Zin. Cadesh.

These places are named in the line bounding the land southward. Numbers 34 and Joshua 15.

The Jews teach us, that it was called the 'Desert of Zin' from a mountain of that name, and that the mountain was so called from the groves of palm-trees; and that it was famous for iron mines. For those words, Numbers 34:4, "And pass on to Zin," are rendered by the Jerusalem Targumist, "And the border passed on to the mountain of Iron." By Jonathan, "And passed on to the palms of the mountain of Iron"...

It seems, therefore, to be some mountainous tract, very near to the borders of the land of Israel, famous for palms of a lower size, and iron-mines, called, from its palm-trees, Tsin, and from that name giving a denomination to the adjacent country, which was desert.

Cadesh, in the eastern interpreters Rekam, was a bound of the land; yet Cadesh itself was, in effect, without the land. Hence those words, "He that brings a bill from a heathen place, &c.; yea, that brings it from Rekam." And, "All the spots that come from Rekam are clean." The Gloss is, "Some spots in the garments" (namely, of a profluvious woman) "which came from Rekam were clean, because they determined not of the spots of strangers." Another Gloss thus: "In Rekam were Israelites; and yet spots coming from Rekam are clean, because they belong to Israelites, and the Israelites hide their spots," &c.

Cades, as Bridenbachius relates, is called Cawatha by the Arabians: for thus he writes; "At length we came into a certain country, which, in the Arabian tongue, is called Cawatha, but in the Latin Cades." Which while we read, those things come into my mind which the eminent Edward Pocock, a man of admirable learning, discourseth concerning the word Kawa, in his very learned Miscellaneous Notes, that it should signify crying aloud, an outcry, &c. To which whether the word Gohe and (whereby Rekam is also called) bellowing, may any way answer, it is more fit for that great oracle of tongues to judge than for so mean a man as I am.