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9. Went down. In the first part of the campaign they “went up” to battle from the lowland around Jericho and Gilgal into the central highlands. Now, from the hills they “went down” to fight in the three distinctive regions of southern Palestine, the “mountain,” the “south” (Negeb), and “valley” (Shephelah).

The mountain. This term is used in the OT for the highlands of Judea, which are a continuation of the central mountain chain that runs throughout the length of the country from north to south.

The south. Heb. negeb. South of Hebron the mountains slope downward and become less rugged, the valleys less deep, and the hills round off and gradually merge with the southern desert. This arid, sparsely settled region extends from north of Beersheba southward to Kadesh-barnea and westward toward the sea. It was often termed negeb in the Hebrew OT, a name that it still bears today. The word itself means a dry, arid land. So familiar was this region of southern Canaan to the Hebrews that they came to use the word negeb as a general expression for “south” (Gen. 24:62; Joshua 15:4, 21; Eze. 47:19). In this verse the word, however, stands for the geographical area described previously.

Valley. Heb. shephelah. Between the highlands of Judah and the Philistine plain that borders the sea there is a region of low, rounded hills a few hundred feet in elevation. This fringe of foothills on the border of Philistia was called the Shephelah, that is, the lowland.