The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 111

them to their immedii.te destination in the patches of 1!8.lld and gravel, is what now wilderness of Paran. Here then ia a plain meets the eye of the traveller in thla forsaken reason for the statement in this verse: the land. It is true tha.t a good deal of rain falls cloud did indeed rest twice between the two at times, and that when it does fall vegeta• wildernesses, but only so as to allow of 11 tion appears with surprising rapidity and night's repose, not so a.s to break the con- abundance ; it is true e.lso that the district tinuity of the me.rch. " TM ~ of he.s been persistently denuded of trees and Paran." Septuagint, iv ri •PrJP.'11 roii f<lf)av. shrubs for the sake of fueL But whatever This geographical expression is nowhere ex- mitigations may have then existed, it is clear actly defined in Holy Scripture, and the name from the Bible itself that the country was itself ha.s disappeared ; for in spite of the then, as now, emphatice.llyfrightful (d."Deut. rescmbl.&nce in sound (a resembl.&nce here, u i. 19; viii. 15; x.u:ii 10; Jer. ii. 6). Some• in so many cases, wholly delusive), it seems thing may be set, no doubt, to the a.ccount to have no connection whatever with the of rhetoric, and much may be allowed for Wady Feiran, the fertile valley at the base variety of sea.sons. Even in Australia the of Serbal, or with the town which once very same distri.llt will appear at one time shared the name. All the allusions, how- like the desolation of a thousand years, and ever, in the Old Testament to Pa.ran point to in the very next year it will blossom as the a district so clearly ma.rked out, so deeply rose. But at certain seasons at any rate et- stamped with its own characteristics, by Tih wa.s (as it is) a "howling" wilderness, nature, that no mistake is possible. This where the dreadful silence of a lifeless land distri.llt is now called et-Tih, i. e. the wan- was only broken by the nightly howling of dering, and is still remembered in the tra- unclean bea.sts who tracked the footsteps of ditions of the .A:rabs a.s the scene of the wan- the living in order to devour the carcases of derings of the people of God. Little known, the dead; Perhaps so bad II country ha.s and never thoroughly explored, its main never been attempted byanyarmyin modem features are nevertheless unmistak.a.ble, and dsys, even by the Russian troops ill Central its boundaries sharply defined. Mea.suring .Asia.. about 150 miles in either direction, its south- Amongst the many Wadys which drain ern frontier (now called the J ebel et -Tih) the unoortain rain-fall of the eastern half of is divided by the broad A11dy waste of et-Tih (and at the same time testify to a. er-Ramleh from the Sina.itic mountains and ~ater rain-fall in bygone ages), the most the Sina.itic peninsula. properly so called ; lmJ?ortant is the We.dy el Terafeh, which, also its northern mountain IIUISB looks across rismg on the nol'them slopes of Jebel et-Tih, the deep :fissure of the Wady Murreh (or runs northwards and north-westwards, and desert of Zin), some ten or fifteen miles fine.lly opens into the Arabah. Towards its broad, into er-Rachmah, the mount.a.in of the northern limit et-Tih changes its character Amorite, the southern extension of the pla- for the worse. Here it lilies into a precipitolll.l teau of Judsh; on the east it falls abruptly quadrilateral of mount.a.ins, about forty miles down to the narrow beach of the Elanitic square, not very lofty, but exceedingly steep Gulf, and to the Ara.bah ; on the west alone and rugged, composed in great measure of it sinks slowly into the aandy desert of Shur, dazzling masses of bsre chalk or limestone, which separates it from the Mediterranean which glow as in a, fumaca beneath the sum- and from Egypt. Et-Tih is itself divided mer sun. This mountain mass, now called into nearly equal halves by the Wa.dy el the Az&.zima.t, or mountain country of the A:riJlh (or" river of Egypt"), which, rising on Az&zimeh, rising steeply from the rest of the the northern slopes of the Jebel et-Tih, and plateau to the southward, is almost completely running northwards through the whole pla- detached by deep depressions from the sur• teau, tlll'Illl off to the west and is lost in the roundin~ districts ; at the north-west corner desert of 8h1.11'. That the western half of alone it 1s united by a short ranie of moun• the plateau went also under the name of t.ains with er-Rachmah, and so with the high• Pa.ran is evident from the history of Ishmael mnds of Southern Palustine. From this (see especially Gen. ni 21; xrv. 18), but it corner the Wa.dy Murreh descends broad and was through the eastern portion alone that deep towards the east, forking a.t the e8.!3tern the wanderings of the Israelites, so far a.a we extremity towards the .A:raba.h on the south- can trace them, lay. This " wilderness of ea.st, and towards the Dead Sea. on the north• Paran" is indeed "a great and terrible wil- ea.et. The interior of this inaceessibui country derness" (Deut. i. 9), lacking for the most has yet to be really explored, and it is the part the precipitollJ! grandeur of the granite scanty nature.of our present kuowlod.ge con• mountains of Sinai, but lacking also their corning it which, more than anything else, fertile valleys and numeroUB streams. A bare prevents us from following with any certe.inty limestone or sandstone plateau, crossed by the march of the Israelites o.s recorded in this low ranges of I.tills, seamed with innumera.ble book. dr,y water-courses, and interspersed with large Ver. 13. - A.lld they first took their 011. x. 11-28.] THE BOOK OF NUMBEllS. 89