! 




ANCIENT INSCRIPTIONS IN WADY MUKATTEB. — Page 85. 
Some have supposed these and other simi.ar inscriptions i„ the Peninsnla to be the work of the 
anetea, Israelites; others ascribe .hear ,0 early Christian pilgrims; others, still, regard ,hem as 
the only known remains of the ,ang„age of the Nabateaas, an Arabian people.whose capital was 



Petra. 



STUDIES 




IN 



BIBLE LANDS. 



BY 



REV. 'GAGE, 



EDITOR OF RITTER'S COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE, ETC., ETC. 




WITH SEVENTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

No. 164, Tremont Street, Boston. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



C -K x 



Boston : 

Electrotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, & Frye. 



PREFACE. 



The following work brings together in convenient form the sub- 
stance of a course of twelve lectures delivered in the spring of 1867, 
before the Lowell Institute, Boston. The book is now published, 
not as an original contribution to biblical geography, but to bring to 
a large and devout class of readers such information respecting the 
sacred lands as should make the Old Testament a more vivid and 
intelligible book. As the editor and translator of Ritter's Palestine, 
I have been compelled to make the familiar acquaintance of many 
works which treat of Bible geography ; and it is my hope that this 
effort to discuss the theme according to Ritter's method will be 
greatly instrumental in doing good. Whatever makes the Bible clear, 
affords no slight aid to those who desire to make the Bible useful ; 
and no one can hope to have that book do its great work in promot- 
ing the well-being of man, without bidding God-speed to every effort 
which will make it more accessible to the minds of men. The Bible 
contains sacred truths in the garb of facts ; these facts are generally 
in the form of history ; and their significance is found first of all in 
the geographical key to the history. It is earnestly hoped that this 
book will do somewhat toward making over to its reader that invalu- 
able key. W. L. GAGE. 

Hartford, Conn., Sept. 23, 1869. 

Note. — A small, but clear and beautiful, map of Palestine in relief, i.e., with the moun- 
tains raised above the surface, affording thereby a better knowledge of the Holy Land than 
any engraved map can give, has been prepared in Germany under the direction of the author 
of this book, and can be had, mounted and ready to hang in the library or study, by sending 
a dollar to Rev. W. L. Gage, Hartford, Conn. It can also be obtained at the rooms of the Ameri- 
can Tract Society, 164 Tremont Street, Boston. 

W. L. G. 

3 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

I. 

Eden, Ararat, and the Tenth Chapter of Genesis . . , . . . .11 

II. 

The Homes of Abraham a8 

III. 

Jacob and the South Country ....49 

IV. 

Egypt and the Passage of the Red Sea '63 

V. 

The Sinai Peninsula 73 

VI. 

Mount Sinai and the Years of Wandering 89 

VII. 

The Trans- Jordanic District 105 

VIII. 

Passage of the Jordan, and Beginning of the Conquest 128 

IX. 

The Completed Conquest 143 

X. 

The Primitive Tribes of Palestine 150 

XI. 

The Territory of the Jewish Tribes .......... 163 

XII. 

Scenes in the Book of Judges 180 

XIII. 

Scenes in the First Book of Samuel 192 

XIV. 

The Empire of David and Solomon 202 

XV 

The Two Kingdoms. . . . . 221 



5 



• 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



MAPS. 

PAGE. 



Primitive Map of the Earth 18 

Map Illustrating the Tenth Chapter of Genesis .... 25 

Region about the Euphrates and Tigris 29 

Palestine before the Conquest 35 

Dead Sea and Vicinity 40 

The South Country 50 

Vicinity of Nablus 59 

Goshen 66 

The Sinai Peninsula 76 

Battles of Ai and Beth-horon 141 

Territory of the Jewish Tribes 166 

Plan of Modern Jerusalem . 208 



These maps will be referred to in the Index, in connection with names of places. 



PICTURES. 

Those marked T are from the admirable wood-cuts in " The Illustrated New Testament," pub- 
lished by Murray, London. Those marked B are from the very accurate steel-plate engravings of 
W. H. Bartlett. Those marked P are from Bonar's " Palestine for the Young," published by the 
London Religious Tract Society. All give views of places as they now appear. 

Ancient Inscriptions in Wady Mukatteb . . . Frontispiece. 

From a lithograph of Leon de Laborde. See page 85. 

Mt. Ararat 20 

From a sketch furnished by Rev. Justin Perkins, D.D., missionary in Persia. 
6 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



7 



PAGE. 

Tower of an Ancient Christian Church, Oorfa .... 27 

This tower stands on the south side of the Pool of Abraham, and is what is 
left of a Christian church of the second century. From a sketch furnished by 
Rev. G. B. Nutting, missionary at Oorfa. 

Pool of Abraham, Oorfa 30 

This is situated within the wall of the city. According to the Moslem tradi- 
tion, this fountain burst forth from the spot where Abraham was cast by an angel, 
who rescued him from the fire into which he had been thrown by the people for 
destroying their idols. Corrected from a picture in Chesney's Explorations. 

Modern Haran (T) 32 

From a sketch taken on the southern side, showing ruins of the castle, with the 
hive-like houses around it. In the foreground is a well with watering-troughs. 

Ruins of a Temple at Kenath 37 

From Porter's "Great Cities of Bashan." The site of the ancient Ashteroth- 
Karnaim. 

South Shore of the Dead Sea 42 

From Rev. H. B. Tristram's " Land of Israel." 

Beersheba 47 

From " Land of Israel." 

Coin from Oorfa 48 

Struck in the time of Abgar, king of Edessa, and containing figures of the moon 
and stars, as a sign of the prevalent worship of the heavenly bodies. 

Mosque at Hebron 53 

From " Land of Israel." From photograph. 

Jacob's Well (T) 60 

From photograph. The high hill in front is Mt. Ebal, near the foot of which is 
the inclosure with the white dome, called Joseph's Sepulcher. 

Rachel's Tomb (T) . . . . . 61 

From photograph. 

Flowers from the Vicinity of Haran 62 

The maiden-hair fern was picked from the walls of the Pool of Abraham. The 
leaves at the left are of the castor-oil plant ; at the right is a crocus. 

On, or Heliopolis 64 

The Paschal Lamb .. • . 72 

Ruins of Pharan, and Mt. Serbal (B) 86 

Wady Aleyat is seen leading to the left of the highest peaks. 



8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE. 

Palm-tree . • 87 

Mt. Sinai, from the Plain Er Rahah (B) 89 

View from the north. The convent of St. Catherine is seen at the left 

Convent of St. Catherine (B) . . 91 

View from the north-east. 

Mt. Hor (B) .101 

Elijah at Horeb 104 

bozrah of moab 107 

This and the two following from Porter's " Giant Cities of Bashan." 

Stone Door of an Ancient House 109 

Interior, showing Stone Roof no 

Mt. Hermon, from near Tiberias (T) 113 

From a sketch taken on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. 

Mountains of Moab, from the Hills near Jericho . . . 115 

Damascus (T) . . 127 



From a sketch taken outside the eastern gate of Damascus, showing St. Paul's 
mound on the right ; the spot where, tradition says, our Saviour appeared to him. 

Crossing the Jordan in Modern Times 130 

From Tristram's " Land of Israel." 

Ain Sultan (P) 132 

Sometimes called " Elisha's Fountain," from the miracle recorded in 2 Kings 
ii. 19-22. " The rivulet is often, even in summer, eight feet broad, and a foot deep. 
It flows on more than a mile, then sinks into the sand ere it reaches the Jordan ; 
but the royal fountain itself remains ever full and fresh, creating greenness all 



around." 

Between Bethany and Jericho (T) ....... . . . 133 

A sketch on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. 

Nablus, with Mt. Ebal and a part of Mt. Gerizim (P). . . 136 

View from the west. 

Lake Merom, from the South 145 

In the distance is Mt. Hermon. 

Tiberias . . . . . . ... . . . 149 



A view from the north, showing the south-west coast of the Sea of Galilee. 

Temple in Petra (El Khusne) (B) 156 



LIST OF, ILLUSTRATIONS. 9 

PAGB. 

Gaza, Modern Ghuzzeh 159 

A view from the south-west. 

Thorn-tree • 162 

Common in Palestine, and supposed to be the tree from which our Saviour's 
crown of thorns was made. 

Modern Hebron (P) . . . 166 

A city of seven thousand inhabitants, near the Vale of Eshcol. 

Solomon's Pools, in Wady Urtas (P) 170 

Mt. Carmel 173 

A view of the western extremity from the north. On the summit, a Carmelite 
convent. 

Mt. Tabor 175 

Tiberias and the Lake of Galilee 176 

From an original sketch. View from the south-west. At the left are the ruins of 
Herod's Castle. 

All that remains of Capernaum 177 

From an original sketch. View of Tell-Hum from the north-west 

SlDON, FROM THE NORTH-EAST (T) 1 78 

From photograph. The most ancient city of Palestine, having a present popu- 
lation of about nine thousand. On the right is the castle joined to the main land 
by a causeway. 

Shiloh, Modern Seilun 182 

This and the following from photographs of the English Palestine Exploration 
Fund. 

Traditional Tomb of Joshua 184 

Nazareth and the Mountains surrounding the Plain of Es- 

draelon (t) 187 

The point of view is on a hill just north of the village. At the left is Mt. Ta- 
bor. A little to the right, beyond Jordan, are the mountains of Gilead. South- 
east of the Plain, are Little Hermon and Mt. Gilboa. On the south, are the hills 
of Samaria and the eastern end of Mt. CarmeL 

Ruth in the Field of Boaz 191 

Cave of Adullam, near Bethlehem (P) 194 

David the Shepherd ■ . . . .201 



10 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE. 

Jerusalem, from the Western Slope of the Mount of Olives (T) 203 

From photograph. The large mosque just within the east wall is the Dome 
(or Mosque) of the Rock. 

Plan of Modern Jerusalem, showing its Physical Features . 208 

Robinson's Arch 209 

The Dome of the Rock 210 

The rock is about fifty feet in diameter, and stands about five feet high from the 
mosque floor, or twelve feet above the outside area. A many-colored satin canopy 
is suspended over it. The walls of the mosque are of white marble and colored 
porcelain tiles. 

Mosque of the Tomb of David, on Mt. Zion (T) . . .211 

From photograph. A view from the west. At the left is the southern end of 
the west wall. 

Ancient Temple Wall at the Jews' Wailing-place . . .212 

Originally from photograph. 

Entrance to the Tombs of the Judges 220 

A short distance north-west of Jerusalem. 

Jezreel 223 

At the left is a portion of the Plain of Esdraelon. 

Samaria from the South 224 

On the hill at the right, are the ruins of the Church of St. John the Baptist. 
This church was erected by the Empress Helena to commemorate the spot where 
John the Baptist was executed. 

Ruins of the Great Colonnade at Samaria (T) 225 

From photograph. On one of the higher terraces of the hill. Built by Herod. 

Pool of Siloam (T) . 234 

Sketch taken at the bottom of the steps leading to the pool. 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



i. 

EDEN, ARARAT, AND THE TENTH CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 

There are many ways in which a correct view of the 

lands of the Bible may be laid before the reader ; and it 

is important at the outset to choose that one which shall 

allow an arrangement so orderly and symmetrical that it will 

be alike pleasant and profitable. The lands which lie at the 

basis of the Scripture story may be examined physically, as 

has been done with marked skill, both in Stanley's excellent 

work, and the posthumous volume of Robinson ; they may 

be examined as a traveler would pass through them, their 

objects spoken of in the order in which they greet the eye, 

and without any reference to the historical connection. Both 

of these ways have their value ; and were our subject the • 

physical geography of the Holy Land, it might, possibly, be 

well to speak of the mountains, rivers, lakes, plains, and 

valleys by themselves, as well as viewed comparatively. And 

were the theme announced as the report of travel in the 

Holy Land, the most graphic method would be to lead the 

reader by the hand from place to place, and to give in pic- 

ii 



12 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



turesque language the results of adventure. There is 
another way still : one which shall cause the theme to have 
visible growth before the eye ; which shall take it in its most 
rudimentary phase, and cause it to enlarge before the sight 
with the enlargement of empires and the expanding destinies 
of nations. This, the historical method, .is the one we shall 
follow. It has not yet been made generally familiar ; but its 
merits are very great. 

I propose first, by way of introduction, to spread out the 
panorama of Bible lands as presented in the opening pages 
of the Scripture, — those vague, most imperfectly known 
regions, whose names we have in the familiar Eden, Nod, 
Shinar, Ararat, and the dark and tangled geographical masses 
of the tenth of Genesis. There can be no systematic 
delineation of this obscure part of our theme : it must be 
glanced at, summed up as best we may, surveyed in a broad 
light, and then left behind. 

We come then to the true threshold of our subject ; to a 
place which is our point of departure, — Ur of the Chaldees, 
the first home of Abraham. That spot, like the profuse 
spring which bubbles up there even now, may be likened to a 
fountain, isolated and almost unknown, but which gives rise 
to a stream that runs on and on, widening with every step, 
acquiring new volume and power, until at last, too wide to be 
bridged, it enters the sea. I propose to trace the history of 
the Jewish people from its commencement in ancient 
Chaldaea, and to follow the wanderings of the patriarchs 
across the land of Palestine ; to go with them into Egypt ; to 
pass with the tribes, the infant and nascent nation, across the 
wilds and athwart the shadows of the dreadful Sinaitic moun- 



EDEN, ARARAT, ETC. I 3 

tain waste ; to track their course through the trans-Jordanic 
region, over the sacred river, and along the path of their con- 
quest, to watch the growth of their empire, and the alternat- 
ing enlargement and contraction of their boundaries, till 
we see them attain their maximum limits. Enough to say 
that there is little question that we shall be able to touch a 
line, which, reaching westward to Tarshish, and eastward to 
Ophir, shall span the widest limits of territory which can be 
embraced in what is known as biblical geography. In this 
way we shall be compelled, it is true, to run over the course 
of Scripture narrative in such a manner as almost to make 
one believe, who is not acquainted with the object in view, 
that the theme is Bible history rather than Bible geography ; 
yet only by a close comparison of the Scripture narrative 
with the lands whence it originated shall we be able to ap- 
preciate worthily the significance of the physical framework in 
which the Bible deeds were inclosed. Repassing the country 
again and again, and in every direction, we shall at length 
know it in all its parts ; and the generalization which may be 
drawn, so far particularly as Palestine is concerned, will best 
be made when we shall have trodden the roads of patriarchs 
and conquerors so often, and with so observant an eye, that 
the summing up and grouping of the subject shall be 
almost spontaneous. 

It has been a question to be carefully considered, how far 
it is well, in a series like this, to endeavor to awaken or guide 
the interest of readers in matters which have been the 
subject of prolonged and learned inquiry. There is hardly 
an important issue in the department of biblical geography 
which might not engage the mind for weeks or even months. 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



To take two or three instances from this debatable ground, let 
me cite the details of the tenth chapter of Genesis, the to- 
pography of Jerusalem, and the site of Ophir. To these 
and kindred themes, whole volumes have been given, and 
respecting them no full results have yet been attained. Cir- 
cumstances have compelled me to pass over a great deal of 
this kind of inquiry, only to my own utter weariness, and 
with the conviction that it is a field of investigation which, 
however congenial to the German mind, is utterly unattrac- 
tive to most Americans at least. The antiquarian instinct is 
not strong with us as a nation : wherever it exists it is excep- 
tional ; and it would be folly to presume on interesting an 
American public in problems which awaken no enthusiasm 
beyond a circle comprising a few hundred Englishmen, 
Frenchmen, and Germans. Those who care to study the 
antiquities of the subject will find ample scope in Ritter's 
great work, recently published in an English version,* as 
well as the learned monographs from which Ritter draws. 
It will best answer our purpose to take the results of schol- 
arly inquiry, and endeavor to apply them to one single and 
simple end, the making of our Bible reading and study more 
intelligible, and therefore more interesting. 

The first geographical land mentioned in the Bible is that 
strange, mysterious Eden, over which commentators have so 
long stumbled, and which has been declared to be one of the 
regions which no man will ever be able to locate. It has had 

* Comparative Geography of Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula, by Prof. Carl Rit- 
ter. Translated and adapted to the wants of biblical students, by W. L. Q-age. Four vols. 
8vo. D. Appleton & Co. 



EDEN, ARARAT, ETC. 1 5 

a treatment widely different and varying according to the 
bias of the minds that read the Bible. Some have dealt with 
it as a vague, mythical land, not intended to be understood as 
amenable to geography at all, — a mere Oriental tract, like the 
Happy Valley of Rasselas. Others have admitted that there 
may have been an Eden, — a place bearing that name, and 
capable of location ; but that whether there was such a tract 
or not is a matter of profound indifference. Others,, no less 
open to the theological character of the first chapters of Gen- 
esis, have yet been willing to examine this matter on the side 
of human learning, as an admirable topic in the department 
of biblical antiquities, and have spared no pains to solve the 
question, Where was Eden ? 

Looked at in the face, and in the light of the passage in 
Gen. ii., which describes the land of Eden, the difficulties 
which grow out of the passage do indeed seem insuperable ; 
and, in fact, they are pronounced to be so by some of our 
leading Bible dictionaries. The only passage describing 
Eden is so brief that I may venture to quote it here from its 
connection. " And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden 
eastward. And a river goeth forth from Eden to water the 
garden ; and from thence it is divided, and becometh four 
heads. The name of the first is Pison ; that is it which 
compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 
And the gold of that land is good : there is the bdellium and 
the onyx-stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon ; 
that is it which encompasseth the whole land of Cush [Ethio- 
pia]. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel ; that is 
it which floweth before Assyria. And the fourth river, that 
is Euphrates." Gen. ii. 8-14. Clearly a geographical de- 



i6 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



scription ; clearly a passage meant to convey a definite idea. 
That it does not is not owing to an intention to perplex, not 
to any desire to veil a mystical and allegorical subject in 
terms so obscure as to defy the reader's efforts to locate the 
site of the story ; not a mere random use of names which 
were and are still familiar, but, possibly, in a large measure 
from a want of comprehension of the writer's point of view 
and his conception of the earth. 

Reading the passage as it stands, and interpreting it after 
the letter, it is utterly unintelligible. With our idea of a 
river, there is none which answers to the description ; and 
writers have been led into conjectures which are equally mon- 
strous and ludicrous in their efforts to discover such a river. 
Submitting the passage to analysis, we see at a glance that 
it contains certain names which are to be identified beyond 
doubt with rivers or places known to us : others that are in a 
measure doubtful. Cush, or Ethiopia, is the name invariably 
applied in the oldest Scriptures to the highlands of Nubia ; 
and the Gihon must therefore be the Nile. Assyria is, and 
has always been, the country through which the Tigris flows ; 
and Tigris is therefore the modern name of the Hiddekel. 
The Euphrates, too, is a river unmistakable. These are what 
would in algebra be called " known quantities." The un- 
known or uncertain factor is the Pison. But it has been 
placed by Ritter * almost beyond question, that Havilah was 
the gold country through which the Indus flows, and which 
supplied Ophir, on the western coast of Hindustan, with that 
mineral. This identifies, though not with absolute cer- 
tainty, the Pison with the Indus. There are no other ele- 

* See his monograph on Ophir in the Cora p. Geog. of Palestine, Vol. I. 



EDEN, ARARAT, E*TC. 



I? 



nients ; and the question remains, how to combine four rivers, 
of which the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris are un- 
questionably three, and the Indus, almost without doubt, the 
fourth, so as to conform to the biblical narrative. No wonder 
it has been the despair of commentators. Some have, on 
their own authority, founded a Cush on the southern shores 
of the Caspian, and so made the Gihon identical with the 
Aras. The arbitrary position pushes them one step farther, 
and compels them to assume that the little Acampis, a mere 
summer stream, flowing northward out of Armenia into the 
Black Sea, is the Pison ; despite the fact that it is no land of 
gold, bdellium, and the onyx-stone. Besides, not even this 
forced supposition agrees with the language of the Scripture 
narrative, — "a river goeth forth, and is divided, and be- 
cometh four heads." 

It were profitless to go into all the conjectural explanations 
which have been made of this passage, all of them unnatural, 
hard, and unsatisfactory. But there is a solution possible, 
and which is almost beyond question tenable and final. It is 
reached by going back of our time, and looking into the view 
held by the ancients of the earth and the ocean which sur- 
rounds it. The accompanying sketch will be worth more 
than whole pages in conveying what we mean. 

