Deuteronomy 1:2

There are eleven days' journey from Horeb, by the way of Mount Seir, to Kadeshbarnea.

(There are eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadesh-barnea.) (There are eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadesh-barnea), (see the notes at

This is added to show that the reason why the Israelites in so many years were advanced no further from Horeb than to these plains, was not the great distance of the places or length of the way, which was but a journey of eleven days at most, but because of their rebellions, as is mentioned before and repeated in this book. Horeb, or Sinai, the place where the law was given, which is promiscuously called by both those names. Mount Seir, or Mount Edom, i.e. the mountainous country of Seir, which was first possessed by the Horims, and afterwards by the Edomites, . Kadesh-barnea was not far from the borders of Canaan. See .

Deuteronomy 1:2 ([There are] eleven days’ [journey] from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadeshbarnea.) Ver. 2. There are eleven days’ journey.] So many days’ march for a foot army. But Philo the Jew saith a horseman might despatch it in three days. Triduo confici potuit.

(2) Eleven days’ journey from Horeb . . .—In our English Version this verse forms a separate sentence; but there seems nothing to prevent our taking it as completing the first verse. The route between Paran on the one side and the line from Tophel to Hazeroth on the other is still further defined as “a distance of eleven days’ journey from Horeb in the direction of Mount Seir, reaching to Kadesh-barnea.” The position of this last place is not yet determined with certainty. But the requirements of the text seem, upon the whole, to demand that it should be placed high up in the wilderness of Paran, not far from the border of the wilderness of Zin. It must be close to some passage out of the wilderness of Zin into the Negeb, or south of Judah. Kadesh-barnea.—In the regular narrative of the exodus we read of the place to which the twelve spies returned as Kadesh (Numbers 13:26), and of the place at which the period of unrecorded wandering closed (Numbers 20:1), in the first month of the fortieth year, as Kadesh. The name Kadesh-barnea first appears in Moses’ speech (Numbers 32:8), where he refers to the sending of the twelve spies. And with the exception of three places where the name is used in describing boundaries, Kadesh -harnea is always found in speeches. This first chapter of Deuteronomy is the only one which contains the name both with and without the appendage -barnea, which connects it with the wanderings of Israel (Deuteronomy 1:32). Upon the whole, it seems most likely that only one place or district is intended by the name. We have now obtained the following view of this first short introduction to the Book of Deuteronomy. It consists of words spoken (in the first instance) to all Israel on their march from Sinai to Kadesh-barnea. But the following verses show that the Law was further “declared” to Israel in the plains of Moab, at the close of the fortieth year of the exodus and of Moses’ life. It does not seem possible for us to separate entirely what was spoken earlier from what was declared later. In several places we have the record of words spoken: for example, in this very chapter (Deuteronomy 1:9; Deuteronomy 1:16; Deuteronomy 1:18; Deuteronomy 1:20; Deuteronomy 1:29; Deuteronomy 1:43), and Deuteronomy 5:5, &c. And the very name Deuteronomy implies the repetition of a law previously given. Further, the exhortations contained in this book are all enforced by the immediate prospect of going over Jordan and entering the promised land. But when Israel marched from Sinai to Kadesh-barnea, it was with this very same prospect full in view. It does not appear, by what Moses “said” at that time (Deuteronomy 1:20), that he had any thought of their turning away from the enterprise. But if so, what supposition is more natural than this—that he delivered the same kind of exhortations in the course of that earlier journey which he afterwards delivered in the plains of Moab?

Verse 2. There are eleven days' journey] The Israelites were eleven days in going from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea, where they were near the verge of the promised land; after which they were thirty-eight years wandering up and down in the vicinity of this place, not being permitted, because of their rebellions, to enter into the promised rest, though they were the whole of that time within a few miles of the land of Canaan!

2. It is eleven days’, etc.] The distance from the accepted position of Ḥ ?oreb-Sinai to that of Ḳ ?adesh, ‘Ain Ḳ ?udeis, is ‘10 or 11 days of common camel-riding’ (C. Trumbull K. B. 71, 215): caravans with children and flocks, like Israel’s, would of course take longer. Horeb] Always in E, and Deut., as in 1 Kings 19 and Malachi, the name of the Mt of the Lawgiving, for which J and P have Sinai. The attempt has been made to interpret the two names as of different sites; but the Biblical evidence for their identity is clear; as even so early a scholar as Jerome perceived (Onom. Sacr. ed. Lagarde, 146). This matter as well as the questions of the position of Sinai-Ḥ ?oreb (as between Jebel Musa and Jebel Serbal and between the Sinaitic Peninsula as a whole and the E. coast of the Gulf of ‘Aḳ ?abah or Mt Se‘ξr or the neighbourhood of Ḳ ?adesh) has already been exhaustively discussed in this series (Driver, Exod. pp. 18, 177–191). It is, therefore, unnecessary to say anything more here; except to recall that the question as between the Sinaitic Peninsula and some site farther N. appears to have been open in the time of the Crusades and of the Moslem geographers in the 14th century. Abu-l Fida c. 1321: ‘the position of Tur Sinβ is the subject of discussion. Some say it is the mountain near Ailah (at the head of the Gulf of ‘Aḳ ?abah) and others that it is a mountain in Syria’ (quoted by G. le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, 72 f.). The Chronicle d’Ernoui et Bernard le Trιsorier says, ‘Cel Mons Synai est entre le Mer Rouge et leCrac (Kerak).’ See further ZDPV xxxvii. 190 ff. by the way of mount Seir] Se‘ξr, the territory of Edom, lay W. as well as E. of the (Deuteronomy 1:44; cp. C. Trumbull K. B. 84 ff.; Buhl, Gesch. der Edomiter, 22 ff.); but Mt Se‘ξr is in Dt (Deuteronomy 2:1) and elsewhere (e.g. Genesis 14:6) the range E. of the ‘Arabah. Thus the way of Mt Se‘ξr would be the most easterly of the roads from the Sinai Peninsula to Ḳ ?adesh, which passes through the ‘Arabah. Further see Dillm. Kadesh-barnea] This form is peculiar to D, deuteronomic passages and P; elsewhere Ḳ ?adesh stands alone: and we have besides ‘En-Mishpaṭ ?, Well of Judgement (Genesis 14:7), and Meribath-ḳ ?adesh (see on Deuteronomy 33:2). The accepted site, visited first by Seetzen in 1807, then by Rowlands in 1842 (Williams, Holy City, i. 464 ff.), and described and argued for by Trumbull (Kad. Barn.), is the neighbourhood of the ‘Ain Ḳ ?udeis (Seetzen’s and Rowlands’ spelling, confirmed by Musil) about 80 km. S.S.W. of Be’er-sheba‘, but the name must have covered the still more fertile ‘Ain Ḳ ?adeyrβt and the ‘A. Ḳ ?aseymeh. Musil, who visited ‘Ain Ḳ ?udeis thrice, doubts its identity with Ḳ ?adesh (Edom i.

, Deuteronomy 1:1-5. 1, 2. These verses form a connexion between this and the preceding books. These… words… Moses spake — Referring, not to the discourses in this book, but to the laws and regulations heretofore recorded.