Where and
What was Yam Suph (The Red Sea)
Modern
scholarship has dismissed the Bible account of the Exodus completely
and come up with new accounts based on the translation of Yam Suph as
Reed Sea, which either do not agree with the Biblical account or
directly contradict it. Moreover, they ignore key points of the
Biblical account while unquestioningly accepting traditions from the
time of Constantine, over 1700 years after the fact. As the Bible is
the only existing account of the Exodus, it seems rather foolish to
ignore it or contradict it. Why not just throw it out completely and
claim the Exodus never happened?
So does Yam
Suph really mean “reed sea”? in Hebrew? Yes, it does, though it
is actually ancient Egyptian and was adopted into Hebrew from there.
It means the same thing in Egyptian: Reed Sea, or Sea of Reeds.
Before
getting off on the Reed Sea rabbit trail, let's look at what the
Bible says. Moses gave the exact location of Yam Suph in several
places in the Pentateuch.
Exo
23:31
“And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of
the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will
deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt
drive them out before thee”. Here
God tells Moses What the bounds of the new nation will be. The bounds
are given east to west and south to north. If the Red Sea were in the
Nile Delta or even the Gulf of Suez, these boundaries would make no
sense. It only makes sense if Yam Suph is the Gulf of Aqaba.
Deu
1:40
“But as
for
you, turn you, and take your journey into the wilderness by the way
of the Red sea”. Deu
2:1
“Then we turned, and took our journey into the wilderness by the
way of the Red sea, as the LORD spake unto me: and we compassed mount
Seir many days”. At Kadesh Barnea, God told the Israelites to turn
around and go back the way they came – back to the wilderness
(pasturelands) by way of the Red Sea. He wasn't telling them to
return to Egypt, which He had forbidden them to do: Deu_17:16
“But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people
to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses:
forasmuch as the LORD hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return
no more that way”. If Yam Suph were in the Delta, along the Route
of the Philistines, or the Gulf of Suez the Israelites
would be returning to Egypt (which was also NOT known as “the
wilderness”!) Mt.
Seir was to the east, not the west. Again,
this only makes sense if Yam Suph is the Gulf of Aqaba.
Num
21:4
“And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to
compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much
discouraged because of the way”. Deu
2:8
“And when we passed by from our brethren the children of Esau,
which dwelt in Seir, through the way of the plain from Elath, and
from Eziongaber, we turned and passed by the way of the wilderness of
Moab”. Mt.
Hor is on the east side of the Arabah on the edge of Edom. Since the
Edomites wouldn't allow the Israelites to cross Edom, they had to go
south along the Arabah, east through Wadi Yatim
(Etham), and north along the eastern border of Edom and Moab– a
long way around, but not nearly as long as it would have been if they
had to go all around the Sinai Peninsula! If
Moses was giving modern directions, he would say they took Route 65
south to Aqaba, then Route 15 east and north towards Quweira3.
Elath
and Eziongeber were
on the northern edge of the Gulf of Aqaba, so these verses prove
convincingly that Yam Suph was the Gulf of Aqaba. 1Ki
9:26
nails
this down even further: “And
king Solomon made a navy of ships in Eziongeber, which is
beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red sea, in the land of Edom”.
Having
shown that the Bible pinpoints the “Red Sea” as the Gulf of
Aqaba, how did it get the name Yam Suph? Reeds
are fresh water plants and don't grow in either the Gulfs of Aqaba or
Suez. However, early English
explorers
found bulrushes growing in the wadis1,2
at
Maqna in present day Saudi Arabia, at
Noweiba
and also further south and east of the entrance of Aqaba. It
is also likely that the climate has dried out since Moses' time, not
that the area wasn't dry then, but it had somewhat more rainfall than
today.
In
any case, the Bible itself proves that Yam Suph was the modern day
Gulf of Aqaba.
2.
Book
Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society ...
Bombay Geographical Society
http://books.google.com/books?id=Hp0BAAAAYAAJ
1836.
P.
48
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