The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 172

may place with more i-onfidence the well of Hagar (Gen. xvi. 14)1 which is placed between " Kadesh and Bered." It is difficult to think that this Kadesh could possibly have been in the Aro.bah. Gernr, again, which was certainly near to Beersheba, is placed (Gen. n. 1) "between Kadesh and Shur," These notices are indeed inde- finite, but they certainly point to the western rather than to the eutem site-. 2. Subsequent mentions of Kadesh point in the ea.me direction. In eh. nxiv. 4, 5 and Josh. xv. 3, 4 the southern frontier of Judah, which was also that of Canaan is traced from the scorpion cliffs at the head of the Ghor to the Mediterranean (se~ note on the first passage). On this frontier Kadesh occurs in such a way that we should lo.:ik for it not at one extremity, but somewhere about the middle of the line. The ea.me is still more clearly the case in Ezek. xlvii. 19, where only three points are given on the southern frontier, of which Kadesh is the middle one. It is, again, very difficult to imagine that this Kadesh could have been in the Aro.bah. 3. It iB a weaker argument, but still of some moment, that Ka.dash is pointedly said to have been in the" wilderness of Paran" (eh. xii. 16; xiii. 3), and also to have been in or near the wilderness of Zin (eh. xiii 21; xx. 1). - But the ea.stem site of Kadesh fair up the Ara.bah does not seem to answer to this double description nearly as well aa the west.em. The plain of Kudes is strictly within the limit.s of that southern desert; now called et-Tih, and yet it is quite close to the Wa.dy Murrah, which with its smdy expansions townrds the east may well have been the wilderness of Zin (see note on eh. xiii. 21 ). In fu.vour of the eastern site, the only argument of real weight is founded upon the repeated statement that Kadesh was close upon the territory of Edom. In eh. xx. 16, e. g., it is spoken of to the king of Edom a.s "a city in the uttermost of thy borders." But the only position in which the children of Israel would be at once on the borders of Canaan and on the borders of Edom as commonly understood, would be in the neighbourhood of Ain el-Weibeh, with the pass of es-Se.f!h on their left, and the Wady Ghuweir on their right, ae they looked northwards, With this agrees the statement that they came to Ka.deeh "by the wa.y of Mount Seir" (Deut. i. 2), and the fu.r.t that there is no station mentioned between Kadeah and Mount Hor (eh. xx:.tlii, 37), although the western site is seventy miles from that mountain. The necessity indeed of placing Kadesh on the border of Edom must be conclusive in favour of the east.em site, if the common assumption is correct that the name and terri- tory of Edom were bounded westwards by the Arabah. It is, however, contended, with some show of.reason, that the kings of Edom had extended their authority at this time over the country of the Azazimeh a.s far as the plain of Kudes. There is, at any rat~· nothing improbable in this, because this great mountain fastness is almost as sharply severed from Canaan as from Mount Seir, properly so called ; and in fact it never appears to have been in possession of the Can11anites. When, however, the southern boundary line is traced in detail (eh. x.xxiv. 3, 4; Josh. xv. 11 2, 21), it ie said to have extended 'i"-~, 11 on the sides," ur '::i:c!-1:iN, "to the borders," of Edom, and ":t • r " this expression can hardly be satisfied by the single point of contact at the south-east comer of Judah, especially when we (onsider the long list of cities which were on or near this border (Josh. :sv. 21-32). Again, when the extreme southern and northern points of Joshua's conquest are mentioned (Josh. xi. 17; xii. 7), the former is "the bald mountain which goeth up Seir "-a natural feature which we look for in vain (for it cannot possibly be the low line of the scorpion cliffs), unless it be the northem rampart of the Azazimat. We have seen tha.t the Hormah to which the lsra.elites wero repelled on their first invasion. is placed (Deut. i. 44) "in Seir,'' ;vhich  OBB. XIII., XIV.] THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. 153