Exodus 15:23

23. Marah Bitterness, a place of bitter or brackish water . This does not enable us to locate the station, since all the springs of the region are saltish . Since the time of Burckhardt Marah has been generally identified with Hawwara, a little over forty miles, or about three days’ journey, from Ayun Musa, and the first spring after leaving that station. But whether Marah be here, or five miles farther on, as Lepsius supposes, at Gharandel, or three miles back, at Wady Amarah, is of comparatively little moment, seeing that we certainly know that all of these spots are on the track of the great host of Israel as they moved towards Mount Sinai. Between the long white mountain wall of er-Rahah on their left, and the blue Red Sea waters on their right, they moved southeasterly across a great whitish gravelly plain, at times amid sand mounds and low, flat, barren hills of limestone and chalk, sparkling now and then with crystals of gypsum, and at other times crossing wadies, or dry water-courses, running from the mountain range across their course, and fringed occasionally with dwarf palms, stunted tamarisks, shrubby broom, and other hardy plants of the desert. There was no shade, and the sun’s rays were reflected hot and dazzling from the white hills and plains. Across the sea on their right the dark form of the promontory of Attaka reminded them of the Egypt that they had left. Accustomed all their lives to the sweet Nile water, which the Egyptians deem unsurpassed in the world, they had now for three days been drinking from their water-skins of the supply laid in at the last station, which was most likely Ayun Musa, anticipating the fountains, of which Moses had probably told them, at this oasis. And now they find the springs so bitter that they cannot drink of them.

Hawwara is now a spring but about eight feet across, within a calcareous mound which has been formed from its deposits. Two stunted palm trees grow near it, affording the weary traveller a delicious shade, and a number of ghurkud bushes straggle around it low thorny shrubs, bearing small juicy berries, much like our barberry. Murray says, “Should the thirsty traveller hasten forward now to drink at the fountain, his Arabs will restrain him by the cry, Murr! murr! ‘Bitter! bitter!’” The water is strongly impregnated with salt and alum, and yet it is frequently quite drinkable. Holland says it is often more palatable than that which has been brought down in skins from Suez.