Joshua 19:22
And the coast reacheth to Tabor, and Shahazimah, and Bethshemesh; and the outgoings of their border were at Jordan: sixteen cities with their villages.
And the coast reacheth to Tabor,.... Tabor was the name of a mountain in those parts; it is generally supposed to be the mountain on which our Lord was transfigured, though it is not sufficiently evident;
See Gill on "Jeremiah 46:18". There was a city of this name near it, 1 Chronicles 6:77, and which is meant here, and which either gave unto or received name from the mount. The Greeks call it Itabyrium, and it is described by Polybius {g} as situated on a hill rising in the form of a pap or breast, and has an ascent of more than fifteen furlongs, and he calls it a city;
and Shahazimah is not mentioned any where else;
and Bethshemesh; there seem to have been several cities, at least more than one, of the name of Bethshemesh; one in the tribe of Judah,
Joshua 21:16; and another in the tribe of Naphtali, Joshua 19:38; which perhaps may be the same with this, it lying on the borders of both tribes. In this, and so in others of the same name, was a temple dedicated to the sun by the Heathens, as there was one of the same name in Egypt for the same reason, Jeremiah 43:13;
and the outgoings of their border were at Jordan; here it ended: so Josephus says, that the border of this tribe in the length of it were Mount Carmel (at one end), and the river (i.e. Jordan, at the other); and at the breadth of it the mountain Itabyrium, or Mount Tabor: it had Jordan on the east, the sea on the west, Zebulun on the north, and Manasseh on the south:
sixteen cities with their villages; which was the sum total of them.
{g} Hist. l. 5. p. 413.