According to the Book of Numbers, the thirty-sixth Station of the Exodus was a place called Punon:
And they departed from mount Hor, and pitched in Zalmonah. And they departed from Zalmonah, and pitched in Punon. And they departed from Punon, and pitched in Oboth. (Numbers 33:41-43)
Like Zalmonah, the only mention of Punon in the Bible is in the Catalogue of Stations in Numbers 33. A place in Edom called Pinon is mentioned in Genesis 36:41 and I Chronicles 1:52, and is thought to refer to the same place. There seems to be a fairly broad consensus among Biblical scholars as to the identity of this particular encampment:
Eusebius’s Phinōn has been identified with a place in the Arabah called Kalaet Phenân, which was visited in the 19th century by the German explorer Ulrich Jasper Seetzen (Seetzen 137). More recently, the name has been linked to that of a seasonal stream, Wadi Feynan, and the archaeological site of Khirbet Faynan:
Wadi Faynan was one of the biggest copper mines in the Roman Empire. It lies south of the Dead Sea on the east side of the Wadi Arabah which separates Israel from Jordan. The first intensive modern research was conducted by the German Mining Museum at Bochum from 1983 under the direction of Andreas Hauptmann and Gerd Weisgerber. They noted that the production of copper from Faynan was in quantities ‘unparalleled in the southeastern Mediterranean, with the possible exception of Cyprus, with up to 200,000 tons of slag left behind. They identified mining and smelting dating from the Chalcolithic period (4500–3100 BC) and running fairly continuously until the 4th century AD ...
The main Roman and Byzantine centre at Faynan is a series of ruins known as Khirbet Faynan (Khirbet means ruins) where two of the major streams that rush down from the mountains in the winter join together to form the broad Wadi Faynan. It is a large mound covering an area of about 70,000 m2, and what survives on the surface are some surprisingly well preserved Byzantine remains. From the Roman period there is also a large reservoir, an aqueduct and a water mill. It was probably the site of the Roman settlement mentioned by Eusebius known as Phaino, and possibly the site known in the Bible as Punon (Numbers 33, 42-3) and documentary evidence shows that the town was the centre of a bishopric in the 5th and 6th centuries. (Selkirk)
The distance from Jebel Harun, which we have identified with Mount Hor, is about 40 km. This could easily have been traversed by the Israelites in two days, assuming that their average pace was around 24-32 km per day (Hoffmeier 120).
The Brazen Serpent
After leaving Mount Hor, the Israelites murmured against Moses and Yahweh. For this, they were afflicted with fiery serpents:
And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. And the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in Oboth. (Numbers 21:6-10)
As we have seen, Numbers 21 does not mention Zalmonah or Punon, so we are not told where this incident occurred—other than that it was after the Israelites had departed from Mount Hor. But as we have just seen, Khirbet Faynan was noted for its copper mines, which would make it an appropriate place in which to construct a brazen serpent. In the original Hebrew text of Numbers 21, the word that is generally translated as brazen, bronze or brass is נְחֹ֔שֶׁת (nə·ḥō·šeṯ). In James Strong’s Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, this is translated as copper (Strong 78):
This suggests that we are on the right track:
Here it is generally conceded that Punon may be identified with Feinan and the Wadis Feinan/Fidan, famed at various periods as a major copper-mining district. About here, coincidentally or not, is placed the incident of the bronze snake (Num. 21:4-9). (Kitchen 194)
Note also that the Hebrew word for serpent is נְחַ֣שׁ (nə·ḥaš), which Strong translates as snake (Strong’s 5175, Strong 78). Close to Khirbet Faynan is Khirbet en-Nahas, one of the largest copper mines in the Wadi Faynan. This can hardly be a coincidence:
[And] the story of the brazen serpent ... is perhaps connected with Khirbet en-Naḥas (naḥash = “serpent”) in the vicinity of Punon, one of the important copper-mining centres in Edom. (Aharoni 204)
The Legends of the Jews
In Louis Ginzberg’s The Legends of the Jews, the incident with the fiery serpents is explicitly placed at Punon, although the murmuring which occasioned it occurred at the preceding station:
The murmurs of the people, on account of which God sent upon them the serpents, took place in Zalmonah, a place where grew only thorns and thistles. Thence they wandered on to Punon, where God’s punishment overtook them. (Ginzberg 337)
The Biblical scholar Adam Clarke, however, suggested that the toponym Zalmonah was connected with the brazen serpent:
ZALMONAH.] Probably in the neighbourhood of the land of Edom. As צלם tselem signifies an image, this place probably had its name from the brazen serpent set up by Moses. See chap. XXI 5, &c. From the same root the word telesm, corruptly called talisman, which signifies a consecrated image, is derived. (Clarke 722, Strong’s 6755, Strong 99)
To be continued ...
References
- Yohanan Aharoni, A F Rainey (translator & editor, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia (1979)
- Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible ... With a Commentary and Critical Notes, Volume 1, G Lane & C B Tippett, New York (1846)
- Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Volume 3, Translated from the German by Paul Radin, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia (1911)
- James K Hoffmeier, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2005)
- Kenneth A Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids MI (2003)
- John McClintock, James Strong, Encyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Volume 8, Harper & Brothers, New York (1879)
- James Orr (General Editor), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume 4, The Howard-Severance Company, Chicago (1915)
- Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, Auszug aus einem Schreiben des Russisch-Kaiserlichen Cammer Assessors, Dr U J Seetzen, in Franz Xaver Freiherr von Zach (editor), Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beförderung der Erd- und Himmels- Kunde, Volume 17, Number 8 (February 1808) ,pp 132-163, Verlag der Beckerschen Buchhandlung, Gotha (1808)
- Andrew Selkirk (editor-in-chief), Wadi Faynan, Copper Mine in Current World Archaeology, Issue 13, Current Publishing, London (2005)
- James Strong, Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, in The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Eaton & Mains, New York (1890)
Image Credits
- Wadi Feynan: © Joe Roe, Creative Commons License
- Khirbet Faynan (Punon): University of Texas Libraries, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, Jerusalem D Survey, Great Britain War Office and Air Ministry (1960), Public Domain
- Moses Erecting the Brazen Serpent (William Blake): William Blake (artist), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Public Domain
- Khirbet en-Naḥas: NASA Earth Observatory, Robert Simmon (imager), Public Domain
