Numbers 21:20

20. In the valley Rather, to the valley, which is in the fields of Moab upon the top of Pisgah. The height of Pisgah is in grammatical apposition with the field of Moab, a portion of the perfectly treeless table-land stretching from Rabbath Ammon to the Arnon. Among biblical problems on the east of the Jordan the solution of none has enlisted deeper interest than the identification of long-lost Pisgah. The great mistake for ages was in the attempt to find some peak higher than the general level of the table-land of Moab, from which all the Land of Promise can be seen. But Dr. J.L. Porter, on the south bank of Wady Hesban, about seven miles west of Heshbon, recently noticed some projecting swells of the range, not higher than others, but shooting out farther west, so as to command the Jordan Valley, and suggested that one of these might be Nebo. Professor Paine, in the third statement of the Palestine Exploration Society, in 1873, in an elaborate monograph of nearly ninety pages, entitled, The Identification of Pisgah, cogently argues, after a month’s investigation of all the district, that a double peaked hill or swell called Jebel Siaghah is the true Pisgah. The view from the southwest peak, 2,360 feet above the sea, extending from Dan on the north to the far distant Negeb, fulfils every requisite of the view which Moses beheld from Pisgah, unless it be all Judah unto the Mediterranean Sea, for which there is no peak east of the Jordan high enough. See Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan., 1876. Dr. Ridgaway dissents from the conclusion of Professor Paine, and sides with Tristram and M. de Saulcy, in the identification of Jebel Neba as the true Pisgah, chiefly because this affords an eastward view, which Jebel Siaghah does not. See Deuteronomy 3:27. “My own impression is, that Abarim was the name of the whole cluster of hills immediately overlooking the Jordan in this region, as the term signifies ‘borders;’ that Nebo was the title of a particular mountain, with one or more peaks, and that Pisgah was the special summit of Nebo. I remember very clearly that its top looked, as we rode by, just like a hill, and seemed relatively so little elevated, as we approached from the east, that we hardly thought it worth while to go on to it. Taking the itinerary of Israel, as given in Numbers 33:46-48, nothing can seem more natural.” Ridgaway.

Jeshimon Literally, the wilderness. It is doubtful whether it is a proper or a common noun.

Edersheim says that it is the tract of land which extends to the northeastern shore of the Dead Sea. Tristram identifies it with “the barren plain of the Ghor,” about the mouth of the Jordan. But Professor Paine, from every mention of the place, comes to the following conclusion: “So Jeshimon is the wilderness where a line drawn to the north from Maon (1 Samuel 23:24) intersects another drawn west from Pisgah, and just there is a region every way worthy of the name.”