Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Nahaliel - i. e. “brook of God;” the modern Wady Enkheileh. The Israelites must have crossed the stream not much above Ar.

Bamoth - Otherwise Bamoth-baal, “the high places of Baal” Numbers 22:41: mentioned as near Dibon (Dhiban) in Joshua 13:17, and Isaiah 15:2. See Numbers 32:34.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

And from Mattanah to Nahaliel, and from Nahaliel to Bamoth. All the Targums interpret this, and the following verse, not of the journeying of the children of Israel, but of the motion of the well, that that, from the place from whence it was given them, descended with them into the valleys, and from thence to the high places, as these words signify: and indeed those places are not mentioned in the journeys of the children of Israel, Numbers 33:1 and were not stations where they pitched, but places they passed through before they came to Abarim, and the wilderness of Kedemoth.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

See Poole "Numbers 21:16".

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

19.Nahaliel to Bamoth — Neither of these can be certainly identified.

The former is supposed to be some wady north of the Arnon, and the latter Knobel identifies with “the high places of Baal,” or Bamoth-baal (Numbers 22:41) on the modern Jebel Attarus, the site being marked by stone heaps. See Joshua 13:17, note.

Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible - Unabridged

And from Mattanah to Nahaliel: and from Nahaliel to Bamoth:

And from the wilderness they went to Mattanah. Our translators seem, by supplying the words, "they went," to have regarded this passage as containing an enumeration of the principal encampments of Israel during their progress through the desert. Hengstenberg regards it in the same light as part of the historical record; the bare list of the stations being given previous to an episodical narrative of the most important incidents that took place at some of them in Numbers 21:21-31, where the thread of the general history is resumed; and he supports this view by remarking, that the very first of the stations mentioned was not in the wilderness, but in the cultivated region (cf. Deuteronomy 2:26); and that the other stations noticed lay within the Amorite territory, being mentioned by anticipation, as there were none of them occupied until after the defeat of Sihon.

Mattanah - i:e., 'a gift' (Genesis 25:6). From the direction in which the Israelites were marching, and the succeeding stations that are recorded, it may be inferred that Mattanah was situated on the boundary line between the Moabite and the Amorite territory, southeast of the Dead Sea. Le Clerc supposed it synonymous with Vaheb (see the note at Numbers 21:14). Hengstenberg suggests that it may be the Tedun, which Burckhardt describes as lying near the source of the Lejum.

Nahaliel - i:e., a torrent or stream of God; supposed to be Wady Enkheileh (a corruption of the ancient name), one of the early tributaries of the Lejum, and marked on Robinson's map ('Biblical Researches,' end of vol.

ii.) as Enkheileh or Lejum.