Joshua 19:51 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Ver. 51. So they made an end of dividing the country— Notwithstanding all the particulars of this division recorded in the present and foregoing Chapter s, it is impossible at this time to draw out a perfectly exact map of the land of Canaan, and the limits of each tribe. The country has undergone too many revolutions, and passed through too many hands, to allow us the gratification of describing the position of most of the places of which Joshua chiefly has preserved any account. The territories of the ten tribes, especially, cannot but be unknown in many respects; for, on the return of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin from Babylon, they who came back found themselves hardly sufficient for re-peopling the single country of Judea; and it even required consideration how to afford Jerusalem a sufficient number of inhabitants: Nehemiah 11. Thus it was the furthest from their thoughts to take any account of the provinces which the other ten tribes had been obliged to quit; and, the country being seized on by foreign nations, it became every day more difficult to mark out the precise limits of the land which had been possessed by each tribe. See Walton's Prolegom. and Shuckford's Connection, vol. 3: p. 417.