Joshua 13:25

Half the land on the children of Ammon - This probably was land which had been taken from the Ammonites by Sihon, king of the Amorites, and which the Israelites possessed by right of conquest. For although the Israelites were forbidden to take the land of the Ammonites, Deuteronomy 2:37, yet this part, as having been united to the territories of Sihon, they might possess when they defeated that king and subdued his kingdom.

All the cities of Gilead - i. e. of Gilead in the narrower sense, included in the territory of Sihon, and distinct from Bashan Deuteronomy 3:10.

Half the land of the children of Ammon - i. e. that half of the Ammonite territory which had been conquered by the Amorites. This, after the overthrow of Sihon, the Israelites took for their own. The land which the Ammonites still held in the days of Moses, the Israelites were not permitted to attack.

Rabbah was a border fortress, the principal stronghold of the Ammonites Numbers 21:24, and the residence of their king. It was attacked and taken by Joab 2 Samuel 11; 12; 1 Chronicles 20:1, but appears in later times again as an Ammonitish city Jeremiah 49:3; Ezekiel 25:5; Amos 1:13-15. In the third century B.C. it received from Ptolemy Philadelplus the name of Philadelphia, and was in later times the seat of a Christian bishop; but has now for many centuries been in ruins, remarkable for their grandeur and extent.

13:25 The cities of Gilead - That is, all the cities of eminency; all the cities properly so called, which lay in that part of Gilead; and so this may well agree with ver. 31 , where half the country of Gilead is said to be given to the Manassites; but there is no mention of any cities there. The land of the children of Ammon - Not of that which was now theirs, for that they were forbidden to meddle with, but of that which was anciently theirs, 'till taken from them by the Amorites, from whom the Israelites took it.Aroer - The border between them and Moab. Rabbah - The chief city of the Ammonites.