the hill between wady el-Huweimiraty and wady ei- Huweimirat. (See Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 84). See Hazeroth.
At Hazeroth, where the people seem to have re- mained a short time, there arose a family dissension to increase the difficulties of IMoses. Aaron, appar- ently led on by his sister Miriam, who may have been actuated by some feminine pique or jealousy, com- plained of Moses on the ground that he had married a Cushite, that is, an Arab wife, and the malcontents went so far as to set up their own claims to authority as not less valid than those of Moses. An appeal is made to Jehovah, who vindicates Moses, rebukes Aaron, and punishes jMu-iam (Numb. xii). See Mir- iam.
The two preceding stations seem from Numb, x, 11- 13, 33-36, to have lain in the wilderness of Paran ; but possibly the passage in x, 11-13 should come after that of 33-36, and the "three days' journey" of ver. 33 lie still in the wilderness of Sinai ; and even Taberah and Hazeroth, reached in xi, xii, also there. Thus the Is- raelites would reach Paran only in xii, 16 ; and x, 12 would be either misplaced, or mentioned by anticipa- tion only. See Paran (Wilderness of).
4. The next permanent encampment brought them into the wilderness of Paran, and here the local com- mentator's greatest difficulty begins. "And after- wards the people removed from Hazeroth, and pitched in the wilderness of Paran," at Kadesh (Numb, xii, 16 ; xiii, 26). In Deut. i, 19-21, we read, " And when we departed from Horeb we went through .all that great and terrible wilderness which ye saw by the way of the mountain of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded lis ; and we came to Kadesh-barnea. And I said unto you. Ye are come unto the mountain of the Amorites, whicli the Lord our God doth give unto us. Behold, the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee : go up and possess it ; fear not, neither be dis- couraged." Accordingly, here it was that twelve men (spies) were sent into Canaan to survey the coun- try, who went up from the wilderness of Zin (Numb, xiii, 21) to Hebron, and returning after forty days, brought back a very alarming account of what they had seen. Let it, however, be remarked that the Scriptures here supply several local data to this ef- fect: Kadesh-barnea lay not far from Canaan, near the mountain of the Amorites, in the wilderness of Zin, in the wilderness of Paran. It is evident that there is here a great lacuna, which some have attemjjt- ed to fill up by turning the route a little to the west to Rithmah (q. v.), on the borders of IduniEea, and then conducting it with a sudden bend to the west and the south, into what is considered the wilderness of Paran {Relievo Map of Arabia Petra-a, published by Dobbs, London). In this view, however, we cannot concur. Both Robinson and Raumer are of a diff"erent opinion. At the same time it must be admitted that so great a gap in the itinerary is extraordinary. If, however, we find ourselves in regard to the journey from Horeb to Kadesh possessed of fewer and less definite materials of information, we have also the satisfaction of feeling that no great scriptural fact or doctrine is concerned. It is certain that the narrative in the early part of Numbers goes at once from Hazeroth to Kadesh ; and although the second account (in Numb, xxxiii) supplies other places, these seem to belong properly to a second route and a second visit to Kadesh. The histor}' in the book of Numbers is not, indeed, a consecutive nar- rative ; for after the defeat of the Israelites in their foolish attempt to force an entrance into Canaan con- trary to the will of God (Numb, xiv, 45), it breaks sud- denly off', and, leaving the journeyings and the doings of the camp, proceeds to recite certain laws. Yet it off'ers, as we think, a clear intimation of a second visit to the wilderness of Zin and to Kadesli. Without having said a word as to the removal of the Israelites southward, and therefore leaving them in the wilder*
EXODE
406
EXODE
ness of Zin, at Kadesh, it records in the twentieth chap, (ver. 1), " Then came the children of Israel, the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin, in the first month, and the peojde abode in Kadesh." And this view ap- pears confirmed by the fact that the writer immediate- ly proceeds to narrate the i)assage of the Israelites hence on hy Mount Hor southwards to Gilgal and Canaan. Kobinson's remarks (ii, Gil) on this point have nnuh force: "I have thus far assumed that the Israelites were twice at Kadesh, and this appears from a comparison of the various accounts. They broke up from Sinai on the the twentieth day of the second month in the second year of their departure out of Egy[it, corresponding to the early part of May ; they came into the desert of Paran, whence spies were sent up the mountain into Palestine, 'in the time of the lirst ripe grapes ;' and these returned after forty days to the camp at Kadesh. As grapes begin to ripen on the mountains of Judah in July, the return of the spies is to be placed in August or September. The people now murmured at the report of the spies, and received the sentence from Jehovah that their car- casses should fall in the wilderness, and their children ■»\'ander in the desert forty years. The}' were ordered to turn hack into the desert ' by the way of the Eed Sea,' although it appears that the}' abode ' many' days in Kadesh. The next notice of the Israelites is, that in the first month they came into the desert of Zin and abode again at Kadesh ; here Miriam dies ; Moses and Aaron bring water from the rock ; a passage is de- manded through the land of Edom, and refused ; and they then journeyed from Kadesh to Mount Hor, •where Aaron dies in the fortieth year of the departure from Egj-pt, in the first day of the fifth mouth, cor- responding to a part of August and September. Here, then, between August of the second year and August of thcjordeth year, we have an interval of thirty-eight years of wandering in the desert. With this coincides another account. From Mount Hor thej' proceeded to Elatli on the Red Sea, and so around the land of Edom to the brook Zered, on the border of IVIoab ; and from the time of their departure from Kadesh. (meaning, of course, their first departure) until they thus came to the Virook Zered, there is said to have been an interval of thirty-eight years."