Verse 2. - From Bethel to Luz. Like Jerusalem and AElia Capitolina, or old and new Carthage, the new city did not coincide precisely in its site with the old one (see Joshua 18:13; also Genesis 28:19; Genesis 35:6; Judges 1:23). Bethel was probably built, as far as could be ascertained, on the spot near the Canaanitish city where the wanderer Jacob spent the night in which the famous vision appeared to him (see Genesis 28:11). Knobel, however, renders literally, Bethel-Luzah, as though the older and later names had been here conjoined. The borders of Archi. Rather, the borders of the Archite (cf. 2 Samuel 15:32; 2 Samuel 16:16; 1 Chronicles 27:33). This is the only clue we have to the residence or tribe of Hushai.

16:20-63 Here is a list of the cities of Judah. But we do not here find Bethlehem, afterwards the city of David, and ennobled by the birth of our Lord Jesus in it. That city, which, at the best, was but little among the thousands of Judah, Mic 5:2, except that it was thus honoured, was now so little as not to be accounted one of the cities.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, Genesis 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, Joshua 16:5. Ataroth was its proper name, but it had these additional epithets to distinguish it from another Ataroth; see Joshua 16:7; Jerom (b) 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.

(b) De loc. Heb. fol. 88. G.