1 They took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
And they took their journey. Moses relates, that, when after a month the people came to the wilderness of Sin near Mount Sinai, and when their provision failed, they rebelled against God and Moses, and manna, a new and unusual kind of food, was given them from heaven. It is uncertain with what foods they were sustained in the meantime. Some conjecture that they brought sufficient flour from Egypt for their supply; but to me it seems probable that other kinds of food were used in addition; for the barrenness of the country through which they passed was not so great but that it produced at least fruits and herbs. Besides, we may readily suppose, from the battle, in which it will soon be related that they conquered the Amalekites, that they were not far from an habitable territory. But, when they were carried away farther into the desert, all their provision began to fail, because they had no more commerce with the inhabitants. Hence their sedition was increased, because hunger pressed upon them more than usual. For, although we shall afterwards be able to gather from the context that there was some previous disturbance in the camp, still famine, which now began to affect them more, because in these uncultivated and miserable regions the barrenness on all sides alarmed them, gave strength to their murmurs and impatience.
The the wilderness of Sin - The desert tract, called Debbet er Ramleh, extend nearly across the peninsula from the Wady Nasb in a south-easterly direction, between the limestone district of Et Tih and the granite of Sinai. The journey from the station at Elim, or even from that on the Red Sea, could be performed in a day: at that time the route was kept in good condition by the Egyptians.
The wilderness of Sin - This desert lies between Elim and Sinai, and from Elim, Dr. Shaw says, Mount Sinai can be seen distinctly. Mr. Ainsworth supposes that this wilderness had its name from a strong city of Egypt called Sin, near which it lay. See Ezekiel 30:15, Ezekiel 30:16. Before they came to the wilderness of Sin, they had a previous encampment by the Red Sea after they left Elim, of which Moses makes distinct mention Numbers 33:10, Numbers 33:11.
The fifteenth day of the second month - This was afterwards called Ijar, and they had now left Egypt one month, during which It is probable they lived on the provisions they brought with them from Rameses, though it is possible they might have had a supply from the seacoast. Concerning Mount Sinai, See Clarke's note on Exodus 19:1.
And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of (a) Sin, which [is] between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.
(a) This is the eighth place in which they had camped, there is another place called Zin, which was the 33rd place in which they camped, and is also called Kadesh, (Numbers 33:36).
And they took their journey from Elim,.... And came again to the Red sea, as appears from Numbers 33:10 perhaps to some bay or creek of it, which ran up from it, and lay in their way, and where for a short time they encamped to look at it, and recollect what had been done for them in bringing them through it; but as their stay here was short, and nothing of any importance or consequence happened, it is here omitted, and their next station is only observed:
and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which still bears the same name, as a late traveller (a) informs us, who passed through it, and says, we traversed these plains in nine hours, being all the way diverted with the sight of a variety of lizards and vipers, that are here in great numbers; and elsewhere (b) he says, that vipers, especially in the wilderness of Sin which might very properly be called "the inheritance of dragons", were very dangerous and troublesome, not only our camels, but the Arabs who attended them, running every moment the risk of being bitten. The Red sea, or the bay of it, they came to from Elim, according to Bunting (c) was six miles, and from thence to the wilderness of Sin, sixteen more. This is a different wilderness from that of Zin, which is written with a different letter, Numbers 20:1 and was on the other side of Mount Sinai, as this was the way to it, as follows:
which is between Elim and Sinai according to the above writer (d), it was twenty miles from Elim the Israelites travelled, and forty more ere they came to Sinai. Dr. Shaw (e) says, after traversing the plains in nine hours, we were near twelve hours in passing the many windings and difficult ways which lie beteen those deserts and these of Sinai; the latter consists of a beautiful plain more than a league in breadth, and nearly three in length:
on the fifteenth day of the second month, after their departing out of the land of Egypt; the month Ijar, as the Targum of Jonathan, which answers to part of April and part of May, and has its name from the beauty of the flowers, which appear at this time of the year: the Israelites were now come from thence a month or thirty days; for they came out the fifteenth of Abib or Nisan, and now it was the fifteenth of Ijar; and as the first day of this month, as Jarchi says, was on the first day of the week, this day must be so likewise; and yet sometimes the Jews say (f) this was a sabbath day.
(a) Shaw, p. 314. (b) lb p. 444. (c) Travels, p. 82. (d) Ib. (e) Travels, p. 314. (f) T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 87. 2.
The provisions of Israel, brought from Egypt, were spent by the middle of the second month, and they murmured. It is no new thing for the greatest kindness to be basely represented as the greatest injuries. They so far undervalue their deliverance, that they wished they had died in Egypt; and by the hand of the Lord, that is, by the plagues which cut off the Egyptians. We cannot suppose they had plenty in Egypt, nor could they fear dying for want in the wilderness, while they had flocks and herds: none talk more absurdly than murmurers. When we begin to fret, we ought to consider, that God hears all our murmurings. God promises a speedy and constant supply. He tried whether they would trust him, and rest satisfied with the bread of the day in its day. Thus he tried if they would serve him, and it appeared how ungrateful they were. When God plagued the Egyptians, it was to make them know he was their Lord; when he provided for the Israelites, it was to make them know he was their God.
MURMURS FOR WANT OF BREAD. (Exodus. 16:1-36)
they took their journey from Elim--where they had remained several days.
came unto the wilderness of Sin--It appears from Numbers. 32:1-42, that several stations are omitted in this historical notice of the journey. This passage represents the Israelites as advanced into the great plain, which, beginning near El-Murkah, extends with a greater or less breadth to almost the extremity of the peninsula. In its broadest part northward of Tur it is called El-Kaa, which is probably the desert of Sin [ROBINSON].
Quails and Manna in the Desert of Sin. - Exodus 16:1. From Elim the congregation of Israel proceeded into the desert of Sin. According to Numbers 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 Numbers 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 Numbers 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 (Exodus 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.
A month's provision, it seems, the host of Israel took with them out of Egypt, when they came thence on the 15th day of the first month, which, by the 15th day of the second month, was all spent.
*More commentary available at chapter level.