En-mishpat

En-mishpat is the older name for Kadesh — the site identified in Genesis as the same place later known throughout Israel's wilderness history as Kadesh-barnea. The text gives the older name and the later name in the same breath, so that the reader is in no doubt about the identity of the location.

En-mishpat = Kadesh

The single appearance comes in the campaign of the four eastern kings against the cities of the plain. Chedorlaomer and his allies sweep south through the territory of the Rephaim, the Zuzim, the Emim, and the Horites, "to Elparan, which is by the wilderness" (Gen 14:6). Then the line of march turns: "And they returned, and came to En-mishpat (the same is Kadesh), and struck all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, who dwelt in Hazazon-tamar" (Gen 14:7).

The parenthetical equation is the key piece of information. The earlier name En-mishpat — "spring of judgment" — is preserved alongside the more familiar Kadesh, and the site functions in this episode as a strategic turning-point on the southern arc of the campaign. From Kadesh the eastern kings strike Amalekite country and the Amorites at Hazazon-tamar, and from there they advance to the valley of Siddim and the battle with the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela (Gen 14:8-10). The verse thus locates En-mishpat both geographically (between Elparan to the south and Hazazon-tamar to the north) and historically (the place under its earlier name).