Unwilling to lose all they had gained in reaching that threshold of their coveted inheritance, the rebellious Israelites determined to make at least a struggle for possession by venturing forward into the land which was now forbidden them.' Clambering the mountain-pass immediately above their secure possession, in disregard of the warning of Moses, they pushed up into the South Country-the Negeb,2 or tract of high land between the desert and Canaan proper; but they were met and discomfited by the Amorites and Amalekites of the region they had invaded. All this was within three years after the coming out of Egypt; probably within two years.*

1 Num. 14: 39, 40.

2 The Hebrew word Neghebh or Negeb (11) which is rendered in the King James Version "the south," or the "south country," or "southward," (e. g. Gen. 12: 9; 24: 62; Num. 13: 17,) is a proper name-the Negeb-and should commonly be so rendered, in order to its better understanding. "The tract below Hebron, which forms the link between the hills of Judah and the desert, was known to ancient Hebrews by a term originally derived from its dryness (Negeb). This was the South Country.” (Grove, in Smith-Hackett Bib. Dict., s. v. "Palestine.") "It was a line of steppe-land with certain patches here and there that admitted of cultivation, but in which tracts of heath prevailed, for the most part covered with grass and bushes, where only grazing could be carried on with any success. The term which Eusebius and Jerome employ for 'Negeb' in the Onomasticon is 'Daromas,' but they carry it farther northward than the Negeb of the Old Testament." (Keil and Delitzsch's Bib. Com. at Josh. 15: 21-32.) "As a geographical term the name has been entirely ignored in the English version; ... and the misapprehension has given rise to several absurd contradictions in terms." (Palmer's Des. of Exod., II., 292.) "The rendering 'south' in our Authorized Version, is apt to confuse the general reader." (Edersheim's Exod. and Wand., p. 165.) This point is treated at length in Wilton's The Negeb.

3 In Deut. 1: 44 the Amorites are mentioned, and in Num. 14: 45 the Amalekites. As Kurtz says (Hist. of Old Cov., III., 254): "In the passage in which the historical facts are narrated with greater precision, Amalekites are spoken of along with the Amorites or Canaanites, whereas in Deuteronomy the Amorites (i. e. Canaanites), who were incomparably more important, are mentioned alone."

It is not clear, from the text, how long the Israelites were journeying from Sinai to Kadesh. The season of the year is plain, but not the year itself, as various critics have shown in their attempts to prove it clear; e. g., Kurtz says (as above, III., 215 f.), "On the twentieth day of the second month (early in May), in the second year of

1

Then came a long halt at Kadesh. "So ye abode in Kadesh many days, according unto the days that ye abode there." No mention is made in the sacred narrative of any formal departure of the Israelites from Kadesh, until the time came for a new move toward Canaan, at the close of their prescribed wanderings; and then, it is said, all the people, "even the whole congregation," had again come together in Kadesh, as if in re-assembling at the recognized rendezvous and rallying-point of the scattered nation. The indications of the text are, that when the people found their progress into Canaan barred for a generation, they gradually scattered themselves in larger or smaller groups among the wadies of

...

the exodus, the people departed from Sinai (Num. 10: 11). On their arrival at the desert of Paran they sent out spies to Palestine (from Kadesh-barnea; Num. 32: 8; Deut. 1: 19 f.; Josh. 14: 7), at the time of the first grapes (Num. 13: 21) that is, August (or earlier). . . . Forty days afterwards the spies returned to the camp at Kadesh (Num. 13: 27). The people murmured at the reports of the spies, and Jehovah pronounced the sentence upon them." Lowrie, in the Schaff-Lange Commentary (at Num. 14: 1-45), would add at least a year to this computation. He says: "We must infer that the journey from Sinai to Kadesh lasted at least from May of the second year of the exodus to July or August of the third year, i. e., fourteen to fifteen months. . . . It may even have lasted longer."

1 Deut. 1: 46. The rabbins held that this indicates that the Israelites remained at Kadesh as long as at all the other stations combined; or, say, nineteen years. Lightfoot takes the meaning to be,-as long as the stay at Mount Sinai. Patrick, following older authorities, understands it,-as long after the mutiny as before; or, forty days. Keil, and Lange, and others, consider the phrase as intentionally indefinite; the facts being well understood by the Israelites to whom Moses was speaking. Fries, as followed by others, would find here an intimation of the permanent stay at Kadesh, until the march Canaanward was finally resumed. "So ye abode [or, waited] at Kadesh, according unto the days that ye abode [or, as long as ye were sentenced to be waiting]." For light on this point see Critici Sacri, Pool's Synops. Crit., Barrett's Synops. of Crit., Schaff-Lange Com., Keil and Delitzsch's Bib. Com., all in loco; also Fries's "Ueber die Lage von Kades," in Stud. u. Krit., 1854, p. 55. 2 Num. 20: 1; Deut. 2: 1.

A "wady" is any depression of the desert surface, or any space between the hills, which becomes the bed of a water-course in the rainy season. From its extra water supply a wady is more fertile and arable than the higher ground about it. It is commonly marked with some signs of vegetation throughout the year.

the desert, living a nomad life,—seeking sustenance by sowing and reaping with the divinely added supply of daily manna,-having, all this time, Kadesh as the northernmost limit of their roving, and as, in a peculiar sense, the centre of their occupancy, or the pivot of their wanderings. Meantime, the tabernacle, with its ministry, would seem to have moved, under the divine guidance, from place to place within the limits of the wanderings, as if on circuit, in order that Moses and Aaron might retain a spiritual oversight of the scattered people.

