Chapter 46. The Battle of Athariym
From Mount Hor, Israel marched to the region where Moses had sent scouts to explore the Covenant Land forty years previous, which begat the infamous and embellished evil report. Israel marched to the place they knew as “the way of the spies,” the road of ‘Athariym, to address the failure of the previous generation, to test their faith in God before moving on. At ‘Athariym, Israel was intercepted by Canaanite hybrids reigned over by King Arad. King Arad marched out his powerful hybrid army to destroy Israel.
Arad, according to Unger’s Dictionary, was a southern Canaanite city in the Negev, positioned seventeen miles south of Hebron, the royal city of Arad. The Negev region was called the “south” country of Canaan, as recorded in Genesis 20, and was located between Kadesh and Shur. “South” derives from negeb from which Negev is transliterated from and understood as the southern desert district of what became Judah’s land. The Negev was the region Abram made his home, a region that included Shur, the home of western Amalekites. Arad city was a mighty walled fortress originally built before the flood (c. 2700–2900 BC) that the postdiluvian Rephaim inherited and renovated, on the road from Petra (city of Amaleqim) to Kiriatharba (city of Anakim). Arad is defined as a fugitive, wild ass, a royal Canaanite city, and a Canaanite king. Arad, as a royal city, was part of the greater Canaanite alliance, which was related to the pentapolis city-state alliance of Sodom on the Dead Sea plain.
… Arad was an important patronymic name of Rephaim kings, patrial for cities and places named after the originating patriarch, and a leading candidate for the patriarch of the Arvadites. Egyptian records as late as 920 BC, recorded in Pharaoh Sheshonq/Shishak’s accounting of conquered cities, cited a king renowned as “Arad the Great” and “Arad of Yrhm.” The King Arad at the time of the battle of Athariym was descendant of the first Arad, a Horim, Anakim, or Amaleqim, and a dynastic king.
