Elim (), according to the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

camped following

the Exodus The Exodus (Hebrew language, Hebrew: יציאת מצרים, ''Yəṣīʾat Mīṣrayīm'': ) is the Origin myth#Founding myth, founding myth of the Israelites whose narrative is spread over four of the five books of the Torah, Pentateuch (specif ...

from

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. It is referred to in Exodus 15:27 and

Numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

33:9 as a place where "there were twelve wells of water and seventy date palms," and that the Israelites "camped there near the waters". From the information that can be gleaned from Exodus 15:23, 16:1, and Numbers 33:9-11, Elim is described as being between

Mara Mara or MARA may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Mara (''Doctor Who''), an evil being in two ''Doctor Who'' serials * Mara (She-Ra), fictional characters from the ''She-Ra and the Princesses of Power'' and ''The New Advent ...

and the Wilderness of Sin near the eastern shore of the

Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...

. It was possibly south of the Israelites' crossing point, and to the west of the Wilderness. Thus, Elim is generally thought to have been located in Wadi Gharandel, an

oasis In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment Suez Suez (, , , ) is a Port#Seaport, seaport city with a population of about 800,000 in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea, near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal. It is the capital and largest c ...

. Professor Menashe Har-El of

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

(1968) has proposed Elim to be the ʿUyūn Mūsa "springs of Moses", now in

South Sinai Governorate South Sinai ( ') is the least populated Subdivisions of Egypt, governorate of Egypt. It is located in the east of the country, encompassing the southern half of the Sinai Peninsula. Saint Catherine's Monastery, an Eastern Orthodox Church monaste ...

, Egypt. He noted that in 1907, the geologist Thomas Barron had observed that twelve springs existed at this site along with

date palm ''Phoenix dactylifera'', commonly known as the date palm, is a flowering-plant species in the palm family Arecaceae, cultivated for its edible sweet #Fruits, fruit called dates. The species is widely cultivated across North Africa, northern A ...

s. Professor James K. Hoffmeier disagrees on the basis that it is too close to the preceding site (seven miles/twelve kilometres) and would require the next four sites (using the Numbers itinerary) to be compressed into only 38 kilometres. Exodus 16:1 records that the Israelites left Elim "on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure from the land of Egypt", heading towards the

biblical Mount Sinai Mount Sinai (, ''Har Sīnay'') is the mountain at which the Ten Commandments were given to the Prophets in Judaism, Hebrew prophet Moses by God in Judaism, God, according to the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. In the Book of ...

through the Wilderness of Sin. Since the Israelites left

Pi-Ramesses Pi-Ramesses (; Ancient Egyptian: , meaning "House of Ramesses") was the new capital built by the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Nineteenth Dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses II (1279–1213 BC) at Qantir, near the old site of Avaris. The city had served as a ...

at midnight on the 14th/15th of the first month according to Exodus 12:18, 29, it was a month after this when they departed Elim for Mount Sinai.

References

* {{coord, 29, 18, N, 32, 58, E, source:kolossus-plwiki, display=title Torah_places

See also

References