Cross south of Scorpion Pass, continue on to Zin and go south of Kadesh Barnea. Then it will go to Hazar Addar and over to Azmon … - Numbers 34:4

Today's Scripture Reading (February 14, 2025): Numbers 34

Eilat is Israel's southernmost city, located on a busy port at the Northern tip of the Red Sea. When President Donald Trump proposed changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,  Google Maps very early on committed to calling the gulf by the Trump name for people in the United States and to include both names for users outside of the United States, we sometimes forget that it is not all that unusual for something to exist with two names. A case in point is the gulf on which Eilat sits. For those in Israel, the body of water is known as the Gulf of Eilat. However, in the Arab world, the same body of water is known as the Gulf of Aqaba.

The modern city of Eilat was founded in 1951. However, there is evidence that settlements have existed in the area for the past 9000 years, which means that people were living in the area of Eilat long before Israel even existed. Today, the city consists of almost 80% people of Jewish heritage. 

Moses specifies the southern boundary of Israel. It is a border that would include the area where the city of Eilat now sits. But Moses also stipulates that the boundary for Israel would pass south of Scorpion Pass, indicating that Scorpion Pass would also be part of Israel. Scorpion Pass is a steep, twisted section of road known today as Route 227. The pass's importance is that it was the only way to travel from the Red Sea to central Israel for thousands of years. 

Of course, being the only way also meant that it could be a dangerous journey, a fact that a group of Israeli travelers discovered on March 17, 1954. It was on that day that attackers stopped a bus filled with civilians making its way through the pass. The Ma'ale Akrabim Massacre (Spider's Ascent Massacre) took place in the middle of the day. The attackers attempted to kill all of the people on the bus, all of whom were of Jewish descent. The bus was making its way from Eilat to Tel Aviv. Of the sixteen people on the bus, eleven were shot dead immediately, and one died of the injuries received on that day thirty-two years later. Chaim, a nine-year-old boy riding the bus, was shot in the head and did not regain consciousness, spending the next thirty-two years in a coma before succumbing to his injuries. Four people survived the attack, with two of them receiving injuries. The survivors included two soldiers, a woman, and a 5-year-old girl who happened to be the little sister of Chaim. Both the driver and the alternate driver were killed in the attack. 

In 2017, the road through the pass was closed due to the topographical dangers of the pass, which include an abyss below the pass and the fact that there are no guard rails on the road. The road also has extreme drop-offs of hundreds of meters. Today, there are other ways to get to central Israel. Still, at the time of the birth of Israel, the Scorpion Pass was the only way to get from the southernmost point of the nation to where the center of power and spirituality resided for all of Israel.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Numbers 35