Numbers 34:12

12 and the boundary shall go down to the Jordan, and its end shall be at the Dead Sea. This shall be your land with its boundaries all around.

Numbers 34:12 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 34:12

And the border shall go down to Jordan
A well known river to the east of the land of Canaan:

and the goings out of it shall be at the salt sea;
the sea of Sodom; and though all sea water is generally salt, this was remarkably so, through the great quantity of bitumen and nitre in it; hence it was called Asphaltites; thus as the description of the borders of the land began with the salt sea, ( Numbers 34:3 ) , it ends with it:

this shall be your land, with the coasts thereof round about:
which, according to the Targum of Jonathan, was thus bounded, Rekamgea (or Kadeshbarnea) on the south, Taurus Urnanus (by which he interprets Mount Hor) on the north, the great sea on the west (i.e. the Mediterranean sea), and the salt sea on the east.

Numbers 34:12 In-Context

10 You shall mark out your eastern boundary from Hazar-enan to Shepham;

11 and the boundary shall continue down from Shepham to Riblah on the east side of Ain; and the boundary shall go down, and reach the eastern slope of the sea of Chinnereth;

12 and the boundary shall go down to the Jordan, and its end shall be at the Dead Sea. This shall be your land with its boundaries all around.

13 Moses commanded the Israelites, saying: This is the land that you shall inherit by lot, which the Lord has commanded to give to the nine tribes and to the half-tribe;

14 for the tribe of the Reubenites by their ancestral houses and the tribe of the Gadites by their ancestral houses have taken their inheritance, and also the half-tribe of Manasseh;

Footnotes

• [a]. Heb [Salt Sea]