The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 448

the line drawn in these versos, it would d~red by tl1e...Soptuagint. A comparison appear to have held a course somewh&t to \\'Ith Judges m. 3 nnd other pMse.ges will the south of west for &bout hnlf its length, show that "l'bo Chamath" had II definite then to have made a southerly deflection to geographical menning as the 11ccepted name I~aclesh, and from thence to hnve struck of a loenlity in the extreme north of C11naan. north-west until it reached the SOIi, almost in When we come to inquire where "the en- 1he same latitude as the point from which it trance to H11math" was, we have nothing to 5(arted. guide us except the natural features of the Yer. 6.-And as for the western border. country. Hamath itself, afterwards Epi- The Hebrew word for "west" (Cl:) is simply phanei& on tho Orontes, l11y far beyond the that for "sea," because the Jews in their extremest range of Jewish settlement; nor O\rn land always had the sea on their west. does it appear that it was ever conquered by Thus the verse roads literally, "And the sea the greatest of the Jewish kings. The H11° boundary shall be to you the great sea and math in which Solomon built store-cities ~oundary; this shall be to you the sea bound- (2 Chron. viii. 4), and the Hamath which ary." It would seem very unlikely that the Jeroboam II. "recovered" for Israel (2 Kings Jews familiarly used the word "yain" for xiv. 28), WILi! not the city, but the kingdom "west " after a residence of several centuries (or p11rt of the kingdom), of that name. in a country where the sun set not over the We do not know how far south the territory sea, but over the desert. Nothing can of of Hamath may h11ve extended, but it is course be proved from the use of the word quite likely that it included at times the here, but it cannot be overlooked as one whole upper valley of the Leontes (now the small indication that the language of this Litany). The "entrance to Hamath" then passage at any rate is the language of an must be looked for at some point, distinctly n.ge subsequent to the conquest of Canaan marked by the n11tural features of tho (see on Exod. x. 19; xxvi. 22, and eh. ii. country, where the traveller from Pe.lestine 18) The line of coast from the brook of would enter the territory of Ho.m11th. •This E~t to the Leontes was upwards of 160 point has been usually fixed at the pass milr.s in length. through which the Orontes breaks out of its Ver. 7.-Ye shall point out for :you, i. e. upper valley between Lebanon and 11nti- ye shall observe and make for, in tracing Lebanon into the open plain of H11m11th. the boundary. Septuagint, r:araµ,up,jaue This point, however, 1s more than sixty miles . . ,rapa. Mount Hor. Not of course the north of Damascus (which confessedly never Mount Hor on which Aaron died, but another belonged to Israel), and nearly a hundred far to the north, probably in Lebanon. The miles north-north-west from Dan. It would Hebrew i:;t:;t iii, which the Septuagint had require some a.mount of positive evidence to make it even prob11ble that the whole of the rendered ·op ro opo, in eh. n., it renders long and narrow ve.lley between Lebanon here ro opa, ro opa,, taking iii as simply and anti-Lebanon, widening towards the another form of i;:i, as it probably is. Hor north, and separated by mountainous and Ha-h.ar is therefore equive.lent to the English difficult country from the actual settlements "Mount Mountain ; " and just as there are of the Jews, was yet Divinely designated BS many "Avon rivers" on the English maps, part of their inheritance. No such positive so there were probably many mountains evidence exists, and therefore we are per- locally known among the Jews as Hor Ha- fectly free to look for " the entrance to har. We do not know what peak this was, Hamath" much further to the south. It is although it must have been one clearly dis- evident that the ordinary road from the land tinguishable from the sea. There is, how- of Canaan or from the cities of Phamicia to ever, uo reason whatever for supposing (con- Hamath must h11ve struck the v11lley of tho trary to the analogy of all such names, and Leontes, have ascended that river to its of the other Mount Hor) that it included the sources, and crossed the watershed to the whole range of Lebanon proper. upper stream of Orontes. The whole of this Ver. 8.-From Mount Hor ye ■hall point road, until it re11ched the pass already out your border unto the entrance of Ha- spoken of leading down to the Emesa of math. Literally, "from Mount Hor point after days, and so to Hamath, l11y through out (~tU;JJ:l, as in the previous verse) to come 11 n11rrow ve.lley of which the narrowest p11rt is at the southern end of the modem district to Hamath," which seems to mean, "from of el Bekaa, almost in a straight line be- Mount Hor strike a line for the entrance to tween Sidon and Mount Hermon. Hero the Hama. th." The real difficulty lies in the two ranges approach most nearly to the bed expression Ti~IJ ~J?, which the Septuagint of the Litany (Leontes), forming a natural renders ,ia1ropu1op.i;..,., ,;, 'Eµ,a~, "u men gate by which the traveller to Ham11th must enter into Ha.m11th." The same expression needs h11ve entered from the south. Here occuril iu c)l. xiii. 21, and is ai.mi.larly ren• then, very uearly in lat. 83° 80', we 1uay en. xum. 60-XXXIv. 29.J THE :eoox ol!' trnMBERB.