Joshua 15:45

15:20-63 Here is a list of the cities of Judah. But we do not here find Bethlehem, afterwards the city of David, and ennobled by the birth of our Lord Jesus in it. That city, which, at the best, was but little among the thousands of Judah, Mic 5:2, except that it was thus honoured, was now so little as not to be accounted one of the cities.

Ekron, with her towns and her villages. One of the five principalities of the Philistines, which with two more next mentioned, though they fell to the lot of the tribe of Judah, were never possessed by them; for which reason perhaps Gath and Ascalon are not mentioned, and these are put for the rest; see Joshua 13:3 .

Here and in the following verses are contained all the cities of the Philistines, among which are Gath and Askelon, which peradventure are here omitted, because they were not at this time places of such power and eminency as afterwards they were, but were the daughters of some of these following cities, though afterwards the daughter might overtop the mother, as is usual. Her towns , Heb. her daughters , i.e. lesser cities, or great towns, subject to Ekton’s jurisdiction. Her villages , i.e. lesser towns or hamlets.

Jos 15:21-63. Cities of Judah. 21-63. the uttermost cities of the tribe of the children of Judah—There is given a list of cities within the tribal territory of Judah, arranged in four divisions, corresponding to the districts of which it consisted—the cities in the southern part (Jos 15:21-32), those in the lowlands (Jos 15:33-47), those in the highlands (Jos 15:48-60), and those in the desert (Jos 15:61, 62). One gets the best idea of the relative situation of these cities by looking at the map.

Verse 45. - Ekron, with her towns and her villages. Literally, her daughters and her farm hamlets (see note on Joshua 13:28). These cities of the Philistines had, like Gibeon, daughter cities dependent on them, and must therefore have been, like Gibeon, "great cities as the royal cities" ( Joshua 10:2 ). They do not appear to have come under regal government till later times (cf. 1 Samuel 5:8, 11 , with 1 Samuel 27:2 ). "Around it (Gezer) and along the sides were distributed a series of small isolated centres of agglomeration .... This disposition to scatter itself, of which Gezer surely does not offer us the only specimen, explains in a striking manner the Biblical phrase, 'the city and her daughters'" (Pal. Expl. Fund, Quart. Paper, Jan., 1874). This explanation, however, is doubtful (see Joshua 9:17 ). According to Knobel, this passage cannot have been written by the Elohist, because he confines himself to the description of the cities the Israelites actually possessed. Why a lair writer, writing presumably when Israel's fortunes were at a lower ebb, should have added a description of the territory Israel did not possess, he does not explain. Joshua 15:45

The fourth group, consisting of the towns of the Philistine line of coast, the northern part of which was afterwards given up to the tribe of Dan (Dan Jos 19:43), but which remained almost entirely in the hands of the Philistines (see at Joshua 13:3 ). (Note: There is no force in the reasons adduced by Ewald, Bertheau, and Knobel, for regarding these verses as spurious, or as a later interpolation from a different source. For the statement, that the "Elohist" merely mentions those towns of which the Hebrews had taken possession, and which they held either partially or wholly in his own day, and also that his list of the places belonging to Judah in the shephelah never goes near the sea, are assertions without the least foundation, which are proved to be erroneous by the simple fact, that according to the express statement in Joshua 15:12, the Mediterranean Sea formed the western boundary of the tribe of Judah; and according to Joshua 13:6, Joshua was to distribute by lot even those parts of Canaan which had not yet been conquered.

The difference, however, which actually exists between the verses before us and the other groups of towns, namely, that in this case the "towns" (or daughters) are mentioned as well as the villages, and that the towns are not summed up at the end, may be sufficiently explained from the facts themselves, namely, from the circumstance that the Philistine cities mentioned were capitals of small principalities, which embraced not only villages, but also small towns, and for that very reason did not form connected groups, like the towns of the other districts.) Joshua 15:45 Ekron, i.e., Akir (see Joshua 13:3). "Her daughters" are the other towns of the principality of Ekron that were dependent upon the capital, and חצרים the villages and farms.

In consequence of the defeat at Ebenezer, the Philistines were obliged to restore to the Israelites the cities which they had taken from them, "from Ekron to Gath." This definition of the limits is probably to be understood as exclusive, i.e., as signifying that the Israelites received back their cities up to the very borders of the Philistines, measuring these borders from Ekron to Gath, and not that the Israelites received Ekron and Gath also. For although these chief cities of the Philistines had been allotted to the tribes of Judah and Dan in the time of Joshua ( Joshua 13:3-4 ; Joshua 15:45-46 ), yet, notwithstanding the fact that Judah and Simeon conquered Ekron, together with Gaza and Askelon, after the death of Joshua ( Judges 1:18 ), the Israelites did not obtain any permanent possession. "And their territory" (coasts), i.e., the territory of the towns that were given back to Israel, not that of Ekron and Gath, "did Israel deliver out of the hands of the Philistines. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites;" i.e., the Canaanitish tribes also kept peace with Israel after this victory of the Israelites over the Philistines, and during the time of Samuel. The Amorites are mentioned, as in Joshua 10:6 , as being the most powerful of the Canaanitish tribes, who had forced the Danites out of the plain into the mountains ( Judges 1:34-35 ).