There is enough on this primitive map of the earth to 
make it intelligible to us. At its heart is the Mediterranean ; 
at the south, Africa ; at the north, Europe, and at the east, 
Asia. The whole is seen to be surrounded by that great 
ocean river, the Oceanus of the ancients, so familiarly de- 
scribed by the classic writers of Greece and Rome, and 
having such close relation to the geography of Eden. The 



i8 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



Romans drew their geographical ideas from the Greeks, and 
the Greeks and the Hebrews from the Egyptians, that great 
race of conquerors, who, long before the empires on the 
Tigris and the Euphrates sprang into being, had carried their 
victorious arms throughout the known earth. This vast 
ocean river has one great arm, the Mediterranean ;• and that 
arm has one long finger, the Gihon, or Nile. We differ from 




the ancients in this, that while we call bays, gulfs, and seas, 
arms of the ocean, we do not so designate rivers. They, 
however, extended our notion, and reckoned rivers elongated 
arms of the sea. They read nature backward rather than 
forward, — not from the little rivulet to the great ocean, but 
from the ocean back to the tiny rill among the mountains. 
The ocean stream, or river, divided into four heads, the four 



EDEN, ARARAT, ETC. 



19 



great rivers which they knew, — the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, 
and Indus. The fertile land on those rivers constituted the 
most charming region on the earth. It was their Eden ; and 
those mighty rivers flowed to water it and give it increased 
fertility. 

Somewhere " eastward in Eden " was the scene where the 
great history of our race began, — the garden of the Bible 
story. But it is a fatal mistake to suppose that Eden itself was 
a tract that a man might walk around in a fraction of a day. 
It was a synonym for all that the Egyptian conquerors and 
scholars knew that was fair and promising. It embraced the 
garden of the Nile, the rich, fat land of Mesopotamia, and 
the charming valley of the Indus. In its scope, it extended 
over an immense range, and comprised all that a Hebrew 
writer, " learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," would 
regard as fair, productive, and romantic. It embraced, in 
addition to Egypt and Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, 
the rich shores of Arabia and Southern Persia. It did not 
take in the arid wastes which lie between these great rivers, 
the vast deserts of Asia : there was no occasion for the 
Scriptures to include them. Eden was only what was most 
prolific in abundance and beauty. In the undefined East, 
beyond the Pison, lay the dim and distant Nod, or Nowhere, 
as the word means, — the darkling region into which the first 
murderer was driven. 

I can hardly claim that the preposition " from " in the sen- 
tence, "and a river goeth forth from Eden," is entirely clear ; 
yet, with the notions of the ancients, it would be difficult to 
substitute any other which would quite satisfy all conditions. 
The question may be raised, how did the river water the 



20 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS 



garden ? It watered Eden, but how the garden ? The 
answer must be found 1 in the necessity of making the whole 
account converge in the garden, the scene of the event soon 
to be related. As the garden is the center of our interest, 
the whole drift of the passage sets toward it and the events 
connected with it. 




MOUNT ARARAT. 



We get no glimpse of any Scripture lands again till the 
mountains of Ararat come into sight. Here, notwithstand- 
ing the interminable disputes of scholars, we need not hesi- . 
tate to accept that conclusion which seems, on the whole, 
legitimately reached ; viz., that by the " mountains of Ara- 
rat " is not meant that lofty double peak in Armenia, which is 



EDEN, ARARAT, ETC. 



21 



crowned with perpetual ice and snows, and is far more indis- 
putably the monarch of that region than is Mt. Blanc of 
Switzerland ; but that whole highland region south of Ara- 
rat, whose height is about six thousand feet, and which rises 
like a mighty island out of a sea of plain. The popular 
apprehension makes the great double-capped Ararat answer 
to the biblical expression " mountains of Ararat ; " but, amid 
all the difficulties which arise when we try to read the ac- 
count of Noah by the broad light which we throw on the 
scenes that are near our own times, there is no one which 
does greater violence to our sense of probabilities than that 
which arises when we conceive of the ark's being stranded 
upon the ice and snow of a mountain more than seventeen 
thousand feet in height. This mountain was ascended, for 
the first time among Europeans, by Dr. Parrot, about a half- 
century since. The sketch of the accompanying engraving 
was furnished by Rev. Dr. Perkins, the well-known missionary 
to Armenia, and may be relied upon as accurate. The pic- 
ture happily gives a good idea of the immense magnitude of the 
mountain, and itself is the most potent of arguments against 
the untenable hypothesis which has been reared in favor of 
its double peak's corresponding to the " mountains of Ara- 
rat " of the Scriptures. But while great difficulties stand 
confessedly in the account of the Deluge, — difficulties which 
are not met by ridicule, nor overcome by rejecting the whole 
narrative as puerile, — there is this to be said, that that high- 
land of Armenia which seems to be meant by the phrase, 
" mountains of Ararat," is admitted to be the most probable 
spot where the nations of the earth parted from one another, 
flowing out westward into the Russian and Hungarian plains, 



f 

2 2 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

passing south-eastward into India, eastward to the Pacific 
shores. " The Armenian plateau stands equidistant from the 
Euxine and the Caspian Seas on the north, and between the 
Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean on. the south. These 
seas were the high-roads of primitive colonization ; and the 
plains watered by the Acampis, Araxes, Tigris, and Euphra- 
tes were the seats of the most powerful nations of antiquity, 
— the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medes, and the Col- 
chians. Viewed with reference to the dispersion of the 
nations, Armenia is the omphalos of the world ; and it is a 
singular fact, that Ararat is the great boundary-stone between 
the empires of Russia, Turkey, and Persia " 

The tenth chapter of Genesis takes us to those " moun- 
tains of Ararat," the high Armenian plateau, and unfolds the 
world of unobscured, authentic history, as it was known to 
those Egyptian geographers, upon whose knowledge the 
writer of that chapter has so largely drawn. It is one of the 
most interesting landmarks in the Bible ; and it is with a 
feeling of sensible relief that we emerge from the shadowy 
vagueness which rests on Eden, Nod, and Ararat, and set 
foot on the solid ground which comes into view in the tenth 
of Genesis. It is a chapter which German scholars have 
loved well. Its evident historical sharpness and accuracy have 
made them sure that research could not be squandered in 
vain upon it ; and so faithful have been the efforts of such 
men as Knobel, Ewald, von Bohlen, Hitzig, and Hartmann, 
that the names specified in that chapter can with great cer- 
tainty be ascribed to the lands which the descendants of 
Noah peopled. 

We probably owe more of the scientific geography con- 



EDEN, ARARAT, ETC. 



23 



tained in Gen. x. to the conquests of the great Sesostris, as 
the Greeks call him, or, to use his strict Egyptian name and 
title, Rhameses the Great, than to any other source. This 
monarch, one of the greatest conquerors who ever lived, flour- 
ished 1400 years before Christ. In his victorious marches, 
he advanced southward into the mountains of Abyssinia, 
northward as far as the Don, routing the Scythians there, and 
eastward, by water, as far as to India. Nor did he content 
himself with conquering the lands at the mouth of the Indus, 
but he carried his victorious banners to the Ganges itself. 
As the result not only of his victories, but of those of his 
successors, the Hebrew writer of the tenth of Genesis was 
able to take a wide and accurate survey of the world so far as 
it was known. The scope of that chapter is too often over- 
looked by the hasty reader. Instead of being an unmeaning 
list of names, it is a storehouse of the most valuable geograph- 
ical facts. What could be more uninteresting at first glance 
than Gen. x. 2, 3, 4 : "The sons of Japheth, — Gomer, and 
Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and 
Tiras. And the sons of Gomer, — Ashkenaz, and Riphate, 
Tiras, Togarmah. And the sons of Javan, — Elishah, and 
Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim ; " and yet these verses, and 
others which sound equally uninteresting, such as 13 and 14. 
are but the names of places of surpassing interest. In those 
older days, the names of men were at once transferred to the 
places which they settled ; just as Washington bears the 
name of our general, the capital of Ohio that of Columbus, 
and America that of Americus. The word Tiras, in verse 2, 
is but a modified form of Thrace, the great tract north of 
Greece. Madai is but another form of Media ; and Elishah, 
in verse 4, is but the Greek Elis, or Hellas. 



24 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

We need not enter, however, upon an exhaustive catalogue 
of the names contained in the tenth chapter of Genesis. 
That the special student can better do by having recourse to 
the pages of two invaluable works, Smith's " Dictionary of the 
Bible," and the last edition of Kitto's " Biblical Cyclopedia ; " 
works of which it is not too much to say, that they represent 
the consummate flower of all the biblical studies of the present 
age, as well as of the past ages. With reason did my friend 
Dr. Barth, the African traveler, tell me, a short time before 
his lamented death, that there was almost no book on the 
shelves of his library which he consulted so frequently as 
Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible." It is indispensable, either 
in its larger or in its abridged forms, not only to every 
scholar, but also to every Christian family, unless the scarcely 
inferior Cyclopedia of Kitto be used in its stead. 

Leaving the details of the tenth chapter, then, to those 
who may wish to master them, it is not right for me to pass 
by a general review of the whole field. There is the earth, 
as it was known to the Egyptians and hence to the Hebrews, 
divided up into three great divisions, in the main distinct, yet 
partly overlapping each other. The three sons of Noah, of 
whom Japheth appears to be the oldest (Gen. x. 21), and 
Ham the youngest (Gen. ix. 24), went their separate ways : 
Japheth, the senior, taking the north coast-lands of the 
Mediterranean, and as far northward as men's knowledge 
extended, or, as we should say in modern speech, the conti- 
nent of Europe ; Shem, the second son, taking what we may, 
for convenience' sake, identify with Asia, — a strip extend- 
ing from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf ; and Ham, 
the youngest, receiving Africa, although his numerous 




gained possession of the fertile western shore of Palestine. 



26 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



In the tenth of Genesis, the genealogy of Japheth, the elder, 
comes first, and to his sons are ascribed the coast of the 
Black Sea, the Islands of the Mediterranean, Greece, Thrace, 
and the uncertain, distant Tarshish, the remote indefinite 
West. Northward, they shaded away into Germany and into 
Russia ; for, to the best of our knowledge, the lands called 
after the names of Ashkenaz, Tubal, Riphath, and Togarmah 
were the then obscure lands of Central Europe. In the 
territory of Madai (Media), south of the Caspian Sea, the 
territory of Japheth impinged upon, or rather overlay, that of 
Shem, yet without that entanglement which was witnessed 
farther south between the descendants of Shem and of Ham. 

Shem took what was the central portion of that ancient 
world ; and from Arpfhaxad, the third son of Shem, descended 
Eber, the progenitor of the mighty race which bore his 
name, the Ebrews, or Hebrews. The territory which bore 
the name of Aram we know best as Syria ; Arphaxad is the 
Chaldaea of history ; Asshur, slightly changed, is Assyria ; 
Elam is Persia ; and Joktan is the fertile Arabia. 

Ham's sons were Mizraim, the inheritors of Egypt ; Cush, 
originally the possessor of the south of Egypt, Nubia, and 
Abyssinia ; Phut, the founder of the Barbary tribes and 
those along the Niger ; and Canaan, who, lacking territory on 
the continent proper, took possession of the western shore of 
Palestine. The descendants of Cush appear to have early 
wandered forth from the region of the Blue Nile. Nimrod, 
the mighty hunter, advanced with victorious tread, and estab- 
lished himself on the banks of the Euphrates, in the heart of 
the territory of Shem, Others encroached on the Arabian 
peninsula, and mingled with the descendants of the Shemitic 
Joktan. 



EDEN, ARARAT, ETC. 



2/ 



Further than this, I need not go. In our later studies, we 
shall have occasion here and there to take up the names of 
the tenth of Genesis. The story of Solomon will bring un- 
der review Ophir and Sheba ; the Philistine history will 
cause us to resort to Casluhim, and the Canaanite tribes will 
be words very familiar to us further on, — the Hittites and 
Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgasites, and all the rest ; but 
for the present we may leave them. Special historical 
research here is more interesting for its own sake than for 
the light it throws upon the Bible story : that which we must 
mainly keep in mind is the development of that line which is 
perpetuated, not in Japheth and Ham, but in the third son of 
Shem, Arphaxad, and in Salah, Eber, and the whole Hebrew 
race that bears his name. From Shem to Abram is a leap 
of ten generations ; and those men, Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, 
Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, and Abram, were all of 
them doubtless dwellers on the plains of Upper Mesopotamia, 




TOWER OF AN ANCIENT CHRISTIAN CHURCH, OORFA (ur). 



II. 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 

Four spots arranged along the banks of the Euphrates 
and Tigris contend for the honor of being Ur of the Chal- 
dees. Of these, only two are regarded as having important 
claims. One of them is Oorfa, otherwise known as Calirrhoe 
and Edessa, a place of great natural attractiveness, lying in 
Upper Mesopotamia, about three hundred miles north-east of 
Damascus. The other is the site of the very ancient city of 
Mugheir, a short distance above the confluence of the Tigris 
and Euphrates. Stanley, in offering his plea, couched in his 
peculiar beauty of diction, has not gone quite so far as would 
be warranted in insisting upon Ur's being in the region at the 
base of the Armenian mountains. It is now settled, almost 
beyond dispute, that the region around Edessa was the home 
of the descendants of Arphaxad, of whom Abraham was one. 
It is not a little surprising that such a scholar as Rawlinson 
should ignore the fact, that, to use Stanley's picturesque ex- 
pression, the name Chaldsea once descended, like a landslip, 
from the mountains of Armenia to the territory at the head 
of the Persian Gulf. In the story of Abraham, we have to 
deal with the primitive Chaldaea, and not with that which 
comes to view later in the Bible. Rawlinson's argument 
that Mugheir was Ur, is invalidated by this fact at the outset. 
Besides, the place which he assigns as Ur of the Chaldees is 

23 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 



2 9 



west of the Euphrates ; and we have a distinct implication in 
the dying speech of Stephen, that Abraham's first home was 
Mesopotamia, and therefore necessarily east of the Euphra- 
tes. To this must be added the fact, that the ruins of Mug- 
heir indicate, that, in the remotest antiquity, the place was a 
large and populous city, second, indeed, only to Babylon. 
But assuredly Abraham was not a man whose home had been 




in a great and luxurious capital : he was not even a man who 
lived, or wished to live, within walls. He was a man of simple 
life, and preferred the shelter of a tent to that of a stone 
roof. In those days, Oorfa, the subsequent Edessa, was 
probably, as it is to-day, always surrounded by a nomad pop- 
ulation, who gladly accepted its verdurous neighborhood in 
. lieu of the vast sand-plains which stretch away to the south 



30 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

and west. The place even now is one of the most striking 
within many miles ; and the profuse spring which the ancient 
traditions of the place assert to have been the home of Abra- 
ham's youth is one which refreshes multitudes of travelers. 
Oorfa is familiar to a portion of the Christian public as a 
mission station of the American Board. 




POOL OF ABRAHAM, OORFA. 



About twenty miles south of Ur, lay Haran. Its situ- 
ation has always been known ; for although the region is 
a desolate one, — a range of sandy and unproductive waste, — 
yet it was at the junction of three important caravan routes: 
one toward the Tigris ; another to the great towns on the 
Euphrates ; and a third south-west, toward Damascus and 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 



31 



Syria. In classic history, it has its interest as the scene of 
Crassus' defeat by the Parthians : a battle brought about, 
doubtless, by the same cause which made it the object of 
Abraham's first wandering, — its location in relation to the 
great highways of travel. Dr. Beke's conjecture, that Haran 
is to be identified with a village of the same name about ten 
miles east of Damascus, is ingenious, and has much to 
recommend it ; but it is, I think, open to fatal objections. 
The argument drawn from the name is no more valid than 
that which applies to the Haran of Mesopotamia ; for both 
sites perpetuated the ancient name. On the other hand, the 
distinct reference to the Euphrates in Joshua xxiv. 2, 3, 
"Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood (or river) 
in old times. . . And I took your father Abraham from the 
other side of the flood ; " the clear intimation conveyed in 
Stephen's dying speech (Acts vii. 2-4), as well as the ex- 
plicit statement (Gen. xxiv. 10) that Haran, the home of 
Rebekah, was in Mesopotamia, taken in connection with the 
clause with which Gen. xx. 9 opens (" Then Jacob went on 
his journey, and came into the land of- the people of the 
East "), make it almost certain that Dr. Beke's conjecture, 
that Haran was only ten miles east of Damascus, is an untena- 
ble one. The distance which Laban had to traverse in pursu- 
ing Jacob is stated to have been a seven days' journey. From 
Haran to Gilead, where the fugitive was overtaken, is a dis- 
tance of three hundred and fifty miles. Of course, fifty 
miles a day is altogether more than the usual distance 
traversed by Eastern caravans ; yet if it be true, that the post 
caravans are but eight days in passing from Damascus to 
Bagdad, a distance of five hundred miles, surely the deter- 



3 2 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



mined and well-furnished Laban could accomplish three hun- 
dred and fifty miles in seven days. 

From Haran, Abraham, with Sarai his wife, and Lot his 
nephew, turned to a new home. A voice, stronger than his 
own inclination, bade him go toward the south-west, and 
enter into the land of Canaan. In the journey thitherward, 
the numerous party does not appear to have made any stay 




MODERN HARAN. 



at Damascus ; although that ancient city was standing then, 
and was visited by Abraham not long after. There was no 
halt till they reached the fertile plain of Moreh, the Sichem, 
or Shechem, of a later age. That fertile vale, the beautiful 
garden of Palestine even at the present day, whose gushing 
brooks and green fields call forth every traveler's enthusiasm 
as he approaches the city of Nabliis, had power to check the 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 



33 



onward progress, even of Abraham, for a season ; " and there 
he builded an altar unto the Lord." 

Yet he did not settle there with any permanence, but 
passed onward toward the south, that he might survey the 
whole extent of the territories which had been allotted to 
him and to his seed after him. It was a great change, to 
pass from the sheltered vale between Gerizim and Ebal to the 
bleak hill-sides and uninviting patches of pasturage along the 
top of that mass of rock which stretches from the vale of 
Esdraelon to the desert, with ever-decreasing fertility as one 
advances toward the south. Yet onward he went, surveying 
the land, and erected another altar on a rounded hill, or 
" mountain," to use the Bible word (Gen. xii. 8), south-east of 
that village or city of Bethel, whose ruins, bearing the name 
Beitin, have been described by our own Robinson, and may 
be seen by any traveler going northward from Jerusalem. 
Stanley says, in his graphic way (" Syria and Palestine," p. 
214), " Immediately east of the low gray hills on which the 
Canaanitish Luz and the Jewish Bethel afterward stood, rises 
— as the highest of a succession of eminences,, each now 
marked by some vestige of ancient edifices — a conspicuous 
hill, its topmost summit resting, as it were, on the rocky 
slopes below, and distinguished from them by the olive grove 
which clusters above its broad surface. From this hight, thus 
offering a natural base for the patriarchal altar, and a fitting 
shade for the patriarchal tent, Abraham and Lot must be 
conceived as taking a survey of the country, which can be 
enjoyed from no other point in the neighborhood. To the 
east, there rises the jagged range of the hills above Jericho ; 

in the distance, the dark wall of Moab ; between them lies the 

3 



34 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



wide valley of the Jordan, its course marked by the tract of 
forest in which its rushing stream is enveloped ; and down to 
this valley, a long and deep ravine, now as always the main 
line of communication from the central hills of Palestine. 
To the south and west, the view commanded the bleak hills 
of Judasa ; and, in the far distance, the southern range, on 
whose slope is Hebron. Northward are the hills which 
divide Judaea from the rich plains of Samaria. This is the 
view which was to Abraham what Pisgah was afterward to 
his great descendant. This was to the two lords of Palestine, 
then almost ' free before them where to choose/ what in 
Grecian legends is represented under the figure of the 
Choice of Hercules ; in the fables of Islam, under the story 
of the prophet turning back from Damascus." From that 
hight, Lot turned down to the rich but enervating valley of 
the Jordan, while Abraham cast a lingering look " northward 
and southward, and eastward and westward," over the coun- 
try which was to be his ; not rich and promising and attrac- 
tive, like those fertile plains where Lot's descendants were to 
live ; and yet where the clear, dry air, and the need of indus- 
try and frugality, were to develop a race far superior to that 
which might be nursed in a land of greater plenty, but where 
there should be little stimulus to healthful labor. 

