Ezekiel Chapter 47 verse 18 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 18. - The east boundary. And the east side ye shall measure from Hauran, etc. The Revised Version, after Keil and Kliefoth, translates, And the east side, between Hauran and Damascus and Gilead, and the land of Israel, shall be (the) Jordan; from the (north) border unto the east sea shall ye measure. Smend offers as the correct rendering, The east side goes from between Hauran and Damascus, and from between Gilead and the land of Israel, along the Jordan, from the border unto the east sea. In any case, by this instruction, first the land of Israel was defined as the territory lying west of the Jordan, and secondly its boundary should extend from the last-named north border at its easternmost point, Hazar-enan, down the Jordan valley to the Dead Sea. The practical effect of this would be to cut off the lands which in the earlier division (Numbers 34:14, 15) had been assigned to Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Otherwise the boundary here given corresponds with that traced in Numbers, though the latter is more minute. Hengstenberg, however, thinks the prophet cannot have intended to assert that the new Israel should not possess the land of Gilead as a frontier in the future as formerly, as in that case he would have been at variance, not only with preexisting Scripture (comp. Psalm 60:7; Micah 7:14; Jeremiah 1:19; Zechariah 10:10), but with subsequent history.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(18) From Hauran, and from Damascus.--The eastern boundary is also the same as that given in Numbers 34:10-12, although more particularly described there. In both cases it excludes the territory of the trans- Jordanic tribes, which was not included in Palestine proper, even after its conquest by Moses, and in which the two and a half tribes were allowed to settle with some reluctance (Numbers 32). The word "from," occurring four times in this verse, is literally from between, as is noted in the margin; it means that the boundary was to run between the territories of Hauran, Damascus, and Gilead on the one side, and that of Israel on the other. The boundary is to be the Jordan; but as this does not extend so far north, it became necessary to mention the territory of Damascus as bounding the land of Israel, and in this connection Hauran and Gilead are also spoken of. The boundary extends, as of old, beyond the mouth of the Jordan to the southern end of the Dead Sea and thence to Kadesh. The extreme length of the land is somewhat uncertain, but must have fallen short of 250 miles.