Kadesh-barnea
An oasis on the southern edge of Canaan where Israel camped, sent scouts into the land and refused to go in. It is usually identified with Ain el-Qudeirat in north-eastern Sinai; the identification is probable, not proven.
Kadesh-barnea lay on the southern border of the promised land (Numbers 34:4), eleven days’ journey from Horeb (Deuteronomy 1:2). From here Moses sent the scouts into Canaan and here the people refused to follow them (Numbers 13:26) (Deuteronomy 1:19–26). Miriam died here, and here Moses struck the rock at the waters of Meribah (Numbers 20:1–13). Genesis also calls it En-mishpat (Genesis 14:7).
The oasis of Ain el-Qudeirat, in north-eastern Sinai, was proposed as the site by N. Schmidt in 1905 and is now the usual identification; the Barrington Atlas and the excavators adopt it. It rests on the biblical description of the border and on the oasis itself, and is probable, not proven. Rudolph Cohen excavated the mound beside the spring, Tell el-Qudeirat, in 1976–1982 and found a series of fortresses built between about the tenth and the seventh century BC, the last destroyed around 600 BC. The few remains beneath the earliest fortress are of uncertain date, and some scholars put them in the twelfth century BC. See R. Cohen and H. Bernick-Greenberg, Excavations at Kadesh Barnea (Tell el-Qudeirat) 1976–1982 (2007), and the review by Avraham Faust in American Journal of Archaeology 113 (2009). The coordinates are those that the Pleiades gazetteer gives for the site at Ain el-Qudeirat.
What happened here
- c. 1445–1406 or c. 1259–1220 BC, traditional dateForty Years in the Wilderness
At Kadesh-barnea the Israelites refuse to enter Canaan after their scouts report on it, and are sentenced to wander until that generation has died. Forty years after leaving Egypt their children camp opposite Jericho.