TERRITORIAL TRIBE OF JUDAH

courtesy Brigham Young University Digital Library

Judah (Heb. Yehuda), the founder of the tribe of Judah, was the fourth son of the Patriarch Jacob and his wife Leah. According to Biblical accounts, after her son was born, Leah exclaimed, "This time I will praise the Lord" (Heb. transl. "ODEH et Adonai"), hence, the name.  

In the Book of Joshua, Chapter 15, we find that after the Israelite conquest of Canaan by Joshua, this tribe received a large inheritance of land which stretched from the western shore of the Dead Sea, westward to the Mediterranean, and from Bethehem southward to the Negev Desert, and included the site of Kadesh Barnea, a major Israelite encampment during the Exodus, as well as Gaza, Ashdod, Ekron, Hebron and Yatta. When the Israelite Kingdom split in two, Judah was the dominating tribe of southern kingdom. It was from this tribe that the word “Jew” originated. 

Today, some of the other sites of this territory include:

The Judean Desert south of Jerusalem (Jerusalem was never part of Judah);
Beersheba, sometimes called the “capital of the Negev” and roughly 45 miles slightly southwest of Jerusalem. 
The Shephelah, the southern coastal plain (excluding Gaza District), characterized by rolling hills and meadows and containing the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Kiryat Gat. It covers the western section of the Valley of Elah.

The Valley of Elah stretches from the Adulam Caves, about 18 miles west of Bethlehem, continuing westward to the coastline. It is the site where David fought Goliath;
Bethlehem, on Jerusalem’s southern border, birthplace of David and Jesus and burial place of the Hebrew Matriarch Rachel. Her tomb is on the city’s northern border and was a Jewish place of pilgrimage since time immemorial;
Hebron, one of the four holiest cities in Judaism, about 20 miles south of Jerusalem. It is where King David held court before he made Jerusalem capital of Israel. Since medieval times, the city has centered around the Cave of the Patriarchs, or Machpelah, where the Hebrew patriarchs and matriarchs, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah (see above for Rachel's burial place) are buried. It has also been a place of Jewish pilgrimage since time immemorial. The city dominates the Judean Desert region.
Yatta, the home of the Makhamra family, a crypto-Jewish "Palestinian" family long resident in the city; 
el Arish, today in the Sinai Peninsula, for centuries, the home of an intermittent Jewish community and a major stopping-off point for Jewish pilgrims on their way from Egypt to the Land of Israel;
Maon, a few miles south of Hebron, is today, a small religious Jewish town, founded in 1982. It started out as an army outpost and was built near the Biblical site of Maon mentioned in the Book of Joshua. The Arab settlement of Ma’in is nearby.
The Negev Desert, the great southern expanse of Israel south of the Judean Desert.
The Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth as well as a resort area. Its western coastline was the easternmost extent of Judah while its eastern coastline, today in Jordan, was the westernmost extent of the tribe of Reuben as well as of the Kingdom of Moab. The southern portion of the Sea is supposedly where the cities of Sodom and Gamorrah were located. The modern Kibbutz Ein Gedi, about midway on the western coast, was where David hid from King Saul. Surrounding Ein Gedi is the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve, Masada, where the last stand of the Jews against the Romans took place in 73CE, and the Qumran Caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.