Albert Barnes Commentary Numbers 21

King Arad the Canaanite - Rather, “the Canaanite, the king of Arad.” Arad stood on a small hill, now called Tel-Arad, 20 miles south of Hebron.

In the south - See Numbers 13:17, Numbers 13:22.

By the way of the spies - That is, through the desert of Zin, the route which the spies sent out by Moses 38 years before had adopted .

He fought against Israel - This attack (Compare to Numbers 20:1 and note), can hardly have taken place after the death of Aaron. It was most probably made just when the camp broke up from Kadesh, and the ultimate direction of the march was not yet pronounced. The order of the narrative in these chapters, as occasionally elsewhere in this book (Compare to Numbers 9:1 and others), is not that of time, but of subject matter; and the war against Arad is introduced here as the first of the series of victories gained under Moses, which the historian now proceeds to narrate.

He called the name of the place - Render it as: “the name of the place was called.” The transitive verb here is, by a common Hebrew idiom, equivalent to an impersonal one.

Hormah - that is, “Ban.” See (Numbers 14:45) and note. In (Judges 1:17), we read that the men of Judah and Simeon slew the Canaanites that inhabited Zephath, and utterly destroyed it; and further, that the name of the city was called Hormah. But it does not follow that the name “Hormah” was first bestowed in consequence of the destruction of the place in the time of the Judges, and that in Numbers its occurrence is a sign of a post-Mosaic date of composition.

The text here informs us that this aggression of the king of Arad was repelled, and avenged by the capture and sack of his cities; and that the Israelites “banned” them . But it was not the plan of the Israelites in the time of Moses to remain in this district.

They therefore marched away southeastward; and no doubt for the time the Canaanites resumed possession, and restored the ancient name (Zephath). But Joshua again conquered the king of this district, and finally in the time of the early Judges the ban of Moses and his contemporaries was fully executed. We have therefore in the passage before us the history of the actual origin of the name “Hormah.”

The direct route to Moab through the valleys of Edom having been closed to them (Numbers 20:20–21), they were compelled to turn southward. Their course lay down the Arabah; until, a few hours north of Akaba (Ezion-Geber), the Wady Ithm opened a gap for them in the hostile mountains, allowing them to turn to their left and march northward toward Moab (Deuteronomy 2:3).

Thus, for some days (see note on Numbers 22:1), they were in the Arabah, a mountain plain of loose sand, gravel, and detritus of granite. This plain, though sprinkled with low shrubs (especially near the mouths of the wadis and the courses of winter torrents), furnishes extremely little food or water and is often troubled by sandstorms from the shore of the gulf. Hence, the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.

This light bread — that is, “this vile, contemptible bread.”

Fiery serpents - The epithet (Deuteronomy 8:15; Isaiah 14:29; Isaiah 30:6) denotes the inflammatory effect of their bite. The peninsula of Sinai, and not least, the Arabah, abounds in mottled snakes of large size, marked with fiery red spots and wavy stripes, which belong to the most poisonous species, as the formation of the teeth clearly shows.