Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/364



certainty from the geographical names of $5-7$; although it does not appear quite clearly whether these are conceived as the centres of the various nationalities or the battlefields in which they were defeated.— ('Astarte of the two horns': Eus. Præp. Ev. i. 10; or 'A. of the two-peaked mountain' ) occurs as a compound name only here. A city 'Aštārôth in Bashan, the capital of Og's kingdom, is mentioned in Dt. 1$4$, Jos. 9$10$ 12$4$ 13$12. 31$, 1 Ch. 6$56$ [=, Jos. 21$27$]. Ḳarnaim is named (according to a probable emendation) in Am. 6$13$, and in 1 Mac. 5$26. 43f.$, 2 Mac. 12$21$. It is uncertain whether these are two names for one place, or two adjacent places of which one was named after the other ('Astārôth of [i.e. near] Ḳarnaim); and the confusing statements of the OS (84$5ff.$ 86$32$ 108$17$ 209$61$ 268$98$) throw little light on the question. The various sites that have been suggested—Sheikh Sa'd, Tell 'Aštarah, Tell el-'Aš'ari, and El-Muzêrîb—lie near the great road from Damascus to Mecca, about 20 m. E of the Lake of Tiberias (see Buhl, GAP, 248 ff.; Dri. DB, i. 166 f.; GASm. in EB, 335 f.). Wetzstein's identification with Boẓrah (regarded as a corruption of Bostra, and this of, Jos. 21$27$), the capital of the Ḫaurân, has been shown by Nö. (ZDMG, xxix. 431$1$) to be philologically untenable.—Of a place nothing is known. It is a natural conjecture (Tu. al.) that it is the archaic name of Rabbath, the capital of 'Ammon; and Sayce (HCM, 160 f.) thinks it must be explained as a retranscription from a cuneiform source of the word. On the text v.i.— is doubtless the Moabite or Reubenite city, mentioned in Jer. 48$23$, Ezk. 25$9$, Nu. 32$37$, Jos. 13$19$ (OS,, ), the modern Ḳuraiyāt, E of the Dead Sea, a little S of the Wādī Zerka Ma'īn. (only here and v.$17$) is supposed to mean 'plain' (Syr. ); but that is somewhat problematical.—On the phrase, see the footnote. While alone may include the plateau to the W of the Arabah, the commoner appears to be restricted to the mountainous region E of that gorge, now called eš-Šera' (see Buhl, Gesch. d. Edomiter, 28 ff.).— (v.i.) is usually identified with (Dt. 2$8$, 2 Ki. 14$22$ 16$6$) or (1 Ki. 9$26$, 2 Ki. 16$6$), at the head of the E arm of the Red Sea, which is supposed to derive its name from the groves of date-palms for which it was and is famous (see esp. Tu. 264 f.). The grounds of the identification seem slender; and the evidence does not carry us further than Tu.'s earlier view (251), that some oasis in the N of the desert is meant (see Che. EB, 3584). The 'wilderness' is the often mentioned 'Wilderness of Paran' (21$21$, Nu. 10$12$ etc.), i.e. the desolate plateau of et-Tīh, stretching from the Arabah to the isthmus of Suez. There is obviously nothing in that definition to support the theory that 'Êl-Pârān is the original name of the later Elath.— (16$14$ 20$1$ etc.), or (Nu. 34$4$, Dt. 1$2. 19$ 2$14$). The controversy as to the