The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 447

ita including the trans-Jordanic territories. have recognised both place and name in a In the prophets the word reverts to its proper precipitous roe.d which ascends the northern (etymological) meaning, as the "flat country" cliffs towards the western end of the Wady along the Mediterranean coast (cf. lea. xi.x. Murreh, and which the Arabs call Nakb 18; Zeph. ii. 5; Matt. xv. 22). This is the Kareb; others would make the ascent to be land that shall fall unto you. These words the steep pass of ea Sufah, over which mns should not be placed in a parenthesis ; it is the road from Petra to Hebron ; others, again, a simple statement in the tautological style identify the Scorpion-stairs with the row of so common in these books. With the white cliffs which obliquely cross and close coasts thereof, or, "according to its bound- in the Ghor, some miles south of the Salt Sea, aries," i. c. within the limits which nature and separate it from the higher level of the and the Divine decree had set to the land of Arabah. None of these identifications are Canaan. satisfactory, although the first and last hav9 Ver. 3.-Then your south que.rter. Ra- more to be said in their favour than the ther, "and your south side." From the second. Possibly the ascent of .Akrabbim wilderness of Zin along by the coast of may have been only the Wady Fikreh, along Edom. This general preliminary definition of which the natural frontier would run from the southern frontier marks the "wilderness the point of the Salt Sea into the Wady of Zin " as its chief natural feature, and as- Murreh. Pass on to Zin. It is only here serts that this wilderness rested " upon the and in Josh. xv. 3 that the name Zin stands by itself; it may have been some place in sides" ('j~-~ll) of Edom, The wilderness of the broadest part of the Wady Murreh which Zin can scarcely be anything else than the gave its name to the neighbouring wild~- Wady Murreh, with more or less of the barren ness. From the south to Kadesh-barnea, hills which rise to the south of it, for this wady undoubtedly forms the natural southern Here again we have th~ expression·';, :iw:;,, boundary of Canaan. All travellers agree of which WO do not know the exact force. both as to the remarkable character of the de- But if Kadesh was in tho neighbourhood of pression itself and as to the contrast between the present Ain Kudes, then it may be its northern and southern mountain walls. understood that the frontier, after reaching To the south lies the inhospitable and un- the western end of the Wady Murreh, made cnltivatable desert ; to the north the often e. detl1UIT' to the south so 11B to include Kadesh, arid end treeless, but still partially green as a place of peculiarly sacred memory in the and habitable, plateau of Southern Palestine. annals of Israel. It is indeed very di llicult, The expression, "on the sides of Edom," can with this description of the southern frontier only mean that beyond the Wady Murreh of Canaan before us, to believe that Kadesh lay territory belonging to Edom, the Mount was in the immediate neighbourhood of the Seir of Deut. i. 2, the Seir of Deut. i. 44 ; it Arabah, where many commentators place it; does not seem possible that Edom proper, for if that were the case, then the boundary which lay to the east of the Arabah, and line has not yet made any progress at all which barely marched at all with the land of towards the west, and the only points given Canaen, should be intended here (see on Josh. on the actual southern boundary are the two xv. 1, and the note on the site of Ke.dash). unknown places which follow. Hazar-e.ddar. And your south border. This begins a In Josh. xv. 3 this double name is apparently fresh paragraph, in which the southern divided into the two names of Hezron and boundary, already roughly fixed, is described Addar, but possibly the latter only is the in greater detail. Shall be the utmost coast place intended here. A Ko.rkaa is also of the salt sea eastward. Rather, "shall mentioned there, which is equally unknown be from the extremity (il:ij:!Q) of the sslt sea with the rest. eastward" (cf. Josh. xv. 2). • The easternmost Ver. 6.-The river of Egypt, or "brook point in this boundary was to be fixed at the <'m) of Egypt." Septuagint, XElµappovv vouthemmost extremity of the Salt Sea. Aiyi,.,,.rov. It was a winter torrent which Ver. 4.-Shall turn from the south to the drained the greater part of the western half ascent of A.krabbim. It is not at all clear of the northern desert of the Sinaitic peuin- sula.. It wo.s, however, only in its lower what il'-PP? ::iw:;, can mean in this sentence. course, where a single channel receives the The A. V., which follows the Septue.gint and intermittent outflow of many wadys, that it the Targums, does not seem to give any was known e.s the " brook of Egypt," be- seuso, while the rendering, " to the south cause it formed the well-marked boundary side of the n.scent," does not seem gram- between Egypt and Canaan (cf. 2 Chron, vii. matically defensible. Moreover, it is quite 8, and Isa. xxvii. 12, where the Septuagint uncertain where the "ascent of Akrabbim," has lwi; 'P,vo,copoiipwv, from the name of i. c. the "Scorpion-pass," or " Scorpion- the frontier fort, Rhinocorura, afterwards Htail'l3," is to be ple.ced, Some travellers built there). So far as we are able to follow • II' 2 436 THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. [oR, xxxm. 50-xxxiv. 29