And goeth out from Bethel to Luz,.... For though these two places in time became one, yet they were originally distinct. Bethel, at which Jacob stopped, and who gave it its name, was a field adjacent to the city of Luz, Ge 38:11; and therefore with propriety may be, as they here are, distinguished:and passeth along unto the borders Archi to Ataroth; or to Archiataroth; these two words being the name of one and the same place, and to be joined as they are, in the Greek version, and others; and is the same with Atarothaddar, Jos 16:5.
Ataroth was its proper name, but it had these additional epithets to distinguish it from another Ataroth; see Jos 16:7; Jerom makes mention of Atharoth by Ramma, in the tribe of Joseph, and of another in the tribe of Ephraim, now a village at the north of Sebaste, or Samaria, four miles from it, called Atharus; the former is here meant.
De loc. Heb. fol. 88.