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Verse 1. "Then came the children of Israel...into the desert of Zin."-The chronology adopted in our Bibles very properly places a period of thirty-seven years between the transactions recorded in the 15th chapter, and those on which we now enter. But in assigning all the intermediate chapters to the year 1471 B.C., that is, the middle year of that period, no other consideration could have operated than the necessity of fixing some date or other to each chapter. We are by no means to suppose that all the events of these four chapters occurred, and that all the laws were delivered. in any one year of this period; they more probably constitute a brief notice of the principal circumstances which occurred, perhaps at distant intervals, in the whole period during which the Israelites were doomed to wander in the deserts till the Egyptian-minded generation had died away in punishment for its rebellions. Most of this time was doubtless consumed in rest at different stations from which they removed from time to time as their Divine Guide indicated. And as they had no determinate object in view, beyond that, perhaps, of obtaining pasture for their flocks, it is of little consequence to ascertain their routes, nor have we materials to enable us to do so, unless in the list of names of some stations which we find given in ch. xxxiii. (see the notes there). The fact would seem to be that they wandered to and fro, again and again, through the length and breadth of the desert region between Egypt, Judæa, and Mount Sinai, and which region, in its present name of the Desert of Wandering (El Tyh), continues to this day to bear evidence to their long sojourn therein. This name is applied to all the country; both to the desert plains and to the mountains which lie between them and Mount Sinai. Now the period of wandering has nearly expired, and the march of the armies of Israel once more assumes a definite purpose-the purpose of entering Canaan.

"Kadesh."-Is this Kadesh the same with the Kadesh-Barnea, where we find the Hebrews in the fifteenth chapter, and which was the point from which their wanderings commenced? This is one of the most perplexing questions in Scripture geography, and one on which the best authorities are nearly equally balanced. We have given our best attention to this subject, as it is really one of considerable interest, and the following are the most satisfactory conclu

