Numbers 21:18

18. Mattanah cannot be identified. Le Clerc suggests that it may be the same as the mysterious Vaheb, (Numbers 21:14, note,) since its meaning in Arabic is the same as that of Mattanah in Hebrew. Neither this nor the other names occurring in this context are found in the catalogue of stations in chap. 33. This discrepancy may arise from the fact that the same station had several names, or from two contiguous stations being occupied at the same time. Kurtz thinks that the object of the writer in the thirty-third chapter is statistical, that is, to set forth, not all the halting places but the regular camps where the tabernacle was erected, while in earlier passages the object is historical. Hence more places are enumerated, as in Numbers 21:11 and Numbers 22:1, seven places are mentioned between Ije-abarim and the plains of Moab; in Numbers 33:44-48, only three places.