But there was little at Bethel which could sustain the 
flocks of Abraham ; true, it was forest-crowned, and not bare, 
as the same hill is to-day ; yet he must still press southward. 
One season of famine drove him to Egypt for temporary sup- 
plies ; but, lest another should arise, he must seek him a new 
home. He made no stay till he reached Hebron. Under 
the terebinths upon the plains of Mamre, north of Hebron, 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 35 

was the scene of his next altar to the Lord, the huge trees,' 




here as at Shechem and Bethel, being the protection which 



36 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



he courted, and their shade the hallowed temple where he 
worshiped. 

As his brief residence at Bethel was characterized by the 
flight into Egypt, and the temporary sojourn there till the 
stress of the famine had passed, so was his residence at 
Mam re interrupted by the rude hand of war. The sultry but 
luxuriant shores of the Dead Sea and the sunken valley of the 
Jordan had drawn thither four kings, whose territories lay in 
what was the later land of Chaldaea, the territory near the 
confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and on the bor- 
der of the Persian Gulf. We have their names, — Amraphel 
king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king 
of Elam, and Tidal king of nations. The power which they 
were able to bring into the field gave them the victory ; and 
they brought under a subjection which lasted twelve years the 
five kings of the five cities of the plain, — Sodom, Gomorrah, 
Admah, Zeboim, and Zoar. The rebellion of these rulers in 
the thirteenth year of their subjection brought the kings once 
more from their eastern home, and this time with stronger 
armies, and bent on a larger measure of conquest. The 
province which they ravaged, and whose population they 
smote down, extended from the base of Hermon to a district 
south of the Dead Sea. They first fell upon the Rephaim, or 
giants, in that interesting land so recently brought to light by 
the researches of Porter, Graham, and Wetstein, southward 
of Hermon, and in the most rocky province of the fertile 
Bashan. Ashteroth Karnaim was the name of the first city 
which was sacked, — a place which Porter, never rash 
in claiming more than is just, believes to still exist, little 
changed in outward form from that which it bore when the 
Rephaim were its tenants. 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 37 

Advancing southward, the Zuzim were the next to fall. 
Their home lay east of Jericho, on the high plain back from 
the Jordan, where it enters the Dead Sea. Then the Emim, 
a race who lived farther south, fell before these conquering 
kings from the east. They do not at once double the south- 
ernmost extremity of the sea and advance northward, but 




ruins OF A temple at kenath. (Ashteroth Karnaim.) 



march forty miles still farther south, and conquer the Horites, 
the dwellers in Mount Seir, the race that held the valley of 
Petra, and the romantic denies of that region, even before 
the time when Ishmael held them as his. 

We are now, as you see, in the very dawn of history. 
That territory of the Rephaim at Ashteroth Karnaim has 
not yet acquired its familiar name of Bashan ; the Zuzim and 



38 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



Emim have not yet given way to the Ammonites and the 
Moabites ; and the Horites of Seir have not yet receded be- 
fore the more powerful Edomites. That time is the very 
morning of history ; and, scanty as is our knowledge, we 
should be grateful that the limits are clear enough to enable 
us to follow the victorious marches of kings whose names 
and conquests antedate all mention of Jerusalem. From Seir, 
we can trace these eastern leaders, of whom Chedorlaomer 
appears to have been chief, across the Arabah Valley, that 
long, terrible, blasted gorge, running from the Dead Sea * 
southward to the eastern arm of the Red Sea, across this 
trough, and for a little way into the upland of Paran ; then 
they came down to the lower land again, and drank of the 
waters of En-mishpat, afterwards to be so familiar as Kadesh. 
Radiating thence, they went on with their destructive work, 
subduing the Amalekites, or the people of the Sinai Penin- 
sula, and then the Amorites, or inhabitants of the hill coun- 
try west, of the Dead Sea, and round about the place then 
known as Hazezon-tamar, but familiar to us as Engedi. 
Then, after completing this work of desolation, cutting off 
all who might have been the natural allies of the cities of the 
plain, they once more swept down on those five important 
places, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Zoar, and 
not only took away the goods of the people, but, confounding 
Abraham's nephew Lot and 'his family with the inhabitants 
proper, they took them captive, and confiscated all their 
goods. Where these cities lay it is not hard to tell, though 
the precise site of each is no longer to be identified. Mod- 
ern explorers have generally identified the name Sodom with 
Usdum, the salt mountain at the southern extremity of the 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 39 

Dead Sea. Zoar, which is stated to have been near Sodom, 
is placed by Robinson's high authority at the mouth of Wady 
Kerak, on the south-eastern shore of the sea, where the well- 
known Lisan peninsula is connected with the mainland. Nor 
is Robinson's reasoning discarded by the supposition of the 
learned but fanciful De Saulcy, who identifies Zoar with some 
ruins on the western shore of the Dead Sea, not far from 
Engedi. The shallowness of the southern portion of the 
sea has suggested the theory that the flats, over which boats 
sail with some difficulty, were once a fertile plain, and that 
they were studded with those five cities whose names are 
suggestive of extreme luxury, debauchery, and overwhelm- 
ing destruction. North of the spot where the peninsula ex- 
tends into the sea from the east, the depth is very great, not 
far from thirteen hundred feet ; and even close to the shore 
where the Arnon enters, there are eleven hundred feet sound- 
ings. But south of the strait that connects the part north 
of the peninsula with that south of it, the water shoals at 
once, there being but from twelve to eighteen feet ; and in 
the year 1818, the English travelers, Irby and Mangles, 
report having found a ford from the peninsula to the south- 
west shore of the sea. No wonder that the theory occurred 
to Robinson, therefore, that this may once have been the 
" plain," and that, in that great commotion of the elements 
which effected the destruction of the cities, the water sub- 
merged their site, and covers it even to the present day. 
Still, the researches of geologists do not confirm this view. 
There are no marks of any upheaval or depression there 
which did not affect the whole Ghor, from the Sea of Galilee 
to the Red Sea. Notwithstanding the discovery of occasional 



4Q 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



bits of bitumen at the bottom, on the beach, and floating 
on the surface, there is no evidence that their formation is 



& % Er Ram 



"■r\pHesban " 




Scale of Miles. 



DEAD SEA AND VICINITY.* 



* To avoid encumbering the map, only modern names, except a few in parentheses, have been 
given. The following table is subjoined, containing the corresponding ancient names, so far as 
ascertained : — 

Ain Jidy (Fountain of a Kid), En-gedi, Anata, Anathoth. Jer. i. i. 

Hazezon-Tamar. i Sam. xxiv. i, 2; Gen. Azarieh (town of Lazarus), Bethany. 

xiv. 7. 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 



41 



not coeval with the geologic age when that wondrous chasm 
was formed, from northern Palestine to the Gulf of Akabah. 
On the contrary, the evidence is decisive that the waters of 
the Dead Sea were once, even within the range of human 
history, deeper than they are now ; that evaporation has for 
centuries been in excess of the amount flowing in, and that 
the flats at the southern extremity were once submerged 
more than at present. The nature of the beach, the logs 
found there, the marks on the rocks, sh ow that once the 
Dead Sea stood at a higher level than now. And certainly 
the amount poured into the Jordan is less than it was when 
Palestine was a wooded country, where rains were abundant, 
and where pasture was found on every hill-side. The stream 
is constantly becoming less and less ; and, under the present 
political rule of the country, the neglect of cultivation tends 
to make it smaller and smaller still. Not till trees shall once 
more grow on Bethel and on the mountains of Gilboa can the 
Jordan flow with its old volume ; and it can not be many 
years from the present time before the Dead Sea will begin to 



Bahr Lfit (Sea of Lot), Salt Sea. Gen. 
xiv. 3. 

Beit-lahm (House of Flesh), Bethlehem 
(House of Bread). 

El'al, Elealeh. Num. xxxii. 37. 

E! Khulil (the Friend, i. e. Abraham), He- 
bron, Kirjath-Arra. 

El Kuds (the Holy), Jerusalem, Jebus. 

Er Ram, Ramah. i Kings xv. 17 : Jer. xxxi. 

15. 

Er Riha, Jericho. 

Hesban, Heshbon. 

Jebel Tur, Mt. of Olives. 

Jebel Kuruntul, Mt. Quarantania, tra- 
ditional Mount of Temptation. Directly wist 
of Er Riha. 

Jebel Usdum, from the city Sodom. 

Kerak, Kir-Moab. Isa. xv. 1. 

Kurmul, Carmel. i Sam. xxv. 2. 



Ma'in, Baal-meon. Num. xxxii. 38. 
Neby Samwil (Prophet Samuel), Mizpeh. 
Sam vii. 5-12. 

Rabba, Rabbath-Moab, Ar. Num. xxi. 

28. 

Selvvan, named from the fountain Siloam. 
Tekua, Tekoa. Amos i. 1. 
Tell Arad (Hill Arad), Arad. Num. xxi. 1. 
Tell Ma'in (Hill Main), Maon. i Sam. 

XXV. 2. 

Tuleil-el-Ful, Gibeah. Judg. xix. 12 ; 1 
Sam xv. 34. 

Wady Kelt, Brook Cherith (Ker't). 1 
Kings xvii. 3. 

Wady Kerak, Brook Zered. Deut. ii. 14. 

Wady Mojeb, R. Arnon. Deut. ii. 24. 

Wady Rahib, Brook Kidron. 

Yutta, Juttah. Josh. xv. 55. 



42 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



sensibly show the effect of evaporation, and disclose to the 
light of day that submerged tract which Robinson conjec- 
tured to be the site of the cities of the plain. 

Scarcely less tenable than is Robinson's theory that four 
of the five " cities of the plain " (Zoar being excepted) occu- 
pied the flats at the southern end of the Dead Sea, where the 
water is but a few feet deep, is the theory promulgated by Mr. 




SOUTH SHORE OF THE DEAD SEA. 



Grove, in Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible," and re-affirmed 
by Mr. Tristram in his excellent " Land of Israel," that the 
five cities lay in the plains north of the Dead Sea, and near 
the site of Jericho. Dr. Wolcott has so triumphantly proved 
the incorrectness of Mr. Grove's and Mr. Tristram's theory, in 
" The Bibliotheca Sacra" for January, 1868, that the question 
must be considered settled in accordance with the old view, 
that they lay contiguous to the southern extremity of the sea. 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 



43 



Placing Zoar at the mouth of Wady Kerak, and close to the 
Lisan peninsula which juts into the Dead Sea from the east, 
we have little doubt that the other four cities lay somewhere 
on that dry, salt-incrusted plain, ten miles in length by six in 
breadth, which separates the southern end of the sea from 
the salt cliffs of Usdum. The soil of that plain, though now 
entirely arid, and presenting a most cheerless aspect, is, when 
examined a foot or two beneath the surface, found to contain 
the elements of the greatest fertility, and to have been capa- 
ble, at some previous day, to have supported a luxuriant vege- 
tation.* 

Chedorlaomer, and the eastern kings who accompanied him 
from the banks of the Euphrates, skirted nearly the whole of 
the Dead Sea, therefore, before they made their second 
descent upon the cities of the plain. We saw them last 
victorious over the Amorites at Hazezon-tamar, or Engedi, on 
the western side of the sea. It was but a short march 
thence across the rough country to the fertile plain at the 
southern extremity of the Dead Sea. 

When Abram heard that Lot was a captive, and that his 
goods had been carried away by the undiscriminating cap- 
tors, he swept down, as you remember, from his temporary 
home under the oaks of Mamre, and, with his three hundred 
and eighteen servants, pursued the fugitives, and brought his 
nephew and his nephew's family and goods back in safety. 

* So entire was my confidence in the accurate judgment of my friend, Mr. Grove, unquestionably 
one of the first, if not the very first, of living biblical geographers, that in my Lowell Institute 
lectures on Biblical Geography I cited, without hesitation, his and Mr. Tristram's view of the sites 
of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim. To Dr. Wolcott's admirable scholarship and 
acuteness, and to his friendly offices, I owe the power to correct the impressions given in the 
Lowell Institute course. 



44 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



It is not hard to trace his course. There is little doubt that 
he plunged quickly up the hill-ridge of Palestine, past the 
sites of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, past Shechem and the 
plain of Esdraelon. The first place where we find him again 
is at the hill of Dan, at the head waters of the Jordan, and 
at the foot of Hermon. Thence on he pushes, passes Da- 
mascus, and routs the enemy finally at Hobah, a place whose 
location we know with probable exactness, and which lay a 
little further north than Damascus, at the eastern base of the 
Anti-Lebanon range. The return of the conqueror, and his 
reception by the rulers of the southern portion of Palestine, 
is made especially interesting, because it brings into view, for 
the first time, what appears to be the city of Jerusalem. Its 
king was one of those who acknowledged his indebtedness to 
the ability of Abraham and his three hundred and eighteen 
brave men. That strong rock of Salem, but a few miles from 
the rocky home of the Amorites on the west coast of the Dead 
Sea, had not been attacked. Thus early in the world's his- 
tory do we get a glimpse of Jerusalem. Little remains of 
the places whose names or sites I have mentioned ; but those 
of the places named in chapters xiii. and xiv. of Genesis are 
still familiar to us and daily in our mouths, — Hebron, Jeru- 
, salem, the Salem of that elder day, and Damascus at the 
north : all of them indebted to nature for those characteris- 
tics which make their existence there not a transient but a 
permanent thing ; the fertility of the vales around Hebron ; 
the natural strength of the rock which was Melchisedek's 
capital, and the profuse waters, which, flowing down from the 
Anti-Lebanon, must always have made Damascus outwardly 
what it is to-day. 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 



45 



Very striking is the relation which Abraham sustained to 
the early inhabitants of Palestine, compared with that which 
arose when Joshua swept into the country, and was resisted 
as an invader. I see no marked reason for believing with 
some, that those tribes, whose names are so familiar to us, the 
Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites and the 
Jebusites, were naturally more placable in that early day than 
they were when they resisted the Hebrews, and were sub- 
jected to such fearful slaughter. The account of Abraham's 
purchase of the cave of Machpelah is extremely beautiful, 
and the conduct of Ephron and the other Hittites was punc- 
tiliously courteous ; yet, had Abraham claimed the land at the 
point of the sword, I doubt not he would have encountered 
opposition no less resolute that did Joshua. The members 
of the patriarchal retinue had not expanded into the vastness 
which they assumed after the long sojourn in Egypt. Isaac's 
servants were embroiled in frequent dissensions with the 
adherents of Abimelech, it is true, but never so as to lead to 
open war. Abraham was even more fortunate. Strong in the 
valor of his defendants, he was looked upon as a valuable ally 
rather than a formidable rival ; and so he lived quietly for 
many years on those open plains of Mamre, hard by Hebron, 
and, so far from quarreling with his Hittite neighbors, their 
intercourse was always mutually assuring. It is noticeable, 
that, in respect to civilization, Abraham was inferior to the 
Canaanites. Ephron and his fellows lived in a walled town ; 
and the compact regarding the sale of the cave was confirmed 
at the gate, just as is the case with all transactions even at 
the present day. Abraham, however, lived in tents, a true 
sheikh, like those who may be seen even now. Notwith- 



4 6 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



standing his possible acquaintance with the architecture of 
the cities on the Euphrates and the Tigris, notwithstanding 
his sojourn amid the luxury of Egypt, he, and his children 
after him, clung to their tents and their nomadic life. How 
long he tarried in Egypt we do not know ; but for thirteen 
years he dwelt just outside the gates of Hebron, and yet the 
habits of a higher civilization had no charms for him. In 
estimating his never-failing conviction that the whole land 
was to fall into the hands of his descendants, it should not be 
forgotten that Abraham, the wandering sheikh of Chaldaea, 
was obviously inferior to those who held the soil. He might 
be of assistance in repelling the attacks of such lawless chief- 
tains as Chedorlaomer and the rest ; but he was an Arab 
sheikh, honest, valiant, frugal, just such a man as was that 
kindly Saleh, who, thirty years ago, guided Robinson across 
the Sinai desert. That faith which was " imputed to him as 
righteousness " was entirely consistent with his simple, 
inartificial life. The civilization of Sodom was inextricably 
bound up with its impiety ; and there is no antagonism what- 
ever between the life of old Father Abraham, spent in tents 
and among flocks and herds, and that trust in God which led 
him away from his home, " not knowing whither he went," 
and which made him so much more than Robinson's Saleh 
was, that, whereas the latter is only remembered as kindly 
and benignant, the former is known as the " Father of the 
Faithful." 

The next and last home of Abraham is in and around 
Beersheba, a few miles farther to the south, and then as now 
on the frontier line between Palestine and the land known in 
Scripture as the south country. Here he digged those wells, 



THE HOMES OF ABRAHAM. 



47 



which, enlarged and renewed from time to time, and cleansed 
from the light sand which otherwise would have choked them, 
are to be seen at the present day. They were first brought 




BEERSHEBA.* 



* Rev. H. B. Tristram, in his recent and admirable work, The Land of Israel, from 
which this engraving is copied, says, " The well at which we were camped was twelve and a half 
feet in diameter, thirty-four feet till we reached the living rock ; and, as we were told by the Arabs, 
twice that depth. At present, the water stood at thirty-eight feet from the surface. The native 
visitors to our camp pointed out, with all the pride of race, that the wells were the work of " Abra- 
ham the Friend." The well above the rock was built with finely-squared large stones, hard as 
marble ; and the ropes of water-drawers for four thousand years have worn the edges of the hard 
limestone with no less than one hundred and forty-three flutings, the shallowest of them four inches 
deep. The ancient marble troughs are arranged at convenient distances round the mouth, in an 
irregular circle, some obi ng, most of them round, for the convenience of the cattle. From their 
style and material, they are probably coeval with the original well. All day long our men, or the. 
Bedouin herdsmen and their wives, were drawing water in skins, and filling these troughs for the 
horses, camels, and sheep, recalling many a scene in the lives of the patriarchs, of Rebecca, and; 
of Zipporah." p. 373. 



4 8 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



to light by the great German traveler, Seetzen, in 1806, who 
recognized in the Bir es Saiba of the natives the Beersheba 
of the Bible. Yet Seetzen was unable to visit the place ; but 
the clew which he gave was followed up twenty years later by 
our own countryman, the illustrious Robinson, who explored 
the place, and who has given us, in the somewhat dry but 
almost always exact language of his Biblical Researches, the 
result of his investigations. Robinson saw two wells there ; 
but Van de Velde, a more recent and very accurate observer, 
discovered five. During the past five centuries, the place has 
been unknown : no traveler has sought for its traces. Still, 
from the time of Abraham down to the middle ages, Beer- 
sheba appears to have been a place of some importance ; not 
a large town, indeed, but one whose name is often met. Ly- 
ing, as it did, just on the outskirts of civilization, it served as 
a garrison town ; and such it appears to have been at the 
time of its last mention in history. The traces of the place 
can be seen at the present time : still, the disintegrating influ- 
ences of time have been so effective, that not much is left but 
the faintest indication that a city was ever there. The name 
Beersheba, retained perfectly in the Bir es Saiba of the 
Arabs, clings to the ancient wells ; and there is no possible 
doubt that here was the last home of Abraham. 




COIN FROM OORFA. 



III. 

JACOB AND THE "SOUTH COUNTRY." 

South of Beersheba the hills fade away, and are lost in 
the rolling country which stretches onward to the distant 
mountain-land lying on the northern part of the great Et Tih 
plateau. As one passes up from the Sinaitic Wilderness into 
the hill country of Palestine, he notices, in the last twenty 
miles before reaching Beersheba, the symptoms of a change. 
The aromatic shrubs of the desert gradually disappear, and 
grass takes its place. There are no trees, and yet the ground 
loses its almost fearfully sterile look, and begins to put on 
the first indications of fertility. Of all the travelers who 
have written of this south country, no other one has traced 
its features with the tender fidelity of Bonar, the Scotch poet 
and preacher, in his " Desert of Sinai" and " Land of Prom- 
ise," — both excellent and admirable works. 

