ISRAEL AT SINAI,—PREPARATIONS FOR THE GIVING OF THE LAND.
EXPOSITION
THE JOURNEY TO MOUNT SINAI. From Rephidim in the Wady Feiran, where they had discomfited Amalek (Exodus 17:8-13), the Israelites moved towards Sinai, probably by the two passes known as Wady Solar and Wady-esh-Sheikh, which gradually converge and meet at the entrance to the plain of Er-Rahah. This plain is generally allowed to be "the Desert of Sinai." It is "two miles long, and half-a-mile broad", nearly flat, and dotted with tamarisk bushes. The mountains which enclose it have for the most part sloping sides, and form a sort of natural amphitheatre. The plain abuts at its south-eastern extremity on abrupt cliffs of granite rock rising from it nearly perpendicularly, and known as the Ras Sufsafeh. "That such a plain should exist at all in front of such a cliff is," as Dean Stanley well remarks, "so remarkable a coincidence with the sacred narrative, as to furnish a strong internal argument, not merely of its identity with the scene, but of the scene itself having been described by an eye-witness". All the surroundings are such as exactly suit the narrative. "The awful and lengthened approach, as to some natural sanctuary, would have been the fittest preparation for the coming scene. The low line of alluvial mounds at the foot of the cliff exactly answers to the 'bounds' which were to keep the people off front 'touching the mount.' The plain itself is not broken and uneven and narrowly shut in, like almost all others in the range, but presents a long retiring sweep, against which the people could 'remove and stand afar off' The cliff, rising like a huge altar, in front of the whole congregation, and visible against the sky in lonely grandeur from end to end of the whole plain, is the very image of the mount that might be touched, and from which the voice of God might be heard far and wide over the plain below, widened at that point to its utmost extent by the confluence of all the contiguous valleys. Here, beyond all other parts of the peninsula, is the adytum, withdrawn as if in the end 'of the world,' from all the stir and confusion of earthly things". As an eminent engineer has observed—"No spot in the world can be pointed out which combines in a more remarkable manner the conditions of a commanding height and of a plain in every part of which the sights and sounds described in Exodus would reach an assembled multitude of more than two million souls." Here then, we may well say, in the words used by the most recent of scientific explorers, "was the scene of the giving of the law. From Ras Sufsafeh the law was proclaimed to the children of Israel, assembled in the plains of Er Rahah".