attack in Canaan. In this immediate vicinity, therefore, "Enmishpat, which is Kadesh,"1 should be looked for, so far as we can judge from the Bible story of Kedor-laʼomer.

2

This first mention of Kadesh refers to a period four centuries prior to the exodus. It is probable that the name "Kadesh" is here used by the writer of Genesis as the name by which the place was known after its occupancy by the tabernacle. An earlier name of this place might seem, from this text, to have been Enmishpat-the Fountain of Judgment; but even that name may have attached to it after formal judgment had been there passed on rebellious Israel, and on both Israel's leader and Israel's highpriest. It is thought by some, that long before the days of Moses, this place "was a sanctuary upon an oasis in the desert, in whose still solitude an oracle had its seat;" and that " "as from Egypt pilgrimages were made to the near oracle of Ammon in the desert, so from Edom and other adjacent districts many oracle seekers, in the most ancient times. . . came to Kadesh," "in order to know the decisions of the gods." But of this there is no proof. It is, at the best, only an inference from the name given it in its first Bible mention."

1 Gen. 14: 7.

2 This view is taken by Grotius, and Fagius, as cited in Crit. Sac.; by the Speaker's Com.; Kalisch's Com.; all in loco; also by Ewald (Hist. of Israel, II., 193); Ritter (Geog. of Pal., I., 428); Stanley (Hist. of Jewish Ch., I., 202); and others.

3 So think: Jerome (Com. on Genesis); "Rashi" ('al ha-Torah); Tremellius and Junius (Genevan Bible); Patrick (Crit. Com.); Menochius, Fischer, à Lapide, and Bonfrerius, as cited in Pool's Synops. Crit.; Bush (Notes on Gen.); all in loco; and many others.

"Rashi" is wrongly cited by Grotius, as deeming the name En-mishpat the earlier one; and this misquotation is perpetuated through the Critici Sacri, the Synopsis Criticorum, and later works, after the common mistake of failing to verify quotations by a reference to the original.

* See Ewald, Ritter, and Stanley, as above.

In the Targum of Onkelos (in loco), En-mishpat is paraphrased, maishar pelug deena (1), "Plain of Division of Judgment." This paraphrase is

4. THE WILDERNESS OF THE WALL.

Kadesh next appears in the Bible text as an apparently wellknown landmark eastward, or possibly northward, as over against "Bered" and "Shur" on the west, or south. Hagar had fled from the Hebron home of Abraham, down along the caravan road toward Egypt. She had rested by a prominent watering-place of that route—“ the fountain in the Way of Shur." The location of that fountain is described as "between Kadesh and Bered."" Again, Abraham moved down from Hebron through the Negeb, desertward; and he sojourned at a point "between Kadesh and Shur;"3 also "at Gerar," which, again, may have been the point indicated as "between Kadesh and Shur."

Shur is subsequently referred to in the text as "before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria;" and again as "over against Egypt;" and as "even unto the land of Egypt." "Before Egypt,” here, clearly means "in the face of" Egypt, east of Egypt. "As thou goest to Assyria" means one of two things:

understood by "Rashi” as indicating the opinion of Onkelos that here was a seat of judgment for the surrounding peoples. Rashi's elaboration of the simple statement by Onkelos, with which Rashi disagrees, is cited by Grotius, and farther elaborated by the fanciful Ewald; to be adopted and re-elaborated by Stanley and others.

1 Gen. 16: 7.

"The spot by which 'the angel of the Lord found' Hagar was not merely 'a fountain of water,' as we read in our version, but a well-known spot, 'the spring' of water in the wilderness-'the spring in the way of Shur.'" (Stanley's Sinai and Pal., p. 477.)

Gen. 16: 14. 3 Gen. 20: 1. Gen. 25: 18. 51 Sam. 15: 7. 61 Sam. 27: 8. "The points of the compass were marked by the Jews after the following manner: With the face turned to the rising of the sun, before is east; behind [or "backside" (Exod. 3: 1), see Gesenius's Heb. Lex. s. v. "Achor"] is west; the righthand is the south; the left-hand the north. Theman and Jamin [Yemen], denoting the south, means lying on the right hand." (Von Raumer's Palästina, p. 20.) On this subject of orientation see Michaelis's Dissertatio de Locorum Differentia. Egyptian and Assyrian orientation differed, however, from the Hebrew.

....

either, in the direction of Assyria; that is, northeastward; or, more probably, on the highway to Assyria; that is, by way of Damascus. The only feasible highway from Egypt to Assyria, was and is, northward through Syria, and thence southeasterly through Mesopotamia; never across the trackless Arabian desert.' "Shur" means "a wall;" and from its meaning, as well as from the various references to it in the text, it would seem clear that Shur was a wall, or barrier, of some kind, across the great northeastern highways out of Egypt, and this at a point on or near the eastern boundary line of Egypt.

A favorite identification of Shur has been in a range of mountains a little to the eastward from the Gulf of Suez, having the appearance of a wall, and bearing the name Jebel er-Râhah, being in fact the northwestern end, or extension, of Jebel et-Teeh." "As

1 See page 35, supra.

There seems hardly room for doubt on this point. The physical structure of the region, and all history, biblical and extra-biblical, tends to its proof. Yet Mr. J. Baker Greene, in his nondescript work, The Hebrew Migration from Egypt (p. 168, note), says of this reference to Shur in Genesis 25: 18: "This passage is somewhat ambiguous. It means, as is most probable, that a traveler from Judea to Assyria would descend the Araba [!!], and thus have on his right hand, between him and Egypt, the plateau of Et Tîb, known as the midbhar of Shur. If the trav eler cross the Jordan on his way to Assyria, this reference to Shur and Egypt is unintelligible." And this remarkable statement is a fair illustration of the confused jumbling of that entire work, in its dealings with geography, history, and philology.

