Lecture VI: The Wilderness
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.
From the Exodus begins the great period of the
life of Moses. On that night, he is described
as first taking the decisive lead. Up to that
point he and Aaron and Miriam appear almost on
an equality. But after that, Moses is usually men-
tioned alone. Aaron still held the second place, but
the character of interpreter to Moses which he had
borne in speaking with Pharaoh is withdrawn, and it
would seem as if Moses henceforth became altogether,
what hitherto he had only been in part, the Prophet
of the people. Miriam, too, though always holding
the independent position to which her age entitled
her, no more appears as lending her voice and song
to enforce her brother's prophetic power. Another
who occupies a place nearly equal to Aaron, though
we know but little of him, is Hur, of the tribe of
Judah, husband of Miriam, and grandfather of the
artist Bezaleel. The guide in regard to the route
through the wilderness was, as we shall see, Jethro:
the servant, occupying the same relation as Elisha
afterwards to Elijah, or Gehazi to Elisha, was the
youthful Hoshea, afterwards Joshua.
But Moses is incontestably the chief personage of
the whole history. In the narrative, the phrase
is constantly recurring, "The Lord spake unto
Moses," "Moses spake unto the children of
Israel." In the traditions of the desert, whether
late or early, his name predominates over that of
every one else: "The Wells of Moses" on the shores
of the Red Sea, "The Mountain of Moses" (Jebel
Mûsa) near the convent of S. Catherine, "The Ravine
of Moses" (Shuk Mûsa) at Mount S. Catherine, "The
Valley of Moses" (Wady Mûsa) at Petra. "The Books
of Moses" are so called (as afterwards the Books
of Samuel), in all probability, from his being the
chief subject of them. The very word "Mosaic" has
been in later times applied, in a sense not used of
any other saint of the Old Testament, to the whole
religion of which he was the expounder.
It has sometimes been attempted to reduce this
great character into a mere passive instrument of the
Divine Will, as though he had himself borne no con-
scious part in the actions in which he figures, or the
messages which he delivers. This, however, is as in-
compatible with the general tenor of the Scriptural
account, as it is with the common language in which
he has been described by the Church in all ages.
The frequent addresses of the Divinity to him no
more contravene his personal activity and intelligence,
than in the case of Elijah, Isaiah, or S. Paul. In the
New Testament the legislation of the Jews is expressly
ascribed to him. "Moses gave you circumcision."
"Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suf-
fered you." "Did not Moses give you the law?"
Moses "accuseth you." S. Paul goes so far as to
speak of him as the founder of the Jewish religion:
"They were all baptized unto Moses." He is con-
stantly called "a Prophet." In the ancient language
both of Jews and Christians, he was known as "the
great Lawgiver," "the great Theologian," "the great
Statesman." He must be considered, like all the
saints and heroes of the Bible, as a man of marvel-
lous gifts, raised up by Divine Providence for the
highest purpose to which men could be called; and
so, in a lesser degree, his name has been applied in
later times: Ulfilas was called after him the Moses
of the Goths; Arpad, the Moses of the Hungarians;
Benedict, the Moses of the Monastic Orders.
The union of the Leader and the Prophet was such
as eastern religion has always admitted more easily
than Western. Mahomet, Abd-el-kader, Schamyl, are
all illustrations of its possibility. But, amongst the
heroes and saints of the true religion, no such union
occurs again after Moses. This double career may be
divided into three parts: the approach by Rephidim
to Sinai; the stay at Sinai; the march from Sinai to
Palestine to Kadesh and by Moab. In the first and
third of these he appears chiefly as the Leaer; in
the second, as the Prophet. Whatever is to be said
on minute matters of topography has been said else-
where; and, with regard to all the details of the
Israelite journey, there are many reasons why we
should be content to remain in suspense for the pres-
ent. Long as the desert of Sinai has been known to
Christian pilgrims, yet it may almost be said never to
have been explored before the beginning of this cen-
tury. We are still at the threshold of our knowledge
concerning it. The older travellers never troubled
themselves to compare the general features of the
desert with the indications of the Sacred narrative,
and therefore they usually missed the cardi-
nal points of dispute. A signal instance of
this may be seen in the travels of Pockocke, Professor
of Hebrew at Oxford in the seventeenth century, who,
taking with him all the Oriental learning which that
office implies, yet gives an account of the Sinaitic des-
ert, such as entirely conceals from us the very localities
which are most important for the whole comparison
of the history and geography. He says nothing of
the plain at the foot of one of the claimants to the
name of Sinai; he says nothing of the commanding
mountain which from the earliest times has been the
other claimant. He went through the sacred locali-
ties with his eyes closed to the impressions which all
now see to be most important and most significant.
