In the catalogue of the Stations of the Exodus given in Numbers 33, the Thirty-Third Station is called Kadesh. The locality of this place is still a matter of keen scholarly debate. This Kadesh is usually thought to be the same as the similarly named Kadesh-Barnea, which is mentioned in Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua.
Today, the most popular candidate for the Biblical Kadesh is Tell el-Qudeirat in the northeast of the Sinai Peninsula, but over the years other sites have been proposed. Most notable among these are Petra in Jordan and Ein el-Qedeis, which is close to Tell el-Qudeirat. Some scholars still maintain the so-called two-site theory, according to which there were—in the context of the Exodus—two distinct places called Kadesh.
Biblical References
Kadesh is mentioned seventeen times in the Old Testament, and Kadesh-Barnea ten times, but only about half of these are relevant to the Exodus:
And they went and came to Moses, and to Aaron, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh; and brought back word unto them, and unto all the congregation, and shewed them the fruit of the land. (Numbers 13:26)
Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there ... And Moses sent messengers from Kadesh unto the king of Edom, Thus saith thy brother Israel, Thou knowest all the travail that hath befallen us ... And when we cried unto the Lord, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt: and, behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border ... And the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, journeyed from Kadesh, and came unto mount Hor. (Numbers 20:1, 14, 16, 22)
For ye [Moses and Aaron] rebelled against my commandment in the desert of Zin, in the strife of the congregation, to sanctify me at the water before their eyes: that is the water of Meribah in Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin. (Numbers 27:14
Thus did your fathers, when I sent them from Kadeshbarnea to see the land. (Numbers 32:8)
And they removed from Eziongaber, and pitched in the wilderness of Zin, which is Kadesh. And they removed from Kadesh, and pitched in mount Hor, in the edge of the land of Edom. (Numbers 33:36-37
Then your south quarter shall be from the wilderness of Zin along by the coast of Edom, and your south border shall be the outmost coast of the salt sea eastward: And your border shall turn from the south to the ascent of Akrabbim, and pass on to Zin: and the going forth thereof shall be from the south to Kadeshbarnea, and shall go on to Hazaraddar, and pass on to Azmon: And the border shall fetch a compass from Azmon unto the river of Egypt, and the goings out of it shall be at the sea. (Numbers 34:3-5)
These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red sea, between Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab. (There are eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadeshbarnea.) ... And when we departed from Horeb, we went through all that great and terrible wilderness, which ye saw by the way of the mountain of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded us; and we came to Kadeshbarnea ... So ye abode in Kadesh many days, according unto the days that ye abode there. (Deuteronomy 1:1-2, 19, 46)
And the space in which we came from Kadeshbarnea, until we were come over the brook Zered, was thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were wasted out from among the host, as the Lord sware unto them. (Deuteronomy 2:14)
Likewise when the Lord sent you from Kadeshbarnea, saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you; then ye rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and ye believed him not, nor hearkened to his voice. (Deuteronomy 9:23)
From these allusions, we learn that:
Kadesh was in the Wilderness of Paran and in the Wilderness of Zin. This could mean that Paran and Zin referred to the same desert, or to different parts of the same desert. Alternatively, it could mean that there were two places called Kadesh, one in Paran and one in Zin. Both of these hypotheses have had their supporters. In the preceding article in this series, I quoted Goethe, concerning the two deserts often encountered, Zin in the north, Paran in the south, and Kadesh in an oasis as a resting place between the two deserts. (Goethe 220).
Kadesh-Barnea was the same place as Kadesh in the Wilderness of Paran. This is clear from Numbers 32:8, in which Moses describes how he sent out spies from Kadesh-barnea to reconnoitre Canaan, and Numbers 13:26, in which we are told that the spies returned to Moses in Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran.
Kadesh lay close to the border of the Kingdom of Edom. The most direct route from Kadesh to Canaan would have taken the Israelites through Edom, but the King of Edom refused permission and the Israelites were obliged to reach the promised Land by a more circuitous route.
Kadesh lay close to Canaan, as it was from here that Moses sent out spies to reconnoitre the Promised Land.
Kadesh was a city. In Numbers 20:16, the word used is עיר (‘îr), Strong’s 5892:
This last point may be decisive when we try to pin down the location of Kadesh. Note, however, that the word ‘îr was also applied to a mere encampment or post.
