This is the land which yet remaineth. The powerful league of the Philistines, as well as the tribes near them, remained unsubdued. In the north, likewise, the neighbourhood of Sidon, and the territory of Coele, Syria, which lay between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, was as yet in the hands of the enemy.
Rabbis Kimchi and Solomon Jarchi translate by "borders." Masius suggests the French marque, and the modern German grenze. All the borders of the Philistines. Literally, all the circles (Geliloth) of the Philistines.
The expression is found in several places in this book (see Joshua 18:17; Joshua 22:10, Joshua 22:11). We may compare the expression the circles of Swabia, Franconia, etc; in the history of Germany. The expression here may have more affinity with what is known as the "mark system" in the history of ancient Germany, and refer to the patch of cultivated ground which extended for some distance round each city.
But this is rendered improbable by the fact that one circle only retained its name (Joshua 20:7; Joshua 21:32), and is still known as Galilee (see notes on these passages). Galilee was too large a district to have been originally a clearing round a town.
Geshur (see note on Joshua 12:5). Ewald conjectures that these Geshurites were the aboriginal inhabitants of the country (see 1 Samuel 27:8), and were the same as the Avites or Avvites. See next verse, where the Avvites are distinguished from the five lords of the Philistines.
It is worthy of remark that the name Talmai, the name of one of the "sons of Anak" (Joshua 15:14), comes in again as the name of a king of Geshur (2 Samuel 3:3, 2 Samuel 13:37). It occurs, however, as a Hebrew name in Bartholomew, or Bar-Tolmai, i.
e; the son of Talmai, or Tolmai, one of the twelve apostles. Ewald supposes that these aborigines were dispossessed by the Canaanitish tribes, and that the old name of Geshur was still applied to those regions on which this primitive race had retained its hold.