In the preceding article in this series, we left the Israelites at Mount Hor, the thirty-fourth Station of the Exodus, which we identified with Jebel Harun, a mountain between Petra and the Arabah. According to the Catalogue of the Stations of the Exodus in Numbers 33, the Israelites next encamped at a place called Zalmonah:
And Aaron was an hundred and twenty and three years old when he died in mount Hor. And king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south in the land of Canaan, heard of the coming of the children of Israel. And they departed from mount Hor, and pitched in Zalmonah. And they departed from Zalmonah, and pitched in Punon. And they departed from Punon, and pitched in Oboth. (Numbers 33:39-43)
The account in Numbers 21, however, is not consistent with this:
And when king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel came by the way of the spies; then he fought against Israel, and took some of them prisoners. And Israel vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities. And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and he called the name of the place Hormah. And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way. And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. And the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in Oboth. (Numbers 21:1-10)
This longer account raises several issues. Note that it does not mention the 35th or 36th Station (Zalmonah and Punon respectively): the incident of the fiery serpents takes place at an unnamed encampment. It also specifies that the Israelites skirted the Kingdom of Edom by passing by the Red Sea (Yam Suph). Does the latter refer to the Gulf of Aqaba?
It could certainly be argued that the author of this passage believed that Kadesh was located somewhere in southern Canaan, to the southwest of the Dead Sea, from whence the Israelites made their way around Edom—via Aqaba—to an area to the southeast of the Dead Sea. But we have already seen how this tradition makes no sense. If the Israelites’ ultimate destination was Canaan and they had already reached southern Canaan, why would they not have simply walked north into the heart of Canaan? Their victory over Arad would have cleared the way.
Arad and Hormah
We are told that the Israelites defeated Arad the Canaanite at Hormah. Where was Hormah? This is not the first time this place has been mentioned in connection with the Exodus. In Numbers 14, when the spies return to Moses in Kadesh with disquieting news of their reconnaissance mission into southern Canaan, we are told:
And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness! And wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt ... (Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwelt in the valley.) Tomorrow turn you, and get you into the wilderness by the way of the Red sea ... Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto Hormah. (Numbers 14:1-4 ... 25 ... 45)
Compare this with the account in Numbers 21:
In both accounts, the Israelites murmur against Moses.
In both accounts, the Israelites engage the Canaanites in battle, albeit with very different outcomes.
A place called Hormah is mentioned in both stories.
Both accounts include the phrase by the way of the Red sea.
Could these be garbled or corrupted versions of the same event?
According to Judges 1:17, Hormah—which means broken rock (but see Strong 43 for related meanings)—acquired its name after it was razed to the ground by the tribes of Judah and Simeon:
And the children of the Kenite, Moses’ father in law, went up out of the city of palm trees with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah, which lieth in the south of Arad; and they went and dwelt among the people. And Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they slew the Canaanites that inhabited Zephath, and utterly destroyed it. And the name of the city was called Hormah. (Judges 1:16-17)
But according to Numbers 21:3, it was during the Exodus that Zephath was destroyed and acquired its new name:
And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and he called the name of the place Hormah. (Numbers 21:3)
Note also how the passage in Judges refers to Arad as a location in southern Canaan—the country in which Zephath lay—whereas in Numbers Arad is a Canaanitic king. This discrepancy is another indication that one or more of these three passages may have suffered corruption. The location of Zephath/Hormah is unknown. Perhaps it was the same place as the ancient settlement of Arad, whose remains—including the later Israelite fortress—have been uncovered at Tel Arad? This is the conclusion which Emil G Hirsch drew in The Jewish Encyclopedia (Singer 462).
Two Hypotheses
It is possible, then, that in the original version, the spies sent out by Moses from Kadesh to reconnoitre southern Canaan engaged the Canaanites in battle in Arad and defeated them. This paved the way for the invasion of Canaan from the south. But as Moses and the main body of Israelites were encamped at that time in Kadesh (ie Petra), to the east of Edom, they first sought permission to cross Edom. This was refused, obliging them to approach Canaan from the east. This weakness of this hypothesis is that it assumes that the spies passed through Edom without requesting or obtaining permission.
