less incompatible. It lias been strongly argued , 1 that the true Mountain of the Law 
was Mount Serbal, anciently named Paran; the most conspicuous, and the first, object 
in the entrance to the Wilderness; a Mountain, wholly separate, of sublime elevation, 
and of the most striking form and magnitude. 
To a people whose entire living generation had seen only the level lands of Egypt, 
the Israelite march into this region of mountain magnificence, with its sharp and 
splintered peaks and profound valleys, must have been a perpetual source of astonishment 
and awe. No nobler school could have been conceived, for training a nation of slaves 
into a nation of freemen, or weaning a people from the grossness of idolatry to a 
sense of the grandeur and power of the God alike of Nature and Mind. 
1 Note in the Pictorial Bible. 
ROCK OF MOSES, WADY-EL-LEJA, MOUNT HOREB. 
Wadt-el-Lkta is a narrow Yalley running up into the Mountains, and containing 
the deserted Convent of El-Arbain. It lies parallel to the valley containing the Convent 
of St. Catherine, and is West of Horeb. The view from the entrance gives one of 
the finest aspects of the granite range, the front of Horeb rising perpendicularly to 
the height of nearly fifteen hundred feet . 1 
The “Rock of Moses” is, from its size, a remarkable object: it rests isolated 
where it has fallen from the eastern Mountain above. It is of red granite, hard 
enough to account for the expression, “a rock of flint .” 2 According to recent 
measurement, it is fifteen feet long, ten feet wide, and twelve feet high . 3 Down 
the front of this Rock, in an oblique direction, runs a seam, twelve or fourteen inches 
broad, of apparently a softer material; the Rock, also, has ten or twelve deep horizontal 
crevices, at nearly equal distances from each other. “ On close examination,” says 
the Artist, “I felt convinced that they were not artificial, from the nature of the 
Rock. I think it must have formed the vault of a cave or recess, through which 
water had oozed for ages, and left the present appearance .” 4 
The reverence with which every object associated with Scripture is regarded in 
these regions by pilgrims and travellers, is strikingly observable here. This mass 
of stone is believed to be the actual Rock which was struck by Moses at the command 
of the Lokd, when water gushed forth to supply the Israelites in the Desert. “ Behold 
I will stand before thee there, upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, 
and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so 
in the sight of the elders of Israel .” 5 The Arabs also call it the Rock of Moses; and 
the reverence of the Bedouins for the relic is scarcely less than that of the Christians. 
Bibl. Res. i. 130. 
3 Carrie's Travels. 
3 Deut. viii. 15. 4 Roberts’s Journal. s Exodus, xvii. 6. 