We are still therefore in the condition of discoverers,
and if we are thus compelled to abstain from positive
conclusions, it is a suspense which we need not be
afraid to avow, and which in this instance is the less
inconvenient, because the very uniformity of nature
by which it is occasioned also enables us to form an
image of the general scenes, even where the particu-
lar scene is unknown; and many will feel at a dis-
tance, what many, I doubt not, have felt on the spot,
that, in speaking of such sacred events, uncertainty
is the best safeguard for reverence; and suspense as
to the exact details of form and locality is the most
fitting approach for the consideration of the presence
of Him who has "made darkness His secret place, His
pavilion round about Him with dark water, and thick
clouds to cover them."
1. In the flight from Egypt, the people of Israel
disappear once more from the view of the Gentile
world. The notices, scanty as they were, which we
have of their earlier history, almost entirely cease on
their entrance into the desert. A solitary glimpse of
their wanderings, recorded by Tacitus, is all that has
penetrated into Pagan records. He relates how, in
the absence of water, they threw themselves on the
ground in despair, when a herd of wild asses guided
them to a rock overshadowed by palm-trees, where
Moses discovered for them a copious spring. A seven
days' journey brought them to Palestine; and the sab-
bath was instituted to commemorate their safe arri-
val within that period, as their deliverance from thirst
in the desert was commemorated by the erection of
the image of an ass in their most holy place. On
this scene the curtain falls, and, as far as the Western
world is concerned, it is no more lifted up, till Pom-
pey entered the Holy of Holies, and found, not as he
doubtless expected this strange memorial of the wil-
derness, but a "vacuam sedem, inania arcana."
To us, on the other hand, the history which fills
this space, and especially the earlier portion
of it, has become almost a part of our minds.
The onward march of the history, the suc-
cessive localities through which it takes us,
at least till the conquest of Canaan, are an epitome
of human life itself. The reaction which followed at
the Waters of Strife, upon the exultation of the Pas-
sage of the Red Sea, has been fitly described as the
likeness of the reaction which, from the days of Moses
downwards, has followed on every great national
emancipation, on every just an benevolent revolution;
when "the evils which it has caused are felt, and the
evils which it has removed are felt no longer."
The wilderness, as it intervenes between Egypt and
the Land of Promise, with all its dangers and conso-
lations, is, as Coleridge would have said, not allegori-
cal, but tautegorical, of the events which in almost
unconscious metaphor we designate by those figures.
It is startling, as we traverse it even to this day, to
feel that the hard stony track under our feet, the
springs to which we look forward at the end of our
day's march, the sense of contrast with what has been
and with what is to be, are the very materials out
of which the imagination of all ages has constructed
its idea of the journey of life.
But this period had a special bearing on the history
of Israel. It was their beginning as a people:
it was their conversion or their reconversion
to the true faith; it had all the faults and all the ex-
cellences which such a new start of life always pre-
sents. With all its faults and shortcomings, it was the
spring-time of their national existence. "I remember
thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine
espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilder-
ness, in a land that was not sown." "When Isreal
was a child, then I loved him." The Law, we are
told, was "a school-master to bring men to Christ."
"Mount Sinai in Arabia" is opposed, both in prepara-
tion and in contrast, to the heavenly and free Jerusa-
lem which is above. But, even in the earlier stages
of the history of the Jewish Church, the Law was a
school-master, and Mount Sinai was a school, for the
dispensation and for the possession even of the earthly
Jerusalem.
2. It is difficult, under the circumstances, to con-
ceive a fitter scene for a new revelation than
was the wilderness of Sinai to the Israelites.