Certain it is, that the popular opinion, of a formal marching to and fro in the desert for the forty years of wandering, finds no more countenance in the text than it does in reason-in view of the purposes of God with his people, and of the habits of Oriental nomads. In this light of the narrative, the stations named in the sacred text, for the period of the wanderings,2 may be taken either as the stations of the tabernacle on its circuit; or as the exceptionally prominent encampments of the people as a whole, at the earlier or at the later portion of that period.3

Hardly a glimpse is given us of the covenant people, in all those years between their first and second formal gatherings at Kadesh; nor can it be supposed that this inspired silence is without a substantial reason. Students of the covenant record, and historians of the covenant people, have recognized a pregnant meaning in the very shadows which obscure the life-story of Israel from Kadesh to Kadesh. "So far as the sacred records

1 Yet Colenso (The Pentateuch, etc., I., 124) insists that the popular opinion is the biblical view, as precedent to his claim that the biblical view is an unreasonable one. 2 Num. 33: 18-36.

3 This reasonable view of the settlement, or the prolonged stay, of the Israelites at Kadesh, and of the nomadic character of the forty years' life in the wilderness, is held by many careful and judicious students of the Bible text; however those students may differ in an understanding of the list of stations given in Numbers 33. For example, see: Hasius, in Reg. David. et Sal., pp. 211-214; Ewald, in Hist. of Israel, II., 193 ff.; Ritter, in Geog. of Pal., I., 428 ƒ.; Kurtz, in Hist. of Old Cov., III., 262–

were concerned," says Kurtz,' "there was no history between the first and second encampments at Kadesh. But whatever happened while the first encampment lasted, and whatever occurred after the second encampment had taken place, was regarded as forming part of the history to be recorded. . . . Nothing of a stationary (or retrograde) character was regarded as forming part of the history to be recorded; but only that which was progressive. . . . During the thirty-seven years, about which the scriptural records are silent, the history of Israel did not advance a single step towards its immediate object, the conquest of the Promised Land. . . . The thirty-seven years were not only stationary in their character,— years of detention and therefore without a history,—but they were also years of dispersion. The congregation had lost its unity, had ceased to be one compact body; its organization was broken up, and its members were isolated the one from the other. . . . It was only Israel as a whole, the combination of all the component parts, the whole congregation, with the ark of the covenant and the pillar of cloud in the midst, which came within the scope of the sacred records." 2

"Not only are the names of the encampments [during the wan288; Winer, in Bibl. Realwörterb., Art. "Wüste, Arabische;" Tuch, in "Remarks on Gen. XIV.," in Jour. of Sac. Lit., July, 1848, p. 91; Fries, in "Ueber die Lage von Kades," in Stud. u. Krit., 1854, p. 55; Lange (and more fully Lowrie, his translator), in Schaff-Lange Com. "Numbers"; Espin, in Speaker's Com., at Num. 20: 1; Hayman, in Smith-Hackett Bib. Dict., Art. "Wilderness of the Wandering;" Palmer, in Des. of Exod., II., 515-519; Edersheim, in Exod. and Wand., pp. 171-174; Smith, in Student's Old Test. Hist., pp. 187, 189; Payne Smith, in Bible Educator, I., 228 ff.; Geikie, in Hours with Bible, II., 347. And the rationalistic Wellhausen agrees with his more evangelical fellow-critics on this point, as shown in his article on "Israel" in Encyc. Brit., ninth edition.

1 Hist. of Old Cov., III., 270 f.

"The subject divides itself into two parts; the emancipation and the preparation for conquest. Both of these, Moses treats at large. The space of years which he passes over in silence, is, if I may so speak, the interlude between the two acts of the great drama." (Palfrey's Lect. on Jewish Script and Antiq, I., 373)

derings] still lost in uncertainty," says Stanley," "but the narrative itself draws the mind of the reader in different directions; and the variations, in some instances as it would seem, of the sacred text itself, repel detailed inquiry still more positively. To this outward confusion corresponds the inward and spiritual aspect of the history. It is the period of reaction, and contradiction, and failure. It is chosen by Saint Paul as the likeness of the corresponding failures of the first efforts of the primitive Christian church; the one 'type' of the Jewish history expressly mentioned by the writers of the New Testament."

In this view of the pivotal and typical character of the Israelites' halt at Kadesh3 a peculiar interest attaches to every gleam of light on the place itself, and on the incidents having their centre there. It is possible that the rebellion of Korah and his company1 occurred at Kadesh; and that thus the attempt to wrest the priestly power from Aaron was made at the same place as the effort to take the civil government from the hands of his brother. If this was

1 Hist. of Jewish Ch., I., 199 f.

21 Cor. 10: 11. 'These things happened unto them for examples'-'types' in the original. This is the true meaning of the word; and it is the only case in which it is applied in the New Testament to the Jewish history."

In the parting blessing, or dying song of Moses, wherein the story of the The ophany is rehearsed to Israel, the Septuagint gives "myriads of Kadesh," where our text gives "ten thousands of saints" (Deut. 33: 2); thus showing Sinai, Paran, Seir, and Kadesh, as uplifted into pre-eminence, as boundary limits of the place of God's chief wonder-working for his people, during their years of training. On this point, see Critici Sacri, Pool's Synops. Crit., Barrett's Synops. of Crit., and Schuff-Lange Com., all in loco; Ewald's Hist. of Israel, vol. II., p. 198, note; Stanley's Sinai and Pal., p. 96.

4 Num. 16.

5 So claim Kurtz (Hist. of Old Cov., III., 257); Lange (Schaff-Lange Com. "Exod. and Lev." "Introduction" p. 25; and "Num. and Deut." p. 85); and others. Forster (Israel in Wild., pp. 290-303) shows reason for believing that Korah's rebellion occurred not earlier than say twenty years after the exodus; but the question of its date is apart from the question of its place.

6 Num. 14: 4; Neh. 9: 16, 17.