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 "Jer 46:18".
There was a city of this name near it, 1Ch 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 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, Jos 21:16; and another in the tribe of Naphtali, Jos 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, Jer 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.
Hist. l. 5. p.