Not that there is much that can detain the traveler for any 
length of time : its resources are very slight, and its features 
are not striking. Yet, as the home of Abraham for an 
exceedingly attractive part of his life, as the home of Isaac 
and of Jacob for a part of theirs, it is one of the most inter- 
esting regions mentioned in the Bible. It is not yet, strange 
to say, thoroughly explored. While there is scarcely a wady 
between Dan and Beersheba which has not been examined 
with a certain degree of care, the south country is known 

4 49 



50 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



only as it has been traversed by the caravan routes of the 
desert. The two hasty tours made a few years ago by Rev. 
Mr. Rowland, in search of Kadesh, lasting but three or four 
days each, are almost the only ones which have been made 
south of Beersheba, except by those who have had occasion 
to cross the region. And discredited as Mr. Rowland appar- 
ently must be, in respect to his alleged discovery of the site 
of Kadesh, and the fancied identification of the well which 
he encountered in the desert with the one which Hagar stum- 




THE "SOUTH COUNTRY." 



bled upon when famished and at the door of death, still the 
remarks which he makes show, that, in spite of the distem- 
pered enthusiasm with which he recounts his explorations, 
there is a rich field for the researches of a learned, careful, 
and zealous man. Yet, even with such exploration, there is 
no startling mystery in that south country which will be 
brought to light. We know, almost beyond question, that 
the country where Abraham lived was at Beersheba and in 
its immediate vicinity ; that Isaac went westward to Gerar, 
and digged his numerous wells up and down the course of 



JACOB AND THE " SOUTH COUNTRY." 



51 



Wady Sheriah, a broad and shallow watercourse a few miles 
south-east of Gaza, and running toward the latter city. 
Very careful research might bring to light the wells which 
the provident and domestic Isaac digged, — the sources of 
such frequent controversy between his herdsmen and those 
of the Philistine king. Even to the present day, wells are 
the most valuable possession of the Arab tribes ; and no con- 
tentions are so prolonged or so bitter as those which are held 
in respect to their possession. But, of all the wells of the 
whole region, no two come so prominently forward as Beer- 
sheba, the favorite residence of Abraham and Jacob, and 
Beer-lahai-roi, the place around which Isaac loved to call 
together his flocks. Mr. Rowland, in his hasty tour through 
the south country, discovered a well some distance south of 
Wady Sheriah, the ancient Valley of Gerar, bearing the name 
Moilahi. This, from the resemblance in the names, he con- 
jectured to be Hagar and Isaac's Lahai-roi. It is scarcely 
possible that this was the case. The country where Rowland 
made his early discoveries is too barren to have been attrac- 
tive to a good husbandman like Isaac : he would have chosen 
the more fertile land south of Gaza, and in fact encroaching 
some distance upon what was the subsequent territory of the 
Philistines. The retem or juniper-bush grows there now just 
as it did in the olden time ; and it affords a scanty shelter 
from the sun's rays to the Arab of to-day, just as it did to 
Elijah, while he was on his pilgrimage to Horeb, and had 
advanced a day's journey south of Beersheba. 

Here, then, in this half-fertile, half-desert tract, was the 
real home of the patriarchs. South of it was the wilderness 
the subsequent scene of their descendants' trials and pro- 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



tracted wanderings. North of it was the home of the 
Canaanites, the powerful and partly-civilized descendants of 
Ham. With the patriarchal families we see mingled rival 
lords of the soil, the Abimelechs, wandering princes also, 
men who lived in tents, and possessed vast flocks and herds. 
Abraham did not attempt to dispossess the strong tribes 
which he found lying between Dan and Beersheba : but 
after tarrying briefly at Shechem, Bethel, and Hebron, he 
went a few miles farther south, to the open country, where 
there were no walled cities ; and here he and his sons and his 
sons' sons led their roving, pastoral life. We trace Hagar 
passing beyond that desert where she famished, making her 
abode for a season in Egypt, and securing a wife there for 
her son Ishmael ; but none of the descendants (Gen. xxv.) 
work their way northward into the land of the Canaanites : 
they go south-east-ward into the hills and plains, and become 
the fathers of those wandering Arabs, who perpetuate, in the 
smallest details, the peculiarities of the time when Ishmael 
led his roving life. The other descendants of Abraham, his 
sons by Keturah (Gen. xxv.), went farther away ; and we find 
them and their successors in the most fertile parts of Arabia 
Felix. Isaac remains at Beersheba and Mamre, and in the 
Vale of Gerar, a little westward, never leaving that region 
but once, and then when his father carried him for sacrifice 
to Moriah. I have already alluded to the rock-tomb which 
Abraham purchased of the Hittite tribe, and which was 
directly before those oaks of Mamre which for thirteen years 
sheltered Abraham's tents. The upland of Mamre is passed 
now by the traveler directly after leaving Hebron and going 
northward, itself bare and possessed of little that is striking 



JACOB AND THE "SOUTH COUNTRY." 



53 



or interesting, saving a great oak, a vivid reminder of the 
terebinth under which Abraham refreshed himself. But the 
grave has had a more splendid destiny than the shaded spot 
where Abraham lived. There is no doubt whatever that the 




MOoQUE AT HEBRON. 



place where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob 
and Leah, were buried, is now sacredly guarded within the 
mosque at Hebron. It is one of those places which are 
equally revered at the present time by Jew, Mahometan, and 
Christian ; and there has been not a year nor a day since the 



54 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



time of Abraham when that rock-tomb has been exposed to 
desecration, or when a guard has not been set over it. From 
the time when Abraham purchased it, down all the centuries 
of the Old Covenant, it remained in the hands of the Jews. 
The Christians then gained possession of it ; then the Ma- 
hometans grasped it : but the patriarchs, and especially 
Abraham, were beloved in their eyes, and it suffered no 
detriment. The Christians held it again for the little season 
in which the Crusaders were victorious, and then relin- 
quished it once more into the hands of the Moslems. These 
hold it to-day, as must be said to the shame of the Christian 
world. There is but one race which should possess and keep 
that hallowed tomb, — the Jews themselves. It ought, 
indeed, to be freely open to the Gentile world, — to those who, 
though not of the Abrahamic lineage, yet revere his memory, 
and accept the Christian fulfilling of his faith ; and yet it is 
owed to the Jews that it be taken from those who hold it 
now in their foul and unseemly clutch, and given to the 
descendants of the ancient patriarchs. Happily, the strong 
arm of the British government has wrested within our days 
what assuredly would not have been given ; and the Prince 
of Wales, accompanied by a small and chosen party of friends 
and scholars, has been permitted to go as far as some might 
perhaps consider it seemly under any circumstances to 
advance. It is true, they did not enter the cave itself. The 
darkened shrines which bear the names of the ancient 
patriarchs and their wives, and which are jealously guarded 
by the Moslem keepers, are directly over the tomb ; yet, in 
that part of the mosque which is called the shrine of Abra- 
ham, the royal party saw a hole about eight inches across, 



JACOB AND THE " SOUTH COUNTRY." 



55 



which leads directly into the cave below. Every night, a 
lamp is lowered into the vault, but it is withdrawn by day. 
The original entrance is closed by masonry, but was doubt- 
less on the southern face of the hill, and so situated that 
Abraham, as he sat under his oaks, could look fully into it. 
The student who may wish to trace the architectural history 
of the mosque will find it fully detailed in Ritter's work on 
the Holy Land, vol. iii. pp. 305 et seq. ; and no one can fad 
to be instructed by the graphic narrative which Dean Stan- 
ley, one of the Prince of Wales's party, has given of the 
royal visit in 1862. It is not to be forgotten, that the great 
earnestness to penetrate the cave of Machpelah is peculiar, 
it would seem, to the Christian nations of the present day. 
The pasha of Jerusalem, who yielded the right of entrance to 
the English party, expressed wonder at their curiosity, and 
said that " he had never thought of visiting the mosque for 
any other purpose than snuffing the sacred air." Yet it may 
be doubted whether, in case a strong curiosity should prompt 
a Mahometan to descend, he would dare to ; for Quaresmius 
tells us, " that, early as the seventh century, it was firmly 
believed, that, if any Mussulman entered the cavern, immedi- 
ate death would be the consequence." I trust, however, that 
the growing weakness of the Turkish government will allow 
of even more perfect exploration. It is not too much to say, 
that, in a good measure of probability, the body of Jacob, 
embalmed as it was in Egypt, is in as perfect condition there 
to-day as are the mummies which are disinterred on the 
Nile ; and, it may be, the first layers of the masonry to be 
still seen at Hebron were laid by Joseph himself, on the 
occasion of his father's sumptuous funeral. That this is no 



56 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



idle fancy is shown by the wealth and power of the man, 
whose father had been a Hebrew shepherd, but who had 
wrought out his fortune with such signal success in Egypt. 
Here Joseph had become habituated to magnificent sepul- 
chers, as well as to sumptuous sepultures ; and after that 
costly pageantry of burial described so strikingly in the clos- 
ing chapter of Genesis, it is hardly to be supposed that he 
would fail to designate, with some architectural memorial, the 
simple rock-grave which his great-grandfather purchased, and 
which for three generations had lain in its original rudeness. 

Jacob's return to the land of his forefathers, that he might 
take a wife from his own family and not from strangers, 
brings Haran momentarily into view again ; and not Haran 
only, but one or two other places which have already become 
familiar to us in connection with Abraham's wander- 
ings. He leaves Beersheba, the home of his childhood ; but 
he leaves it not to return to its comparative bareness, and 
the scanty resources which it had yielded to Abraham and 
Isaac. We find him living farther north, in the fertile vale 
of Hebron and on the fruitful plain of Shechem, but no more 
in the south country. His way led him from his childhood's 
home, along the great ridge which runs north and southward 
all the way from Dan to Beersheba. We get no glimpse of 
him till he reaches Bethel, the same place already noticed, 
the Luz of a former time, on a mountain directly east of 
which Abraham and Lot stood when they surveyed the whole 
country, and divided it between themselves. On one of the 
stones of that still wild and rocky spot, Jacob pillowed his 
head, and saw in his dream the ladder that reached to the 
stars. On he went, — no names of places given us, — and 



JACOB AND THE " SOUTH COUNTRY." 



57 



came to the distant Mesopotamia, " the land of the people of 
the East," and at last greeted his kinsmen of Haran. Near 
the home of his grandfather, hz wrought his fourteen years' 
service, and at last returned, no longer a solitary shepherd 
with crook and staff alone, but a man of substance. His 
flight with his wives and herds carried him, not, as before, 
past the foot of Hermon, and not far from Damascus, but 
south-westward, direct toward the mountains of Gilead, a 
distance of three hundred and fifty miles. This natural 
defense he reached on the seventh day. The hight Mizpah, 
where he made his covenant with Laban, was long con- 
sidered a sacred spot, and the cairn erected there testi- 
fied to the historical interest of the place. It is not 
known with certainty at the present time where was 
that Mizpah, one of the many whose names are scattered 
through the Bible, and all of them designating a lofty 
natural watch-tower ; but there is but little doubt that it 
lay on the eastern part of the Gilead range. Thence Jacob 
passed westward to the site of his next encampment, Maha- 
naim. This place, the scene of that " wrestling " which 
has given its own name to the Jabbok River, is familiarly 
known. It can be readily seen from any high point near the 
plain of Esdraelon. The eye, tracing the Jabbok from its 
confluence without the Jordan eastward, sees with distinct- 
ness, even at a considerable distance, the cleft which the 
river makes through the great rock wall which runs parallel 
with the Jordan, on the eastern bank, from its source to its 
mouth On this ravine, but a half-day's march from the 
Jordan, was Mahanaim. From this point Jacob sent his mes- 
sengers southward to the mountains of Seir, the possession 



58 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



of his brother Esau, to greet and propitiate that powerful 
chieftain. Instead of bringing back a peaceful response, the 
martial brother, having already subdued the powerful Horites, 
who formerly inhabited Seir, headed his bands and rushed 
northward, as if with the object of checking Jacob's advance. 
I need not remind the reader of the fear of the younger 
brother, of the rich present sent to propitiate the elder, of 
the sudden revulsion in the mind of the impulsive Esau, and 
the peaceful interview of the chieftains. Esau and Jacob 
part on the borders of the Jabbok for the last time ; the 
former returns with his retinue to his own mountains, the 
latter crosses the brook, then follows its course to the Jordan, 
and lodges at Succoth. Here he does not erect tents ; he 
is passing into a higher stage of life. Succoth means 
" booths ; " and the place, thousands of years subsequently, 
the scene of Lynch's encampment on the Jordan, testifies in 
its very etymology that there, on Israel's real entering the 
promised land as a nation, the day of tents and nomadic wan- 
derings had passed away for ever. 

From Succoth, near the confluence of the Jabbok and the 
Jordan, there are wadies, or gorges, running north-westward 
to the plain of Esdraelon and westward to the neighborhood 
of Shechem. The course which Jacob then took is one 
which has been frightfully familiar to the people of Palestine 
ever since. Down that cleft which he followed, over that 
same ford where he crossed the Jordan, and up the wadies, 
are even now, and have always been, the ravaging courses 
of those terrible Arabs who come from the east, and who are 
so much fiercer than any who are met in Palestine, or in the 
Sinai Peninsula. It is that open door eastward which now 



JACOB AND THE " SOUTH COUNTRY." 



59 



makes the rich vale of Esclraelon little better than a waste 
of flowers, uncut grass, and rank weeds : no man dares till it ; 
for with the approach of harvest the Arabs would come up 
from across the Ghor, by Jacob's former path, and bring ter- 
ror to man and destruction to every growing thing. And so 
it will be, so long as the present inefficient government holds 
sway, — a government so notoriously deficient in the power 
to protect its people that a land which once supported eight 



'If. 7 ..It.'ii.. . 



EBAL 



fir 



KM 



GERIZIM 3 

^>3 



VICINITY OF NABLUS. 



i. Jacob's Well. 2. Joseph's Tomb. 3. Holy place of the Samaritans. 4. Nablfls. 



millions of souls now meagerly gives sustenance to one-tenth 
of that number. 

Shechem, that loveliest of all the vales of Palestine, 
wrought the same effect upon Jacob that it had done upon 
Abraham. As we find the grandfather tarrying at the 
plain of Moreh, and building an altar there ; so, under its 
changed name of Shechem, we see that it wins the grandson 
just as cordially. It was doubtless inhabited in Abraham's 



6o 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



day, but of its earlier tenants we do not hear ; enough that 
Abraham went southward before coming into collision with 
them. And there, by the side of that well which Jacob 
digged, and which, little changed, can be seen to-day, the 
shrewd, careful man could have lived without serious con- 
tention as well as Isaac lived in the valley of Gerar, far to 
the south. But this was not to be. The strivings of Isaac's 
herdsmen with those of Abimelech were easily pacified, in 




Jacob's well. 



comparison with the feuds which the turbulent sons of Jacob 
stirred up with the Canaanites, who possessed the valley of 
Shechem. The cautious and peace-loving patriarch preferred 
to withdraw to a less favored spot, to the vale of Hebron, 
which his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac had 
loved. His journey southward took him past a site already 
sacred in his memory, the Luz, or Bethel, where that wonder- 
ful vision of angels ascending and descending came to him as 
he lay beneath the stars. He, as well as his grandfather 



JACOB AND THE " SOUTH COUNTRY." 



6l 



before him, appears to have always passed around that strong 
rock where the Jebusites lived, little conscious of its great 
destiny, and only once coming into momentary sight as the 
home of Melchisedek, whence he goes forth to greet Abra- 
ham after his victory over the kings of the East. But, south 
of the Jerusalem that was to be, Jacob came to a place which 
was to witness his greatest sorrow. On the highland a little 
north of Bethlehem, at a place called Ephrath, Rachel died 
and was buried. The place of her burial, kept in remem- 
brance by successive structures, one of which, of compara- 
tively modern construction, can be seen even now, is un- 




questionably authentically preserved. She could not be car- 
ried to Hebron, it would seem ; she must be buried by the 
wayside, where she fell. The next stage brings him to 
familiar ground, to Hebron and Mamre, and they become his 
home till his visit to Egypt. His sons do not appear to have 
repressed the wish to return and feed their flocks on the 
far richer and more extensive pasture-lands of the north ; 
and we find them once more on that fertile plain of Shechem, 
tending their flocks, while Joseph goes ten miles farther 
north-eastward to Dothan, just on the southern border of the 



62 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



vale of Esdraelon. This place was brought to light by Rob- 
inson and Van de Velde, only fifteen years ago ; the traces 
of the great ancient road running southward toward Egypt 
being still discernible. 




FLOWERS FROM THE VICINITY OF H ARAN. 



IV. 



EGYPT, AND THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA. 

The scene of the Bible story now passes from Palestine to 
Egypt. That strip of land, but a few miles wide, and lining 
the banks of the Nile with emerald, was the mother of civili- 
zation. Zoan, in Egypt, lying east of the Tanitic mouth of 
the Nile, is referred to in the Bible as one of the most 
ancient cities in the world, and the rise of Egyptian civi- 
lization antedates all authentic history. The power of that 
nation culminated during the time of the Hebrew sojourn in 
that country ; Sesostris, the greatest and most formidable of 
the Egyptian monarchs, being almost unquestionably one of 
the Pharaohs who ruled while the Jews were in Goshen. It 
brings our subject out from the shadowy vagueness which 
might seem to rest upon it, to remember that in all great col- 
lections of Egyptian antiquities, such as that at Berlin, for 
example, the features of that mighty monarch are preserve'd, 
colossal in size, but perfectly well kept, and unquestionably 
authentic. Not that Rameses the Great, or Sesostris, as the 
Greeks called him, was the king of Egypt when Joseph went 
down into that country ; not that he was the Pharaoh who 
resisted Moses' demands : he lived between Joseph and 
Moses, and was one of those kings whose stern hand crushed 
the chosen people. The royal residences were at Memphis, a 
little south of Cairo, and near the pyramids (to be seen on 

63 



6 4 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



those plains even in Abraham's time), and at Zoan, east of 
the Tanitic mouth of the Nile. The sacred city, the seat of 
learning, the place where Joseph found his wife, and where 
Moses was educated, was at On, or Heliopolis, about ten 
miles north-east of Cairo ; its remains are to be discerned 
even at the present day, though in a state of great decay. 




REMAINS OF ON, OR HELIOPOLIS. 



The tract which most interests us, however, is Goshen. The 
various hints of the Bible, when brought together and com- 
pared, enable us to determine the location of that fertile 
tract. It was unquestionably within the Lower Delta ; it 



* The obelisk, seventy feet in hight, now standing alone on the plain, was anciently one of 
many in the University-city of Egypt, and was doubtless standing in the time of Joseph and 
Moses. 



EGYPT, AND THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA. 65 

was the country which lay between the capitals of Egypt and 
Palestine ; it was the tract on the extreme eastern frontier of 
the kingdom ; it was but three days' journey from the Red 
Sea ; it embraced some one or more of the Nile mouths. As 
we learn from Ps. lxxviii, 12 and 43, Zoan was within Goshen, 
and this city lay even west of the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile. 
The repeated references to the use of the river take away all 
doubt about a portion of the Israelites' dwelling upon its 
shores. The fish which they ate, the food which they raised, 
and which is found profusely where the inundations occur, as 
well as the express allusions to watering the ground with the 
foot, make it certain that the western border of Goshen was 
on the river. The distinct statement that it was but a three- 
days' march from one of the cities to the sea proves, on the 
other hand, that the district extended a considerable distance 
to the eastward, and embraced no inconsiderable share of 
that comparatively infertile country where the desert sands 
and the luxuriant Nile Valley struggle for supremacy. Its 
southern limit evidently came down well-nigh to On, or 
Heliopolis, about ten miles north, as already intimated, of 
the present city of Cairo ; for Joseph says, in the message 
which he sends to Jacob (Gen. xlv. 10), " Thou shalt dwell in 
the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near me." When the 
patriarchal family and the dependants came down to Egypt, 
Joseph goes forth " to meet Israel, his father, to Goshen," 
showing that the district lay between the capital and southern 
Palestine. That tract, which even in its present neglect 
manifests that it is " the best in the land," was well adapted 
to a race of herdsmen ; and the abundant pasturage which 
the Hebrews' flocks would find would even surpass what had 
5 



66 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



been seen on the fruitful plains of Shechem. The Hebrews 
were useful as a kind of breakwater against the irruptions of 




MAP OF GOSHEN. 



wild Bedouin tribes ; and as they themselves were Bedouin 
in their characteristics, they would be skilled in all the arts 
of a half-civilized warfare. They were therefore of the very 



EGYPT, AND THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA. 67 



highest service to their Egyptian masters, for the inroads of 
wild Asiatic tribes constituted one of the greatest scourges 
of Egyptian civilization. In the Greek translation of the 
Bible made in Egypt by the Seventy, while the memory of 
the old history was yet fresh, the word translated " treasure- 
cities," in the account of the works which the Hebrew bond- 
men wrought, is rendered " fortified cities," as if in allusion 
to the need of protection against inroads on the eastern 
frontier. Two of those cities are expressly named, — Rame- 
ses and Pithom. It may be that archaeologists are mistaken 
in their alleged identification of the sites of those two cities, 
yet the physical character of the country makes it impossible 
to mistake their approximate situation. A little north of 
Cairo, the lines of long parallel limestone cliffs which 
accompany the river northward to this point recede from 
each other, and allow space for the Delta, — one of the lines 
of cliffs running away to the north-east, the other to the north- 
west. At one point, nearly east of the spot where the Pe- 
lusiac branch of the Nile diverges, there is a narrow break 
in this line of cliffs, and a valley may be traced eastward to 
the so-called Bitter Lakes of Suez. Excellent pasturage still 
extends up this valley, and here, on the extreme border of 
what was Egypt proper, and at the door of a natural avenue 
into the Nile Valley, the cities of Rameses and Pithom were 
built. Subsequent ages have recognized the value of that 
same natural communication, and the canal which has been 
recently opened is the third on the same line which has con- 
nected the Nile and the Red Sea. Here, and here alone, in 
this valley the rich basin of the Nile shades away by imper- 
ceptible gradations into the desert. Elsewhere the line 



68 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

between fertility and sterility is one strictly drawn : here it is 
not. And thus it was in the time of the Exodus, when the 
Israelites exchanged the rank luxuriance of the Nile country 
for Succoth, the place of scant herbage, the place of " booths," 
and then for Etham, " on the edge of the wilderness." Here 
transition is manifestly depicted ; but this transition is only 
to be found in this valley. Those who have put Goshen fur- 
ther south, near Cairo, have not only to contend with the 
impossibility of passing in those days down to the Gulf of 
Suez, but also with the want of that gradual shading away of 
Goshen into the wilderness which the allusions to Succoth 
and Etham bring into view. 

