hills rises into the Jebel Ilummim, "lofty and precip. itous, extending in several peaks along the shore, ap- parently of chalk}' limestone, mostly covered with tiints ... its precipices . . . cut oft' all passage along- shore from the hot springs (lying a little west of south from the mouth of wady Useit, along the coast) to the mouth of wadj' Taij'ibeh" (Hobinson, i, 150; compare Stanley, Sin. and Palest, p. 35). Hence, between the courses of these wadys the track of the Israelites must have been inland. Stanley says "Elim must be Ghu- rundel, Useit, or Taiyibeh (p. 37) ; elsewhere (p. G8) that " one of two valley's, or perhaps both, must be Elim ;" these appear from the sequel to be Ghurfuidel and Useit, "fringed with trees and shrubs, the first vege- tation he had met with in the desert;" among these are "wild palms," not stately trees, but dwarf or sav- age, "tamarisks," and the "wild acacia." To judge from the configuration as given in the maps, there seems to be no reason why all three should not have combined to form P^lim, or, at any rate, as Stanley sug- gests, two of them. Only, from Num. xxxiii, !>, 10, as Elim appears not to have been on the sea, we must suppose that the encampment, if it extended into three wadys, stopped short of their seaward extremities. The Israelitish host would scarcely find in all three more than adequate ground for their encampment. Beyond (i. e. to the south-east of Ghiirundel), the ridges and spurs of limestone mountain push down to the sea, across the path along the plain (Robinson, i, 101, and Map). This portion of the question may be summed up by presenting, in a tabular form, the views of some leading travellers or annotators on the site of Elim :
Wady Wady Some warm ?piing3
Ghurundel. Useit. north of 7'.'c, wliich
' ■ ' feed the rioli date
Niebulir, One or Labordo plantations of the
Robinson, both, "possibly." convent there,
Kruse. Stanley. Seetzen.
[By I.epsius - - -"
identifiefl with Marah.]
Dr. Kruse (Anmerh. p. 418) singularly takes the words of Exod. xv, 27, " the}' encamped there (in Elim) by the 7caters," as meaning "by the sea;" where- as, from Num. xxxiii, 9, 10, it appears they did not reach the sea till a stage farther, although their dis- tance from it previously had been but small. See Elim.
3. From Elim the Israelites marched, encamping on the shore of the Red Sea, for which purpose they must have kept the high ground for some time, since the precipices of Jebel Hummuni — a lofty and precipitous mountain of chalk}' limestone — run down to the brink of the sea. They therefore went on the land side of this mountain to the head of wady Taiyibeh, which passes down south-west through the mountains to the shore. On the plain of Bas Zetima, at the mouth of this valley, was probably (Stanley, p. 37) the encamp- ment " by the Red Sea" (Nimi. xxxiii, 10).
4. According to Num. xxxii, 11, the Israelites re- moved from the Ked Sea, and encamped next in the wilderness of Sin ; an appellation no doubt represent- ing some natural feature, and none more probably than the alluvial plain, which, lying at the edge of the sea, about tlie spot we now regard them as having reached, begins to assume a significant appearance. The modern name for this is el-Kda, identified by Seetzen with this wilderness (iii, pt. iii, 412). Stanley calls el-Kaa, at its initial point, " the plain of Murh- hah,''' and thinks it is probably this wilderness (p. 37). Kobinson likewise identifies it with "the great plain, which, beginning near el-Miu'khah, extends with greater or less breadth almost to the extremity of the peninsula. In its broadest part it is called el-Kil-a" (i, lOG). Thus they kept along the shore, and did not yet ascend any of the fruitful valleys which run up to- wards the centre of the district. The account in Exod.
EXODE
403
EXODE
xvi knows nothing of the foregoing encampment by the sea, but brings the host at once into "the wilder- ness of Sin ;" but we must bear in mind the general purpose there of recording not the people's history so much as God's dealings with them, and the former rather as illustrative of the latter, and subordinate to it. The evident design, however, in Num. xxxiii be- ing to place on record their itinerary, this latter is to be esteemed as the locus classictts on any topographical questions as compared with others having a less spe- cial relation to the track. Indeed, we may regard the encampment by the Red Sea as bein'j essentially in the wilderness of Shur itself. See Sin (Dkskrt of).
The Israelites arrived in the wilderness of Sin on the fifteenth day of the second month after their de- parture out of the land of Egypt (Exod. xxi, 1), ai.d being now wearied of their journey and tired of their scanty fare, the}' began again to murmur. Indeed, it is not easy to see how the most ordinary and niggard- ly food could have been supplied to them, constituting as they did nearly two millions of persons, in such a country as that into which they had come. It is true that some provision might have been made bj' indi- viduals ere the march from Suez began. It is also proljable that the accounts of encampments which we have are to be regarded as ohiefly those of Moses and his principal men, with a chosen body of troops, while the multitude were allowed to traverse the open coun- try and forage in the valleys. Still the region was unfiivorable for the purpose, and some have hence con- cluded that here we have one of those numerical diffi- culties which are not uncommon in the Old-Testament Scripture, and which make manj' suspect some radi- cal error in our conceptions of the Hebrew system of numl)ers. The contrast between the scanty supply of the desert and the abundance of Egypt furnished the immediate occasion of the outbreak of dissatisfaction. Bread and flesh were the chief demand ; bread and flesh were miraculously supplied ; the former by man- na, the latter by quails (Exod. xvi, 13). Manna grows in some of the neighboring valleys ; but the Israelites ■were in the wilderness, so that the supply could not have proceeded from natural resources, even had such existed to a sufficient extent for the puqiose. The modern confection sold under that name is the exuda- tion collected from the leaves of the tamarisk-tree {ta- mmix Orientalis, Linn.; Arab, tarfa^ Heb. ^'^^X) only in the Sinaitic valleys, and in no great abundance. If it results from the punctures made in the leaf by an in- sect (the coccus maiiJiijmms, Ehrenberg) in the course of June, July, and August, this will not precisely' suit the time of the people's entering the region, which was about May. It is said to keep as a hardened sirup for years (Laborde, Comment. Geo(jr. on Exod. xvi, 13, 14), and thus does not answer to the more striking characteristics described in Exod. xvi, 14-26. Seetzen thought that the gum Arabic, an exudation of the acacia, was the real manna of the Israelites ; i. e. he regards the statement of '" bread from heaven" as a fic- tion (Reisen, iii, 75-79). A caravan of a thousand per- sons is said by Hasselquist {Vot/ar/es, etc.. Materia Iledica, p. 298, transl. ed. 17C0) to have subsisted sole- ly on this substance for two months. See Manxa.