I asked my uncle then what was meant by the word wilderness. He said, “The word occurs in a great many places, both in the Old and New Testament, where it sometimes means a wild, uninhabited desert, and sometimes only an uncultivated plain: the wilderness through which the Israelites were conducted, partook of both these descriptions, being partly rocky, and partly a sandy, unproductive district. It occupied the space between the two branches of the Arabian Gulf, which was sometimes called in Hebrew, and is indeed at this day in the Coptic language, the ‘Sea of Weeds.’”
“Why, then, do we give it the name of the Red Sea?”
“We have borrowed the term from the Greeks,” said my uncle: “from whence they derived it is not so easily answered; certainly not from the colour of the water, or of the sand at the bottom. The most probable notion is, that it was originally called the sea of Edom, as it washed the coast of that country; and that, as Edom signifies red in Hebrew, the Greeks, not understanding the geographical allusion, simply translated it, just as the Romans and ourselves have done after them.”
A general conversation then ensued, about the passage of the Israelites through the sea; and I shall write here some of what I picked up, by way of exercise only, for I am sure, Mamma, that you are already well acquainted with all that is known on the subject.
The exact spot at which they quitted the Egyptian shore has been much contested among commentators; but the greatest number of opinions seem to be in favour of Clysma; a point several hours journey from the town of Suez, which stands at the head of the western gulf. The names that some of the places in the vicinity still retain, appear to confirm this supposition; for instance, the ridge of hills extending from the Nile to this part of the coast is called Ataka, which means deliverance; and the narrow plain to the southward of that ridge preserves the name of Wadi-et-tiheh, or the Valley of the Wandering. On the opposite shore of the Red Sea there is a headland called Ras Mousa, or the Cape of Moses; farther to the southward, Hammam Faraun, Pharaoh’s Baths; and the general name of this part of the gulf is Bahr el Kolsum, or the Bay of Submission. From these circumstances it may be concluded that the Israelites crossed the western arm of the Red Sea, about twelve or thirteen miles from Suez; and it appears from my uncle’s maps that the sea there is eight or nine miles broad.
My uncle says it is the opinion of some geographers that formerly the Red Sea did not stop at Suez; and modern travellers have described a large plain which is considerably lower than the surface of the sea, and which extends seven or eight leagues to the northward of that town. This plain is two leagues in breadth; and from the thick layer of salt, and the quantity of shells which are every where found under the soil, they say there can be no doubt that it was once the bed of the sea. I asked what could have driven the sea out, if ever it had been there? But he said there was no difficulty in that; for rivers and narrow seas are continually changing their boundaries by the sand which their tides and currents throw up; and as soon as ever the Red Sea had washed up a new barrier at Suez, evaporation in that climate would rapidly dry the part that had been cut off.
It has been asked, were there not ledges of rock lying across the Red Sea, on which, when the tide was out, the Israelites might have forded it. “But,” says my uncle, “if we do not believe the transaction to have been miraculous, we may as well not believe it all; for the event, as well as the miracle, rest on precisely the same authority. At the same time, do not suppose that I wish to discourage these inquiries; they are of considerable use;—they lead to the investigation of facts, and the more strictly the Bible is examined, the more we shall be satisfied of its truth. The attention of the celebrated travellers Niebuhr and Bruce was particularly directed to that question; and they distinctly assert that there are no rocks there whatever.”
My uncle concluded the conversation by saying, “Many of the Fathers have supposed it to have been the opinion of St. Paul, that the passage through the waters of the Red Sea was intended as a type of the Christian baptism, and of our conditional resurrection to eternal happiness. And it was this idea that probably induced the framers of our liturgy to introduce the history of that event into the service appointed for the day of our Lord’s resurrection.”
19th.—We amused ourselves for some time after dinner this evening with our favourite question-play, animal, vegetable, and mineral; Marianne is well acquainted with it.
I thought of sponge as a good puzzling thing: however, it puzzled me not a little, in the progress of their questions, to describe it satisfactorily. In the first place, I had heard some one tell you that sponge was a vegetable production—but I have since read that it is a substance formed by some species of marine worm; so when I was forced to give distinct answers to the questions, was it animal, or was it vegetable, I was divided between those two ideas. Then came questions as to what part of the world it was found in; and I set them all wrong by saying, only in the Mediterranean. In short, I found that even in children’s plays people may have to blush for their ignorance.