In the manner in which Ptolemy, Strabo, and other geographers set up four boundaries of some region — by reason, namely, of the four principal quarters of the world — so here too the Holy Spirit [sets four] of the Israelite land. Now the first boundary, from the South, is the desert — that, namely, through which, from the departure out of Egypt, they have now wandered 40 years. For because this, being recently done, was in everyone’s memory, by antonomasia it is called “the desert,” and is set as it were among the boundaries — [the desert] which is otherwise called “the desert of Sin and Kadesh [Gades]” Num. 27:32 & 33:34, v. 3. And here the southern boundary [is set] by Ptolemy bk. 5 of the Geography [as] Arabia Petraea, by Tacitus bk. 5 of the histories [as] Egypt; but by Scripture, elsewhere, often [as] Beersheba — 2 [Sam.] 3:13.24; 3 [Kings] 4:4; 4 [Kings, i.e. 2 Kings] 23:1; [1] Chron. 21:2, 30 — [and] in Gen. 15 [as] “the river of Egypt,” which, as I explained elsewhere, is not that fuller Nile itself, but that [river] which — as St. Augustine says, quest. 21 on this book — “flows through the city Rhinocolura,” a certain stream, as it were, of that fuller Nile,
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—of which [more] at ch. 15 of Genesis, disputation 9, Pererius. — The second boundary, from the North, is Lebanon, a mountain most celebrated in Scripture.
Of which several things can be asked. And first: whence did that mountain take its name? Masius thinks [it is] from frankincense [thus], because in Hebrew it is called lebonah [לבונה], in Greek λίβανος and λιβανωτός [libanos, libanōtos, “frankincense”]. Since this [frankincense] is twofold — namely the most excellent, and the less excellent — the [former] is born in Sabaea alone, as Virgil sang (Georgics 2): “Frankincense is the Sabaeans’ [tree alone]”; but this [lesser sort] grows elsewhere too, and on this mountain especially, where [there is] an abundance of cedars, terebinths, and other resinous trees. From these [comes] the viscous humor that oozes out and congeals, and it is wont to be called thus [frankincense], as in Pliny bk. 12 ch. 14 [and] bk. 14 ch. 6; and Ecclesiasticus 24:21: “As frankincense uncut [I gave] the odor of my dwelling.” — But from the white snows Ribera (on Habakkuk 2) says Lebanon is named. For Laban [לבן] to the Hebrews is “white,” and this region [is] chief of mountains, says Tacitus (in the cited book): “Lebanon rises up — wondrous to tell — amid such heats shady and faithful to [its] snows.” Both notions some regard. For because frankincense [is] white there, therefore St. Jerome would have it called Lebanon. Of these I disapprove none. For the more causes of this naming concur, the better — so that from both frankincense and snow, [being] there copious and white, it was called Lebanon. But [some prefer to derive it] rather from Jeremiah 18:14: “Shall the snow of Lebanon fail from the rock of the field?”; and to this [white sense] they seem to look who look to the white [temple] — namely the temple of God at Jerusalem (Zech. 11, Isa. 35, Jer. 22, Hab. 2); and therefore they say it is also called Lebanon, because — as Josephus relates (bk. 9 of the Captivity, ch. 6) — it gleamed far and wide as it were with whitest stones.
Second. Where does the same Lebanon begin? There are two ranges toward the North which bear the name of Lebanon, but the one is called simply Lebanon, the other Antilebanon, by Greeks and Latins. And the one [is] more toward the North, the other more toward the South — with a very ample valley lying between, in which [are] the cities Heliopolis, Albia, Damascus, and the rivers Adonis and Chrysorrhoas. A very pious and learned man proves against Postellus, in threefold [manner], that the one which is more northern is Antilebanon, the one which is more southern is Lebanon. First, because Pliny bk. 5 ch. 20 says Lebanon begins from Sidon’s back [i.e. behind Sidon]. Second, St. Jerome (bk. on Hebrew Places): “those [places] which are above Lebanon,” he says, “are called Antilebanon.” Third, the river Chrysorrhoas tends toward the East into the Euphrates, and is said to gush from all Lebanon; but unless Lebanon be more southern, either this river will not rise from it, or certainly it will not be able to advance into the Euphrates, because the opposing Trachonite mountains — which Ptolemy calls Alsadamus — would impede [it]. I, however, say: first, that in Hebrew both these [ranges] are named by one and the same simple name of Lebanon; and indeed rightly, because it seems one and the same mountain, though it be a little larger, [with] a valley lying between which by Polybius bk. 5 is called Marsyas; and therefore also Pliny, in the cited place, reports that both were once joined by a wall. Second, that of this mountain there are nonetheless two ridges, and therefore two, as it were, mountains; whence Num. 34:8, in Hebrew and Greek, it is called “mountain and mountain,” that is, biverticem [two-peaked] or geminum [twin] — for which, in our interpreter, [it is] altissimus [highest]. Third, [as for] that [ridge] of this mountain which is more northern [Aquilonarius],