According to an alternative hypothesis, the spies were defeated by the Canaanites in Arad and some of them were taken prisoner. Permission to pass through Edom was never an issue and is a much later addition to the story:
And when king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel came by the way of the spies; then he fought against Israel, and took some of them prisoners. (Numbers 21:1)
It was for this reason that the spies who returned safely to Kadesh advised Moses not to invade Canaan from the south. Moses, therefore, travelled north from Kadesh, passing to the east of the Dead Sea, in order to invade Canaan from the east, across the River Jordan. The story of Moses’ requesting and being denied permission to cross Edom would then be a later addition to the story. Subsequently, as part of the campaign to conquer Canaan, the Canaanites of Arad were defeated and their cities razed—just as recorded in Judges 1.
Either of these reconstructions would allow us to leave Hormah (or Zephath) and Arad somewhere in the Negeb in southern Canaan, without upsetting the Exodus itinerary that we have been painstakingly reconstructing since leaving Ramses in Egypt. I prefer the second hypothesis, which even leaves us free to extend Edom’s eastern boundary to the east of the Arabah, encompassing Petra (which was the Edomite capital in later centuries).
Zalmonah
So where was Zalmonah? The name is generally interpreted as meaning gloomy or shady, which does not fill me with confidence as to its genuineness. It sounds like a generic name coined to fill a gap. Is it another of Goethe’s fictitious encampments, concocted by later scholars to ensure that the Catalogue of Stations in Numbers 33 had precisely forty stations between Ramses and the Plains of Moab—one for each year of the supposed forty years of wandering (Goethe 207 ff)?
The distance from Jebel Harun to the Plains of Moab (assuming that the final encampment was across the Jordan from Jericho, the first Canaanitic city to be captured) is roughly 200 km. If the Israelites were covering 24-32 km per day (Hoffmeier 120), then we would expect there to be about six or seven Stations between Mount Hor and the Plains of Moab. According to Numbers 33, there were seven:
- Zalmonah, Punon, Oboth, Ruins of Abarim (Ije Abarim), Dibon Gad, Almon Diblathaim, Mountains of Abarim.
This suggests that Zalmonah lay 24-32 km beyond Jebel Harun. I cannot, however, find any toponyms in this region that resemble Zalmonah. I suspect that the name was coined after the fact to fill in a blank space on the map.
The account in Numbers 21 has a significantly different list of encampments:
- An unnamed place where the fiery serpents attack the Israelites, Oboth, Ruins of Abarim, Valley of Zared, Opposite Arnon, Beer, Mattanah, Nahaliel, Bamoth, Pisgah, Land of the Amorites.
The incident with the fiery serpents is generally placed at the next station, Punon, for reasons which we will examine in the next article.
To be continued ...
References
- Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Volume 3, Translated from the German by Paul Radin, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia (1911)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Israel in der Wüste, Noten und Abhandlungen zu besserem Verständnis des west-östlichen Divans, West-östlicher Divan, in Erich Trunz (editor), Goethes Werke, Band 2, Fifth Edition, Christian Wegner Verlag, Hamburg (1960)
- James K Hoffmeier, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2005)
- Isidore Singer (managing editor), The Jewish Encyclopedia, Volume 6, Funk & Wagnalls Co, New York (1901)
- James Strong, Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, in The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Eaton & Mains, New York (1890)
Image Credits
- Tel Arad: © Mboesch, Creative Commons License
- Israelite Fortress at Tel Arad: אסף.צ (photographer), Public Domain
- The Arabah: Map Data © 2020 ORION-ME, Fair Use
- From Mount Hor to the Plains of Moab: University of Texas Libraries, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, Jerusalem, D Survey, Great Britain War Office and Air Ministry (1960), Public Domain
