Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III:

 

Let me respond to your second point first.

 

1.  You wrote:  “If you would read the entire passage of Numbers 21:33-35, then you would have found that 21:34 answered the question,  "The LORD said to Moses, 'Do not be afraid of him, for I have handed him over to you, with his whole army and his land (my emphasis). Do to him what you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon.' "  This indicated that permission had been granted by the LORD. God was giving the land to them for Og's aggression against the Israelites. Nothing new there since that is what happens when one goes to war against another foe and loses. ‘To the winner goes the spoils.’ "

 

I agree that YHWH authorized the Israelites to live in Bashan in the northern Transjordan.  That is further backed up at Joshua 13: 29-30, where it is effectively confirmed that YHWH approves Moses’ action of conquering Bashan and giving it to the half-tribe of Manasseh.

 

But note the key first half of Numbers 21: 33:  “And they turned and went up by the way of Bashan….”  Why?  Bashan was not on the route of the Conquest, nor was Bashan part of the originally Promised Land of Canaan.  So why was it then that the Israelites, per Moses’ direction:  “turned and went up by the way of Bashan”?  That’s the big question.  Whereas King Sihon’s Gilead was on the route of the Conquest, so King Sihon had to be dealt with, why did Moses then lead the Israelites further north all the way up to Bashan?

 

The answer, in my opinion, is that Moses had been east of the Sea of Galilee, being about 100 miles south of historical Mitanni/MDYN, when he saw the burning bush and YHWH told Moses to “serve God” upon “this mountain”.  In order to be able to “serve God” on an ongoing basis east of the Sea of Galilee, near the city of Ashtaroth, at the “desert”/XRB mountain Jabal al-Druze, Moses needed to conquer Bashan.  So he did. 

 

The whole sequence makes perfect sense if MDYN = Mitanni.

 

2.  You wrote:  “Midian is NOT Mitanni.  So do not go there.”

 

What Biblical text would you cite in support of that proposition?  We have been looking in some detail at Exodus 3: 1 and Exodus 3: 12, both of which make better sense if Biblical “Midian”/MDYN = historical Mitanni.

 

I am very interested in looking at any Biblical text that would undercut my view that Biblical “Midian”/MDYN = historical Mitanni, in Late Bronze Age eastern Syria.

 

3.  You wrote:  “Furthermore, the Midianites, being nomadic people, would move over vast areas of land to maintain their flocks.”

 

But there’s no way that Moses would drive his father-in-law’s flock out of northwest Arabia and traverse 100 miles of terrible terrain into the heart of southern Sinai.  Here’s a quick glimpse at how awful the terrain is in the general vicinity of Mt. Sinai, in the interior of south Sinai, to the point that Moses would never have driven his father-in-law’s flock out of Jethro’s homeland into and over such treacherous and life-threatening terrain:

 

“Sometimes, because it is such an alien landscape, it appears that a large meteorite must have fallen out of the sky and lodged itself between Africa and Asia to form the Sinai.  …[T]he Sinai, perhaps even more so in its mountainous southern interior [where Mt. Sinai is located], is also a desert.  This is a very dry region, which receives almost no rainfall.  …[S]pecifically within the mountains themselves, the landscape is particularly barren.  Visitors to the Sinai have a difficult time imagining that any form of life could exist here….”  Jimmy Dunn, “A Survey of Egypt, Part XI:  The Southern Sinai Interior”.  http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/survey11.htm

   

By contrast, it would be sensible for Moses to lead Jethro’s flock 100 miles south of MDYN/Mitanni through steppeland, ending at the far northeast corner of Bashan, east of the Sea of Galilee, to the “desert”/XRB mountain Jabal al-Druze..

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois