יהושע, פרק ט״ו, פסוק א׳

After Caleb son of Jephunneh, the leader of the tribe of Judah, received the city of Hebron as the first inheritance in the land, a lottery was held for the rest of the tribe. The purpose of this drawing was to determine the direction of their territory and to see whether their land would end up far away from their leader's portion. Guided by the providence of God, the lot for the tribe ultimately fell in the region immediately surrounding Hebron [אברבנאל, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. As the land was distributed internally, it was divided strictly according to families. Each individual family received its own separate and clearly defined parcel of land, ensuring there was no mixing of properties between the different groups [מצודת דוד].

The boundaries of this tribal inheritance were carefully mapped out, with a specific focus on the southern terrain. The territory stretched to the border of Edom, reaching the very edge of the Edomite land located south of the land of Israel [רש״י, מצודת דוד, מצודת ציון, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. This boundary passed through the wilderness of Zin, establishing both the southern border of the entire land of Israel and the specific southern limit of Judah's inheritance in the Negev region [רש״י, מצודת דוד, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. To provide exact geographical precision, the boundary is noted as reaching the absolute southernmost edge of the land [רש״י, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. The primary approach among commentators is that this detail clarifies the exact layout of the border, indicating that the wilderness of Zin did not run along the entire length of the southern boundary. Instead, it served as the starting point from which the border extended outward from that extreme southern edge [רד״ק, מצודת דוד].