The exact locality of these places, as well as of those in 
the immediate vicinity of the Red Sea, is not known. Rame- 
ses almost unquestionably lay at the western opening of the 
valley that runs eastward to the Bitter Lakes. A collection 
of ruins is pointed out near to the village of Abbasah, which 
our countryman, Rev. Dr. Samson, one of the most careful 
observers who have investigated the subject, believes to be 
the remains of Rameses. No one wishing to investigate 
exhaustively the geography of Goshen and its treasure-cities 
of Rameses and Pithom can pass over Dr. Samson's contri- 
butions to " The Christian Review" for 1849 and l &50. From 
that point it is a three-days' journey, thirty-five miles, to the 
head of the Gulf. The first day's journey brought them to 
Succoth, a place whose name, signifying booths, sufficiently 
indicates its most striking physical character. Doubtless here 
they parted with civilization, and passed from houses to tents, 
by the transitional use, for a night, of structures which should 
partake of the nature of both, and be protected, it may be, 



EGYPT, AND THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA. 69 



. with a thin covering of leaves. It is easy even now to see 
where such an encampment would be naturally reared, and 
equally easy is it to mark the spot which is " on the edge of 
the wilderness." This line has no doubt shifted to a certain 
extent within four thousand years ; yet it may be approxi- 
mately made out ; and where the grass ceased utterly, there 
was Etham. 

The natural course of the Israelites was not directly 
toward the Red Sea ; it lay north of it, and was unques- 
tionably known to their leader. Moses had been over the 
ground before, possibly often ; for the Egyptians had a mining 
colony in Arabia, not far from Mt. Sinai, and the way thither 
was a well-beaten track. It formed no part of his plan, how- 
ever, to lead the people up to the Promised Land by the 
route which had been taken by Abraham when four centuries 
before he had come down to Egypt for bread ; which had 
been taken too by the Midianites when they brought Joseph 
down ; by the sons of Jacob and by Jacob himself when they 
came down ; and by Joseph when he carried his father's body 
up to Hebron in that imposing procession which has been 
described in the closing chapter of Genesis : * this was a 
direct route running north-eastward, not far from the Medi- 
terranean coast, and not passing within many miles of the 
Red Sea. The reason why that route was not taken is ex- 
plicitly stated in the Scriptures. (Ex. xiii. 17, 18.) "And it 
came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God 
led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, 
although that was near ; for God said, Lest peradventure the 
people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt. 

* I do not accept the hypothesis that he passed around the Dead Sea and crossed the Jordan. 



7o 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



But God led the people about through the way of the wilder- 
ness of the Red Sea." Their direction was toward the south- 
east, instead of toward the north-east. The long detour 
which Moses proposed led him through territory with which 
he was perfectly familiar. Forty years of his life had been 
passed in that desert country, and even now a secluded dell 
close by the traditional Mt. Sinai bears the name of Moses' 
father-in-law. The real home of the Midianites was on the 
eastern side of the eastern arm of the Red Sea, it is true ; 
but the nomadic habits of those days took Jethro and his 
tribe west of the Gulf of Akabah, and permitted them to 
look for pasturage even in the central granitic ridge where 
the law was afterward given to Moses. The whole country 
was doubtless as familiar to the Hebrew lawgiver as it is now 
to any Arab sheik ; he knew every wady, every spring, every 
mountain, every place of pasturage. Mt. Serbal. the most 
imposing, though by no means the loftiest, mountain of the 
peninsula, had long been a hallowed place. It had been the 
resort of Phoenician and Philistine worshipers even before 
Moses' day, and was doubtless the goal of that pretended 
pilgrimage which Moses asked permission of Pharaoh to 
make (Ex. viii. 27) : " We will go three days' journey into 
the wilderness, and sacrifice to the Lord our God." 

In view of the fact that Moses proposed to enter Palestine 
by a long detour, in order that the training of the desert 
might discipline them, and transform them from an ener- 
vated, effeminate, leprous race into hardy and energetic 
soldiers, equal to the great task of conquest before them, he 
struck out in the general direction of the Gulf of Suez. 
Doubtless, as already remarked, a regular road ran past the 



EGYPT, AND THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA. 7 1 

head of the gulf to the Egyptian mining colony of Serabit el 
Khadem, north-west of Mt. Serbal, and it was a simple mat- 
ter to follow it and double the northern extremity of the gulf. 
It is true, the Red Sea extended some miles farther north 
than it does now ; yet near its head were cities, and a 
beaten road ran eastward into the Sinai Peninsula. Much 
difficulty is found by certain biblical students in accepting the 
story of the sea's opening and affording deliverance to the 
Israelites, and closing in upon the pursuing Egyptians ; but 
there is an antecedent difficulty which rises even before we 
reach this. There are three places mentioned (Ex. xiv.) as 
in proximity with the sea, — Migdol, Pi-hahiroth, and Baal- 
zephon. The location of the second of these is not deter- 
mined ; probably it is indeterminable. Migdol, the town or 
tower which the Greeks subsequently called Magdalon, was 
at some distance north of the gulf. Baal-zephon appears to 
have been the ridge even then consecrated to the worship of 
Baal, which is now to be recognized in the bold Jebel 
Attakah, running south-eastwardly down to the shore, and 
forming in its eastern extremity a striking bluff. Between 
this ridge and the sea was a triangular piece of land, on some 
part of which was Pi-hahiroth. For some reason, entirely 
unexplainable on any theory but that which recognizes a 
miraculous intervention in parting the waters of the sea, 
Moses did not lead the host of the Israelites along the well- 
beaten road which doubled the head of the gulf, but drew 
them into that triangle which was bordered on the right by 
Baal-zephon, or Jebel Attakah, on the left by the sea, and 
in the rear by the great Egyptian army. It was therefore 
appropriate for Pharaoh to say, " They are entangled , in the 
land ; the wilderness hath shut them in." 



7 2 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



The place where the crossing was effected was limited to 
the few miles between the point where the bold bluff of 
Jebel Attakah runs down to the sea, and the ancient head of 
the gulf, a few miles north of the present city of Suez. 
Everywhere there the water is shallow, and landings are at 
the present day only effected by means of boats, and with 
much difficulty. It is a safe conjecture, that the passage was 
made very near the site of Suez. Doubtless, wind and tide 
were agents in the piling-up of the waters, and their subse- 
quent return ; the Scripture itself states, that the " Lord 
caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that 
night." Dr. Bonar, in his excellent book called " The Desert 
of Sinai," accuses the learned and pious Robinson of trying 
to weaken the force of the miracle by ascribing it to wind 
and tide ; but not so do I read the work of our countryman : 
on the contrary, he stands strongly on the ground that a 
miracle was wrought, but simply claims that in working this 
great wonder God brought the winds and the waves into sub- 
jection to his will, and made them the ministers in executing 
his mighty purpose. 



V 



THE SINAI PENINSULA. 

We have now taken the Hebrews back into Asia, their 
true home. Our next step will be to follow them in their 
long and toilful pilgrimage. It is true that they reached the 
borders of the promised land in about a year and a half after 
going out from Egypt, of which time a year was spent in the 
shadow of Mt. Sinai. The other thirty-eight years of their 
wanderings were passed in a limited region on the eastern 
and north-eastern border of the peninsula, and in a country 
of almost no resources, and scarcely superior to the deserts 
of Shur or Sinai. 

Before attempting to follow the journey of the Israelites 
through the " wilderness," let me briefly sketch the physical 
character of the whole tract known as the Peninsula of Sinai. 
Between the two arms of the Red Sea known as the Gulfs of 
Akabah and Suez, there is a triangular piece of land, whose 
base line is about one hundred and thirty miles in length, and 
runs from the city of Suez to the fortress of Akabah. The 
lower portion of this triangle is a mass of granitic mountains, 
broken up into the most irregular and fantastic forms, and yet 
having a manifest center, the striking group of peaks of 
which Mt. Sinai is one. From this central knot of moun- 
tains there are various wadies, or waterless river-courses, run- 
ning away to the sea, and forming natural means of com- 

73 



74 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

mimication between the various parts of this wild and 
formidable mass of rock. Perhaps nowhere else in the world 
is the face of nature more ruggedly sublime than here. The 
mountains met there are of no ordinary hight ; the loftiest 
one, Om Shaumer, being nine thousand three hundred feet in 
altitude, and St. Catherine being eight thousand seven hun- 
dred. Standing on the summit of either one of these, the 
Gulf of Akabah is plainly seen on the east, and that of Suez 
on the west, neither of them but a few miles away. The 
country itself seems as if some gigantic convulsion once 
passed over it, heaving up huge waves of molten granite, and 
then cooling them at once. They have retained the ancient 
sharpness ; and such is the dryness of the air, and the want 
of great and wearing rains, added to the natural hardness of 
the rock, that time has exerted no .corrosive influence, and 
the aspect of the country can scarcely be changed from what 
it was when the Israelites passed through. North of this 
triangle, which occupies a good portion of the peninsula 
proper, there is an elevated plateau of limestone, the southern 
border of which is an almost precipitous wall of rock, four 
thousand feet in hight. This does not run due east and 
west ; it forms a rude rim around the southern, south-west- 
ern, and south-eastern sides of the plateau. The surface of 
this elevated plateau is undulating, and, in its north-east 
portion, rises into a second or superimposed plateau, which 
gradually settles away northward to meet the thin and scanty 
pasture lands of the " south country," the ancient patriarchal 
home. East of this great plateau runs northward and south- 
ward the desolate and arid trough of the Arabah, connecting 
the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Akabah, and forming a con- 



THE SINAI PENINSULA. 



75 



tinuation of that great cleft, or depressed chasm, which con- 
nects the Red Sea with Lake Tiberias. It was supposed, 
until a very recent date, that the lower portion of the Ghor, 
or Jordan gorge, was so far depressed below the level of the 
ocean, that, if it were possible to run a canal across the plain 
of Esdraelon, and onward, between Gilboa and Tabor, till it 
should reach the Jordan, the entrance of the Mediterranean 
would at once form a noble ship-canal between Lake Tiberias 
and the Red Sea ; and it is not many years since Capt. Allen, 
of the English Navy, wrote a book called " The Dead Sea a 
New Route to India," in which he discussed this theory in 
extenso. Later investigations have shown, however, that the 
land east of the plain of Esdraelon is so elevated that a canal 
would be impracticable at that point ; and, moreover, that 
could the Jordan be flooded in this way, could that long defile 
between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea be converted 
into a deep lake, and the latter made many feet deeper than 
it is, the Arabah, the trough running from the Dead Sea 
southward to the Gulf of Akabah, instead of being all the 
way depressed to the extent that it has been supposed, rises 
at its highest portion to an altitude (eight hundred feet) alto- 
gether precluding the possibility of its being submerged. 
Measurements have been made repeatedly with a view to 
ascertain this fact ; and at last it has been put beyond the 
possibility of error. 

The physical character of the Sinai Peninsula is little 
changed, as remarked before, from what it was at the time of 
the Exodus. It is a land without a history ; the only point 
where it links itself in with the changing destinies of the 
world is at the time when the Israelites sojourned within it. 



j6 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

It always had a scanty, wandering population ; and the few 
thousands of Arabs who inhabit the peninsula to-day are 




THE SINAI PENINSULA. 



i. Jebel Musa. 2. Ras Sasafeh. 3. Plain er Rahah. 4. Wady Sebaiyeh. 5. Jebel Cathe- 
rine. 6. Om Shaumer. 7. Mt. Serbal. 8. W. Hebran. 9. W. Shellal. 10. El Murkah. 11. 
W. Tayibeh. 12. W. Ghurundel. 13. Ain Howarsh. 14. Pharan (Rephidim). 15. Serabit el 
Khadem. 16. W. Sheikh. 17. Ed Deir. 

about as numerous, probably, and live in precisely the same 
manner, as the Amalekites of old, who had possession of the 



THE SINAI PENINSULA. 



77 



pasture land of the country. It is a region which always has 
been without houses ; the little ecclesiastical city of Pharan, 
now in ruins, not being a real exception, so foreign was it to 
the whole character of the land. It has no soil capable of con- 
tinuous and profitable cultivation ; the long and fertile valley 
known as the Wady Feiran, at the foot of Mt. Serbal, not 
having breadth and scope enough to repay for colonizing it 
alone. A great part of" the country is so sterile as to fill the 
mind of travelers with dismay ; there is no grass, no thrifty 
trees, except in Wady Feiran and at the Convent of Mt. 
Sinai, — nothing but acacia-bushes, and furzy, thin, aromatic 
shrubs. After the rains of winter, it is true, a quick vegeta- 
tion springs up ; but the sun and the subsequent drought 
cause it to wither and utterly vanish. There are compara- 
tively few springs in the country ; those which emerge from 
the limestone tract are almost intolerably bad, while those 
issuing from the southern granitic tract are sweet and re- 
freshing. The natural channels of communication across the 
country are in one sense numerous : in another they are not 
so ; for, although the number of unimportant wadies is large, 
yet the really effective lines of intercourse are so few and so 
striking that there is no difficulty whatever in following them. 
Despite, therefore, the want of historical monuments, and the 
want of a nation there which perpetuates the history of the 
past, the physical character of the country is such that the 
simple narrative of the Bible allows us to follow, with tolera- 
ble closeness, and with a sense of certitude, the line of the 
Israelites' march. From the head of the Gulf of Suez there 
is a roughened plain, about ten miles in width, running south- 
ward for several miles, having the sea on the west, and the 



78 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



precipitous edge of the great Tih plateau on the east. Moses 
and the Israelites must have followed this plain ; there is no 
alternative. South of this plain the system of great wadies 
is so simple that we have little if any difficulty in tracing 
them to Sinai. From Sinai, north-eastward, the task of fol- 
lowing them is much more difficult, it is true ; but there are 
certain landmarks there which make it tolerably easy to 
determine the course of the wanderers. I need not say that 
the word wilderness, used almost invariably in the Bible to 
signify the Sinai Peninsula, does not correspond at all with 
our use of the same term. To many of us it suggests the 
idea of dense woodland ; it should imply the very reverse,- — 
a tract utterly destitute of vegetation, and wholly desert, 
sterile, repulsive. Nor should it convey the impression of a 
sandy waste. With the exception of the limited tract known 
as Ramleh, south of the Tih plateau, there is no sandy dis- 
trict in the whole peninsula. The country is stony and peb- 
bly, but not sandy. 

Arabia Petraea, as this country is sometimes called, is a land 
which has always been interesting to pilgrims. As early as 
the time of Elijah, to go to Horeb was a journey of devo- 
tion ; and the old prophet is seen going down thither to com- 
mune with God in the place which had been consecrated cen- 
turies before his day. Very early in the history of the Chris- 
tian church, the Sinaitic region became a sacred resort ; and 
Arabian geographers and Christian travelers have explored it 
in all ages. The first volume of Ritter's " Comparative Geog- 
raphy of Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula" is devoted, in a 
large measure, to the tracing of the routes of those who have 
carefully explored the land ; and no man in our time has had 



THE SINAI PENINSULA. 



79 



the patience to sift and compare their accounts with the care 
and fidelity and ability of the great German geographer. 
He has reviewed all the Roman itineraries, examined the 
Pentinger Tables, read all the Arabian and Greek geogra- 
phers, and investigated the whole Christian literature of the 
subject. In my translation of his important Work on the 
peninsula I have retained all that could illustrate the Bible ; 
and yet no one can adequately measure the enormous eru- 
dition of Carl Ritter who does not look into the original and 
see what he has called out to illustrate the geography of 
Arabia Petraea as it is connected with extra-biblical literature. 

What Ritter has done for this department, our country- 
man, Dr. Robinson, only second to Ritter in his command of 
the literature of Sinai and Palestine, has done for original 
research on the spot. Ritter was never in the Holy Land ; 
Robinson was the most acute and at the same time the most 
learned investigator who has ever gone thither. It is not too 
much to say that Robinson's Biblical Researches are worth 
all the records of travel in the Holy Land from the time of 
the Saviour down to the time when he published his work. 
And this I say in full recognition of the value of Seetzen's, 
Irby and Mangles', Burckhardt's, Niebuhr's, Russegger's, and 
Ruppell's thorough, accurate, and hard-gained results, and in 
recognition, too, of a certain degree of merit to be ascribed 
to such writers as Felix Fabri, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Pietro 
della Valle, Buckingham, Pococke, and Monro. Yet all can- 
did students of biblical geography know that when Robinson 
came upon the field, he observed so closely, with such ample 
preparation, and such acumen, that the publication of his 
work produced a revolution in the department. He has been 



8o 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



worthily followed ; but such works as Stanley's, Schubert's, 
Tristram's, Wilson's, Porter's, Laborde's even, and Thom- 
son's, would hardly have been possible had Robinson not 
gone before. Indeed, he did his work so thoroughly that 
others have had but little to do except to glean in the field 
which he harvested. With the exception of a few narrow 
men who adhere closely to the monkish traditions respecting 
holy places, European scholars place just as high value on 
Robinson as we Americans can do : indeed, much more, for 
he is really only appreciated fully in Europe. I think I can 
not be wrong in saying, that, in the judgment of English and 
German scholars, Edward Robinson is the greatest name that 
has sprung up among us ; and the preface of almost every 
new work on Biblical Antiquities echoes the words of Ritter 
and Stanley respecting the amazing extent and accuracy of 
Robinson's investigations. 

Having briefly sketched the physical character of the 
Sinaitic peninsula, and alluded to the literature of the subject, 
let me enter into some detail respecting the journey of the 
Israelites through the land. The first part of the way is 
unmistakable ; it ran along that undulating plain which has 
already been referred to as lying between the lofty limestone 
wall on the east and the sea on the west. Northward and 
southward, as far as the eye can reach, the Israelites could 
see confronting them that giant barricade, rising to the alti- 
tude of about four thousand feet. To ascend it would have 
been impossible for such a number of people, although the 
regular Mecca caravans now climb to the top by a natural 
pass, and strike directly eastward across the high plateau, 
descending again on the eastern margin, not far from the 



< 



THE SINAI PENINSULA. 



8l 



head of the Gulf of Akabah. The Israelites, however, did 
not attempt this, but followed the plain along the shore. It 
is a cheerless and most inhospitable country. There are 
some tolerable springs near the place where they crossed the 
sea, still known as the springs of Moses, shaded by palms, 
and a favorite resort to-day for the people of Suez, who, in 
the absence of better attractions, elevate that scanty oasis 
into the rank of their fashionable watering-place. 

