KADESH and KADESH -BARNEA (t77j,?, Holy ' or Holy - places ;' Yr: tj:Ir) ; Kcitins, Icci572s Baptql; Caa'es, Cades-barne). This ancient place has given rise to much controversy. Some maintain that Kadesh and Kadesh-barnea are dif ferent places, and that even the single name Kadesh is not always applied in Scripture to the same place. One Kadesh, they say, was situated in the wilder ness of Paran, and is mentioned in Num. xiii. 26 ; another in the wilderness of Zin, mentioned in Num. xx. and xxxiii. 36 ; and the former is identical with Kadesh-Barnea (Num. xxxii. 8), from which the spies were sent out (Wells's Geo ,raphy of the O. T., i. 274 ; Reland, Pa/. p. r5). The site of Kadesh, too, has been disputed by those who admit that there is only one place of that name. Mr. Rowlands, who is followed by Williams (1-loly City,i. 465, seq., 2d ed.) and Pro fessor Tuch (Zeitschr. der Morgenl. Gesellsch. 179), locates it in the midst of the desert of Til), about forty-five miles south of Beersheba. Ile was evidently misled, however, by a fancied re semblance in names (see Bibliotheca Sacra for May 1849, I/ 377, seq.) Raumer places it at Ain Hasb, in the Arabah, twenty miles south of the Dead Sea (see Keil on 20sh. x. 4.1); Robinson at Ain el IVeibeh (B. R. ii. 195); and Stanley at Petra (S. and P., p. 95 ; .2ewish Church, p. iSo). The points at issue will be best solved by a careful examina tion of the topo,graphical notices of Kadesh given in the Bible. The identification of Kadesh is highly important in a geographical point of view, as it enables us to trace with considerable exactness the routes of the Israelites. Next to Sinai it was un questionably the most important stag,e in their journeyings, and the scene of some of the most re markable events. At Kadesh the spies were sent out ; there the first expedition against the Canaanites was marshalled, which resulted in such calamites ; there the Israelities turned back disheartened to the desert again. To Kadesh they again returned after an interval of thirty-eight years' wandering ; there Miriam died ; and there, after a long resi dence, the people turned back a second time, being refused a passage through Moab (Num. xiii. 26 ;
xx. seq.) The first notice of Kadesh occurs in the story of the capture of Sodom by the eastern kings (Gen. xiv.) The four kings ' first invaded Bashan, taking Ashteroth-Karnaim ; then they marched southward through Moab to Mount Seir, or Edom, and having overrun the whole of that country, they turned back and came to En- sh pat , which Kadesh :' and then they continued northward up the Arabah to the plain of Sodom. En-Nish/Sat, 'spring of judgment ' (L)t.,jp i4p ; ThY rnyliv 1-"Cjs ; lantern Iffisphat), was doubtless a noted gathering-place of the southern nomads, where they perhaps had an oracle, and where they as sembled to consult the deity and to pay their VONI'S ; hence it came to be called Kadesh, the Holy Place.' Its position is indicated in the sacred nar rative. Having traversed all Mount Seir unto l'aran,' which lay on the west side of the Arabah, the kings evidently turned northward toward So dom, and would thus natumlly follow the course of the Arabah ; in it, therefore, Kadesh appears to have been situated. It continued to be a place of note during the whole period of the pati-iarchs (Gen. xvi. 14 ; xx. r).
There is some difficulty in connection with the next notice we find of Kadesh. We read, in NUM. Xii. 16, that the people removed from Hazeroth, and pitched in the wilderness of Paran.' FTOM thence the twelve spies were sent out (xiii. 3); and they returned from searching the land after forty days. And they went and came to Moses, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh' (vers. 25, 26). From this it might seem that Kadesh was only a single journey from Hazeroth, which We know was only four days' march from Sinai [HAzERoTH]. But an examination of Deut. 19-21, and Num. xxxiii. 1S-36, shows that between Hazeroth and Kadesh there were a great many intervening stations. These the historian, in Num. xii., passes over, in order to group together the leading events. The principal stations he groups together in chap. xxxiii.