After leaving Sukkoth they camped at Etham on the edge of the desert. The first leg of the journey ends at Etham, a location at the boundary between cultivated land and the wilderness proper. Numbers 33:6 records the same campsite in the itinerary of Israel's wilderness travels. The precision of the itinerary — Rameses, Sukkoth, Etham — is the precision of real geography, real travel, real history. The Exodus is not mythological in form but historical in substance: specific places, specific times, specific numbers. Luke 1:1–4 says that the events of the gospel were handed down by eyewitnesses and carefully investigated — the same historical specificity that characterizes Exodus 13's itinerary characterizes the gospel accounts. The God who acts in history leaves an itinerary that can be traced.

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