Numbers 21:1

DEFEAT OF THE CANAANITE KING OF ARAD, Numbers 21:1-3.

1. King Arad The Authorized Version is mistaken in making Arad a person and not a place. It is mentioned in Joshua 12:14, between the names Hormah and Libnah. In Judges 1:16, we read: “The wilderness of Judah lieth in the south of Arad.” Robinson identifies it with a hill, Tell-Arad, twenty miles south of Hebron, “a barren looking eminence rising above the country around.”

By the way of the spies The word אתרים , translated spies, occurs only here, and is regarded by Furst and Gesenius, following the Septuagint, as the name of an unknown place, Atharim. This removes the difficulty in the way of identifying Kadesh with Ain Gadis, or Kadis, fifty miles west of Mount Hor, since the routes from these two places into Canaan must be different. See note on Numbers 20:1. The Authorized Version, Vulgate, Syriac, and Targum, translate this word spies as if it were written without the initial aleph, and were a participle of the verb תור , because it has the article. But names of places, especially if celebrated, generally take the article in prose. (Nordh., Gram., § 721.)

Fought against Israel It is not probable that the king of Arad made this attack after Israel had left his borders and marched east-by-south fifty miles, and was encamped at the foot of Mount Hor. The attack would naturally take place when the camp in Kadesh was breaking up, and the king suspected that his territory was to be immediately invaded. “The order of the narrative in these chapters, as occasionally elsewhere in this book, is not that of time but of subject-matter; and the war against Arad is introduced here as the first of a series of victories gained under Moses which the historian now takes in hand to narrate.” Speaker’s Com.

Took… prisoners A slight repulse is often beneficial in its effects. This taught Israel to look to Jehovah for help, as we find in the next verse.