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sions at which we are able to arrive. We conclude then that there is but one Kadesh mentioned in Scripture; and that the difficulties which have seemed to require that there should be a second, or even a third, place of this name, may be easily and effectually obviated by altering the position commonly assigned to Kadesh-Barnea-that is, the Kadesh from which the spies were sent in the fifteenth chapter, and from which the desert wanderings commenced. We are at perfect liberty to make such alteration, because nothing whatever is distinctly known of such a place, and its position has been entirely fixed according to conjectural probability. But being once fixed, it has generally been received and reasoned upon as a truth; and it has been thought better to create another Kadesh, to meet the difficulties which this location occasioned, than to disturb old maps and old topographical doctrines. Kadesh is usually placed within or close upon the southern frontier of Palestine, about midway between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. This location would seem in itself improbable, without any strong counter reasons; for we do not find that a hostile people, when not prepared for immediate action, confront themselves directly with their enemies, but encamp at some considerable distance, and send scouts and spies to reconnoitre the country; nor is it by any means likely that they would have remained so long at Kadesh, as they seem to have done at their first visit, if they had been in the very face of their enemies, as they must have been in the assigned position. We should therefore, on this ground alone, be inclined to place Kadesh more to the south or south-east than this. Besides, if this were Kadesh, how could it be described as on the border of Edom, since the Edomites did not, till some centuries later, occupy the country to the south of Canaan, and were at this time confined to the region of Seir? Moreover, from a Kadesh so far north, they were not likely to send to the king without moving down towards the place where they hoped to obtain permission to cross Mount Seir; particularly as, by so moving, they would at the same time be making progress towards the point which the refusal of the Edomites would oblige them to pass, and which they actually did pass. Therefore, the stay of the host at Kadesh, waiting for the king's answer, seems to imply that Kadesh was so near as not to make it worth their while to move till they knew the result of their application to him. Further, we read in chap. xxxiii. 36, after an enumeration of distances of evidently no very great length, that in the present instance the removal to Kadesh was from Ezion-gaber at the head of the Gulf of Akaba, the distance between which and the Kadesh of the map is about one hundred and twenty miles; and this is the consideration which has chiefly influenced those who determined that there must have been two places of this name; and we must confess that, while thinking over the other reasons we have stated, we were inclined to consider them as leading to that conclusion, and that the second Kadesh must have been very near Mount Hor. And this impression was confirmed when, happening to find that Eusebius describes the tomb of Miriam being still in his time shown at Kadesh, near Petra, the capital of Arabia Petræa, we perceived that it would be important to ascertain where this author fixed Petra, since one account places this city far more to the north than another. We found, accordingly, that he fixes Petra near Mount Hor, on which Aaron died and was buried; and, consequently, the Kadesh of this chapter-that is, the Kadesh where Miriam died-could be at no very great distance from Mount Hor. Another argument, of great apparent weight, has been deduced from recent discoveries in this region, to show not only that the Kadesh of this chapter was near Mount Hor, but also much nearer to the Gulf of Akaba than had previously been supposed. In the first place, it is said, in Num. xxxiii. 36, that the Israelites removed from Ezion-gaber, and entered the Desert of Zin, and came to Kadesh; and as this desert of Zin is the Wady-el-Araba and its continuation northward to the Red Sea, it is inferred that Kadesh was in this Wady, especially as the text seems expressly to identify Kadesh with Zin; and, further, that this Kadesh must have been between the Gulf of Akaba and Mount Hor, because, leaving Ezion-gaber on that Gulf, the host came to Kadesh before they reached Mount Hor (ch. xxxiii. 37). Now it does seem to us that these considerations do prove that there either was a second Kadesh much less distant than the first from the Mount Hor on which Aaron died, or that the single Kadesh was also nearer. We are willing to admit either of these conclusions; but, as we have said, we think all difficulties are sufficiently met by placing the single Kadesh neither close to the border of Canaan nor close to Mount Hor, but at a middle point between them, on the western border of the Wady-el-Ghor, which is the northern half of the Desert of Zin-say in or about lat. 30° 5', at nearly an equal distance between Mount Hor and the Kadesh-Barnea of the maps. This spot will be on or in the Desert of Zin, not too near to Canaan, nor too distant for Mount Hor and the capital of Edom. We have already shown that this could not be too far from the southern frontier of Canaan; and that it was not too far from the capital of Edom will appear on reflecting, that, if it had been quite near, it would not have been necessary to have told the king so particularly where they were at the time," We are at Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border:" a form of expression quite averse to the interpretation that they were then close at hand, and had for some time been so. Kadesh, as we place it, is on the uttermost western border of the region of Seir, and is near enough to the capital of that region (Petra) to agree with the account of Eusebius, since near," in the sense he uses it, can only imply that it was nearer to Petra than to any other great and well known city. The argument for a Kadesh between Akaba and Mount Hor is of no weight in itself; because in that case the Israelites, in going to Mount Hor after receiving at Kadesh the refusal of the king of Edom, must have gone out of their way northward; whereas the direction which that refusal obliged them to take was southward, towards the head of the gulf, where the mountains become low, and the passage eastward may easily be made. This is sufficient to show that Kadesh was to the north of Mount Hor.

Under these views let us read the various texts which bear on the subject in chap. xx., xxi. 1-4, and xxxiii. 36-41, and observe whether the following paraphrastic exposition does not satisfactorily elucidate them. The Israelites left Ezion-gaber to resume their design of entering Canaan, and therefore to return to Kadesh, where they had formerly been with a similar design. They therefore proceeded up the desert of Zin, or Wady-el-Araba; but how far they proceeded in it before they emerged from it into the proper desert of Paran on the west, it is difficult to determine. They might have left it at the point (in N. lat. 30° 5') where the Roman road, direct from Ezion-gaber to Jerusalem, did in after-times leave it. This they would naturally do, if the object of their journey had been the supposed Kadesh between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea; and this they might do even to our Kadesh, if they had any cause to prefer pursuing their journey rather along the Paran than the Zin side of the confining hills. But as we do not know this, it seems more probable that they followed the Nabathæan (or Edomite) commercial route, which led first from Ezion-gaber up the valley to the capital of Petra near Mount Hor, and then continued, still, up the valley, finally leaving it, and striking off N.N.W. for Phoenicia, at the point near which, on perfectly independent considerations, we have been led to fix Kadesh. Arrived at Kadesh, and their design being known, they were attacked by King Arad (or the King of Arad) whose dominions lay in the south of Canaan, and suffered some loss (see the note on chap. xxi. 1); in consequence of which, and perhaps other circumstances, they were led or instructed to give up the idea of penetrating by the southern frontier of Canaan, which was inhabited by a very warlike race, and to adopt the design of turning eastward and making a circuit through the countries on the southern and eastern sides of the Dead Sea. But their way in this direction was barred by the mountains of Seir, which extend from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Akaba, and are only traversed