But from that point for many miles southward, for a three- 
days' journey of the slowly-moving Israelite host, there are 
no supplies of water, and not a plant or a shrub which could 
in the slightest degree satisfy the hunger of man or beast. 
The Israelites, who had so recently left the luxurious Valley 
of the Nile, were sorely tried even at the very start ; indeed, 
there are few spots in the whole peninsula which would have 
more disheartened them than this barren plain along the sea. 
The site of the fountains of Marah, the bitter waters which 
they could not drink, is now easily traced ; indeed, the name 
still clings to the spot : and not only do travelers speak of 
the Ain Howarah, but of the Ain Amarah, almost side by 
side, whose waters are only used from sheer necessity. All 
the springs which flow from that limestone soil are bad, but 
none are intolerable excepting those which are first encoun- 
tered after leaving Ain Musa, opposite Suez. And these are 
the ones which correspond with the Marah fountains of 
Scripture. Still farther on, about one day's journey south- 
ward, are the well-shaded and numerous springs of Wadies 
Ghurundel, Useit and Tayibeh, whose palm-trees are still the 
delight of all travelers. These were threescore and ten in 
number when the Israelites passed that way ; they are 

6 



82 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



variously counted by the explorers of our own day, but are 
not widely different from the old number. The taste of the 
water is not markedly different from that found at the 
old springs of Marah ; yet nearly all agree that the pref- 
erence is to be given to that of Elim. The Scripture does 
not assert nor even imply that that of Elim was pleasant ; it 
is an unwarranted inference — which has been drawn from 
the obviously attractive character of the place where they 
made their first long encampment — that the water of Elim 
was sweeter than that of Marah. That it is somewhat more 
agreeable is asserted by travelers ; yet the difference is not 
marked : the same physical cause which controls the one 
controls the other also. In the midst of the attractions of 
Elim the Israelites tarried a month and a half. The place of 
their chief encampment was doubtless in the broad, open, 
fair wady known still as the " goodly," or Wady Tayibeh. 
It runs downward to the sea, and has a fine open view of the 
opposite coast-land of Egypt, and the intensely blue waters of 
the Gulf of Suez, a good way northward and southward. It 
has been the custom of some writers to assume that the sin- 
gle Wady of Ghurundel is the Elim of Scripture ; but the 
requisitions of so vast a host as that of the Israelites during 
a sojourn of more than a month make it almost necessary 
to infer that they distributed themselves over all the fertile 
tracts in the immediate neighborhood. 

From Elim there was a tedious and difficult passage to 
the Wilderness of Sin. They could either have passed by 
narrow and obstructed defiles, or round about, as some trav- 
elers do, by a narrow and dangerous path running between 
the rocks and the sea. Here is the natural boundary between 



THE SINAI PENINSULA. 83 

the Desert of Shur and the Desert of Sin. The latter is a 
desolate plain, about twelve miles in length, and known to- 
day as El Murkah. Little water is found upon it, and what 
there is, is bitter. It is a place which one can see at a glance 
would sorely try the Israelites, and compel them to cry out, 
" Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the 
land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, and when we 
did eat bread to the full ; for ye have brought us forth into 
this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." It 
is noticeable that it was in this desert, where the tamarisk- 
tree is not found, where, in fact, there is no vegetation, that 
the supply of manna first appeared. 

From the plain of El Murkah, the Wilderness of Sin, there 
are three ways which might have been taken. One of these 
passes near the base of the great rock-wall of the Tih 
plateau, runs near the ancient Egyptian mining colony of 
Serabit el Khadem, — whose ruins are still distinctly visible, 
and which was probably a busy scene at the time of the Ex- 
odus, — soon after traverses the sandy waste of Debbet er 
Ramleh, and then, by a difficult and narrow line of wadies, or 
rock valleys, runs down to the open plain in front of the tra- 
ditional Mt. Sinai. This led the Israelites toward the left. 
Another way ran along the borders of the sea to the plain El 
Kaa, which lies between the whole granitic mountain-mass at 
the south of the peninsula, and the sea ; and from this plain, 
by way of the important Wady Hebran, up to Mt. Sinai. 
This would cause them to bear to the right, and then to take 
a sharp turn to the left. There still is a middle course. 
They may have crossed the Desert of Sin, entered the roman- 
tic valley known as Shellal, and passed by it into the long and 



84 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



curious ravine known as Wacly Mukatteb, or Valley of the 
Inscriptions ; thence into the fair, fertile, and well-watered 
Wady Feiran, and directly to the base of Mt. Sinai. There 
is little or no doubt that the latter was the one chosen ; it has 
every advantage in its favor, — it is the most direct, the best 
supplied with shade and water, and the one which is most in 
harmony with the Scripture narrative. The first of the three 
ways is rocky, scantily supplied with springs, and longer than 
the last ; the second is much longer and much harder ; the 
last is the one which is now assumed by all later observers as 
the route of the Israelites. 

Two places are then mentioned as the scenes of temporary 
encampment, — Dophkah and Alush : no traces of them 
remain, but they were unquestionably on or near the plain El 
Murkah. But passing that, we come to more explicit allu- 
sions, and to scenes of even greater interest. In the well- 
watered and palm-shaded Wady Feiran, directly at the base 
of the imposing five-peaked Serbal, — a sacred mountain for 
long ages even when the Israelites passed by its foot, — there 
was the encampment of a part of the numerous and widely- 
scattered Amalekites. They were just such a race, doubtless, 
as the strongest and fiercest of the Arab tribes of the pres- 
ent day. They knew of the approach of the Israelites, and 
predicted with certainty, that, if a stand were not made, the 
delightful paradise which they inhabited would be wrested 
from them, and its clear brook and lofty palms become the 
possession of this host of strangers. This -was the reason of 
the stand which they made ; this the cause of that noted 
battle. The Israelites advanced along that wonderful Valley 
of Inscriptions, Wady Mukatteb, whose walls are written over 



5 



THE SINAI PENINSULA. 85 

with those mysterious and undeciphered hieroglyphics, pro- 
voking the curiosity of travelers more than any other object 
in the whole peninsula, and traced more or less numerously 
on every important mountain and rock-wall in the land, with 
the single exception of Mt. Sinai. From Wady Mukatteb 
they passed into Wady Feiran ; the place where they are con- 
nected being, it would seem, the site of Rephidim. At the 
very foot of Serbal, and rising distinctly in view of those who 
stand in the valley known as Feiran, is a low but well-marked 
hill, on which Moses, Aaron, and Hur appear to have stood 
during the battle. The victory of the Israelites put them in 
possession of the most paradisiacal spot in the whole penin- 
sula. For more than a month and a half they remained in 
that fertile vale. The Egyptian colony at Serabit el Khadem 
was not far from them ; but not a hint is given in the Bible to 
indicate whether the two races came at all into contact. Yet, 
visitors came from Midian, east of the Gulf of Akabah, with 
an errand of great import to the Israelites. It is a Curious 
fact that the polity which Jethro imparted to Moses, his son- 
in-law, is singularly like that which prevails among the 
Bedouins of the present time. The taking away of that sin- 
gle responsibility which was slowly crushing the strength of 
the great lawgiver by overtaxing his power, was followed by 
that delegation of trust to rulers of thousands, hundreds, 
fifties, and tens, which is a marked feature of Arab polity ; 
and every line in the description of the interview of Moses 
and Jethro is faithful to the experience of all close observers 
of the Bedouin character. It has been supposed by many, 
and by some too whose opinions are entitled to the most 
respectful consideration, that Mt. Serbal, the most striking 



86 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



by far in the whole peninsula, is the Sinai of the Bible. 
There is little or no doubt that that was a holy mountain at 
the time of the Exodus, and that it was the place whither 
not only Phoenicians and Philistines resorted, but Egyptians 
as well, for the purpose of sacrifice. It has been a hallowed 
spot in modern time ; the remains of altars may be seen on 
the summit, and the ecclesiastical city of Pharan, the walls of 




RUINS OF PHARAN, AND MT. SERBAL. 



which are yet standing, was at its base. It is the place to 
which, in all probability, as has already been remarked, Moses 
wished to go to sacrifice, a three-days' journey in the wilder- 
ness. Some have thought that Horeb is Serbal, and Sinai 
the well-known sacred mountain ten miles farther west ; oth- 
ers, with more reason, as it seems to me, make Horeb a 
generic word comprising that whole region embracing both 



THE SINAI PENINSULA. 



87 



Sinai and Serbal. Still, after giving due weight to the argu- 
ments of Lepsius, that Serbal, the sacred mountain of that 
region in the most ancient time, was the scene of the law- 
giving, I must admit that the hints given in the Bible do not 
apply so well to it as to the traditional mountain of Sinai. I 
know that Serbal is the most imposing mountain ; but it is 
by no means the loftiest, it being but six thousand three 
hundred feet high, while the traditional Sinai is more than 
eight thousand. Besides, the delightful Wady Feiran at its 
base can not be confounded with the Wilderness of Sinai. 
The Bible says (Ex. xix. 1), after its account of the battle 
with the Amalekites and the interview with Jethro, mani- 
festly in Wady Feiran, " In the third month, when the chil- 
dren of Israel were gone out of the land of Egypt, the same 
day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. For they were 
departed from Rephidim, and were come to the desert of 
Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness ; and there Israel 
camped before the mount." 



VI. 



MOUNT SINAI, AND THE YEARS OF WANDERING. 

From the foot of Serbal, and the luxuriant verdure of Wady 
Feiran, there runs a broad, curving valley, the largest and 
most important in the whole peninsula, bearing the name of 
Wady Sheikh. It is a continually-ascending* way, and leads 
to a plain from which rises the group of mountains, Ed Deir, 
St. Catherine, Sinai, and Om Shaumer. From Serbal to Sinai 
•there is a more direct but frightfully precipitous and rocky 
path, the Nubh Hawy, or Pass of the Winds, whose difficul- 
ties travelers agree in regarding as the most formidable 
in the peninsula. The broader and longer one of these 
was doubtless taken by the main body of the Israelites ; 
and there is found in it, even now, no scanty amount of 
pasturage for flocks. Emerging from the broad mouth of 
Wady Sheikh, the traveler stands on the Desert of Sinai. 
A plain is seen, vast in size when one thinks how rare 
it is to meet any continuous tract in that broken and 
rocky country, for it embraces no less than a square mile. 
At one extremity there towers the lofty, craggy pile known as 
Ras Sasafeh, the northern abutment of Sinai. Its grandeur 
and precipitousness, taken in connection with the great plain 
at its base, caused Robinson to suspect in a moment that here 
was the scene of the law-giving. The highest peak of Sinai 
can not be seen from this plain ; one must pass round the 

88 



MOUNT SINAI, AND THE YEARS OF WANDERING. 89 

mountain to the south side to see it ; but the northern side is 
so bold and steep that it makes an even more-striking impres- 
sion on the mind than the more shelving southern ascent. 
The face of Ras Sasafeh rises so that one can well see that 
the command was an intelligible one, that the mount be not 
touched ; towering, as it does, like a wall of rock. On that 




MT. SINAI, FROM THE PLAIN ER RAHAH. 



plain, hundreds of thousands of people could stand, and look 
up to the majestic, overhanging cliff. At the southern base 
of Sinai is another tolerably large tract of ground, known as 
the Plain of Sebaiyeh ; but it is far more broken and uneven 
than the great camping-ground on the north. Since the time 
of Robinson, most travelers have coincided with his view, that 
the latter was the place where the people assembled when the 



90 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

law was given, though there are some who insist that they 
were on the more uneven ground south of the mountain, since 
there is the view of the true crest of Sinai. The mountain is 
long, rather than round, and its physical character is this : On 
the east there is a defile running northward and southward, 
separating Sinai from the lofty mountain known as Ed Deir. 
On the western side there is another similar ravine, separat- 
ing Sinai from the still loftier peak of St. Catherine. In the 
former of these defiles, a mile from the great plain at the north 
base of the mountain, is the Greek convent, built in the sixth 
century by the Emperor Justinian, and the only hostelry for 
travelers in the whole peninsula. It has been so often de- 
scribed that I need only allude to it, for it bears no special 
relation to my subject. It has, within a very few years, been 
brought into new prominence as the scene of Prof. Teschen- 
dorf's discovery of a very ancient manuscript of the New 
Testament ; and I shall not soon forget the rare pleasure I 
enjoyed, a few months since, in hearing from his own lips the 
story of that most interesting discovery, — the unfolding of hint 
after hint, the intense anxiety, and the hours of joy when the 
precious document came to light. In the other ravine, that 
along the western base of the mountain, is a deserted convent, 
that of El Arbain, or the Forty. The ascent is made from the 
convent, the way leading up continuous flights of rude stairs, 
cut along in the solid granite. The top of the mountain is 
long and tolerably flat, being mostly a small rock-plateau, run- 
ning northward to a sharp edge, down which you can look, as 
from the eaves of a house, directly upon the great plain. 
The southern portion of the mountain rises cone-like into the 
air, and looks down upon the narrower and more broken Plain 



MOUNT SINAI, AND THE YEARS OF WANDERING. 9 1 



of Sebaiyeh at the southern base of Sinai. On this high 
peak Moses would seem to have dwelt during those long forty 
days and forty nights in which he was communing with his 
God ; while Joshua appears not to have gone above the rock- 
plateau, and there to have awaited the return of Moses from the 




CONVENT OF ST. CATHERINE. 



loftier hight. The place has for centuries been a sacred one, 
and the broken remnants of churches and chapels, and a 
mosque, even, testify to the ancient regard of Mohammedans 
as well as Christians for this sacred spot. 

I am inclined to think that the true view of the place of 



9 2 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



the encampment must be gained by partial concession both 
of those who hold to the northern and those who hold to the 
southern plain. They are connected, not only by the narrow 
ravine east of Sinai, which beyond the convent narrows into 
a 'mere foot-path, but by a very broad line of valley which 
passes east of the mountain east of Sinai. In this valley, as 
well as in the two plains, there was an excellent opportunity 
for encampment ; and I can not forbear thinking that the 
great host of the Israelites filled both the plains and this 
circuitous Wady Sebaiyeh, as well as that portion of Wady 
Sheikh which connects the great plain Er Rahah with Wady 
Sebaiyeh. The play of lightnings was doubtless visible all 
over the mountain ; the elders and the chief priests were 
probably in the plain south of the mountain, and an immense 
multitude doubtless stood on the northern plain, and looked 
up to the top of the massive wall which is called Ras Sasafeh. 

Most travelers have inferred, from the fact that the ascent 
is on the eastern side, that there was the path by which 
Moses went up ; but my friend, Rev. F. W. Holland of Lon- 
don, who has recently passed several weeks in that neighbor- 
hood, assures me the most accessible way is one leading from 
the northern extremity of the western defile, and that there 
is little doubt that Moses went up and down that way. If 
that is the case, the old tradition which makes the casting of 
the golden calf at that point would seem to rest upon a cer- 
tain basis of truth ; although, as a general rule, these tra- 
ditions — such for instance as that the convent occupies the 
place where Moses discovered the burning bush, and that the 
rock can still be seen at the foot of Sinai which was smitten 
by Moses, and from which water gushed — are idle fables, 



MOUNT SINAI, AND THE YEARS OF WANDERING. 93 

invented by the Greek monks for the easy credulity of the 
Arabs. Still, there are one or two interesting circumstances 
connected even with these traditions : one is, that the moun- 
tain itself bears the name, not of Sinai, but of Jebel Musa, 
the Mount of Moses, while the ravine east of it is called, 
even to-day, by the Arab name of Moses' father-in-law. 

Around this mountain lay the tract known as the Wilder- 
ness of Sinai. It is one thousand feet higher than the level 
of Wady Feiran ; the air is dry, clear, and bracing. I need 
not say that this is one of the healthiest districts in the 
world ; the winds which sweep across these rocks are laden 
with no impurities, and bring only vigor. There are a few 
springs of water, and these are sweet and refreshing, for they 
issue from granite, not from limestone. There are small 
bits of land moist enough to reward tillage ; and all travelers 
are enthusiastic about the trees and grass and herbs grown 
in the garden of the Greek convent. In the western ravine 
there are the traces of old gardens not quite given up to 
utter neglect ; the monks go thither every year and take a 
little care of them, gathering figs and dates and almonds, and 
a few other tropical productions, to lay in store, or to send to 
Cairo. On the mountains there grow a few aromatic shrubs, 
and in the wadies there are scanty furze-bushes, giving a 
meager support to the camels and the goats of the Arabs, 
and once sustaining the herds of the Israelites. The Wilder- 
ness of Sinai comprised a large part of Wady Sheikh, the plain 
Er Rahah, the plain of Sebaiyeh, and Wady Sebaiyeh. It was 
the Israelites' home for a year ; and here not alone was the 
Decalogue given, but the whole ceremonial law was perfected, 
and propounded to the people. As the Bible expressly says 



94 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



that the Decalogue was given during a thunder-storm, while the 
people were filled with fear, it may be remarked incidentally, 
that one, at least, of the travelers who have given us the record 
of their wanderings has described a thunder-storm at Sinai. 
The play of lightning and the echoes of the thunder he 
asserts to have been extraordinarily grand and impressive. 
The ordinary silence of the desert is so appalling that when 
it is broken in this way the roll of thunder is doubly loud, 
and the mountains themselves seem to quake. A person 
sitting on the summit of Ras Sasafeh, and speaking in ordi- 
nary tones, can be understood at the base, for there is not 
the sound of a bird or an insect or a brook to mingle with 
his voice. The desert is inhabited by absolute, unbroken 
silence. It is unnecessary to say that Moses, learned as he 
was in the arts of the Egyptians, was master of no magic 
which would enable him to create a mimic thunder-storm on 
Sinai ; and it is a paltry way of dealing with the text to 
degrade that great convulsion of the elements in which the 
law was given, into, the legerdemain of a showman. What- 
ever more there was, there was a storm of thunder and 
lightning, not inferred from hints in the Bible, but directly 
and explicitly asserted. 

Among the chapels on Sinai there is one bearing the name 
of Elijah ; and near it is a small aperture in the rock, which 
is asserted to have served the prophet as a lodging-place. In 
the absence of a spot more fit, this is thought, even by the 
careful Ritter, to be authentic. The pilgrimage of Elijah to 
Horeb is the only instance recorded in the Bible of any one 
of the Israelites going down from Palestine to view the scene 
where the law was given. How different from the pilgrim 



MOUNT SINAI, AND THE YEARS OF WANDERING. 95 

spirit of the present and the past few centuries ! It was an 
easy thing for the Jews to go to Horeb, but its ancient fame 
appears to have inspired no desire to see it. It throws new 
light, not more on the spirituality of Elijah than upon the 
worldliness of the nation in whose mind he tried to keep di- 
vine truth a living thing. And here was the place, so far as 
the evidence in our possession enables us to go, where Elijah 
was, after receiving the command to "go forth and stand upon 
the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed 
by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and 
brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord ; but the Lord was 
not in the wind : and after the wind an earthquake ; but 
the Lord was not in the earthquake : and after the earthquake 
a fire ; but the Lord was not in the fire : and after the fire a 
still, small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that 
he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out and stood in 
the entering in of the cave ; and, behold, there came a voice 
unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah ? " 

" The view from the summit can not compare," says Ritter, 
" even under the clearest sky, with that from St. Catherine, 
and hence travelers who have interested themselves in mak- 
ing a topographical survey of the whole peninsula have made 
little account of it. But the very fact that Sinai is so over- 
topped by loftier peaks gives the view from its summit its own 
peculiar charms. Shut in, as the observer is, he can better 
study the strange wildness and sublimity of this little cluster 
of naked mountains, and get a better conception of the 
strange elemental forces which produce so haggard a scene, 
than if upon a loftier summit and with a wider view. Sir 
Francis Henniker has very truly and finely said that it seemed 



g6 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



to him, as he surveyed the wild picture before him, as if it 
had once been an ocean of boiling lava, cooled and fixed in its 
present form by a single mandate of the Most High. 

