Halak

Mount Halak is the southern bookend of Joshua's conquest sweep — a peak that, paired with Baal-gad in the north, frames the territory taken west of the Jordan. The name surfaces only in two summary verses in Joshua, and in both places it functions as a geographic boundary marker rather than as the scene of an event.

The southern limit of the conquest

The first notice describes the extent of the campaign: "from mount Halak, that goes up to Seir, even to Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon under mount Hermon: and all their kings he took, and struck them, and put them to death" (Jos 11:17). Halak ascends toward Seir — the Edomite hill country — and so it stakes the southern edge of what fell under Joshua's hand.

A boundary in the king-list summary

The same span recurs at the head of the catalogue of conquered kings. The territory beyond the Jordan westward runs "from Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon even to mount Halak, that goes up to Seir; and Joshua gave it to the tribes of Israel for a possession according to their divisions" (Jos 12:7). The peak is again the southern terminus, paired with Baal-gad as the northern terminus, and the pair together defines the inheritance distributed among the tribes.