from west to east by a few narrow valleys, among which only one, that of Ghoeyr, furnishes an entrance that would not be extremely difficult to a hostile force. The generally impracticable character of these valleys will be seen from the annexed wood-cut, which represents a portion of that valley (Wady Mousa) in which stands Petra, the ancient capital of the Edomites. The great valley of Ghoeyr would therefore appear to have been, as Colonel Leake conjectures, the "high way" through which Moses, aware of the difficulty of forcing a passage, applied to the king to be allowed to penetrate eastward. The refusal of the King of Edom to comply with this application left the Hebrews no other alternative than again to proceed southward towards the head of the Red Sea, and there turning to the east, and then to the north, pass up along or through the eastern border of Edom, having been repelled from the strong frontier which Seir offered on the west. They accordingly returned along the Wady-el-Araba, and on their way stopped at Mount Hor, where Aaron died and was buried; after which they continued the route we have thus indicated so as to furnish a general view of their whole journey till they arrive in the plains of Moab.

It cannot be denied that the view we have taken with regard to Kadesh is liable to several objections, which we are the less anxious to notice, as we believe that the general considerations which we have furnished will enable any reader to find a suitable answer for them. The only one that seems of much weight is that which arises from the fact that the first Kadesh is mentioned as being in the desert of Paran, whereas the Kadesh of this chapter is in the desert of Zin. But we have already shown (note to Gen. xxi. 21.) that Paran, although it has a specific application, is also a general name applied to the whole desert region of which the desert of Zin is one out of several parts; and that a desert is sometimes mentioned by the general and sometimes by the specific designation. Besides, as we place Kadesh, it stands just on the line which separates the proper desert of Paran from that of Zin, so that it may with equal propriety be said to be in either. This objection is indeed fatal to the location of Kadesh immediately on the frontier line of Canaan, but in the present instance its only effect is to require either that there should be two places of the name of Kadesh, or that a single Kadesh should be placed somewhere near the position which we have thought it most expedient to assign.

12. "Because ye believed me not," &c.-It is evident that the offence for which Moses and Aaron, and particularly Moses, were prohibited from entering the Promised Land, lay in some part of their conduct in the transaction which the preceding verses record. Some commentators, unable to discover any offensive matter in the narrative, conceive that the offence consisted in something which the text does not record. Others, however, find ample reason for the punishment in the passage before us, but still differ as to the part of their conduct on which criminal unbelief should be fixed. The Psalmist says (Ps. cvi. 33), that Moses "spake unadvisedly with his lips," whence some conclude that the offence lay in the certainly very unusual manner in which Moses addressed the murmuring people: "Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?" But others conceive that the act of smiting the rock twice, as if once were not sufficient, or indeed his smiting the rock at all, since he was only commanded to speak to it, argues a mind impatient of delay, provoked, and apparently doubtful whether God would answer the first sign or not. This opinion is favoured by the distinct mention of his smiting the rock "twice," which seems to imply that there was some significancy in the repetition of the act.

13. "This is the water of Meribah."-It may assist the reader to some idea of the difficulties which beset one who attempts to elucidate Scripture geography, to understand that this Meribah is, by Scripture illustratofs of no mean name, confounded with the rock, for a similar reason called Meribah, in Rephidim, from which a supply of water had been miraculously obtained about thirty-nine years before. The time, the place, the circumstances, are so perfectly distinct in the sacred narrative, and the reason for the similarity of name is so obvious, that it seems scarcely necessary to do more than notice the existence of so egregious an error, which is, however, a fair specimen of hundreds with which ingenious makers of difficulties have contrived to obscure some of the most clear and distinct passages of the sacred volume.

19. "If 1 and my cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for it."-See the note on Gen. xxvi. 20, and also on Lament. v. 4.

