Ezekiel 47:19 - Exposition

The south boundary . This should begin where the east boundary terminated, viz. at Tamar , "Palm tree." Different from Hazezon-Tamar, or Engedi ( Ezekiel 47:10 ; 2 Chronicles 20:2 ), which lay too far up the west side of the sea, Tamar can hardly be identified either with the Tamar of 1 Kings 9:18 near Tadmor in the wilderness, or with the Thamara ( θαμαρά ) of Eusebius between Hebron and Elath, supposed by Robinson to he Kurnub , six hours south of Milh , towards the pass of Es-Sufah , since this was too distant from the Dead Sea The most plausible conjecture is that Tamar was "a village near the southern end of the Dead Sea" (Currey). Proceeding westward, the southern boundary should reach to the waters of strife in Kadesh ; better, to the waters of Meribotk Kadesh . These were in the Desert of Sin, near Kadesh-Barnea ( Numbers 20:1-13 ), which, again, was on the road from Hebron to Egypt ( Genesis 16:14 ). The exact site, however, of Kadesh-Barnea is matter of dispute; Rowland and Keil find it in the spring ' Ain Kades , at the north-west corner of the mountain-land of Azazimeh, which stretches on the south of Palestine from the south-south-west to the north-north-east, and forms the watershed Between the Mediterranean and the Arabah valley. Delitzsch and Conder seek it in the neighborhood of the Wady-el-Jemen , on the south-east side of the above watershed, and on the road from Mount Hot. Robinson ('Bibl. Rea,' 2.582) discovers it in ' Ain-el-Weibeh , not far from Petra. A writer (Sin; Smend?) in Riehm ('Handworterbuch des Biblischen Alterthums,' art. "Kades") pleads for a site on the west side of the Azazimeh plateau, and in the vicinity of the road by Shur to Egypt. Leaving Kadesh, the boundary should continue to the river , or, brook , of Egypt, and thence extend to the great sea , or Mediterranean. The punctuation of גַחֲלָה , which makes the word signify "lot,' must be changed into נַחְלָה , so as to mean "river," since the reference manifestly is to the torrent of Egypt, the Wady-el-Arish , on the borders of Palestine and Egypt, which enters the Mediterranean near Rhinocorura ( ῥινοκόρουρα ). In Numbers 34:5 it is called the river of Egypt. And this is the south side southward (see on Numbers 34:17 ). The correspondence between this line and that of the earlier chart ( Numbers 34:4 , Numbers 34:5 ) is once more apparent.