" Yet, though the view from Sinai toward the east, south, 
and west is comparatively limited, in consequence of the 
greater hight of the outlying peaks, the view is by no means 
inconsiderable, nor to be dismissed with a hasty passing word. 
Both the arms of the Red Sea can be seen, although only in 
glimpses. ' Close before me,' says Wellsted, ■ rose St. Cathe- 
rine, with its bare, wedge-shaped peak, wearing a snow-cap 
cone yet upon its head. For many years, in the course of 
repeated voyages made in all the waters adjacent to this re- 
gion, I had been accustomed to look at all these mountain 
systems from every point of view ; but the loftiness of the 
Sinai group gave it at once a special character. Rising in 
sharp, isolated wedges, enormous masses of rock have de- 
tached themselves from time to time, and have fallen, giving 
rise to deep clefts, gorges, and ravines, which break through 
the whole district, and give it the wildest aspect. The high- 
est summits are covered with snow in winter, which, melting 
in spring, fills the channels of countless brooks, and sweeps 
with mad and devastating violence through all the mountain- 
passes, carrying away whatever little soil may have accumu- 
lated. The lofty wedge-shape brings the peaks of the Sinai 
group in sharp contrast with those of the other long, low 
ridges of the peninsula. No resting-places for man, no vil- 
lages, no castles, give animation to the scene, as in European 
mountain regions ; no lake, no clear river, no waterfall, no 
forest, breaks the monotony of solitude. Everywhere there 
is seen only the wide, empty wilderness, — gray, dark-brown, 



MOUNT SINAI, AND THE YEARS OF WANDERING. 97 



black, — in the extreme distance the bright sea of sand. 
There is nothing to give interest to the scene except the 
mighty recollection of the past : this throws over it all a 
dark and deep and mysterious charm.' " 

In the valleys and on the plains which encompass Sinai the 
Israelites passed nearly a year. At the end of that time, the 
law being perfected, the people, being hardened by their tent 
life and open-air duties, were supposed to be ready to move 
on to the promised land without delay. Up to this point we 
have followed them without great difficulty : after this point 
their course is much more uncertain, partly in consequence 
of the obscurity of the language of Scripture, and partly 
from the want of a thorough examination of the whole coun- 
try. It is true, every route has been traversed, but no trav- 
eler has explored all, compared them with themselves and 
with the biblical account, and given us the result of his in- 
vestigations. Still, there is little need of this. The general 
character of the country is much the same, whichever way 
the Israelites chose in their journey northward. It was a 
great and terrible wilderness, relieved with few springs and 
scanty vegetation, and filled with narrow passes and desolate 
plains. It is almost a profitless use of time to endeavor to 
decipher the geography of the thirty-third chapter of Num- 
bers. Those encampments were of so little account in leav- 
ing any impress on the Hebrew character, they were in every 
sense so temporary, that the scholarship which is worthily 
directed to the tenth chapter of Genesis is here squandered 
on an unremunerative theme. Yet the record of the earlier 
chapters of Numbers gives us all that we really need, and 
tells its story with even greater explicitness than does the 
7 



98 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



narrative of Exodus relative to the approach to Sinai. There 
is little doubt that the Israelites took what seemed the most 
direct course to the land which they sought, passing, as it 
would seem, up to the great elevated plateau known as the 
Tih ; and- when drawing near to the confines of Palestine, 
delegating forty of their number to go up and explore the 
land. The main body, meanwhile, passed down into the long 
trough of the Arabah, between the limestone wall of the Tih 
on the west and the mountains of Seir, or Edom, on the east, 
to Kadesh, a district lying, it would seem, in the north-west- 
ern part of this sunken valley. No trace of the city of 
Kadesh appears to be remaining ; but Kadesh seems to have 
been a district as well as a city ; and of all the locations 
which have been assigned to it, that given by Robinson ap- 
pears to be the one best authenticated. The Desert of Paran, 
often alluded to in the Bible, is, taken in a general sense, the 
broad tract known as the Tih Plateau ; while that of Zin 
seems to be the sterile valley of the Arabah. The five des- 
erts of the whole peninsula are these : Shur, or Etham, near 
the Isthmus of Suez; Sin, the western plain, embracing not 
only the tract alluded to as El Murkah, crossed by the Israel- 
ites after leaving Elim and the encampment by the sea, but 
extending down nearly to the southern extremity of the 
peninsula, and comprising the plain known at the present 
time as El Kaa ; Sinai, the plains around the mountain of 
the law-giving ; Paran, the Tih Plateau ; and Zin, the valley 
of the Arabah. Kadesh lay on the confines and between 
both the latter ; hence it is sometimes reckoned as belonging 
to the one, and sometimes to the other. The reader of the 
Bible history need not be reminded of the hasty and desper- 



MOUNT SINAI, AND THE YEARS OF WANDERING. 99 



ate plunge which the Israelites made to seize a mountain of 
the Amalekites, as it is called in the narrative, nor of the 
signal defeat which they encountered. The region is so little 
known at present, that I dare not attempt to pronounce upon 
the hypothesis that that mountain was a second small plateau, 
superimposed upon the north-eastern portion of the great 
Tih plain. Enough that it appears. tenable. At just what 
time the conflict with the king of Arad, one of the walled 
cities in the south of Palestine, took place, it is difficult to 
say ; but this is plain : the country which they sought to take 
was too strong for them. Caleb and Joshua were the only 
ones of the spies who gave a favorable account of the com- 
parative ease of capturing the land ; and in both assaults the 
Israelites were evidently completely routed. We see them, 
in both instances, pushed back down the Arabah Valley. 

Very near them rose the lofty range of Edom, — the 
mountains of Seir. A valley known as Wady Ghaweir runs 
eastward from the Arabah, cleaving the range, and allowing 
free passage across the country once held by the Edomites. 
This was in the possession of the descendants of Esau ; but if 
permission were granted to the Israelites to pass through, they 
might easily march northward, east of the Dead Sea, and 
enter Palestine by another approach. The south was, as they 
saw, thoroughly guarded. The " Canaanites and Amalekites 
dwelt in the valley," meaning the northern part of the Arabah 
and along the shores of the Dead Sea ; while the Amorites 
held the high land of the south of Palestine. They had proved 
themselves more than a match for the Israelites, and now a 
new way must be sought ; but the Edomites were unwilling 
that their kinsmen should pass through their territory. Then 

> 

•3 3 J 



IOO 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



follows that long period of distressing waiting, — those years 
while the old generation was dying and being buried, those 
thirty-eight years of aimless wandering, and of more purpose- 
less encampments. To all appearance, they did not travel 
much out of the Arabah Valley, one of the most barren, arid, 
and frightful portions of the whole desert. Of the many 
places mentioned in connection with their wanderings, Mt. 
Hor and Ezion-geber stand out with perfect distinctness. 
Whenever these names are mentioned we know where we are. 
Mt. Hor, the place of Aaron's burial, his place of sepulture 
being marked at the present day by a Mahometan wely y or 
tomb, overhangs the eastern edge of the Arabah, not far from 
its northern extremity, while Ezion-geber lay at the northern 
end of the Gulf of Akabah. We see the Israelites at this 
place ; we see them farther north again, at the foot of Hor, 
and yet again at Kadesh ; in despair, doubtless, disgusted 
with their provisions, famished for want of water, and dying 
by thousands. 

Reference has already been made to the journey of the 
spies northward. Their course is perfectly plain. They 
passed out of the Desert of Zin by the narrow pass of Sufa, 
or Zephath, not far from the southern extremity of the Dead 
Sea, thence to Hebron, and so up the whole line of watershed 
along which Abraham and Jacob and Jacob's sons had passed, 
till they reached Rehob, not far from Dan, a short distance 
west of Lake Huleh. Just north of Rehob is the opening of 
the long valley between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon 
Mountains, and in that valley lay the ancient city of Hamath. 
We read, therefore, in the account of the spies' course, that 
" they searched the land from the wilderness of Zin unto 

c c « 



MOUNT SINAI, AND THE YEARS OF WANDERING. IOI 



Rehob, as men come to Hamath." Some have imagined that 
another Rehob is meant, lying farther north, and nearer the 
city of Hamath, which was in the narrowest part of the 
Code- Syrian valley, and where the Orontes breaks through a 
wild mountain gorge ; but this seems to me a false view. 
The spies were absent forty days, and, with the going and 




MOUNT HOK. 



returning, the time would be entirely consumed in traversing 
the district between Dan and Beersheba, or, which is almost 
identical, between Rehob, close by Dan, and the Desert of 
Zin. Eshcol, whose grapes have received undying celebrity 
from their visit, is a valley under the very shadow of the city 
of Hebron ; and the grapes of that spot, though perhaps not 
equaling those which the virgin soil once produced there, are 



102 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

still remarkable both for size and flavor. We get, in the 
report of the spies, one glimpse of the inhabitants of Hebron, 
giants in stature compared with the diminutive Hebrews. 
The Israelites were at Kadesh when the spies returned. The 
report was brief : and, notwithstanding the good things which 
it confirmed to exist in Palestine, was not a little discouraging. 
They reported to Moses (Num. xiv. 27-30), " We came unto 
the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with 
milk and honey ; and this [the grapes] is the fruit of it. 
Nevertheless, the people be strong that dwell in that land, 
and the cities are walled, and very great ; and, moreover, we 
saw the children of Anak [the giants] there. The Amale- 
kites dwell in that land of the south ; and the Hittites and 
the Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains ; and 
' the Canaanites dwell by the sea and by the coast of Jordan." 
Of some of these tribes we have already caught glimpses. 
A portion of the Amalekites we saw in Wady Feiran, stop- 
ping the way of the Israelites as they advanced to Sinai, — a 
widely-scattered tribe, wandering over the Tih Plateau, the 
south country, and the Arabah Valley ; the Jebusites have 
been referred to as the inhabitants of the rock which became 
the subsequent Jerusalem ; the Hittites we saw dwelling in 
the neighborhood of Hebron, and selling to Abraham the 
grave of Machpelah ; while the Amorites have been referred 
to as inhabiting the hill country in the southern part of Pales- 
tine. It is manifest, at a glance, that they all possessed a 
higher civilization than the wandering Hebrews. Their walled 
cities, and their culture of the grape, indicate that they were 
far in advance of the race which had not risen from the estate 
of slaves to the strength and culture which were only to 
accrue with the lapse of centuries. 



MOUNT SINAI, AND THE YEARS OF WANDERING. IO3 

From the results of this preliminary survey of Palestine, let 
us come back to the wanderings of the Israelites. It should 
not be supposed that they were on the move from day to day ; 
their course was in all probability not unlike that of the Arabs 
of the present time. They must advance in obedience to the 
necessities of pasturage for their flocks, and of water for 
themselves. He who hears even the young ravens which cry, 
would move the pillar of cloud and of fire, so as in ordinary 
cases to minister to these natural wants. Could they have gone 
to that romantic ,rock city of Petra, as Stanley fancies they did, 
though I think without reason, they would have found shade 
and water and pasturage, and their thirty-eight years in and 
near Kadesh would not have been intolerable. It seems to be 
one of the few weak points in Stanley's admirable work, — 
this fanciful identification of Kadesh, the place where Miriam 
died, and where the scarcity of water is expressly alluded to, 
with the profusely-watered city of Petra. And here I can not 
refrain from paying a passing tribute to the rare thoroughness 
as well as to the peculiar beauty of Stanley's " Sinai and 
Palestine." That tenacious notion that a picturesque, fascinat- 
ing, brilliant work must necessarily be superficial and unrelia- 
ble, has caused some to entertain the conviction that because 
Stanley has the former qualities in an eminent degree, he 
must be destitute of the sterling qualities which characterize 
the heavier Robinson. It is not so. His work is in every re- 
spect a classic. Chateaubriand and Lamartine wrote books on 
Palestine, whose peculiar, indeed whose only value lay in their 
style ; but Stanley, while always ornate, rich, picturesque, and 
yet chaste, betrays the ripest scholarship and a thoroughly- 
trained judgment. Nor is it to be said that there are no 



io4 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



grounds for identifying Kadesh with Petra ; there are some 
which are entitled to consideration, although the burden of 
evidence is against them. 

Not being allowed to pass through the rocky hights of Edom, 
we see the Israelites, at the end of forty years, move down to 
the Gulf of Akabah once more, round the lower extremity of 
the mountains of Seir, and pass up along their eastern base. 
The Edomites, descendants of Esau, seem to have cherished 
no ill-will toward their distant kinsmen, notwithstanding their 
former refusal, and bring out provisions to them as they pass 
by. It is a quick march. The narrative makes no halt till it 
takes them to the borders of Moab. Only two incidents are 
brought into distinct notice : the one occurring apparently at 
the outset, the latter while the Israelites were well on their way. 
The first of these was the death of Aaron, on Mt. Hor ; the 
second was the fatal biting of the serpents. The discovery, 
by Burckhardt, of venomous reptiles near the northern portion 
of the Gulf of Akabah, seems not only to corroborate the 
striking veracity of the narrative, but to fix the place where 
this evil befell the wandering Israelites. 




VII. 

THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. 

We have now advanced to a new field, a kind of interme- 
diate link between the Wilderness and the Land of Promise. 
That district, east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, has 
already come into view once or twice. We have seen the 
descent of Chedorlaomer and the kings of the East upon it, 
their onslaught upon the ancient tribe of Emim, east of the 
Dead Sea, and the Zamzummim, or Zuzim, farther north, east 
of the lower Jordan ; we have seen Jacob crossing the moun- 
tains of Gilead, erecting his memorial pile at Mahanaim, on 
the Jabbok, and passing thence down the defile to the Jordan ; 
but further than this it has not come into any prominence. 
Nor does it do so in the subsequent Bible story ; for although 
the territories of Ammon and Moab, of Reuben, Gad, and 
Half-Manasseh, have some relation to the history of Israel, 
yet it is only slight and incidental. At the time when the 
Hebrews entered that district, the land was in a state of con- 
vulsion, and the circumstances of the king of Moab were des- 
perate. Here, as in all our previous studies, history is the 
best companion of geography ; indeed, the two are insepara- 
ble if we would view the Holy Land as a living and not a 
dead thing. Let us glance, then, at the country in the state 
in which the Israelites found it. The ancient tribes of the 

Rephaim, the Emim, and Zuzim, had faded out, and the de- 

105 



106 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

scendants of Lot had taken possession of the whole of the 
land. The children of one of Lot's daughters held the south- 
ern region, the district of Moab ; those of the other daughter 
had gone farther north, and gave their own name of Ammon 
to the land. Their race was a prolific one ; and, at the time 
of the Israelitish invasion, about five hundred years subse- 
quent to the time when Abraham and Lot parted upon Bethel, 
we find the Moabites and Ammonites great nations. Their 
character was different. Moab was peaceful and inoffensive ; 
Ammon, warlike and turbulent. The Moabites were quiet 
herdsmen, possessing admirable grazing lands, and raising 
great flocks and herds ; the Ammonites were the Bedouins of 
the day, a nomadic, fierce, thriftless race. It is, therefore, 
easy to make out from the biblical account the boundaries of 
Moab ; but Ammon shades away northward into the hills, and 
eastward into the desert, in a manner which defies our at- 
tempt to establish its limits. Moab consisted of three divis- 
ions, each bearing a distinctive name, and each perfectly well 
to be made out at the present day. The tract lying south of 
the Wady Mojeb, or Anion, a stream flowing into the Dead 
Sea, just north of the well-known peninsula, is alluded to in 
Scripture as the "field of Moab;" the tract lying between 
the Arnon and the Jabbok is called the " land of Moab ; " 
while the low tract close by the Jordan and opposite Jericho 
bears the name of the " plains of Moab." The finest tract 
for grazing purposes was and still is the second one men- 
tioned, the land of Moab, a fine upland, a broken plateau, 
bounded on the west by that great mountain-wall which fol- 
lows the whole course of the Jordan, and broken here and 
there by hights which rise conspicuously above the elevated 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. IOJ 

plains. It is a country but little known even at the present 
day ; Burckhardt, Seetzen, Buckingham, Irby and Mangles, 
Tristram, and a few other bold and enterprising travelers 
only, having traversed it, and brought us what little we know 
of it : while the country farther north, the territory of Am- 
nion, has been crossed by a fearless few, — Porter, Wetzstein, 




bozrah (of Moab), Jer. xlviii. 24. 



and Graham, — in addition to those who have brought us what 
we know of Moab. Many of the greatest explorers, including 
such men as Robinson and Stanley, have scarcely set foot 
upon the land east of the Jordan. The wild character of the 
Bedouins there, taken in connection with the slight relation 
of that district to the history of the Jews, has shut it off ; and 



io8 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



out of the hundreds of travelers who go annually to Jerusa- 
lem, Hebron, Nazareth, and Jericho, scarcely one passes the 
Jordan and treads the land of Moab. 

At the time of the Israelitish invasion, the fierce tribe of 
the Amorites had sent a portion of their large numbers away 
from the hill-country north of Hebron across the Jordan, to 
subdue the rich pasture-lands there. Their strength had 
made them more than a match for the peaceful and inoffen- 
sive Moabites ; and they had easily wrested from the latter 
their best land, and driven them into the " field of Moab," the 
tract south of the Arnon. The Israelites did not pass 
through this territory ; but, having crossed the Zared and 
then the Arnon, they went farther toward the sun-rising, and 
entered the comparatively bare and desolate country east of 
the " land of Moab." The king of the Amorites, Sihon (his 
name is preserved), had established his capital at Heshbon, a 
place which bears the same name even to-day (Hesban), and 
whose ruins, though not important, display the same cisterns 
which made the fish-pools of Heshbon noted even in Solo- 
mon's time. The war against this Amorite king, Sihon, was 
short and decisive. The whole of the Belka, or country be- 
tween the Arnon and the Jabbok, passed into the hands of 
the Israelites. 

After the conquest over this formidable " Sihon, king of 
the Amorites," the Israelites do not appear to have hastened 
to the Jordan ; but, impressed with the conviction that no 
enemies must be left in their rear to follow and harass them, 
they marched far northward, past the Gilead range, to that 
great and fruitful tract of Bashan, south of Damascus and east 
of the Sea of Galilee. The capital city, or one of the two 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. IO9 

capitals, rather, was Edrei, whose ruins, according to Mr. Por- 
ter, may be seen even now, on a high, isolated bluff at the 
south-west corner of the Ledja. But whether this place, or 
Dera on the Hieromax, designates the site of the ancient 
Edrei, the journey was a long one northward. The recent 
discoveries made by Mr. Porter, and announced in his work 




STONE DOOR OF AN ANCIENT HOUSE. 



called " The Giant Cities of Bashan," are of a very great in- 
terest. The construction of the houses, and the size of the 
sarcophagi found there, are such as to convince him that he 
has really brought to light the very home and tomb of Og, 
king of Bashan. However this may be, there is a striking 
coincidence between the cities of Bashan, as they are de- 



I IO 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



scribed in Deut. iii. 5, and those cities — they can not be 
called ruins — which Prof. Porter has brought to light within 
the last few years. " All these cities were fenced with high 
walls, gates, and bars." All of these features remain, and, in 
addition to them, places of sepulture, which appear as if in- 
tended for persons of no ordinary stature. Moreover, we are 
distinctly, though only incidentally, told that Og, king of 
Bashan, remained, of the race of giants ; and his iron bed- 




INTERIOR, SHOWING STONE ROOF. 



stead was long preserved in token of the gigantic stature of 
the man. 

The Israelites overran the whole of Bashan, subduing 
Argob, with its threescore cities, that tract of black rock 
east of the Sea of Galilee, so little known to us till Mr. Por- 
ter brought its distinctive characteristics to light. They 
were then masters of the whole tract east of the Jordan. 
From the Arnon on the south to Hermon and the borders of 



1 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. 



I I I 



Damascus on the north, the land was theirs. It was a tract 
obviously adapted to pasturage, and immediately caught the 
eye of the two tribes which were especially eminent for the 
number and excellence of their flocks. The tribes of Reu- 
ben and Gad requested to have their portions assigned to 
them on the east side of the Jordan, and their request was 
granted, on the condition that the fighting men should cross 
the river with the other tribes, and, after the conquest was 
effected, should return and live with their flocks. The divis- 
ion was as follows : Moab was allowed to retain the terri- 
tory south of the Arnon, and at the same time to hold the 
cities of the tract taken by the Israelites from the Amorite 
king. Indeed, the fact that Moab was always more highly 
civilized than the tribe of Reuben allowed the two to live side 
by side in tolerable quietness ; the cities Heshbon, Aroer, 
Dibon, and the rest being held by the Moabites, while the 
pastoral Reubenites dwelt in tents, and tended their flocks 
on that fine level pasture-land. The territory distinctively 
held by Reuben, then, was from the Arnon on the south 
to a line running east and west through Heshbon. It was 
bounded by the Dead Sea and the Jordan on the west, while 
eastward the town of Aroer marked its limits. As the terri- 
tory of Reuben, it comes into no prominence in the Bible. 
Long known as Moab, it receives curse on curse ; the subtle 
idolatries practiced there, and, in especial, the worship of its 
god, Chemosh, having exercised an irresistible charm over 
the Israelites for many centuries subsequent to the conquest. 
But Reuben takes an altogether subordinate position. It 
gives not a hero to Israel, it gives not even a solitary name to 
the long list of Bible worthies. It sinks into the peaceful 



» 



I I 2 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

occupation of sheep-tending, and gradually disappears, its 
sons being merged, to a certain extent, in the primitive tribes 
of the region. 