27. "Mount Hor."-This name seems to have been anciently borne by the whole range of Mount Seir, and, when superseded by the latter denomination, continued to be preserved in the name of the particular summit on which Aaron died. Topographical probabilities concur with local traditions in identifying this Mount Hor with the high mountain which rises conspicuously above the surrounding rocks in the vicinity of Petra, the ancient capital of the Edomites, or Nabathæans, which is in a valley (Wady-Mousa) that cuts the range of Seir about halfway between the Gulf of Akaba and the Dead Sea, but rather nearer to the former than to the latter. This mountain, whose rugged pinnacle forms a very striking feature in one of the most interesting scenes in the world, is of very difficult and steep ascent, which is partly artificial, rude steps or niches being in some places formed in the rock. Dr. Macmichael, who visited the spot in 1818, in company with Mr. Bankes and Captains Irby and Mangles, says that it took his party one hour and a half to ascend its almost perpendicular sides. If this were really Mount Hor, as there seems little reason to doubt, the high-priest, before he lay down and died on that mountain, must have been able to mark out with his eye much of that wild region in which the Israelites had, for so many long years, wandered to and fro. From its summit, Mount Sinai might clearly be distinguished in the south; whilst the boundless desert, marked by so many wonderful transactions, in which he had borne a conspicuous part, spread its wide expanse before him on the west. The supposed tomb of Aaron is enclosed by a small modern building, crowned with a cupola, such as usually cover the remains of Moslem saints. At the time of the above visit this spot formed the residence of an old Arab hermit, eighty years of age, the one half of which he had lived upon the mountain, from which he seldom descended, and where he chiefly subsisted through the charity of the native shepherds. He conducted the travellers into the building, and showed them the tomb, which lay at the further end of the building, behind two folding leaves of an iron grating. This monument, which is about three feet high, is patched together with fragments of stone and marble, and covered with a ragged pall. On the walls near the tomb are suspended beads, bits of cloth, leather, and yarn, with paras and similar articles, left as votive offerings by the Arabs. The old Arab lighted a lamp of butter, and conducted the travellers to a grotto or vault underneath, which is excavated in the rock, but contains nothing remarkable. The Arabs are in the habit of offering sacrifices to Haroun (Aaron), generally of a goat. When, however, they make a vow to slaughter a victim to him, they do not go to the top of the mountain, but think it sufficient to complete their sacrifice at a spot from which the cupola of the tomb is visible in the distance; where, after killing the animal, they throw a heap of stones over the blood that flows to the ground, and then feast on the carcase. The services thus rendered to the tomb of Aaron afford a striking picture of the debasing superstitions into which the Arabs have fallen. Burckhardt, who, in his Moslem character, sacrificed a goat, says, that while he did so, his guide gave utterance to such exclamations as

the following:-"O, Haroun, look upon us! it is for you we slaughter this victim. O, Haroun, protect us and forgive us! O, Haroun, be content with our good intentions, for it is but a lean goat! O, Haroun, smooth our paths: and praise be to the Lord of all creatures!" (See Burckhardt's Travels in Syria;' Macmichael's Journey;' Irby and Mangles' Travels' (unpublished); and also Laborde's 'Arabie Pétrée,' to which we are indebted for our wood-cut.

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DEFILE IN IDUMEA, IN THE ROAD FROM PALESTINE TO EGYPT.-FROM LABORDE.

CHAPTER XXI.

1 Israel, with some loss, destroy the Canaanites at Hormah. 4 The people murmuring are plagued with fiery serpents. 7 They, repenting, are healed by a brasen serpent. 10 Sundry journeys of the Israelites. 21 Sihon is overcome, 33 and Og. AND when 'king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel came by the way of the spies; then he fought against Israel, and took some of them pri

soners.

2 And Israel vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver this

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1 Chap. 33. 40. 2 That is, utter destruction,

people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities.

3 And the LORD hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and he called the name of the place Hormah.

4 And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.

5 And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought Or, grieved, Heb. shortened.

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us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.

6 And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.

7 ¶ Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.

8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall

live.

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5. Chap. 11. 6.

that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

10 And the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in Oboth.

11 And they journeyed from Oboth, and pitched at Ije-abarim, in the wilderness which is before Moab, toward the sunrising.

12 From thence they removed, and pitched in the valley of Zared.

13 From thence they removed, and pitched on the other side of Arnon, which is in the wilderness that cometh out of the coasts of the Amorites: for Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites.

14 Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of the LORD, 10What he did in the Red sea, and in the brooks of Arnon,

15 And at the stream of the brooks that goeth down to the dwelling of Ar, and "lieth the border of Moab.

upon

6 Wisd. 16. 1, 5. 1 Cor. 10. 9. 72 Kings 18. 4. John 3. 14. 8 Chap. 33. 43. 9 Or, heaps of Abarim. 11 Heb, leaneth.

10 Or, Vaheh in Suphah.

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