The contrast between such cases, where the names and details are as circumstantially stated as in the legal tablets of early Babylonia, and cases which rest merely upon the memory of tradition, will be clear at once from a reference to Numb. xv. 32-36. Here we have to do with tradition only, and accordingly no name is given, and the story is introduced with the vague statement that it happened at some time or other when the Israelites ‘were in the wilderness.’ The whole of the chapter is an interpolation which is singularly out of place in the narrative, and seems to have been substituted for a description of the disasters which followed on the abortive attempt of the Israelites to invade Canaan. Footnote 213: Sayce, _Babylonian Literature_, pp. 79, 80; Knudtzon, _Assyrische Gebete an den Sonnengott_, pp. 73 _sqq._ Footnote 214: Athenæus, _Deipn._ xiv. 639 c. Footnote 215: Amiaud’s translation of the Inscriptions of Telloh in the _Records of the Past_, new ser., ii. pp. 83, 84. Footnote 216: This was clearly shown by Colenso, _The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined_, Pt. i. Footnote 217: The _soss_ was 60, the _ner_ 600. Footnote 218: Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_ (Eng. tr.), p. 475. Footnote 219: So in Josephus, _Antiq._ ii. 10. Footnote 220: Trumbull, _Kadesh-barnea_ (1884). Footnote 221: Numb. xiii. 21 seems to be a later exaggeration when compared with the following verse. No argument, however, can be drawn from the statement that the spies were absent only ‘forty days,’ since here, as elsewhere, ‘forty’ merely means an unknown length of time. Footnote 222: Eshcol, however, was already the name of an Amorite chieftain of Mamre in the time of Abraham (Gen. xiv. 13). Footnote 223: Numb. xxi. 1-3 is a combination of this abortive attempt and the subsequent conquest of Arad and Zephath by Judah and Simeon (Judg. i. 16, 17), and is intended to resume the thread of the history which had been broken by the insertion of chapter xv. Footnote 224: In Numb. xx. 1-13 a tradition about the waters of Meribah takes the place of a history of the long period that elapsed between the first and the second arrival at Kadesh, during which the numerous series of stations mentioned in Numb. xxxiii. 19-36 was passed. A comparison with Exod. xvii. 1-7 and Deut. xxxiii. 8 seems to show that the story of ‘the water of Meribah’ has been transferred from Rephidim to Kadesh. At Kadesh, indeed, there would have been no want of water (see Gen. xiv. 7), and it may be that the meaning of the word Meribah, ‘contention,’ has been the cause of the transference. En-Mishpat, ‘the Spring of Judgment,’ where contentions were decided, had been for centuries the name of the spring at Kadesh-barnea. As for the name of Zin, it possibly signifies ‘the dry place.’ Footnote 225: Gen. xxxvi. 27; 1 Chron. i. 42. Footnote 226: