Quails and Manna in the Desert of Sin. - Exo 16:1. From Elim the congregation of Israel proceeded into the desert of Sin. According to Num 33:10, they encamped at the Red Sea between Elim and the desert of Sin; but this is passed over here, as nothing of importance happened there. Judging from the nature of the ground, the place of encampment at the Red Sea is to be found at the mouth of the Wady Taiyibeh. For the direct road from the W. Gharandel to Sinai, and the only practicable one for caravans, goes over the tableland between this wady and the Wady Useit to the upper end of the W. Taiyibeh, a beautiful valley, covered with tamarisks and shrubs, where good water may be found by digging, and which winds about between steep rocks, and opens to the sea at Ras Zelimeh. To the north of this the hills and rocks come close to the sea, but to the south they recede, and leave a sandy plain with numerous shrubs, which is bounded on the east by wild and rugged rocky formations, and stretches for three miles along the shore, furnishing quite space enough therefore for the Israelitish camp. It is about eight hours' journey from Wady Gharandel, so that by a forced march the Israelites might have accomplished it in one day. From this point they went "to the desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai." The place of encampment here is doubtful. There are two roads that lead from W. Taiyibeh to Sinai: the lower, which enters the desert plain by the sea at the Murkha or Morcha well, not far from the mouth of the Wady eth Thafary, and from which you can either go as far as Tr by the sea-coast, and then proceed in a north-easterly direction to Sinai, or take a more direct road through Wady Shelll and Badireh into Wady Mukatteb and Feirn, and so on to the mountains of Horeb; and the upper road, first pointed out by Burckhardt and Robinson, which lies in a S.E. direction from W. Taiyibeh through W. Shubeikeh, across en elevated plain, then through Wady Humr to the broad sandy plain of el Debbe or Debbet en Nasb, thence through Wady Nasb to the plain of Debbet er Ramleh, which stretches far away to the east, and so on across the Wadys Chamile and Seich in almost a straight line to Horeb. One of these two roads the Israelites must have taken. The majority of modern writers have decided in favour of the lower road, and place the desert of Sin in the broad desert plain, which commences at the foot of the mountain that bounds the Wady Taiyibeh towards the south, and stretches along the sea-coast to Ras Muhammed, the southernmost point of the peninsula, the southern part of which is now called el Ka. The encampment of the Israelites in the desert of Sin is then supposed to have been in the northern part of this desert plain, where the well Murkha still furnishes a resting-place plentifully supplied with drinkable water. Ewald has thus represented the Israelites as following the desert of el Ka to the neighbourhood of Tr, and then going in a north-easterly direction to Sinai. But apart from the fact that the distance is too great for the three places of encampment mentioned in Num 33:12-14, and a whole nation could not possibly reach Rephidim in three stages by this route, it does not tally with the statement in Num 33:12, that the Israelites left the desert of Sin and went to Dofkah; so that Dofkah and the places that follow were not in the desert of Sin at all.
For these and other reasons, De Laborde, v. Raumer, and others suppose the Israelites to have gone from the fountain of Murkha to Sinai by the road which enters the mountains not far from this fountain through Wady Shelll, and so continues through Wady Mukatteb to Wady Fern (Robinson, i. p. 105). But this view is hardly reconcilable with the encampment of the Israelites "in the desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai." For instance, the direct road from W. Gharandel (Elim) to Sinai does not touch the desert plain of el Ka at all, but turns away from it towards the north-east, so that it is difficult to understand how this desert could be said to lie between Elim and Sinai. For this reason, even Kurtz does not regard the clause "which is between Elim and Sinai" as pointing out the situation of the desert itself, but (contrary to the natural sense of the words) as a more exact definition of that part or point of the desert of Sin at which the road from Elim to Sinai crosses it. But nothing is gained by this explanation. There is no road from the place of encampment by the Red Sea in the Wady Taiyibeh by which a whole nation could pass along the coast to the upper end of this desert, so as to allow the Israelites to cross the desert on the way from Taiyibeh to the W. Shelll. As the mountains to the south of the W. Taiyibeh come so close to the sea again, that it is only at low water that a narrow passage is left (Burckhardt, p. 985), the Israelites would have been obliged to turn eastwards from the encampment by the Red Sea, to which they had no doubt gone for the sake of the water, and to go all round the mountain to get to the Murkha spring. This spring (according to Burckhardt, p. 983), "a small lake in the sandstone rock, close at the foot of the mountain") is "the principal station on this road," next