Joshua 15:61-63

Cities in the Wilderness

This section relates to the cities in "the Wilderness" between the Mountain and the Dead Sea, and includes one Group of six cities:

1. Beth-arabah, see above, Joshua 15:6; Joshua 2. Middin; 3. Secacah; 4. Nibshan, sites unknown, places not mentioned elsewhere; 5. The city of Salt, "Civitas Salis," Vulgate, probably near the Valley of Salt, at the southern end of the Dead Sea, where the Edomites suffered several defeats (2Sa 8:13; 2 Kings 14:7; 1 Chronicles 18:12); 6. En-gedi, "the spring of the wild goat" or "gazelle," from the numerous ibexes or Syrian chamois which inhabit these cliffs, now Ain Jidy. "Here," remarks Canon Tristram, "a copious warm fresh spring bursts forth amidst an oasis of tropical vegetation. Here that quaint asclepiad the osher, the jujube, the beautiful parasite Lonicera indica, and a host of strange semi-tropical plants send our botanist into an ecstacy of delight." Land of Moab, p. 27. "Relics of its grove of palms (whence its name Hazazon Tamar = "the felling of palm-trees") "are still to be seen, in the trunks of palms washed up on the shores of the Dead Sea, preserved by the salt with which a long submersion in those strange waters has impregnated them." Stanley's S. and P., p. 144. Here (a) the settlements of the Amorites were attacked by the army of Chedorlaomer (Genesis 14:7), immediately before its descent into the plain, and final victory over the five kings; here (b) the Kenites had their "nest" in the cliff (Numbers 24:21); here (c) David took refuge from the pursuit of Saul (1 Samuel 24:1); here (d) the solitary sect of the Essenes had their chief seat." See Stanley, S. and P., pp. 295, 296.

In the wilderness The wilderness of Judæa. "A true wilderness it is, but no desert, with the sides of the limestone ranges clad with no shrubs larger than a sage or a thyme brown and bare on all the southern and western faces, where the late rains had not yet restored the life burnt out by the summer's sun, but with a slight carpeting of tender green already springing up on their northern sides. Not a human habitation, not a sign of life, meets the eye for twenty miles; and yet there seems no reason why, for pasturage at least, the country might not be largely available. But there are no traces of the terraces which furrow the hills of the rest of Palestine; and one small herd of long-eared black goats were all we saw till we reached the plains of Jericho." Tristram's Land of Israel, p. 197.