They had left the land of Egypt: they had come out
of the house of bondage, into a land as different, into
a life as new, as it was possible to conceive. Instead
of the green valley of the one abundant, beneficent
river, where water and vegetation never failed, they
were in the great and terrible wilderness," where a
spring in each day's march, — the bitter waters of
the endless life and stir which ran through the teem-
ing population of Egypt, the song and dance and
feast; the armies passing through the hundred gates;
the flags and their brilliant colors flying from the
painted gateways; the king at the head of vast pro-
cessions with drum and cymbal, and the rattle of his
thousand chariots; there was the deep silence of the
desert broken by no echo of human voice. by no cry
of innumerable birds, by no sound of rushing waters,
broken only by the trumpet, which at early dawn
and fall of day roused the tribes from their slumbers,
or called them to their rest. For a time the Red Sea
was in sight. Once, after they had struck far into
the desert, the hills opened before them (we may be
allowed to dwell upon it as the most authentic spot
ascertainable in their wanderings), and the familiar
sea, their ancient enemy and their ancient friend,
burst with its flashing waters upon them, and they
encamped once more upon its shining beach; and
looked once more upon the distant range of the Afri-
can hills, the hills of the land of their captivity. It
was a moment, such as occurs from time to time in
the history of men and of nations to remind them
from what dangers and by what means they have es-
caped. Onwards they went, and the desert itself now
changed into vaster and stranger shapes than they
had ever known before. Here and there, it may be,
amongst the host, was an Israelite who had seen the
granite hills of Ethiopia; but taking them generally,
the ascent of these tremendous passes, the sight of
those towering peaks, must have been to them as the
awful retreats of Delphi to the invaders of Greece, as
the Alps to the invaders of Italy. Rumors of these
mysterious mountains no doubt had reached them even
in their house of bondage. "A three days' journey
into the desert to sacrifice to the Lord" was a pro-
posal not unfamiliar to the ears of Pharaoh: and, as
they now mounted into the higher region of that
desert, they would perceive traces that the Egyptians
had been there before them. Here they might see a
lonely hill, surrounded by ancient monuments, — sepul-
chres, temples, quarries, — unquestionably the work of
Egyptian hands. There they would see, in a retired
valley heiroglyphics carved deep in the soft sandstone
rock, extending back to the builder of the great
pyramid, whose figure can be traced here in the
desert cliffs, when it had perished everywhere in his
own tomb and country. But no report, no experience
of individuals, could have prepared them for the scene,
as it must have presented itself to a whole host (tak-
ing it at its largest or its smallest numbers) scaling
that fortress, that towering outpost of the Holy Land.
Staircase after staircase, formed by no human hand in
the side of the rocky walls, brought them (by what-
ever approach they came) into the loftier and still
loftier regions of the mountain platform. Well may
the Arab tribes suppose that these rocky ladders were
called forth by the rod of Moses, to help their upward
progress.
3. And now they approach the first great halting-
place, known by that special name Rephidim,
"the place of rest." We know not the spot with
certainty. yet of all localities hitherto imagined, that
which was believed to be so in the fifth century at
least answers the requirements well; — the beautiful
palm-grove, now and for many ages past called the
valley of Paran or Feiran.
At any rate some such spot is implied both by the
name and by the twofold encounter which here for the
first time occurs with the native tribes of the desert.
We are too much accustomed to think that the Pen-
insula of Sinai, when the Israelites passed through,
was entirely uninhabited. This, however, is not the
case even now, still less was it so then. Two main
steams of population at present occupy the pastures
of the wilderness, and two also appear at the time
of the Israelite migration. The first was the
great tribe of Amalek, ruled, as it would seem, by a
chief who bore the title of king, and the hereditary
name of Agag, — themselves a wide-spread clan, —
"first of nations;" and, like the feebler Bedouins
of modern days, extending their excursions far into
Palestine, and leaving their name, even before history
commences, on mountains in the centre of the coun-
try. This fierce tribe, occupying as it would seem
the whole north of the peninsula, were, as might natu-
rally be expected, the first to contest the entrance of
the new people. Wherever Rephidim may be,
it was evidently a place of sufficient impor-
tance to induce the Amalekites to defend it to the
uttermost. According to the account of Josephus, they
had gathered to this spot all the forces of the desert
tribes from Petra to the Mediterranean, and, accord-
ing to a portion of the Mosaic narrative, they began
the attack by harassing the rear of the Israelite host.
It is a scene of which the significance is indicated,
not so much by the description of the event itself,
as by its accompaniments and its consequences. The
battle is fought and won by the youthful warrior who
here appears for the first time, — Joshua, the Ephraim-
ite. But Moses is on "the hill," overlooking the fight;
he stands, in the Oriental attitude of prayer, his hands
stretched out, as if to draw down and receive bless-
ings from above. Beside him, holding up his arms
as they fail from weariness, are his brother and (if we
may trust Josephus) his brother-in-law, one whose
name occurs but seldom, yet always so as to show a
high importance beyond what we are actually told
concerning him, Hur, of the tribe of Judah, grand-
father of the builder of the tabernacle, husband of
the prophetess Miriam. The victory is gained; and
on the summit of the hill was erected a rude altar
named or inscribed by two words signifying "Jehovah
is my banner;" and a fragment of the hymn of
victory was transmitted through Joshua to after-ages,
probably in the book of the Wars of Jehovah, "As
the hand is on the throne of Jehovah, so there
shall be war between Jehovah and Amalek from
generation to generation." The situation well ac-
cords with the spot consecrated in Christian times as
the sanctuary of Paran. In the fifth century, a city,
a church, an episcopal palace, had gathered round it;
and pilgrims flocked to it in considerable numbers.
