Joshua 17:15 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

He retorts their own argument: Seeing thou art a great and numerous people, turn thy complaints into actions and valiant exploits, and enlarge thy borders by thy own hand, to which thou mayst confidently expect God's assistance. To the wood country; to the mountain, as it, is called, Joshua 17:18, where among some towns there is much wood land, which thou mayst without much difficulty possess, and so get the more room. Cut down, i.e. the wood, Joshua 17:18, for thy own advantage and use; partly in building more cities and towns; and partly for preparing the land for the use of pasture and tillage. The Perizzites; supposed to be a savage and brutish kind of people, that lived in woods and mountains. Of the giants, who lived in caves and mountains, now especially when they were driven out of their cities. If Mount Ephraim be too narrow for thee, or, seeing Mount Ephraim is too narrow for thee, as thou complainest, take to thyself the rest of that hilly and wood country. Mount Ephraim was a particular and eminent portion of the land, belonging to the tribe of Ephraim, as appears from Joshua 19:50, Joshua 20:7 21:21 Judges 4:5. And this seems to be here mentioned synecdochically, for all the portion allotted to Ephraim and Manasseh, as appears from their complaint, which was not that this part, but that their whole portion, was too strait for them.