Numbers 21:19

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, 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.