The Sinai Peninsula

Sinai is the name of the mountain—and the region (the Sinai Peninsula) in which it is located—most famously known as the place where God first reveiled his laws to Israel as they journeyed from Egypt to the Promised Land.

The Sinai Peninsula is haunting in its beauty and spectacular in its vistas:

Most people visualize the Sinai as a flat, sandy desert and are unprepared for the rich geological diversity nature has granted to this land. True, the Sinai is a desert with little rain and harsh climatic extremes. Vegetation is scarce except for the occasional oasis that lends a splash of green to an otherwise barren landscape. Fantastic displays of multicolored sandstone, deep wadis enclosed by towering cliffs, and majestic pink granite peaks of southern Sinai provide a feast for the eyes.

Thomas V. Brisco, Holman Bible Atlas (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1998), 65.

As the photos below show, whichever route the ancient Israelites may have taken during the exodus, their journey through the Sinai wilderness could not have been easy or pleasant. The land does not, and could not possibly have, engender a sense of assurance or safety for any traveler. Understanding what the Sinai is like in reality adds a new layer of appreciation for the struggles and complaints of the ancient Israelites, and the tremendous demands it must have made on Moses and the other leaders.

This bleak and arid 'waste' is punctuated, thankfully, by a number of oasis. The famous ones named in the biblical narrative of the exodus include Marah, where "they could not drink the water because it was bitter" (Exo 15:23), Elim, "where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees" (15:27), and Rephidim, where they complained against Moses for they had no water to drink, and later were attacked by the Amalekites (Exo 17). We have no way to identify these places with certainty; however, there are a number of oasis situated along the road from the northern end of the Gulf of Suez to St Catherine that fit into the itinerary of the exodus.

Marah(?), the spring of bitter waters.

Elim?

Rephidim?

Though they could not have appealed to the ancient Israelites so soon after being pursued by Pharaoh's army, the Sinai Peninsula also features some spectacular beaches:

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