Jeshimon

Jesh’imon. (a wilderness). A name which occurs in Num 21:20 and Num 23:28, in designating the position of Pisgah and Peor; both described as "facing the Jeshimon." Perhaps the dreary, barren waste of hills lying immediately, on the west of the Dead Sea.

Pisgah and Peor faced the Jeshimon, i.e. the waste; not merely midbar, "a common" rather than a desert (Num 21:20; Num 23:28). The desolate tract skirting the N. and N.W. coasts of the Dead Sea, between the Jordan mouth (near which was Beth-jeshimoth) and Engedi: consisting of chalky crumbling limestone rocks and a fiat covered with nitrous crust, into which the feet sink as in ashes; without vegetation except the hubeibeh, or alkali plant. The hill of HACHILAH was "S. of" or "before" Jeshimon (1Sa 23:19; 1Sa 26:1; 1Sa 26:3.) Eusebius says Jeshimon was ten miles S.of Jericho, near the Dead Sea. "The mid bar ("pastoral common") of Judah" stretched S. of Jeshimon from Engedi southward (Jos 15:61-62).

[Jeshi’mon]

Plain or desert seen from the tops of Pisgah and Peor. Num 21:20; Num 23:28. Perhaps the same as that mentioned in 1Sa 23:19; 1Sa 23:24; 1Sa 26:1; 1Sa 26:3. It was in the south, on the west of the Dead Sea. Some do not treat Jeshimon as a proper name, but translate it ’the waste’ in all places.

JESHIMON.—This word, derived from a Heb. root meaning ‘to be waste or desolate,’ is used either as a common noun (= ‘desert,’ ‘wilderness’) or (with the art., ‘the Jeshimon’) as a proper name (Num 21:20; Num 23:28, 1Sa 23:19; 1Sa 23:24; 1Sa 26:1; 1Sa 26:3). In the latter usage the reference is either to the waste country in the Jordan valley N. of the Dead Sea and east of the river (so apparently in Numbers), or to the eastern part of the hill-country of Judah on the western shore of the Dead Sea (Son 1:1-17 Samam.).

jḗ-shē´-mon, jesh´i-mon (הישׁימן, ha-y^eshı̄mōn, “the desert,” and in the Revised Version (British and American) so translated but in the King James Version, Num 21:20; Num 23:28; 1Sa 23:19, 1Sa 23:24; 1Sa 26:1, 1Sa 26:3, “Jeshimon” as a place-name. In Numbers, the Septuagint reads ἡ ἔρημος, hē érēmos, “the desert”; in 1 Samuel, the Septuagint reads Ἰεσσαιμόν, Iessaimón): In these passages probably two districts are referred to: (1) The “desert” North of the Dead Sea, which was overlooked from Pisgah (Num 21:20; Num 23:28). This is the bare and sterile land, saturated with salt, lying on each side of the Jordan North of the Dead Sea, where for miles practically no vegetable life can exist. (2) The sterile plateau West of the steep cliffs bordering the western shores of the Dead Sea. Here between the lower slopes of the Judean hills, where thousands of Bedouin live and herd their flocks, and the more fertile borders of the sea with their oases (‛Ain Feshkhah, ‛Ain Jidy, etc.), is a broad strip of utterly waterless land, the soft chalky hills of which are, for all but a few short weeks, destitute of practically any vegetation. The Hill of Hachilah was on the edge of this desert (1Sa 23:19; 1Sa 26:1, 1Sa 26:3), and the Arabah was to its south (1Sa 23:24). It is possible that the references in Numbers may also apply to this region.

#The word “Jeshimon” (y^eshı̄mōn) is often used as a common noun in referring to the desert of Sinai (Deu 32:10; Psa 78:40; Psa 106:14; Isa 43:19, etc.), and except in the first two of these references, when we have “wilderness,” it is always translated “desert.” Although used in 7 passages in poetical parallelism to midhbār, translated “wilderness,” it really means a much more hopeless place; in a midhbār animals can be pastured, but a y^eshı̄mōn is a desolate waste.