Joshua 15:7,8 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Northward looking toward Gilgal Having Gilgal to the north of it. Which is to be understood, not of that Gilgal near Jericho, but of that place called Geliloth, (Joshua 18:17,) which was distant from thence, as appears by what follows. And the border went up Properly; for the line went from Jordan and the salt sea, to the higher grounds nigh Jerusalem; and, therefore, the line is said to go down, (Joshua 18:16,) because there it takes a contrary course, and goes downward to Jordan and the sea. By the valley of the son of Hinnom A famous place on the east side of Jerusalem; and so delightfully shady, that it invited the Israelites to idolatrous worship in it, whereby it became infamous, 2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:32. Hinnom, in all probability, was some eminent person in ancient times, who was the owner of this valley; for it is sometimes called the valley of the children of Hinnom; which shows his posterity were planted here. After it was polluted by idolatry it became a place where they threw all their filth and dead carcasses; and where there was a continual fire, the Jews say, to burn bones, and such sordid things as were thrown there; from whence they think it became the name for hell fire. The south side of the Jebusites Namely, the city of the Jebusites. The same is Jerusalem Which is called Jebusi in the last verse of the eighteenth chapter, and Jebus, Judges 19:10, especially that part of it fortified by the Jebusites, which was called mount Sion, and lay on the south of Jerusalem. And the border went up to the top of the mountain Which is thought to be mount Moriah. The end of the valley of the giants northward Which mountain had on the north part of it the valley of Rephaim, (as the word is in the Hebrew,) which was in the tribe of Judah, extending itself from mount Moriah as far as Bethlehem, as Josephus informs us.