The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 8

t1co.nty vegeto.tion of the desert. But (1) the story does not represent the lsraelite!J as ho.ving been mainto.ined exclusively by the natural produce of the wilderness, but, on the contrary, expressly claims that they enjoyed for themselves (a.nd we may rest assured also for their cattle, if such wa.s i;ecessa.ry) a. miraculous supply both of meat and of drink; a.nd (2) there is good reason for believing that the Aro.bia.n peninsula. was considerably more fertile than it is to-da.y, that, in fact, there were resources in the country of which they might have availed themselves in cases where no special miraculous provision was granted; while (3) there a.re indications in the narrative itself that the flocks and herds were eca.ttered far and wide during the sojourn in the desert, a.nd so were able the more easily to obtain pasture. The first of these considerations may be disregarded by rationalising critics, but, unless a disbelief in the miraculous is to be postulated as a preliminary to historical research, intelligent and unprejudiced Bible students will find it impoiwble to ignore the circwnsto.nce that the entire narrative belongs to the region of the super- natural, that the writer explicitly asserts the intervention of causes which were supra.mundane in effecting lsra.ers guidance through the great and terrible wilder- ness, and that, as the Hebrew Psalmist expresses it, "-man did eat angel's food." At the same time, while observing that the desert pilgrims were a.t special times and places provided with miraculous supplies, they will hardly fail to notice that nowhere does the narrative affirm that these were their sole support, or convey the impression that the region through which they passed was an immense plain of sand, or a bleak and sterile tract of be.re and calcined ro~k. The passage adduced by Oolenso to prove that the inhospitable desert was incapable of affording BUSten- ance to the two millions of Iara.elites who passed through it, with their two millions of sheep and oxen, rather makes for the opposite contention (eh. xx. 2), since it relates to the beginning of the fortieth year, thereby showing that during all the previous thirty-nine years at lea.et neither the people nor the animals had perished, and since it applies not to the whole extent of the Arabian peninsula, but to the most barren and desolate region of it, styled" the desert of Sin," now called the Wa.dy-el-Ara.ba.h, situated between the land of Edom and the wilderness of Pa.ran. And indeed a sufficient refutation of the sweeping statements of Knobel, Bohlen, Oolenso, Kuenen, and others ma.y be found in the fa.et, which is incontrovertible, that at the very period when the Isra.olites passed through it, it WllJi the seat of several numerous a.nd powerful nomadic tribes, like the Amalekites, with whom they warred at Rephldim, the Midianites, whom they encountered at Shittim, a.nd the Kenitee, who inhabited some parts of the same wilderness, "having their nest in the rock.'' Then there are grounds for believing that the scene of Israel's wanderings is not precisely the same to-day as it then we.s. "There is no doubt that the vegetation of the wAdys has considerably decreased. ... If this be so, the greater abundance of vegetation would, as is well known, have furnished a greater abundance of water, and this age.in would react on the vegetation, from which the means of subsistence would be procured" (Stanley's 'Sinai and Palestine,' pp. 24, 25). Oarl Ritter also thus awns up the circwnstances which appear to him to warrant the inference that the Sine.itio peninsula was capable of providing susten- ance for a more nwnerous population than it is presently able to me.into.in:-" There was, it is evident, in former times, a growth both of the larger sorts of trees and of smaller shrubs, of which we have no remnant; there was also a large number of plants which might contribute in pa.rt to the sustenance of Israel during the journey; there was a universe.Uy distributed agriculture, as we learn from the existence of .mines, and from the oldest Egyptian habitations, o.s well as from the Christian  :s THE AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORSHIP OF