2 "Some twelve or fourteen miles from the coast, and parallel to it, runs Jebel erRahah, appearing in the distance as a long, flat-headed range of white cliffs, which forms, as it were, a wall inclosing the desert on the north. Hence probably arose the name of the Wilderness of Shur' (Exod. 15: 22); for the meaning of the name Shur is 'a wall.'" (F. W. Holland, in The Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 527.)

This view is accepted by Porter, in Alexander's Kitto, Art. “Wandering, Wilderness of;" Bartlett, in his From Egypt to Palestine, p. 186; by the Editor of the Queen's Printers' Aids to the Student of the Holy Bible, p. 28; and others.

Rowlands reports the name "Jebel es-Sûr" as still given by the Arabs to this mountain range (see Williams's Holy City, p. 489, and Imp. Bib. Dic., s. v. "Shur"). He is followed in this by Wilton (The Negeb, p. 6); Tuch (Jour. of Sac. Lit. for

we stand at 'Ayún Músa," says Palmer, "and glance over the desert at the Jebels er-Ráhah and et-Tih, which border the gleaming plain, we at once appreciate the fact that these long wall-like escarpments are the chief, if not the only, prominent characteristics of this portion of the wilderness, and we need not wonder that the Israelites should have named this memorable spot after its most salient feature, the wilderness of Shur, or the wall." But a prime objection to this identification is, that Jebel er-Râhah does not stand "before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria." It is too far south for that. A "wall," better meeting the requirements of the text than this mountain range, is to be looked for; nor will a search for it be in vain.2

Inasmuch as there was a great defensive Wall built across the eastern frontier of Egypt, "as thou goest toward Assyria;" a Wall that was hardly less prominent in the history of ancient Egypt than has been the Great Wall of China in the history of the "Middle Kingdom;" it would seem the most natural thing in the world, to suppose that the biblical mentions of the Wall " that is before Egypt," had reference to-the Wall that was before Egypt.

66

The earliest discovered mention of this Wall is in an ancient papyrus of the Twelfth Dynasty (of the old3 Egyptian empire,

July, 1848, p. 89); Stewart (Tent and Khan, p. 54); Faussett (Bib. Cyc., s. v. “Shur"); Burton (Gold Mines of Mid., p. 101); and others. Yet this mountain may take its name from the wilderness, instead of giving a name to it, if in fact the name is to be found there. Laborde, indeed, applies the name "Djebel Soar" to a mountain peak still eastward of the Râhah range (see Map in his Voyage de l' Arabie Pétreé.) 1 Des. of Exod., I., 38 f.

2 Others, again, have counted Shur as the name of a town on the Egyptian borders, toward Arabia. So, e. g., Ewald (Hist. of Israel, II., 194, note); Kurtz (Hist. of Old Cov., III., 13); R. S. Pool (Smith-Hackett Bib. Dic., s. v. "Shur "); and others. 3 The terms Old Empire, and Middle Empire, and New Empire are employed differently by different writers. Lepsius, Bunsen, Ebers, Chabas and others speak of all the dynasties which preceded the Hykshos kings, as the Old Empire. Wilkinson,

prior to the days of the Hykshos invasion), which was obtained by Lepsius for the Museum of Berlin. This papyrus gives the story of Sineh, or Saneha, an Egyptian traveler into the lands eastward from Egypt. As he journeyed, he came to the frontier Wall "which the king had made to keep off the Sakti," or eastern foreigners. It was a closely guarded barrier. There were "watchers upon the Wall in daily rotation." Eluding the sentries in the darkness of the night, he wandered beyond in a dry and thirsty land, like that which the Hebrews found in that same Wilderness of the Wall several centuries after him, when their cry was, "What shall we drink?" His story was:

3

1

"Thirst overtook me in my journey;

My throat was parched,

I said, This is the taste of death.""

Chabas understands the term "Anbu," which is here rendered the Wall, and which is of frequent recurrence in the Egyptian records, to refer to a defensive Wall built across the eastern front of Lower Egypt by the first king of the Twelfth DynastyAmenemhat I. And Ebers coincides fully with Chabas in this understanding.

5

Again in one of the Anastasi Papyri, of the Nineteenth Dynasty, preserved in the British Museum, this Wall is mentioned in the report from a scribe of an effort to re-capture two fugitive slaves who had fled towards the eastern desert; and who, before he could.

Birch, Brugsch, Rawlinson, Mariette, and others, put the beginning of the Middle Empire at an earlier period than the Hykshos domination. Hence the Twelfth Dynasty would by some be counted in the Old Empire; by others, in the Middle Empire.

1 Exod. 15: 22-24.

"Goodwin's translation in Rec. of Past, VI., 136. See also Brugsch's Hist. of Egypt, I., 147. The papyrus itself is given in fac-simile in Lepsius's Denkmäler, Abth. VI., Bl. 104.

• Études sur l'Antique Histoire, p. 99 ƒƒ.

4"La muraille defensive." Egypt. u. d. Büch. Mose's, pp. 78-85.