Your borders: Your is plural, referring to the people of Israel and not just to Joshua.

The Hebrew text seems to define the territory as follows: “from the wilderness and this Lebanon and to the great river, the Euphrates River, all the land of the Hittites and to the great sea at the going down of the sun will be your borders.” Good News Translation takes this to indicate the four limits of the territory: south, “the wilderness,” traditionally called the Negev, and referring to the dry country extending from Beersheba to the desert of Sinai and the Gulf of Aqaba; north, the Lebanon Mountains; east, the Euphrates River; and west, the Mediterranean Sea. In Hebrew “this Lebanon” is puzzling; most translations have simply “the Lebanon.” The name does not refer to the country known today as Lebanon but to the Lebanon Mountains. The Hebrew of verse 4 is literally “From the wilderness (desert) … shall be your border.” Good News Translation inverts the Hebrew order and translates Your borders will reach from…. But the result is a sentence which is both lengthy and difficult, and it will help the reader if the sentence is restructured. For example, “I will give you (plural) all the land from the desert in the south to the Lebanon Mountains in the north. Your borders (or, The borders of your land) will reach from the great Euphrates River in the east. It will include the Hittite country as far as the Mediterranean Sea in the west.” A restructuring of this type will have at least two advantages: (1) It will break verse 4 into two less difficult sentences, and (2) it will tie verse 3 (“I promised Moses that I would give”) more closely with verse 4 (“I will give”).

“All the land of the Hittites” (Revised Standard Version) is omitted in the Greek Old Testament and is thought by some scholars to be a later addition to the text (see Bible de Jerusalem [Bible de Jérusalem]); it denotes the northern part of Syria, which had been part of the Hittite empire. See the similar description of the promised land in Deuteronomy 11.24, which does not include the phrase “all the land of the Hittites.” It seems best to follow the Hebrew text here. Only during the time of David and Solomon did the Israelites actually occupy much of this land.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Newman, Barclay M. A Handbook on Joshua. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1983. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .