certainty from the geographical names of 5-7; although it does not
appear quite clearly whether these are conceived as the centres of the
various nationalities or the battlefields in which they were defeated.—(
Hebrew characters)
('Astarte of the two horns':[1] Eus. Præp. Ev. i. 10; or 'A. of
the two-peaked mountain'[2]) occurs as a compound name only here. A
city 'Aštārôth in Bashan, the capital of Og's kingdom, is mentioned in
Dt. 14, Jos. 910 124 1312. 31, 1 Ch. 656 [= (Hebrew characters), Jos. 2127]. Ḳarnaim is named
(according to a probable emendation) in Am. 613, and in 1 Mac. 526. 43f.,
2 Mac. 1221. It is uncertain whether these are two names for one
place, or two adjacent places of which one was named after the other
('Astārôth of [i.e. near] Ḳarnaim); and the confusing statements of
the OS (845ff. 8632 10817 20961 26898) throw little light on the question.
The various sites that have been suggested—Sheikh Sa'd, Tell 'Aštarah,
Tell el-'Aš'ari, and El-Muzêrîb—lie near the great road from Damascus
to Mecca, about 20 m. E of the Lake of Tiberias (see Buhl, GAP, 248 ff.;
Dri. DB, i. 166 f.; GASm. in EB, 335 f.). Wetzstein's identification
with Boẓrah (regarded as a corruption of Bostra, and this of (Hebrew characters),
Jos. 2127), the capital of the Ḫaurân, has been shown by Nö. (ZDMG,
xxix. 4311) to be philologically untenable.—Of a place (Hebrew characters) nothing is
known. It is a natural conjecture (Tu. al.) that it is the archaic name
of Rabbath, the capital of 'Ammon; and Sayce (HCM, 160 f.) thinks
it must be explained as a retranscription from a cuneiform source
of the word (Hebrew characters). On the text v.i.—(Hebrew characters) is doubtless the
Moabite or Reubenite city (Hebrew characters), mentioned in Jer. 4823, Ezk. 259, Nu.
3237, Jos. 1319 (OS, (Greek characters), (Greek characters)), the modern Ḳuraiyāt, E
of the Dead Sea, a little S of the Wādī Zerka Ma'īn. (Hebrew characters) (only
here and v.17) is supposed to mean 'plain' (Syr. (Syriac characters)); but that
is somewhat problematical.—On the phrase (Hebrew characters), see the footnote.
While (Hebrew characters) alone may include the plateau to the W of the
Arabah, the commoner (Hebrew characters) appears to be restricted to the
mountainous region E of that gorge, now called eš-Šera' (see Buhl,
Gesch. d. Edomiter, 28 ff.).—(Hebrew characters) (v.i.) is usually identified with (Hebrew characters)
(Dt. 28, 2 Ki. 1422 166) or (Hebrew characters) (1 Ki. 926, 2 Ki. 166), at the head of the E arm
of the Red Sea, which is supposed to derive its name from the groves
of date-palms for which it was and is famous (see esp. Tu. 264 f.). The
grounds of the identification seem slender; and the evidence does not
carry us further than Tu.'s earlier view (251), that some oasis in the N
of the desert is meant (see Che. EB, 3584).[3] The 'wilderness' is the
often mentioned 'Wilderness of Paran' (2121, Nu. 1012 etc.), i.e. the
desolate plateau of et-Tīh, stretching from the Arabah to the isthmus
of Suez. There is obviously nothing in that definition to support the
theory that 'Êl-Pârān is the original name of the later Elath.—(Hebrew characters) (1614
201 etc.), or (Hebrew characters) (Nu. 344, Dt. 12. 19 214). The controversy as to the
