And very much Eyl Pa'ran, not El Pa'ran; An Eyl (איל) is an oak tree, or at least a "robust" tree, which may well be treated as a god, or as containing a god within itself, but that second-letter Yud is there for a reason: this is about the tree, not the deity.
Genesis 14:6 notes it as the furthermost point of the wilderness to which Av-Raham drove Kedar-la-Omer and his Beney Eylam in the War of the Kings.
Most Biblical cartographers treat it as Eilat on the northern shore of the Red Sea (1 Kings 9:26), assuming Eyl Pa'ran to be the same Pa'ran which is mentioned in Genesis 21:21. However, that was "the wilderness of Pa'ran", where Yishma-El dwelt after being evicted by Sarah, and nothing in the text suggests that it was a town at the very farthest end of the Negev desert, on the Red Sea, but much more likely at the northern end of that desert, going towards Azah (Gaza), around Be'er Lechi Ro'i and Be'er Sheva.
Numbers 10:12 and 13:3 mark it as a point of the Israelite journey in the wilderness; and this may be the reason why the Biblical cartographers choose to see it as Eilat: an attempt to give historical validity to the supposed Mosaic crossing of the Red Sea, when in fact these references to Eyl Pa'ran, seen in relation to Genesis 14:6 and 21:21, simply add weight to the more likely historicity of the Exodus having been along the Mediterranean coast, through the Sea of Reeds, the marshy delta of the River Nile.
Deuteronomy 1:1 states that the place where Mosheh recited the Law before his death was "in the Aravah, opposite Suph, between Pa'ran and Tophel and Lavan, and Chatserot and Di Zahav", which puts the Eilat hypothesis finally and totally to bed - though it is also rather extraordinary to think of Mosheh being here, at that time, because this place is well inside Kena'an, and it is a place which he supposedly never reached, was even prohibited from reaching; so perhaps we need to question this cartography too, or even, chas ve chalilah, the historicity of the Mosaic myth itself.
1 Samuel 25:1 names it as the place where David went after Shemu-El's
(Samuel's) funeral.
1 Kings 11:18 tells us that this is where Adad of the Beney Edom fled after his failed rebellion against Shelomoh (Solomon), and it too is described as being en route to Egypt, which coincides with the flight of Hagar and Yishma-El, as noted above.
Overall we can read Pa'ran as the Negev desert, and Eyl Pa'ran, most probably, as a particular oak-grove somewhere rather unspecific in its midst.
Pa'ran means "a place abounding in foliage or caverns".
1 Kings 11:18 tells us that this is where Adad of the Beney Edom fled after his failed rebellion against Shelomoh (Solomon), and it too is described as being en route to Egypt, which coincides with the flight of Hagar and Yishma-El, as noted above.
Overall we can read Pa'ran as the Negev desert, and Eyl Pa'ran, most probably, as a particular oak-grove somewhere rather unspecific in its midst.
Pa'ran means "a place abounding in foliage or caverns".
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