Exodus 16:1

THE MURMURING IN THE DESERT OF SIN, Exodus 16:1-3.

1. The wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai That is, between them by the route which a caravan of this kind would naturally take, not between them as a bird would fly . If Elim be Gharandel, as we think to be certain, there is no other way for such a host as this to have reached Sinai than by the Wady Taiyebeh, which leads to the seashore and the great maritime plain of el Murkha . See Introduction, (1 . ) The “wilderness of Sin” seems, then, to be this flat seacoast strip of desert, which, further south, broadens into el Ka’a (or el Ga’ah) stretching down to Ras (Cape) Mohammed. This is a vast, flat waste of sand and black flints, without shade, or water, or life, except in the lower ends of the few wadies which lead up from it into the Sinai mountains, and is, perhaps, the most desolate tract in all Arabia. How natural that in this thirsty, featureless wilderness they should remember all the good things of the fat Nile-land whose far-off mountains they had seen so clearly as they descended into the plain, and probably now saw dimly sketched against the western horizon. Probably they brought water upon their cattle and in their wagons from the Wady Taiyebeh, and encamped at the mouths of several wadies which led down into the plain.

All the congregation Implying a rallying of all the scattered parties from the slopes and valleys of Mount Hammam into the plain, in order to make a “new departure,” and turn into the mountains of Sinai. Fifteenth day of the second month of the year of the Exode; just a month after they left Rameses.