Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/592

 holding 739,800 Parisian grains of water; Thenius, however, gives only 1014·39 Parisian, or 1124·67 Rhenish inches. (See my Archäologie, ii. 141-2.) =Chap. 17= v 1 Want of Water at Rephidim. - Exo 17:1. On leaving the desert of Sin, the Israelites came למסעיהם, “according to their journeys,” i.e., in several marches performed with encampings and departures, to Rephidim, at Horeb, where they found no water. According to Num 33:12-14, they encamped twice between the desert of Sin and Rephidim, viz., at Dofkah and Alush. The situation of Rephidim may be determined with tolerable certainty, partly from Exo 17:6 as compared with Exo 18:5, which shows that it is to be sought for at Horeb, and partly from the fact, that the Israelites reached the desert of Sinai, after leaving Rephidim, in a single day's march (Exo 19:2). As the only way from Debbet er Ramleh to Horeb or Sinai, through which a whole nation could pass, lies through the large valley of es-Sheikh, Rephidim must be sought for at the point where this valley opens into the broad plain of er Rahah; and not in the defile with Moses' seat (Jokad Seidna Musa) in it, which is a day's journey from the foot of Sinai, or five hours from the point at which the Sheikh valley opens into the plain or er Rahah, or the plain of Szueir or Suweiri, because this plain is so far from Sinai, that the Israelites could not possibly have travelled thence to the desert of Sinai in a single day; nor yet at the fountain of Abu Suweirah, which is three hours to the north of Sinai (Strauss, p. 131), for the Sheikh valley, which is only a quarter of a mile broad at this spot, and enclosed on both sides by tall cliffs (Robinson, i. 215), would not afford the requisite space for a whole nation; and the well found here, which though small is never dry (Robinson, i. 216), neither tallies with the want of water at Rephidim, nor stands “upon the rock at (in) Horeb,” so that it could be taken to be the spring opened by Moses. The distance from Wady Nasb (in the desert of Sin) to the point at which the upper Sinai road reaches the Wady es Sheikh is about 15 hours (Robinson, vol. iii. app.), and the distance thence to the plain of