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I think Lebanon is rather to be called, and that which is more southern, Antilebanon. For Ptolemy (in the cited place) says the latitude of Lebanon is of “parts,” or, as they are now wont to call [them], of degrees 34, but of Antilebanon 33. Then Strabo bk. 16: “Two,” he says, “are the mountains, which, as it were parallel to each other, make the [Syria] which is called Coele or Hollow [Syria] — both beginning a little above the sea, Lebanon indeed above that sea which is near Tripoli and the city Theouprosōpon [Θεοῦ πρόσωπον], that is, ‘God’s face,’ but Antilebanon above the sea which [is] near Sidon.” To that first argument, therefore, I respond: that Pliny took the name of Lebanon then for both ridges, which he afterwards distinguished. To the second: St. Jerome called that “above Lebanon” which is more southern. To the third: Who teaches that Chrysorrhoas empties into the Euphrates? Certainly Strabo [says] of the same thus, in the same place: “Chrysorrhoas, beginning from the city and region of the Damascenes, is almost wholly consumed into channels; for it irrigates a great part of that region, and that indeed which is very deep [low-lying].”
(marg.) By which Lebanon is the boundary here constituted? [the third of the sub-inquiries]
By a Hebrew and Latin general name this cannot be determined; but [it can] from that Greek [name] which the Seventy [LXX] used. For here, for Lebanon, they put Antilebanon; and likewise below (ch. 9), Deut. 1, 3, 11; and this can be confirmed from that which is said in Hebrew, “from the desert and this Lebanon.” For the demonstrative “this” [hoc] indicates especially that mountain which was nearer and more conspicuous to the Israelites [encamped] in the Moabite plains. And this was the more southern mountain, namely Antilebanon. Whence elsewhere too this boundary is wont to be drawn “from Dan.”
The third boundary is toward the East, the Euphrates. Of this I spoke [at] Gen. 2, where the fourth river of paradise is constituted [as it]. But first, why is it called “the great river”? In [tractate] Shevuot, 7th chapter [perek], the Talmudists respond [that] it was done because it bounds this land, which is the most excellent of all. But by the same reasoning Lebanon would be called “great,” and truly the Jordan would be “greatest,” because it waters and gladdens that same land. And therefore rather from its own true magnitude it receives that epithet — with which [magnitude] it surpasses even the Tigris itself, as Strabo says (bk. 16), who nonetheless [notes] it is called “great” at Dan. 10 too, and it surpasses the other rivers of paradise, which in the treatise on paradise [I held] to be Phison and Araxes. And this is intimated in Hebrew and Greek when to the river-name is now added that epithet, now a proper name is joined, thus: “the great river, the river Perath [Euphrates].” Whence Lucan bk. 3: “And the great Euphrates, which lifts [its] head with the rushing Tigris.”
(marg.) Is the eastern boundary of this land truly [the Euphrates]? [a sub-inquiry]
Masius will have [it] to be the northern [boundary]; and indeed the side of the North also somewhat overreaches the Euphrates. But then there would be no eastern boundary, and — against Geography — this land would be bounded by only three quarters of heaven, whereas nonetheless Deut. 11:24 fixes four boundaries a little more clearly than [it is done] here, and [so it is] below in all [the allotments] by tribes also. Of the other, [truly] eastern boundary, [more] afterwards.
The fourth boundary [is] toward the West — or, as the text has, “against the setting of the sun,” or, as the Seventy [have], “from the setting of the sun” — [and] is the great sea, which we [call] the Mediterranean, [and which] Tacitus too (in the cited place) calls the “Jewish” [sea]. But it is called “great” comparatively, and in respect of these parts and of these men [the locals]. For since to the Hebrews every gathering of waters is called “sea,” three [seas are reckoned] in that [land]—
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—[the seas] of the Israelites’ land. The first is [the waters] of Merom, about which below at ch. 11. The second, the Lake of Tiberias, or Genesareth. The third, the Dead Sea — whence, in the cited place, Tacitus [says]: “The Jordan is not received into the [open] sea.” For it flows through the one and the other lake entire; it is held [only] in the third — bituminous, namely, which (as the same Tacitus says) “is of immense circuit, in the appearance of a sea, but more corrupt in taste, and pestilent to the neighbors by the gravity of [its] odor.” To these [seas], therefore, when that Western sea is compared, deservedly it is called by the Jews, and in these places, “great.”