for Israel, which was so numerous that it might easily stretch into the desert of Zin, and as far as Kadesh.
The seventeen places of encampment, therefore, that are mentioned in vv. 19-36 between Rithmah and Kadesh, are the places at which Israel set up in the desert, from their return from Kadesh into the “desert of the way to the Red Sea” (Num 14:25), till the reassembling of the whole congregation in the desert of Zin at Kadesh (Num 20:1).[1]
Of all the seventeen places not a single one is known, or can be pointed out with certainty, except Eziongeber. Only the four mentioned in Num 33:30-33, Moseroth, Bene-Jaakan, Hor-hagidgad, and Jotbathah, are referred to again, viz., in Deu 10:6-7, where Moses refers to the divine protection enjoyed by the Israelites in their wandering in the desert, in these words: “And the children of Israel took their journey from Beeroth-bene-Jaakan to Mosera; there Aaron died, and there he was buried.... From thence they journeyed unto Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land of water-brooks.” Of the identity of the places mentioned in the two passages there can be no doubt whatever. Bene Jaakan is simply an abbreviation of Beeroth-bene-Jaakan, wells of the children of Jaakan. Now if the children of Jaakan were the same as the Horite family of Kanan mentioned in Gen 36:27, - and the reading יעקן for ועקן in [[Bible_(King_James)/1_Chronicles|1Ch
- ↑ The different hypotheses for reducing the journey of the Israelites to a few years, have been refuted by Kurtz (iii. §41) in the most conclusive manner possible, and in some respects more elaborately than was actually necessary. Nevertheless Knobel has made a fresh attempt, in the interest of his fragmentary hypothesis, to explain the twenty-one places of encampment given in vv. 16-37 as twenty-one marches made by Israel from Sinai till their first arrival at Kadesh. As the whole distance from Sinai to Kadesh by the straight road through the desert consists of only an eleven days' journey,Knobel endeavours to bring his twenty-one marches into harmony with this statement, by reckoning only five hours to each march, and postulating a few detours in addition, in which the people occupied about a hundred hours or more. The objection which might be raised to this, namely, that the Israelites made much longer marches than these on their way from Egypt to Sinai, he tries to set aside by supposing that the Israelites left their flocks behind them in Egypt, and procured fresh ones from the Bedouins at Sinai. But this assertion is so arbitrary and baseless an idea, that it is not worth while to waste a single word upon the subject (see Exo 12:38). The reduction of the places of encampment to simple marches is proved to be at variance with the text by the express statement in Num 10:33, that when the Israelites left the wilderness of Sinai they went a three days' journey, until the cloud showed them a resting-place. For it is perfectly evydent from this, that the march from one place to another cannot be understood without further ground as being simply a day's march of five hours.
