Joshua 15:2

The shore of the salt sea. Literally, the extremity, i.e; the south extremity. From the bay. Literally, tongue . 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,' Joshua 15:1-63 . 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.