According to the Bible, in the first month (i.e. eleven months after leaving the Holy Mount), the Israelites abode in Kadesh, where Miriam died and was buried (Num. xx. 1). Moses once more struck water from the rock, the water as before was Meribah (Num. xx. 13), hence the name of the place Meribath-Kadesh (Ezek. xlviii. 28). The name Kadesh itself suggests a sanctuary, and Moses here again had communings with Yahveh (Num. xx. 7).
Kadesh appears as Cades in the life of Hilarion († 307), which was written by Jerome. The saint went there to see a disciple passing by Elusa (modern Khalasa).[109] There is Ain Kadeis or Gadeis marked on the modern map. Robinson, however, sought Kadesh of the Israelites near Mount Hor, at the present Ain el Waiba.[110]
Kadesh lay “in the uttermost borders of Edom,” and the Israelites would now have marched through Edom, “keeping along the king’s highway.” Perhaps the road along the Mediterranean is meant. “But Edom refused” (Num. xx. 21). They were therefore obliged to seek an entry into Canaan by compassing the land of Edom, which meant turning in an easterly direction towards Mount Hor, and then in a southerly direction to the Gulf of Akaba, the so-called “Red Sea” (Num. xiv. 25). An intercalated passage in Deuteronomy states that “the children of Israel took their journey from Beeroth of the children of Jaakan to Mosera; there Aaron died” (Deut. x. 6). The wells must therefore be sought close to Mount Hor, and may be the so-called Wells of Moses, which are named as such by the mediæval pilgrims. The modern map mentions Wadi Musa, which joins the Arabah coming from Petra. The Book of Numbers located the death of Aaron in “Mount Hor, by the” (border, not) “coast of the land of Edom” (Num. xx. 23). Here the Lord once more spoke to Moses, which suggests the existence of a sanctuary.
Eusebius (c. 320) wrote, “Mount Hor, in which Aaron died, a hill near the city Petra.”[111] Mount Hor is the modern Gebel Haroun or Mount of Aaron, a few miles north-west of the classical Petra. The district at the time was apparently in the possession of the Kenites, since the prophet Balaam, called upon by King Balak of the Moabites, to curse the Israelites, foretold the fall of the Amalekites, and, looking towards the Kenites, declared “Strong is thy dwelling place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock” (Num. xxiv. 21). This rock, a term which the Septuagint rendered as Petra, was probably the Ha-sela (Arabic sila, a mountain cleft) of the Bible, a name changed to Joktheel after its capture by Amaziah (c. b.c. 800, 2 Kings xiv. 7).
At Kadesh the Israelites had been told to “get you into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea” (Num. xiv. 25), i.e. they moved south from Mount Hor. The intercalated passage further named “Gadgodah and Jotbath, a land of brooks and water” (Deut. x. 7; LXX, Etebatha). The modern map mentions Et Taba in the depression between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, where Romans perpetuated the existence of a sanctuary in the name Ad Dianam, later Ghadiana. This movement brought the Israelites into conflict with the Amalekites and the Canaanites, with whom they fought and were discomfited even unto Hormah (Num. xiv. 45; LXX, Herman), perhaps the present El Hameima.
According to Arab tradition, Joshua fought against Samida ben Hagbar ben Malek, the Amalekite king of Syria in the land of Aila and killed him. Also Moses, after the death of Aaron, entered the land of the people El Eiss, called El Serah, and advanced to the desert Bab. There was then near Aila an important city called Asabaum or Aszyoun.[112]
This Aszyoun was “Eziongeber beside Eloth (i.e. Alia) on the shore of the Red Sea in the land of Edom” (1 Kings ix. 26). It was the port on the Gulf of Akaba which was used by King Solomon. By way of this the Israelites passed into the plains of Moab. “And when we passed by from our brethren the children of Esau which dwelt in Seir, through the way of the plain from Elath, and from Eziongeber, we turned and passed by the way of the wilderness of Moab” (Deut. ii. 8).
A list of stations with further names stands in Numbers (xxx. 12, 13, 17-30), which affords no guide and confuses the issues. It is now looked upon as a post-exilic collection of caravan routes which the scribe who compiled the Book of Numbers incorporated into his account, perhaps because the number of stations named in it was forty, corresponding to the forty years’ wandering. Along some routes it mentions the stations that appear in the narrative in Exodus and Deuteronomy, but even here with deviations.
Having passed by the depression near the Red Sea, the Israelites were in districts that were occupied by the allied Moabites and Midianites. They entered into friendly relations with the Midianites; later they waged a cruel war against them.
The frontiers of Midian were always vague. According to the Bible Moses met Jethro in the “land of Midian,” which suggests that the peninsula of Sinai was included in Midian at the time. Midian is called Madian in the Septuagint and by the Arab writers. Antoninus Martyr (c. a.d. 530) held that the city Pharan, situated between the convent and Egypt, was in “the land of Midian” with its inhabitants descended from Jethro (c. 40).