And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.
And they took their journey from Elim (see the note at Exodus 15:2). They had remained there several days. A halting-place in the immediate vicinity of Elim is mentioned in Numbers 33:10; but from its being wholly unnoticed in this general narrative, it seems to have been a station of comparatively little importance.
And ... came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai. Beginning at that part now called El Murkhah, the wilderness of Sin stretches along the eastern shore of the Red Sea, and merging into the spacious plain of El Kaa, extends with a greater or less breadth to almost the extremity of the peninsula. But on pursuing the route to Sinai the Israelites merely skirted the borders of El Kaa.
On the fifteenth day of the second month. It was now a month since they had started from Rameses; and as the distance they had traveled in all did not exceed one hundred miles, ample time had been allowed for their reaching the point at which they had arrived. Three stations only are mentioned previous to their arrival at the Red Sea-namely, Succoth, Etham, before Pi-hahiroth; so that even assuming they might have chosen for a few hours, or during a whole night, some intermediate halting-places, omitted in this record from there having been no regular encampment, or from the places being geographically insignificant, not more than one week would be spent on the eastern side of the gulf before the passage. The stations enumerated on the Arabian shore are Marah, Elim, the wilderness of Sin; and supposing that there had been an encampment at some unrecorded localities during each of the "three days' journey they went in the wilderness of Etham," from Ayun Musa, the place where it is generally believed they first landed-making seven resting-places in all-still there would be a period of three weeks for the prosecution of this part of the journey, which therefore must have been leisurely performed; and being enlivened by the two great luxuries of shade and water, could not have been oppressive to any classes in the vast host.
But their next stage, after leaving Elim, was a very trying one, because they now were exposed to privations which they had not hitherto experienced; and 'in leading them forward, Moses disclosed his firmness and the fidelity with which he discharged the office he had been called to undertake. He knew the country, and the sufferings the people would encounter on the wide plain of Murkah, across which they must accomplish a shadeless march of 12 miles to the great rocks of Sinai. He led them on, however, and here, in this scene of special emergency, the hand of their Divine Guide was specially outstretched to supply them with those necessaries which on the previous days they found among the natural resources of the comparatively pleasant, refreshing country through which their road then had led them' (Drew's 'Scripture Lands,' p. 567: cf. Robinson's 'Biblical Researches,' vol. 1:, pp. 106, 177; Wilson's 'Lands of the Bible,' vol. 50:, pp. 133, 257; 2:, p.
764).