In the Jewish Church the memory of the first ene-
my of the Chosen People was long preserved; and
the slaughter which Joshua had begun was carried
out to extermination, first under Saul and then under
David. Its last trace appears in the offensive name
of "Agagite," applied to Haman in the book of Esther.
This was the first hostile encounter. Immediately
in connection with this we read of the friendly
encounter with that other tribe, which is here
frequently mentioned in the same close contact and
contrast with Amalek. On the shores, as it would
seem, of the Gulf of Akaba, dwelt the Kenites, a clan
of the vast tribe of Midian. We have already
seen its Chief or Priest, variously names Jethro or
Hobab (which in the form of Shouaib is his usual
Arab designation at the present day). Of all the
characters that come across us in this stage of their
history, he is the purest type of the Arabian chief.
In the sight of his numerous flocks feeding round the
well in Midian, in his courtesy to the stranger who
became at once his slave and his son-in-law, we seem
to be carried back to the days of Jacob and Laban.
And now the old chief, attracted from afar by the
tidings of his kinsman's fame finds him out in the
heart of the mountain of Sinai, "encamped by the
Mount of God." "I, Jethro, thy father-in-law, am
come unto thee, and thy wife, and her two sons
with her. And Moses went out to meet his father-
in-law, and did obeisance, and kissed him," — gave
the full Arab salutation on each side of the head, —
and they asked each other of their welfare," — the
burst of question and answer, which renders these
meetings so vociferous at first, rapidly subsiding into
total silence, as then, hand in hand, "they come into
the tent," and confer privately of what each really
wishes to know. He listens, and with his own priestly
sanctity acknowledges the greatness of his kinsman's
God; he officiates )if one may so say) like a second
Melchizedek, the High Priest of the Desert; "he took
a burnt offering and sacrifices for God; and Aaron
came," even Aaron the future priest of Israel, "and
all the elders of Israel, to eat bread," to join in the
solemn feast of thanksgiving, "with Moses' father-in-
law, before God." He is the first friend, the first
counsellor, the first guide, that we have met, since
they cut themselves off from the wisdom of Egypt,
and they hang upon his lips like children. He sees
Moses wearing himself away by undertaking labor
that is too heavy for him; and he suggests to him
the same subordination of rulers and judges, of elders
or sheiks, that still forms the constitution of the
Arabs of the peninsula; and "Moses hearkened to the
voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he had
said." And out of this simple arrangement sprang
the gradations that we trace long afterwards in the
constitution of the Hebrew commonwealth. "And
when he was to depart to his own land and to his
own kindred, Moses prayed him not to leave them;"
in the trackless desert, he, with his Bedouin instincts
and his knowledge of the wilderness, would "know
how they were to encamp, and would be to them
instead of eyes." The alliance so formed was never
broken. In subsequent ages, when Israel had long
since become a settled and civilized people, in their
own land, a stranger's eye would have at once dis-
cerned little groups of settlers here and there retain-
ing their Arabian customs, yet one with the masters
of the soil. In the caverns of Engedi, on the south-
ern front of Judah, the "children of the Kenite"
were to be seen dwelling among the people. The
valley opening down from the east to the Jordan,
opposite Jericho, still bears the name of Hobab. Far
in the north, by Kedesh-Naphtali, a grove of oaks
was called from the nomad encampment hard by,
"the oak of the loading of tents." It is the tent of
Heber the Kenite, whose wife Jael will make use of
the show of Arabian hospitality to slay the enemy
of Israel. In the streets of Jerusalem, during the final
siege, a band of wild Arabs will be seen, dwelling in
tents, drinking no wine. They are "the children of
Jehonadab the son of Rechab," "the Kenites that came
of Hemath the father of the house of Rechab."
