Numbers 21:4-5

COMPASSING EDOM VIA RED SEA, Numbers 21:4-5.

A glance at the map will reveal the necessity of this countermarch down the Arabah to the head of the eastern arm of the Red Sea, called the Elanitic Gulf. From Mount Hor the march into southern Canaan was impracticable on account of the mountains. The short cut through Wady-el-Ghuwier, fifteen miles north of Petra, or through some other pass farther north, as Seil Dhalal, or Wady T’lah, had been refused by the king of Edom, who held Mount Seir. There is no reason given in the Book of Numbers why they could not have marched northward along the Arabah and descended by the Acrabbim (see note on Joshua 15:3) into the soft and fertile plain called the Ghor, at the south of the Dead Sea, and thence through one of several wadies turned eastward, and thus compassed Edom on the north. But in Judges 11:17-18, we learn that Moab, who controlled these wadies, had also refused a passage to Israel. It was not expedient to meet the enemy in one of these ravines, as narrow as the pass of Thermopylae. The only other course was to march round Mount Seir on the south, and thus avoid a war with Moab at such a disadvantage, or with Edom in his impregnable fastnesses.

4. Discouraged because of the way Hebrew, short, impatient, vexed. The Arabah is a horrible desert, shut in by the limestone cliffs of the Tih on the west, and the granite range of Mount Seir on the east. The soil is loose sand and drifts of fine granite and other stones, and is exposed to suffocating sand-storms. The heat in this deep, treeless trench is at times intense. There is little vegetation except at the mouths of the valleys opening into this desert. All this was enough to discourage the people; but the reflection that every step was taking them farther away from the Land of Promise was still more disheartening.

5. Spake against God This is the new Israel raised up in the wilderness. Their disobedient fathers have perished since the sentence of exclusion from Canaan, pronounced at Kadesh-barnea thirty-eight years before. But the new Israel is strikingly like the old, faltering and murmuring in hardships, blaming their leaders, and distrusting God. But the sequel will show that there was faith and courage in them sufficient to fight their way into Canaan and partially conquer it.

This light bread Hebrew, exceedingly vile. The manna is thus contemned. Similar language will be found in chap. Numbers 11:6, where a description of the manna is given. Says Professor Bush: “This was not only a wicked disparagement of the material gift which the Lord bestowed upon them from heaven, but it was a virtual turning away with loathing from that spiritual or heavenly manna which we are taught to recognize in the Lord our Saviour, whose words authenticate this interpretation.” John 6:48-51. The manna had fallen upon the encampment during thirty-eight years, an almost daily miracle of goodness, and yet, because of its commonness, it was despised. Even miracles, repeated for a long time, cease to convince men, and come to be regarded the same as the operations of nature. There is no record that any Hebrew perished in the wilderness from hunger or thirst.