to Ayun Musa and Gharandel; but the water is "of the worst description, partly from the moss, the bog, and the dirt with which the well is filled, but chiefly no doubt from the salt of the soil by which it is surrounded," and men can hardly drink it; whereas in the Wady Thafary, a mile (? five English miles) to the north-east of Murkha, there is a spring that "yields the only sweet water between Tor and Suez" (p. 982). Now, even if we were to assume that the Israelites pitched their camp, not by this, the only sweet water in the neighbourhood, but by the bad water of Murkha, the Murkah spring is not situated in the desert of el Ka, but only on the eastern border of it; so that if they proceeded thence into the Wady Shelll, and so on to the Wady Feirn, they would not have crossed the desert at all. In addition to this, although the lower road through the valley of Mukatteb is described by Burckhardt as "much easier and more frequented," and by Robinson as "easier" than the upper road across Nasseb (Nasb), there are two places in which it runs through very narrow defiles, by which a large body of people like the Israelites could not possibly have forced their way through to Sinai. From the Murkha spring, the way into the valley of Mukatteb is through "a wild mountain road," which is shut out from the eyes of the wanderer by precipitous rocks. "We got off our dromedaries," says Dieterici, ii. p. 27, "and left them to their own instinct and sure tread to climb the dangerous pass. We looked back once more at the desolate road which we had threaded between the rocks, and saw our dromedaries, the only signs of life, following a serpentine path, and so climbing the pass in this rocky theatre Nakb el Butera." Strauss speaks of this road in the following terms: "We went eastwards through a large plain, overgrown with shrubs of all kinds, and reached a narrow pass, only broad enough for one camel to go through, so that our caravan emerged in a very pictorial serpentine fashion. The wild rocks frowned terribly on every side." Moreover, it is only through a "terribly wild pass" that you can descend from the valley Mukatteb into the glorious valley of Feiran (Strauss, p. 128).
(Note: This pass is also mentioned by Graul (Reise ii. p. 226) as "a wild romantic mountain pass," and he writes respecting it, "For five minutes the road down was so narrow and steep, that the camels stept in fear, and we ourselves preferred to follow on foot. If the Israelites came up here on their way from the sea at Ras Zelime, the immense procession must certainly have taken a long time to get through the narrow gateway." To this we may add, that if Moses had led the people to Sinai through one of these narrow passes, they could not possibly have reached Sinai in a month from the desert of Sin, to say nothing of eight days, which was all that was left for them, if, as is generally supposed, and as Kurtz maintains, their stay at the place of encampment in the desert of Sin, where they arrived on the 15th day of the second month (Exo 16:1), lasted full seven days, and their arrival at Sinai took place on the first day of the third month. For if a pass is so narrow that only one camel can pass, not more than three men could walk abreast. Now if the people of Israel, consisting of two millions of men, had gone through such a pass, it would have taken at least twenty days for them all to pass through, as an army of 100,000 men, arranged three abreast, would reach 27 English miles; so that, supposing the pass to be not more than five minutes walk long, 100,000 Israelites would hardly go through in a day, to say nothing at all about their flocks and herds.)
For these reasons we must adopt Knobel's conclusions, and seek the desert of Sin in the upper road which leads from Gharandel to Sinai, viz., in the broad sandy table-land el Debbe or Debbet er Ramle, which stretches from the Tih mountains over almost the whole of the peninsula from N.W. to S.E. (vid., Robinson, i. 112), and in its south-eastern part touches the northern walls of the Horeb or Sinai range, which helps to explain the connection between the names Sin and Sinai, though the meaning "thorn-covered" is not established, but is merely founded upon the idea that סין has the same meaning as סנה. This desert table-land, which is essentially distinguished from the limestone formations of the Tih mountains, and the granite mass of Horeb, by its soil of sand and sandstone, stretches as far as Jebel Humr to the north-west, and the Wady Khamile and Barak to the south-west (vid., Robinson, i. p. 101, 102). Now, if this sandy table-land is to be regarded as the desert of Sin, we must look for the place of Israel's encampment somewhere in this desert, most probably in the north-western portion, in a straight line between Elim (Gharandel) and Sinai, possibly in Wady Nasb, where there is a well surrounded by palm-trees about six miles to the north-west of Sarbut el Khadim, with a plentiful supply of excellent water, which Robinson says was better than he had found anywhere since leaving the Nile (i. 110). The distance from W. Taiyibeh to this spot is not greater than that from Gharandel to Taiyibeh, and might therefore be accomplished in a hard day's march. |