4. Besides the dangers of the desert tribes, this
earlier stage of the wanderings also brings
out those natural difficulties of the desert
journey, which, through the guidance of Moses, were
to be overcome. It is not here intended to enter
upon the vexed question of the support of Israel in
the wilderness. There are two classes of readers to
whom it presents perplexity, — those who are dis-
posed to treat the whole as poetry rather than as
history, and those who have no scruple in inventing
miraculous inferences which have no foundation in
the sacred narrative. It concerns those who feel
the truth and soberness of the narrative too strongly to
venture on either of these expedients. They, be they
few or many, may be content to withold a hasty
judgement on points which the Scripture has left un-
determined, and to which the localities and the phe-
nomena of the desert give no certain clew. We can-
not repudiate altogether the existence of natural
causes , unless we go so far as to maintain that moun-
tains and palm-trees, quails and water, wind and
earthquake, were mere creations of the moment to
supply momentary wants; we cannot repudiate alto-
gether the intervention of a Providence, strange, un-
expected, and impressive, in the highest degree, unless
we are prepared to reject the whole story of the stay
in the wilderness.
In the case of each of the main supports of the
Israelites, there have been memorials preserved down
to our own time, of the hold acquired on the recol-
lections of the Jewish and the Christian Church. The
flowing of the water from the rock has been
localized in various forms by Arab traditions.
The isolated rock in the valley of the Leja, near
Mount S. Catherine, with the twelve mouths, or fis-
sures, for the twelve tribes, was pointed out as the
monument of the wonder at least as early as the
seventh century. The living streams of Feiran, of
Shuk Mûsa, of Wady Mûsa, have each been connected
with the event by the names bestowed upon them.
The Jewish tradition, to which the Apostle alludes,
amplified the simple statement in the Pentateuch to
the prodigious extent of supposing a rock or ball
water constantly accompanying them. The Christian
image, based upon this, passed on into the Catacombs,
where Peter, under the figure of Moses, strikes the
rock, from which he takes his name; and it has found
its final and most elevated application in one of the
greatest of English hymns, —
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hid myself in Thee."
The manna, in like manner, according to the Jew-
ish tradition of Josephus, and the belief of
the Arab tribes, and of the Greek Church of
the present day, is still found in the droppings from
the tamarisk bushes which abound in this part of the
desert. The more critical spirit of modern times has
been led to dwell on the distinction between the ex-
isting manna, and that described in the Book of Num-
bers; and the identification is further rendered pre-
carious by the insufficiency of the present supply in
the Desert of Sinai. It became afterwards a favorite
figure in Christian writing, to express the heavenly
sustenance of the soul, either in the Eucharist or in
our spiritual life generally. Of all the typical scenes
represented in the celebrated Ammergau Mystery,
none is more natural or touching, than that in which
the whole multitude of the Israelites, in every vari-
ety of age, sex, and character, appear looking up
with one ardent expectation to the downward flight
of the celestial food, fluttering over the hundreds of
upturned heads, according to that fanciful and child-
like but beautiful conception of the descent of the
manna. The historical origin of this sacred figure
was always carried back beyond Palestine to the
desert; a portion of it was laid up as a relic by the
Ark for this very purpose, "that they might see the
bread wherewith their fathers were fed in the wil-
derness." And a Christian poet has well caught,
in "The Song of the Manna-Gatherers," the freshness,
the monotony, and the transitional character of the
whole passage through the desert, and at the same
time has blended together the natural and the super-
natural in the union which is at once most Biblical
and most philosophical: —
"Comrades, haste! the tent's tall shading
Lies along the level sand,
Far and faint: the stars are fading
O'er the gleaming western strand,
Airs of mourning
Freshen the bleak burning land.
"Haste, or o'er the third hour glowing
With its eager thirst prevail,
O'er the moist pearls, bestrowing
Thymy slope and rushy vale.
. . . . .
"Comrades — what our sires have told us,
Watch and wait, for it will come.
. . . . .
"Not by manna show'rs at morning
Shall our board be then supplied,
But a strange pale gold, adorning
Many a tufted mountain's side,
Yearly feed us,
Year by year our murmurings chide.
"There, no prophet's touch awaiting,
From each cool deep cavern start
Rills, that since their first creating
Ne'er have ceased to sing their part;
Oft we hear them
In our dreams, with thirsty heart."
-Keble's Lyra Innocentium.
from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. I : Abraham to Samuel,
Lecture VI: The Wilderness
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1879, pp. 148-164
Posted Jun 5, 2018, 12:32 AM UTC
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