Etymology
Unlike several of the Stations of the Exodus, Kadesh has a common Hebrew name with an undisputed meaning:
Kadesh was a sanctuary—a clean or holy place—in the desert. The form Kadesh-Barnea is of uncertain etymology, however. Strong derives it from roots meaning field and, in this context, to wander or to scatter:
I don’t find this very convincing. Other meanings have been suggested:
Not only does the name “Kadesh” (“Holy”) seem to have been gained by the abiding there of the tabernacle; but the cognomen “Barnea” is thought by many to have been given, in consequence of the sentence of dispersion there passed upon the Israelites. Simon would derive this word from bar “desert,” and nea “wandering;” rendering it, “Desert of the Wandering.” Fürst and others give a similar origin, but would take bar in its later signification of “son.” Jerome held this latter view, and rendered “Barnea” “Son of Change,” corresponding to the idea of “Bed’wy.” Others, again, think that “Barnea” was an earlier name for the locality; or, that it was the name of a prominent place in the neighborhood of Kadesh. Whatever may have been its signification, that name became subordinate to the name which memorialized the abiding there of God’s people with the sacred tabernacle. (Trumbull 24-25)
None of these speculations seem very helpful in identifying the site.
Location
In his classic study Kadesh-Barnea: Its Importance and Probable Site, Henry Clay Trumbull considers no less than eighteen candidates that have been put forward for the identification of the Kadesh of the Exodus. These he allocates to two broad groups:
Sites that lie to the west of the Arabah.
Sites that lie in or to the east of the Arabah.
The Arabah is the lowlying dry valley that runs from the southern end of the Dead Sea to the top of the Gulf of Aqaba.
Trumbull does not consider Petra a serious contender:
It is hardly necessary to follow out farther or more closely than this, the various suggested identifications of Kadesh ; or to multiply farther the names of those who have had a part in discussing the subject, or in influencing public opinion by a recorded vote in favor of one site or another. Yet the list would not be even fairly complete, without a mention of the noteworthy and remarkable proposal of Dean Stanley, to find the site of Kadesh in the Rock-City, Petra itself. It is quite needless to detail his nominal argument in favor of his suggestion; for it was rather the poetry of the idea than any cold reasoning on the subject that led him to carry the host of Israel directly into the stronghold of Edom and the sacred fortress of Mount Seir. In view of all that he has to say of the matter, the only wonder is that he will concede that the “present ruins are modern,” instead of boldly claiming that the great theatre itself was built expressly for the funeral services on the occasion of the death of Aaron. (Trumbull 228-229)
At the time of the Exodus, however, the capital city of the Kingdom of Edom was Bozrah, about 40 km north of Petra. There is no archaeological evidence of an Edomite presence in Petra prior to the 7th century BCE (mainstream chronology), or several centuries after the Exodus. At the time of the Exodus, the Kingdom of Edom was not as extensive as it became in later centuries. Petra could well have been described to the King of Edom as a city in the uttermost of thy border (Numbers 20:16). So there is nothing fundamentally objectionable to the claim that Petra was the Biblical Kadesh.
Can we rule out either of Trumbull’s two groups? Well, we know that the Israelites wished to pass through the Kingdom of Edom on their way from Kadesh to Canaan. Studying the map of Edom, however, I do not see how this could have been the case if Kadesh was located to the west of the Arabah—at Tell el-Qudeirat, for example. Canaan lies immediately to the north of this region, while Edom lies to the east. The Israelites would not have needed to enter Edom at all. In fact, Tell el-Qudeirat lies in southern Canaan:
And if Kadesh lay in the Arabah, or close to it, then the Israelites would have already violated the territory of Edom, which included most if not all of the Arabah in those days.
If, on the other hand, Kadesh lay well to the east of the Arabah—at Petra, for example—then the Biblical account would make perfect sense. The Israelites would have been just beyond the borders of Edom (as Petra had not yet been occupied by the Edomites at the time of the Exodus), but they would have had to cross Edom if they wished to invade Canaan by the shortest route.
What’s more, we are told that when the King of Edom refused the Israelites permission to pass through his territory, they were obliged to invade Canaan from Transjordan. Surely this proves that they were setting out from a location that lay to the east of Edom?
Steve Rudd
Independent researcher Steve Rudd has championed Petra as the true Kadesh. On his Bible Archeology website, he lays out several reasons why Kadesh can not be identified with Tell el-Qudeirat. Among these the following might be mentioned:
Tell el-Qudeirat is located 27 km inside the Promised Land.
The Israelites reached Kadesh by passing through Ezion-Geber.
Jerome and Eusebius identified Petra with Kadesh-Barnea, and Josephus identified Mount Hor (Aaron’s burial place) with a mountain close to Petra. According to Numbers 33, Mount Hor was the Thirty-Fourth Station of the Exodus, the one immediately after Kadesh.
