EN ROUTE FOR SINAI

 

Forty years in the wilderness of Sinai; Yisraelites move in wild and wasteland  (ABOUT 1220 B.C.)

 From the frontiers of Migdol to the Horeb-Sinai range is nearly two hundred miles, taking into account the many inevitable detours made by a caravan.

Exodus sets out to relate the principal adventures which took place during these ‘forty years’ spent in the ‘desert’.

Forty years: this eastern form of expression has already been explained; it is symbolic rather than numerical. In general the number forty in the Scripture means ‘a rather long period’. Here it could be taken for the length of a generation, though even that is rather vague (twenty-five, thirty years?).

The desert of Sinai: here both a geographical and an historical error must be avoided; it would be wrong to think of the desert or wilderness of Sinai as like the Sahara desert. The Yisraelites moved from pasture to pasture in wild and wasteland certainly; yet although the ground was poor their undemanding flocks found sufficient to eat.

The stages of the journey to Sinai

From the Sea of Reeds the column plunged into the wilderness of Etham, sometimes called Shur.

The first stage was Marah.

For three days they traveled across the wilderness of Etham, a barren, bleak and desolate plain, without being able to water their flocks at an oasis. Marah has been identified with the place called the Spring of Mosheh (Ain Musa); some Scriptural scholars prefer to locate the camp at Ain Howara a little lower down, where briny springs are to be found. There was general discontent among the people who grumbled at Mosheh. ‘What are we to drink?’ they said. Mosheh threw into the water a kind of wood, which it appears, sweetened the salt water, or, at least, made it more or less drinkable; some travelers think that it was branches of barberry.

They reached Marah but the water there was so bitter they could not drink it; that is why the place was named Marah. The people grumbled at Mosheh. ‘What are we to drink?’ they said. So Mosheh appealed to YAHWEH, and YAHWEH pointed out some wood to him; this Mosheh threw into the water, and the water was sweetened.

So they came to Elim where twelve water-springs were, and seventy palm trees; and there they pitched their camp beside the water.

Shemoth 15:22-25, 27

The second stage was Elim,

The second stage was Elim, which with some probability has been identified with the luxuriant oasis of the Wadi Gharandel, where twelve water-springs were, Shemoth points out, and seventy palm trees. It was a dreamland after the tiring journeys of the previous days.

On the shores of the Red Sea and the wilderness of Sin

The Book of Bemidbar states that the Yisraelites left Elim and encamped by the Sea of Reeds (Bemidbar 33:10). Then, still for geographical reasons, they penetrated into the wilderness of Sin. It was a month since they had left Egypt. Soon traveling grew hard and exhausting. The unruly among them took advantage of this to complain bitterly of the two leaders who had led the Yisraelites into this rash expedition. And the whole community of the sons of Yisrael began to complain against Mosheh and Aaron in the wilderness and said to them, ‘Why did we not die at YAHWEH’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we were able to sit down to pans of meat and could eat bread to our heart’s content? As it is, you have brought us to this wilderness [of Sin] to starve this whole company to death!’

That evening the camp was covered with a flight of quails. Ornithologists tell us that at the beginning of spring (and this was the season when the event occurred) large flights of quail, after wintering in Africa, return to Europe and pass in great numbers over the Sinai peninsula. It often happens that exhausted by their efforts whole flocks of these birds come down to the ground for a night to get their second wind and leave the next day at dawn for the north. The Yisraelites were amply provided with this providential meat.

And they also needed bread, which was the basic food of nomads. The discontented among them began to complain. ‘I will rain down bread for you from the heavens,’ YAHWEH had told Mosheh. Indeed the next morning (the morning after the arrival of the quail) there was a coating of dew all around the camp. When the coating of dew lifted, there on the surface of the desert was a thing delicate, powdery, as fine as hoarfrost on the ground. It was the famous manna of the desert. In another verse the writer explains that this manna was like coriander seed, an umbilliferous aromatic plant which is plentiful in the wilderness of Sinai. It was white and its taste was like that of wafers made with honey. The writer of the Book of Bemidbar compares the manna to bdellium, a transparent and aromatic resin produced by a kind of palm tree (Bemidbar11: 7). Botanists have thought that it might possibly have been an exudation associated with another tree, the tamaris mannifera, but the proposed identification is by no means certain.

After gathering the manna the people ground it in a mill or crushed it with a pestle; it was cooked in a pot or made into bread.

The sons of Yisrael ate manna for forty years, up to the time they reached inhabited country: they ate manna up to the time they reached the frontier of the land of Canaan. It should be added, since we are here dealing with the history of Yisraelite civilization, that during these ‘forty years’ in the wilderness the Yisraelites, who quickly became once again nomad shepherds, lived by leading their flocks from pasture to pasture over the steppe. Some groups seem to have settled temporarily near an oasis where they grew a small amount of cereals. In the camps set up on the Horeb massif, they continued, as in the past, to drink milk and to eat curds; in addition to manna they had also bread, vegetables and even on occasion, a kid or a Iamb. It should not be thought, indeed, that their pastoral life ‘in the wilderness of Sin’ was more arduous than that of the patriarchs, at least when the latter were wandering about in the neighbourhood of Beersheba and in the Negeb.

The Book of Bemidbar in the list which it gives of the halting places in the wilderness mentions two which do not occur in Shemoth: these are Dophkah and Alush. Dhorme, a well-known Scriptural scholar, sees a connection between the place-name Dophkah and the Egyptian word mafkat (turquoise) which would give grounds for locating it at Serabit el-Khadim, to which from time to time the Pharaohs sent teams of miners to extract the precious stones which are numerous in this part of the mountain range.

The Yisraelites then went straight on to Alush. It must have been a difficult journey, cutting diagonally across the greater part of the wilderness of Sin. They camped now right at the centre of the mountain mass.

YISRAEL’S JOURNEY TO SINAI

After the passage of the Red Sea, the column of Yisraelites set out for Sinai.

1st stage. Marah. Ain Musa (Spring of Mosheh) or perhaps Ain Howara. At all events the caravan journeyed for three days without having water available.

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