Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/607

 Deu 29:1). And whilst the general identity of Sinai and Horeb may be inferred from this; the fact, that wherever the intention of the writer is to give a precise and geographical description of the place where the law was given, the name Sinai is employed, leads to the conclusion that the term Horeb was more general and comprehensive than that of Sinai; in other words, that Horeb was the range of which Sinai was one particular mountain, which only came prominently out to view when Israel had arrived at the mount of legislation. This distinction between the two names, which Hengstenberg was the first to point out and establish (in his Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 325), is now generally admitted; so that the only room that is left for any difference of opinion is with reference to the extent of the Horeb range. There is no ground for supposing that the name Horeb includes the whole of the mountains in the Arabian peninsula. Sufficient justice is done to all the statements in the Bible, if we restrict this name to the southern and highest range of the central mountains-to the exclusion, therefore, of the Serbal group. This southern range, which Arabian geographers and the Bedouins call Jebel Tur or Jebel Tur Sina, consists of three summits: (1) a central one, called by the Arabs Jebel Musa (Moses' Mountain), and by Christians either Horeb or else Horeb-Sinai, in which case the northern and lower peak, or Ras es Sufsafeh, is called Horeb, and the southern and loftier one Sinai; (2) a western one, called Jebel Humr, with Mount Catherine on the south, the loftiest point in the whole range; and (3) an eastern one, called Jebel el Deir (Convent Mountain) or Episteme (vide Ritter, 14, pp. 527ff.). - Near this range there are two plains, which furnish space enough for a large encampment. One of these is the plain of er Rahah, on the north and north-west of Horeb-Sinai, with a level space of an English square mile, which is considerably enlarged by the Sheikh valley that opens into it from the east. At its southern extremity Horeb, with its granite rocks, runs almost precipitously to the height of 1200 or 1500 feet; and towards the west it is also shut in as with a wall by the equally precipitous spurs of