Misinterpretations often arise from decontextualizing the verse as a blueprint for modern geopolitical borders or Jewish territorial claims, ignoring its role as a historical record of tribal allotments rather than prescriptive prophecy; others spiritualize the boundaries as arbitrary metaphors for personal faith limits, overlooking the literal geographic survey amid Joshua's land division; or confuse the valley of Hinnom with immediate New Testament imagery of Gehenna as hell, missing its ancient topographical function near Jerusalem which Jebusites still controlled until David's conquest.
Joshua 15:8
King James Version (1769)
8 And the border went up by the valley of the son of Hinnom unto the south side of the Jebusite; the same is Jerusalem: and the border went up to the top of the mountain that lieth before the valley of Hinnom westward, which is at the end of the valley of the giants northward:
This verse delineates a segment of the southern boundary of the territory allotted to the tribe of Judah in the Promised Land, tracing from the valley of Hinnom past the south side of Jerusalem—then a Jebusite stronghold—to a mountain overlooking the westward end of the valley of the giants to the north, underscoring God's precise and methodical division of Canaan among the Israelites as their inheritance after the conquest.