Numbers 34:3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Your south quarter Which is here described from east to west by divers windings and turnings, by reason of the mountains and rivers. Though Canaan itself was a pleasant land, as it is termed Daniel 8:9, yet it butted upon wildernesses and seas, and was surrounded with divers melancholy prospects. And thus the vineyard of the church is compassed on all hands with the desert of this world, which serves as a foil to it, to make it appear the more amiable and desirable. Many of the borders of Canaan, however, were its defences and fortifications, and rendered the access of its enemies more difficult. The utmost coast of the salt sea So called from the salt and sulphureous taste of its waters; and termed also the Dead sea, because no creature, it appears, will live in it, on account of its excessive saltness, or rather bituminous quality. “It contains,” says Volney, “neither animal nor vegetable life. We see no verdure on its banks, nor are fish to be found within its waters.” This was part of the border of the Israelites, that it might be a constant warning to them to take heed of those sins which had been the ruin of Sodom: yet the iniquity of Sodom was afterward found in Israel; (Ezekiel 16:49;) for which Canaan was made, though not a salt sea, as Sodom, yet a barren soil, and continues such to this day. Eastward That is, at the eastern part of that sea, where the eastern and southern borders of the land met. Thus Moses determines the boundary of Canaan, on the south, to be Idumaea and the deserts of Arabia.