Deuteronomy 1:46

So ye abode in Ḳadesh So JE, Numbers 20:1 b, but apparently of a later residence than this.

many days, according unto the days that ye abodethere] -An example of the "idem per idem" idiom often employed in the Semitic languages, when a writer is either unable or has no occasion to speak explicitly" (Driver). Cp. Deuteronomy 9:25; Deuteronomy 29:16 [15]; 1 Samuel 23:13, etc.

If this verse be from the writer of the rest of this discourse the time implied cannot, in the light of his further statements in Deuteronomy 2:1; Deuteronomy 2:14, amount to years; for the 2nd of the 40 years was already either wholly or nearly exhausted and these verses state that all the next 38 were spent between Ḳadesh and the Moabite frontier. But as we shall see in the introd. to the next section JE attributes to the people a very long residence in Ḳadesh, in fact the bulk of the 38 years. Probably, therefore, the indefinite statement of this verse is not from the writer of the rest of this discourse, but from an editor aware of the divergent traditions; in further evidence of which observe that he uses the simple Ḳadesh instead of the Ḳadesh-barnea- employed in the rest of the discourse.