El Qudeirat is a well-watered oasis, whereas the Israelites murmured at the lack of water at Kadesh. It was at Kadesh that Moses for the second time struck a rock to bring forth water.
Canaan can be entered from Tell el-Qudeirat without any need to enter Edom.
This last point, which I also made above, is, in my opinion, the decisive blow against not only Tell el-Qudeirat but all the sites in Trumbull’s western group of candidates. Rudd’s full case in favour of Petra can be read here.
From Hazeroth to Petra
As the crow flies, Petra lies about 200 km from ‘Ain el-Hudhera, the spring in eastern Sinai that we have identified as Hazeroth, the Fourteenth Station of the Exodus. If the Israelites were covering 24-32 km per day (Hoffmeier 120), then the journey from Hazeroth to Petra could hardly have taken them much more than a week or so. This falls well short of the nineteen days implied by the Catalogue of Stations in Numbers 33, which lists eighteen stations between Hazeroth and Kadesh. (The situation is no better if Kadesh is identified with Tell el-Qudeirat, which lies even closer to ‘Ain el-Hudhera.)
Note that the eleven days from Horeb (the Mountain of God) to Kadesh, as reported in Deuteronomy 1:2, accord well with our identification of Serabit el-Khadim with Horeb. It took the Israelites four days to go from Horeb to Hazeroth (Numbers 10:33, 11:35), and seven days would have been sufficient to reach Petra from Hazeroth.
Note also that the Thirty-Second Station, the one immediately before Kadesh, is Ezion-Geber. This well-known place lay at the northern extremity of the Gulf of Aqaba, a mere 80 km from ‘Ain el-Hudhera. Is it credible that the Israelites would have halted seventeen times between these two places? And none of the sites commonly identified with Kadesh could have been reached from Ezion-Geber in a single day. Petra lies about 100 km from Ezion-Geber, and Tell el-Qudeirat even further.
It seems to my mind that Goethe was right after all when he speculated that the eighteen Stations listed in Numbers 33 between Hazeroth and Kadesh were fictitious. They were only added to the original list after it came to be commonly believed that the Israelites spent a further thirty-eight years wandering in the wilderness before they were finally permitted to enter the Promised Land. Goethe believed that the Israelites only spent two years or so on the Exodus, proceeding straight to the invasion of Canaan shortly after they arrived in Kadesh for the first and only time. He even speculated that the final number of Stations (omitting the first and last, as these were merely the endpoints of the journey) was carefully arrange to be forty in order to match the number of years the Israelites supposedly spent wandering in the wilderness.
It is possible, however, that seven or eight genuine Stations—two or three before Ezion-Geber and a few after it—have been lost, as the Israelites must have encamped about half-a-dozen times between Hazeroth and Kadesh. But whether these correspond to any of Goethe’s feigned stations it is now impossible to know.
Conclusion
Kadesh, the Thirty-Third Station of the Exodus, was located at Petra. The Israelites probably journeyed from Hazeroth (‘Ain el-Hudhera) to Kadesh via Ezion-Geber, skirting the Kingdom of Edom but not entering it.
To be continued ...
References
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Israel in der Wüste, Noten und Abhandlungen zu besserem Verständnis des west-östlichen Divans, West-östlicher Divan, in Erich Trunz (editor), Goethes Werke, Band 2, Fifth Edition, Christian Wegner Verlag, Hamburg (1960)
- James K Hoffmeier, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2005)
- Charles Leonard Irby & James Mangles, Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria and Asia Minor: During the Years 1817 & 1818, T White & Co, London (1823)
- Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Sinai and Palestine in Connection with their History, A C Armstrong & Son, New York (1894)
- James Strong, Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, in The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Eaton & Mains, New York (1890)
- Henry Clay Trumbull, Kadesh-Barnea: Its Importance and Probable Site, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York (1884)
Image Credits
- Tell el-Qudeirat: © H J Bruins (photographer), Fair Use
- Petra: © xorge, Creative Commons License
- Trumbull’s Map of the Negeb: Pennsylvania State University. Special Collections Library, Creative Commons License
- The Kingdom of Edom: M Celle (designer), Alexander Jones (General Editor), The Jerusalem Bible: Reader’s Edition, Doubleday & Company Inc, Garden City NY (1968), Fair Use
- Street of Façades, Petra: © Dennis Jarvis, Creative Commons License
- Ground Plan of Petra: Charles Leonard Irby & James Mangles, Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria and Asia Minor: During the Years 1817 & 1818, p 418, Public Domain
