Place
Marah
Named in 3 verses across 2 books, first in Exodus 15:23.
In the Bible
All 3 verses, in Bible order. Text from the Berean Standard Bible; verse numbers follow the KJV.
Exodus
- Exodus 15:23
And when they came to Marah, they could not drink the water there because it was bitter. (That is why it was named Marah.)
Numbers
- Numbers 33:8
They set out from Pi-hahiroth and crossed through the sea, into the wilderness, and they journeyed three days into the Wilderness of Etham and camped at Marah.
- Numbers 33:9
They set out from Marah and came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there.
Events here
Events the dataset sets at Marah. Dates follow its Ussher–Jones reckoning (one of several traditional counts), not established history.
- c. 1491 BCWilderness Wanderings
Dictionary
From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), as attached to this record by Theographic. Its geography and “modern” descriptions date from the 1890s. Easton wrote in 1897, and some of his views are now debated.
Read Easton’s entry
Bitterness, a fountain at the sixth station of the Israelites (Ex. 15:23, 24; Num. 33:8) whose waters were so bitter that they could not drink them. On this account they murmured against Moses, who, under divine direction, cast into the fountain “a certain tree” which took away its bitterness, so that the people drank of it. This was probably the ‘Ain Hawarah, where there are still several springs of water that are very “bitter,” distant some 47 miles from ‘Ayun Mousa.