luke 6:17 ). The land of the Canaanites : the whole country of which these were the separate parts. And unto Lebanon : the Whale Mountain , so called, probably, from the snow which rests on its summit. The great river, the river Euphrates . The Phrath, or Euphrates, which has its sources in the mountains of Armenia, and in its course divides Armenia from Cappadocia, formed the eastern limit of the territory promised by God to Abraham. The epithet "great" seems to have been commonly applied to it. Callimachus calls it ' ασσυριοῦ ποταμοῖο μέγας ρόος , and Lucan has-

" Quaque caput rapido tollit cum Tigride magnus Euphrates ."

('Phars.,' 3:256.)

As by much the most considerable river of western Asia, the Euphrates was known as "the river" par excellence (cf. Exodus 23:31 ; Isaiah 8:7 ; Jeremiah 2:18 ; Psalms 72:8 ). The mention of Lebanon and the Euphrates is not, as Keil suggests , "to be attributed to the rhetorical fullness of the style;" but is due to the fact that these were included in what God promised to Abraham and his seed ( Genesis 15:18 ; Exodus 23:31 ; Deuteronomy 11:24 ).