The east boundary. And the east side ye shall measure from Hauran, etc. The Revised Version, after Keil and Kliefoth, translates, And the east side, between Hauran and Damascus and Gilead, and the land of Israel, shall be (the) Jordan; from the (north) border unto the east sea shall ye measure.
Smend offers as the correct rendering, The east side goes from between Hauran and Damascus, and from between Gilead and the land of Israel, along the Jordan, from the border unto the east sea. In any case, by this instruction, first the land of Israel was defined as the territory lying west of the Jordan, and secondly its boundary should extend from the last-named north border at its easternmost point, Hazar-enan, down the Jordan valley to the Dead Sea.
The practical effect of this would be to cut off the lands which in the earlier division (Numbers 34:14, Numbers 34:15) had been assigned to Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Otherwise the boundary hero given corresponds with that traced in Numbers, though the latter is more minute.
Hengstenberg, however, thinks the prophet cannot have intended to assert that the new Israel should not possess the land of Gilead as a frontier in the future as formerly, as in that case he would have been at variance, not only with preexisting Scripture (comp.
Psalms 60:7; Micah 7:14; Jeremiah 1:19; Zechariah 10:10), but with subsequent history.