The History of the Jews [by H H Milman]

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK III. THE DESERT. The March?Mount Sinai?Delivery of the Law?The Tabernacle- The Law. Thus free and triumphant, the whole people of Israel set forth upon their pilgrimage towards the promised land?a land described, in the most glowing language, as flowing with milk and honey. But at present anarid and...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK III. THE DESERT. The March?Mount Sinai?Delivery of the Law?The Tabernacle- The Law. Thus free and triumphant, the whole people of Israel set forth upon their pilgrimage towards the promised land?a land described, in the most glowing language, as flowing with milk and honey. But at present anarid and thirsty desert lay before them?long levels of sand, or uneven, stony ground broken by barren ridges of rugged mountains, with here and there a green spot where a few palm-trees overshadowed a spring of running water. Extraordinary as it may seem, we can almost trace their march, at least in its earlier stations; for while the face of cultivated countries and the manners of civilized nations are in a perpetual state of change, the desert and its inhabitants are alike unalterable. The same wild clans pitch their tents in the same valleys, where waters, which neither fail nor increase, give nourishment to about the same extent of vegetation. After three days' march through the wilderness of Shur, the Israelites reached the well of Marah, but here a grievous disappointment awaited them. As they rushed to slake their burning lips in the stream, they found it, unlike the soft and genial waters of the Nile, so bitter that it could not be drank. From Ajoun Mousa (the wells of Moses), near that part of the sea where Niebubr supposes that the passage was made, the observant and accurate Burckhardt travelled in 15 hours and a quarter (a good three days' march for a At the time when this work was written, the Peninsula of Sinai had not been investigated with the frequency, the careful observation, and the Biblical knowledge possessed by later travellers. My chief authorities were Delia Valle, Shaw, Pooocke, Mr. Fazakerley in Walpole's Travels, Nie- buhr, but more especially the ...