And the border was drawn [thence],.... From Bethhoron:
and compassed the corner of the sea southward; it is hard to say what sea is meant, or what by it. Fuller k conjectures, that as the Hebrews call any confluence of water a sea, as we call such a "mere", the great waters in Gibeon may be meant, Jeremiah 41:12; for it cannot mean the Mediterranean sea, for Dan lay between Benjamin and that; and yet if a sea is meant, no other can be; wherefore it is best to render it the "west quarter", as it is in the latter part of this verse; and so the same word is translated, Joshua 18:12; the "west", and not the "sea", as it sometimes is; for the border of Benjamin did not reach the sea any where; though Josephus l makes it to extend to it, and says, that the length of it was from the river Jordan to the sea:
the hill that [lieth] before Bethhoron southward; the hill that lay to the south of nether Bethhoron, as in Joshua 18:13:
and the goings out thereof, the end of the western coast,
were at Kirjathbaal, which [is] Kirjathjearim, a city of the children of Judah; of which see Joshua 15:9;
this [was] the west quarter; as thus described.
k Pisgah Sight, B. 2. c. 12. p. 251. l Ut supra. (Antiqu. l. 5. c. 1. sect. 22.)