94 JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP the last chapter of Deuteronomy after the merging of Deuteronomy and the Priestly work (D and P). The time is therefore different but the location is the same, since according to Deut 34,1 the death takes place in the plains of Moab, following immediately after it was announced in Deut 32,48-52 (The long poem in 30,1-29 was probably added subsequently). This rescheduling of the death would then have permitted Moses to issue instructions for living in Canaan and to take care of some unfinished business with the Midianites (Numbers 28-36). That the death of Moses was originally recorded in Numbers rather than in Deuteronomy is further supported by the parallelism with the deaths of Miriam and Aaron (Num 20,1 and 20,22-29). An even clearer indications is the relative inactivity of Joshua after his commissioning as successor to Moses (Num 27,15- 23). Moses continues to lead and Joshua continues to take orders from him as if the transfer of office had never taken place. He has a relatively minor role in settling the Transjordanian tribes together with Eleazar the priest (32,28), and that is about all. The command addressed to Moses to “exact vengeance on the Midianites on behalf of the Israelites; after that you will be gathered to your kin”, preceding the war of extermination (31,1), may even betray some embarrassment that Moses is still alive after being told some time earlier that it was time for him to die. Moses, therefore, belonged, together with Miriam and Aaron, to the first wilderness generation during which the Midianite connection would have been accepted without demur. For the Aaronid author of the Baal Peor episode in its final form, however, the Midianite connection had to be repudiated before entry into the land. The repudiation could have been seen in the first place, in view of the situation at the time of writing, as a matter of survival. By the Achaemenid period the Kedarite Arabs, descendants of the Ishmaelites (cf. Gen 25,13; 1 Chr 1,29) and, more remotely, of the Midianites, controlled a vast area including the Sinai peninsula, the Negev and the southern Transjordanian region. Together with Sanballat of Samaria, Tobiah the Ammonite, and the city-state of Ashdod, they presented, under their leader Geshem/Gashm, a threat to the survival of the semi-autonomous province of Judah. This Gashm, “king of Kedar” (mlk qdr), was one of Nehemiah’s most dangerous enemies 14. The biblical texts do not refer to Judaean-Arabian intermarriage during this period, but we would assume it was taking place at least in southern Judah 14 Geshem is referred to as “Geshem the Arab” (Neh 6,1), and Arabs are mentioned among other opponents of Nehemiah (Neh 4,1). Geshem’s title comes from a dedicatory bowl from the Persian period found at Tell el- Maskhuta near Ismailia inscribed with the donor’s name, qyn br gšm mlk qdr (“Cain son of Gashm king of Kedar”). See W.J. DUMBRELL, “The Tell el- Maskhuta Bowls and the ‘Kingdom’ of Qedar in the Persian Period”, BASOR 203 (1971) 33-44; E.A. KNAUF, “Kedar (Person)”, ABD IV, 9-10.