395

THE SEA OF REEDS: THE

What does the Hebrew yam-shp mean? and where was it? The rendering 'the sea of reeds', which latterly has become fashionable, depends upon the use of shp (reeds) in Exod. ii 3, 5 (E) of the reeds of the river Nile or of one of the streams of the Nile delta, and again in Isa. xix, 6, where the word qjndb (rushes) also is found. The rendering 'the Red Sea' goes back to LXX ? 00'cxocaaoc.According to LIDDELL and SCOTT, Greek-English Lexicon, this phrase was used by HERODOTUS to denote the Red Sea, the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean (I, 180, etc.), and similarly by PINDAR, Pytbian Odes 4, 448. Later, when the Greeks had discovered the Persian Gulf, the phrase included that also: XENOPHON, Cyropaedia, 8.6.10, and it could also be used vaguely of far-away, remote places. The phrase thus means 'the sea over there', as the speaker pointed vaguely in a southerly direction. It was a sea different from the virtually land-locked Medi- terranean Sea, though nobody knew how far it extended. It was the sea at the end of the land. The LXX translators may well have under- stood s£p to mean, not 'reeds', but 'end', equalling or perhaps reading sip. One curious factor is how rarely the Hebrew Text says that the crossed the yam-sup. According to the P-itinerary (Num. xxxiii) they crossed 'in the midst of the sea' (verse 8), but it was much later (verse 10) when they arrived beside the yam-sup and pitched camp beside it. According to P, the Israelites marched out east through Rameses and Succoth to Etham on the edge of the wilderness, but they then turned back to Pi-hahiroth which is east of Baal-zephon. These sites have not been firmly identified, but the turning movement seems to have brought them back to the west of the Bitter Lakes, through which the modern Suez Canal runs. This is how they came

Für eine genaue Lokalisierung des angezeigten Elam in der sudl. Wüste gibt es leider sehr wenig Anhaltspunkte. Wenn in 1 Sam. xv 7 statt wirklich zu lesen ist, müßte es südlich von Telam gesucht werden, das aber selbst nicht lokalisiert werden kann bis darauf, daß es wahrscheinlich einen äußersten Südpunkt des judäischen Gebiets darstellte (vgl. o. WELLHAUSENz.St.) und daß es eher östlich als westlich von Beerseba zu suchen ist, vgl. M. NOTH, Das Buch Joshua, 2. Aufl. (1953) p. 93 f. Ist ferner die Rekonstruktion der alten Erzählung von Gen. xiv richtig, so müßte es in der Richtung zwischen der �en-elkd �r�t (Kades) und Engedi (bzw. Hazazon Thamar), also wohl ostnordöstl. von Kades gesucht werden, da die Amalekiter wahrscheinlich nordöstl. von Kades im Negeb wohnten Num. xiii 26. 29, xiv 25 und Gen. xiv 6 f. und Elam dann am ehesten in der bergigen Landschaft südl. davon suchen ist. 396 to be trapped by the pursuing Egyptians. If they had gone straight on east from Etham, they would have escaped safely, and could have followed the caravan route to Beersheba. See GROLLENBERG, Atlas of the Bible (Eng. ed.) map. 9, p. 44. This was not the coast route, 'the way of the land of the Philistines' which went through Raphia and Gaza, but another route 10-15 miles south of it. After they had crossed 'the sea', they marched for three days into the wilderness of Etham, passed through and Elim, and thence onwards to the shore of the yam-sup, where they pitched camp. After that they marched on into the , but there is nothing here about crossing the yam-sûp. Apparently the sea which the Israelites crossed was somewhere by the Bitter Lakes, and the yam-sûp mentioned here is the Gulf of Suez. Exod. xiv is said to be a narrative interwoven with strands from J, E and P. Once again a sea is crossed, but it is not calledyam-s4p, and strangely, it was an east wind which drove the waters back and turned the sea into dry land (verse 21). Once again, in Exod. xv 19-21 it was 'the sea' which the Israelites crossed. In Exod. xv 22 it is said that Moses led the people on from theyam-sfip into the wilderness of Shur, and on through Marah and Elim into the wilderness of Sin. It is here that the complications begin, because according to Num. xxxiii (P), 'the sea' was before Marah and the yam-sûp between Elim and the wilderness of Sin. But it is not said that the Israelites crossed the yam-sirp. Exod. xiii 17-18 says that God did not guide the people along the caravan route, but that he led them round through the wilderness so that they would avoid any fighting, and this journey involved them going towards the yam-sûp. This could mean the Gulf of Suez or the Gulf of Akaba; it means to the south in an indefinite way. The same indefinite south is involved in Exod. xxii 31, where the south-north extent of the Promised Land is from the yam-sup to 'the sea of the Philistines', i.e. the Mediterranean Exod. x 19 says that God turned a strong westerly gale and it then carried the locusts away and blew them into the yam-sup. This is difficult. Was it a westerly gale before He turned it, or after He turned it? In any case, theyam-sfip here apparently means the Gulf of Suez. Num. xxi 4 is held to be from the E-tradition-apart, that is, from the reference to Mount Hor, which is P. They set out by the yam-sirp route so as to go round the land of Edom. This means that they set out south from Mount Hor, which was ESE of Kadesh, along the