Numbers 14:25 - Exposition

Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwelt in the valley. This parenthesis bears on the face of it several difficulties, both as to the meaning of the statement and as to its position in the text.

1 . It has been stated just before ( Numbers 13:29 ) that the "Canaanites" dwelt by the sea, and in the Ghor, and it has been proposed by some to understand under this name the Phoenicians, because "Sidon" was the first-born of Canaan, and because they are known to have occupied the coast. But if "Canaanite" means "Phoenician" in Numbers 13:29 , it is difficult to maintain that it is here equivalent to "Amorite." Again, if "Canaanite" be taken in this vaguer sense, yet it is clear that the Amorites dwelt in "the mountain", and not in the lowlands. This has been got over by supposing that עֵמֶק may mean an upland vale, or plateau, such as that to which the Israelites presently ascended. It is, however, a straining of the word to assign such a meaning to it. It is rightly translated by the Septuagint ἐν τῇ κοιλάδι . And even if one looking down from above might call an upland plain by this name, yet certainly one looking up from below would not. If the word stands rightly in this place, בָּעֵמֶק must mean "in the Wady Murreh," the broad sandy strait which bounded the "mountain of the Amorite" on the south. If so, we must conclude that not only the roving Amalekites, but also the Canaanites, or Amorites, had established themselves in some parts of the Wady.

2 . It is scarcely credible that an observation of this sort, which would seem unusual and abrupt in any speech, should have formed a part of God's message to Moses. It has no apparent connection with the context. It does not (as often alleged) afford a reason for the command which follows; it was not at all because enemies were already in possession before them that the Israelites had to turn their backs upon the promised land, but because God had withdrawn for the time his promised aid. If the "valley" be the Rakhmah plateau, they had always known that hostile tribes held it, and that they would have to conquer them. That the words are an interpolation, as the A.V. represents them, seems as certain as internal evidence can make it; lint by whom made, and with what intent, is a question which will probably never be answered. It may be worth while to hazard a conjecture that the interpolated words are really connected with what goes before, viz; the promise of inheritance to Caleb. Now that promise was fulfilled in the gift of Hebron to Caleb and his seed ( Joshua 14:14 ). But we have express mention in Genesis 37:14 of the "vale of Hebron," and the same word, עֵמֶק , is used in the Hebrew. Is it not possible that this parenthesis was originally the gloss of one who had a special interest in the heritage of Caleb, and wished to note that at the time it was given to him "the vale" was occupied by two hostile peoples? Into the wilderness, i.e; the Sinaitic peninsula, as distinguished from Palestine on the one hand, and from Egypt on the other. By the way of the Red Sea, i.e; towards the Red Sea; here apparently the Elanitic Gulf (cf. Numbers 11:31 ).