Gad, which took possession of the lands farther north, was 
of a different stamp. While agriculture was its chosen call- 
ing, so that it too wanted to have a share in the rich grazing- 
lands east of the Jordan, it was tumultuous, wild, martial, 
and prolific in heroes. While Reuben gave none, Gad gave 
Elijah and Jephthah, men whose names, in their distinctive 
way, are among the best remembered in the long procession 
of Jewish historical characters. The territory of Gad is more 
indefinitely marked than that of Reuben ; but as it was first 
assigned, it extended from a line drawn east and west through 
Heshbon northward to the Jabbok, embracing the southern 
half of the mountains of Gilead. Subsequently, the ambi- 
tious, pushing spirit of the Gadites made them more than a 
match for the warlike and powerful half-tribe of Manasseh, 
which occupied Bashan and the northern half of the Gilead 
range, and we see the more southern tribe thrusting itself 
northward to the very verge of the Hauran. I should not 
omit to state that in the original allotment to Gad was the 
whole of the eastern bank of the Jordan, the fertile valley 
which lies between the river and the rock-wall on the east, 
and which extends from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. 

There was still another tribe, — one which has been alluded 
• to by name, — Half-Manasseh, which shared in the division 
of the lands east of the Jordan. The cause which prompted 
Reuben and Gad to ask for a tract there was not operative 
with Half-Manasseh. This powerful tribe, one of the most 
warlike and grasping of all, craved the privilege of seizing and 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. I I 3 

possessing that natural fastness, the northern half of Gilead, 
and the almost inaccessible rocks of Argob and of Eastern 
Bashan. It would seem that the conquest of Og had so far 
subdued the land, that Israel had no further occasion to fear ; 
yet to enter into it and possess it wholly required a longer and 




MOUNT HERMON, FROM NEAR TIBERIAS. 



more stoutly-contested campaign than the speedy one against 

Og. To accomplish this was the wish, as it was the act, of • 

the powerful half-tribe of Manasseh. This territory, when 

subdued, comprised that part of Gilead which was north of 

the Jabbok, and extended north as far as to Hermon. The 

ancient importance of that grand, snow-crowned peak is testi- 
* 8 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



fied by the fact that the Bible gives us, in connection with the 
story of the Israelitish conquests, four names for Hermon, 
three in addition to its familiar designation, — Sion, or the 
elevated, the Sidonian name Sirion, and the Amorite name 
Shenir. Not more marked is it now, as the natural boundary 
of Western Palestine, than it was when the Israelites were 
capturing the district east of the river. It was then the 
" snowy " Hermon ; and one of the names by which the Arabs 
designate it at the present day likewise means " the snowy." 

From the preceding sketch it will be seen that the Israelites 
broke away at once from the limit which had been set by 
Abraham when he parted from Lot ; indeed, they wandered 
so far from it that the circle of the Jordan, that rich intervale 
which accompanied the winding course of the river, originally 
chosen by Lot, was included in the domain of Gad. The only 
adherence to the compact between Abraham and Lot is seen 
in the fact that the Israelites did not attack the Moabites and 
the Ammonites, both the descendants of Lot by the dark 
incest of his daughters. The war was against the Amorites 
and the king of Bashan, not against the distant kinsmen of 
the invading Israelites. 

Only one more people comes prominently into view before 
we see the Israelites taking their way down into the Jordan 
Valley opposite Jericho. They are a branch of the Midianites. 
We have already seen portions of this tribe in the Sinai 
Peninsula ; we have alluded too to their main home on the 
eastern side of the Gulf of Akabah ; but now we discover 
that they were a tribe very widely scattered, skirting the east- 
ern border of Seir, Moab, and Ammon, and extending as far 
as to the Euphrates. Balaam, the great heathen prophet, was 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. 



a Midianite, yet his home was in Mesopotamia. The influence 
of this corrupt race was only bad ; the profligacy and licen- 
tiousness which it engendered being so great as to bring down 
a plague upon the people, and make it necessary for Israel to 
visit them with an almost exterminating war, — a war in which 
five of the kings of Midian perished, and in which Balaam, 
the great prophet, also fell by the sword. 




MOUNTAINS OF MOAB, FROM THE HILLS NEAR JERICHO. 



The exact position of the two mountains, which have been 
made famous as well as interesting, the one by the ascent of 
Balaam, the other by that of Moses, remains, and will 
probably always remain, unknown to us. Among the peaks 
of Moab are many from which the same commanding view 
could be had which was gained by both Balaam and Moses ; 
for although, as one looks at the rock-wall of Moab from 
Palestine, it seems to have no commanding summits, yet those 



n6 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



who have crossed the Jordan, and explored those almost un- 
visited spaces, report that the mountains have a much more 
marked individuality than would be believed possible. Ac- 
cording to the testimony of the Englishman Palmer, " When 
their summits are attained, a wholly new scene bursts upon 
the view, unlike any thing which could be expected from 
below, unlike any thing in Western Palestine. A wide table- 
land appears, tossed about in wild confusion of undulating 
downs, clothed with rich grasses throughout, and, in the 
northern parts, with magnificent forests of sycamore, beech, 
terebinth, ilex, and enormous fig-trees." While the rich, well- 
wooded, well-watered districts of Moab, Gilead, and Bashan 
were to be seen, in all those charms which fascinated the 
heart of Reuben and Gad, the distant view, that across the 
■Jordan, is not to-day, and could hardly have been then, such 
as to correspond with the glowing language of the spies who 
had been sent up from the desert. It may be true, as Stanley 
suggests, that to one who stands on the hights of Moab and 
looks westward across the Jordan at the hills of Judah and 
Ephraim, " their monotonous character is lost, and the range 
when seen as a whole is in the highest decree diversified and 
impressive ; " yet those brown and treeless hills, and those 
waterless ravines which could be traced westward from the 
Jordan Valley, would contrast most unfavorably with the rich 
and well-watered land east of the river. Robinson testifies 
that nowhere in the whole course of his wanderings did he 
meet such a wealth of springs and running brooks as in the 
district south-east of the Dead Sea. And most of the terri- 
tory northward is not unworthy to be ranked far beyond 
Palestine proper in all the elements which enrich a people. 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. I I 7 

The Bible shows us, in its indirect way, that the trans -Jordan- 
ic district had from time immemorial been in the possession of 
the most powerful tribes in the whole region. Those allusions 
to the Rephaim, the Emim, and Zamzummim, merely indicate 
that those races of giants held, by the tenure of their might, 
the most valuable territory of all Southern Syria. On what 
grounds, then, do we find Moses straining his sight to look 
across the river, striving to catch a glimpse of what he was 
not permitted to enter ? Caleb and Joshua, his near and 
trusted friends, had traversed the whole length of Western 
Palestine, from Beersheba to Dan ; he might have learned 
from them that what lay beyond was not a rival to that which 
the valor of the Israelites had already secured. The original 
promise made to Abraham extended to the Euphrates. With- 
out taking one thing into account, it would indeed appear 
wonderful that the Hebrew leader should have wished to take 
further risks, and not have settled down into the quiet and 
secure pastoral life to which the plains of Moab and the slopes 
of Gilead invited the wearied tribes. Yet, though the Scripture 
does not hint at what passed in the mind of, Moses, we can 
not doubt that a man so observant as he would see that the 
country was without natural means of defense. At the north, 
in Bashan, and in parts of Gilead, the rugged ravines and 
frowning battlements of rock might serve as a partial protec- 
tion ; yet only a race always in readiness for war, a nation of 
warrior-shepherds, could hold, with any security, the pasture- 
lands of the south. As the Emim and Zamzummim had 
quailed before Chedorlaomer and the other kings of the East, 
and had at last been exterminated by the Moabites and the 
Ammonites ; as the Ammonites had just yielded to Moses, 



n8 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



and even Og, in the intrenchments of Bashan, had confessed 
him conquerer, so in turn the Israelites might be the prey of 
some stronger and more disciplined race which should sweep 
through that unprotected land. Therefore it was, as it ap- 
pears to me, that his eye measured the long line of hills across 
the Jordan, traversed the steep gorges which run up westward 
from the Jordan to the great dorsal ridge of Palestine, and 
felt secure in the thought that the " mountains of the Amo- 
rites," as the great line of watershed is called in the Bible, — 
the high lands from Hebron to Shechem, — would afford the 
most secure and undisturbed shelter to his people, age after 
age. It is not a little curious that the only tradition claiming 
any value in that country is the Mahometan one that puts the 
mountain where Moses died on the west bank of the Jordan, 
and north-west of the Dead Sea. The ruins of a small 
mosque attest the mountain of the Moslem tradition. Yet 
the tale is clearly an idle one. Though the place of Moses' 
sepulture is closely concealed by the Scriptures, and though 
we do not know which mountain of the rocky tract Pisgah ' 
was consecrated to the Moabite god Nebo, and bore his 
name, still there can be no doubt that it lay on the eastern 
side of the Jordan, and confronted the city of Jericho. The 
spot which has been pointed out with the most probability is 
a peak a short distance southward of Heshbon, which was 
ascended by Mr. Porter, and from which a view of surpassing 
extent could be gained. From that, or any one of the range 
to which it belongs, Balaam could look across the Dead Sea 
and see the steep rocks where the Kenites clustered, and 
which served them instead of houses ; he could also reach 
with his eye the south country, and discern the tents of the 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. I 1 9 

roving Amalekites ; and, in the distance, he could descry the 
blue line of the Mediterranean, over which the ships of Chittim 
should sail ; while far to the south were the purple hills of 
Edom. Nor is Moses represented as compassing an area any 
less limited. From Dan, at the extreme north, and under the 
very shadow of Hermon, to the south country, the home of 
Abraham and Isaac, from the plain of Jericho to the Mediter- 
ranean, — all this is distinctly recorded in the closing verses 
of Deuteronomy as falling within the scope of his vision. 
Balaam lived to go down, and was slain fighting against the 
nation his tongue was constrained to bless, while Moses 
remained in the mountain and died ; " but no man knoweth 
of his sepulcher to this day." 

" On these brows," writes Tristram, " overlooking the mouth 
of the Jordan, over against Jericho, we halted and gazed on a 
prospect on which it has been permitted to few European 
eyes to feast. 

" As the eye turns southward * toward the line of the ridge 
on which we were elevated, the peak of Jebel Shihan just 
stood out behind Jebel Attarus, which opened to reveal to us 
the situation of Kerak, though not its walls. Beyond and be- 
hind these, sharply rose Mts. Hor and Seir, and the rosy 
granite peaks of Arabia faded away into the distance toward 
Akabah. Still turning westward, in front of us, two or three 
lines of terraces reduced the hight of the plateau as it de- 
scended to the Dead Sea, the western outline of which we 
could trace in its full extent, from Usdum to Feshkah. It lav 
like a long strip of molten metal, with the sun mirrored on 
its surface, waving and undulating in its farther edge, unseen 



See map, page 40. 



e 

1 20 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

in its eastern limits, as though poured from some deep cavern 
beneath our feet. There, almost in the center of the line, a 
break in the ridge, and a green spot below, marked Engedi, 
the nest once of the Kenite, now of the wild goat. The 
fortress of Masada and jagged Shukif rose above the moun- 
tain line, but still far below us, and lower too than the ridge 
of Hebron, which we could trace as it lifted gradually from 
the south-west, as far as Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The 
buildings of Jerusalem we could not see,* though all the 
familiar points in the neighborhood were at once identified. 
There was the Mount of Olives, with the church at its top, the 
gap in the hills leading up from Jericho, and the rounded 
hights of Benjamin on its other side. Still turning north- 
ward, the eye was riveted by the deep Ghor [Jordan Valley], 
'with the rich green islets of Ain Sultan and Ain Duk, — 
bright twins, nestling, as it were, under the wall of Ouaran- 
tania. There, closer still beneath us, had Israel's last camp 
extended, in front of the green fringe which peeped forth 
from under the terraces in our foreground. The dark sinu- 
ous bed of the Jordan, clearly defined near its mouth, was 
soon lost in dim haze. Then, looking over it, the eye restec 
on Gerizim's rounded top ; and, farther still, opened the plain 
of Esdraelon, the shoulder of Carmel, or some other inter- 
vening hight just showing at the right of Gerizim ; while the 
distant bluish haze beyond it told us that there was the sea, 
4 the utmost sea.' It seemed as if but a whiff were needed to 
brush off the haze and reveal it clearly. Northward, again, 
rose the distinct outline of unmistakable Tabor, aided by 

* " This must have been from a slight haze, or want of power in our glasses, as the point where 
we stood is certainly visible from the roof of the English church." 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. 



121 



which we could identify Gilboa and Jebel Duhy. Snowy 
Hermon's top was mantled with clouds, and Lebanon's 
highest range must have been exactly shut behind it ; but 
in front, due north of us, stretched in long line the dark for- 
ests of Ajlun, bold and undulating, with the steep sides of 
mountains here and there whitened by cliffs, terminating in 
Mt. Gilead, behind Es Salt. To the north-east, the vast 
Hauran stretched beyond, filling in the horizon line to the 
Belka, between which and the Hauran [Bashan] there seems 
to be no natural line of separation. The tall range of Jebel 
Hauran, behind Bozrah, was distinctly visible. 

" We did indeed congratulate each other on the privilege 
of having gazed on this superb panorama, which will live in 
memory's eye. ' And the Lord showed him all the land of 
Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, 
and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost 
sea, and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the 
city of palm-trees, unto Zoar.' " — Deut. xxxiv. 1-3. 

It was a descent of more than four thousand feet from the 
summit of those Abarim mountains which witnessed the 
vision of Balaam and Moses, to the "plains of Moab," the 
Scripture name for the eastern side of the Jordan Valley at 
Jericho. From the ordinary level of that table-land was a 
descent of about two thousand feet. The course of the 
Israelites may be traced with apparent certainty down the 
Wady Hesban, a ravine which descends from Heshbon, to 
the Jordan, and which still retains the name of the ancient 
city which lay at its head. They came out upon a place 
where even now may be seen the acacias which gave the 
place its name of Abel Shittim, " the groves of acacia-trees." 



I 22 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



" The difference between the upper and lower ground in 
respect to soil and climate is as great as can be imagined. In 
aspect, temperature, and products, the valley is tropical in 
character, so that the Hebrews passed as if into another zone 
when they came down into it. In its southern extremity, 
where it opens on the gloomy, mist-covered waters of the as- 
phaltic lake, it is not less than twelve miles in width. There, 
open and level on all sides, it forms a space on which many 
armies might be encamped. Over its whole extent it was 
lined and striped by thick belts of verdure, in its numerous 
groves of acacia and nukb, and of palms. The general 
direction of the valley itself for the sixty miles between Lake 
Tiberias and the Dead Sea is tolerably straight ; but deep 
in its very bottom the river winds — it has been said that it 
wriggles — along like a gigantic serpent [so that the length 
of the channel is not sixty, but two hundred miles]. The 
ground descends steeply all the way to the southern opening 
of the valley at the head of the Dead Sea ; and its depth and 
closeness, as well as the reflection from the heated rocks on 
either side, give a tropical character to the climate. The 
square, monotonous range of hills that support the eastern 
highlands rises up on that side for nearly a hundred miles, 
and on the other are the gray, parched hills of Ephraim and 
Jordan, broken and irregular, and of much smaller altitude. 
The Israelites had never looked, in one view, on such an 
ample space, so clothed in what would seem to them 
a boundless profusion of luxuriant vegetation ; and then 
there was the rapid stream, flowing deep in its low 
channel through the thickly-clustered trees, under whose 
cool shades they could stay and rest in voluptuous in- 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. 



123 



dulgence. The aged leaders would think less of the 
Jordan when they remembered the broad waters of the 
Nile, and the fatness of the Egyptian soil ; but for the multi- 
tudes, this was the first river that they had seen ; and not 
even in the fertile and beautiful region above them, whence 
they had descended, was there more exuberant abundance, 
especially at the season when they came into the valley, 
which was the full harvest-time, when it was covered with 
the richest crops, and when the trees were thick with the 
blossoming promise of their luscious fruit. The depth of the 
valley, and the hights on either side reflecting the sun's rays, 
made the climate hot and relaxing, especially at the season 
when they encamped in it. But they could bear this the 
more easily on account of the ample shade which they found 
in the acacia grove where they were stationed." * 

Before we follow the Israelites across the Jordan, we must 
glance a moment at that allotment of Western Palestine 
which was made by Moses, — we know not just how long 
before his death, — and the details of which he received in 
part from the report of the spies. The account is given in 
the thirty-fourth chapter of Numbers, and, with some slight 
modifications of the eastern boundary, in the forty-seventh 
of Ezekiel. Though some of the minor places have not as 
yet been identified with existing sites, still enough remains to 
show how he marked out the boundaries of the Israelitish 
territory, and how carefully he adapted himself to the natural 
frontiers of the country. The southern border he defines to 
run from the south-eastern extremity of the Dead Sea across 



* From Drew's Scripture Lands. 



124 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



the Araoah, taking in Kadesh-barnea, and skirting Edom, to 
pass on by the steep ascent of Akrabbim, the last pass which 
led from the desert up to the hill-country, and then to run 
westward through the towns of Hazar-addar and Azmon 
(neither identified with certainty) to Wady el Arish, an im- 
portant ravine which runs from the heart of the Sinai Penin- 
sula north-eastward, and emerges upon the Mediterranean 
shore at the old city of Rhinocolura, south-west of Gaza. 
This ravine bears uniformly in the Bible the name " River of 
Egypt," it being considered the beginning of the Egyptian 
domain. The southern border ended naturally at the sea. 
The western was the Mediterranean coast-line northward to 
the point where the great Lebanon range runs down almost 
to the shore. This would be the natural boundary, and this 
was at once accepted as the place where the northern line 
would commence. The stations on this northern border 
were Mt. Hor, the entrance of Hamath, Zedad, Ziphron, and 
Hazar-enan. Of these we must say that Mt. Hor is probably 
to be identified with the whole Lebanon range; no other 
prominent elevation, or system of elevations, in that region 
would seem to answer the conditions. By the entrance to 
Hamath is meant, with much probability, the narrow valley 
between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, which was the 
most striking feature to a man of Palestine as he went north- 
ward, and passed between these great chains on his way to 
the important city of Hamath. 

From the " entrance of Hamath " the border-line was drawn 
north-east toward the city of Hamath, then south-east by 
Ziphron, Zedad and Hazar-enan. — Num. xxxiv. 8, 9. 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. 1 25 

" Hamath," writes Mr. Porter, " is a quaint old city. If one 
could fancy Pompeii restored and repeopled with men and 
women, whose moldering bones are now being dug up from its 
ruins, it would not present a greater contrast to the modern 
cities of the West than Hamath. For thirty centuries or more, 
life has been at a standstill there. Everything is patriarchal, — 
costumes, manners, salutations, occupations. The venerable 
elders who, with turbaned heads, flowing beards, and flowing 
robes, sit daily in the gates, might pass for the elders of the 
children of Heth, who bargained with Abraham in the gates 
of Kirjath-arba ; and the Arab sheiks, who ever and anon, 
pass in and out, armed with sword and spear, are no unworthy 
representatives of the fiery Ishmael. There is no town in 
the world in which primeval life can be seen in such purity as 
in Hamath. The people glory in it. No greater insult could 
be offered to them than to contrast Hamath with the cities of 
the infidel. The site of Hamath is picturesque. It stands in 
the deep glen of the Orontes, whose broad, rapid stream 
divides it through the center. The banks are lined with 
poplars, and the queer houses rise like terraces along the 
steep slopes. Four bridges span the stream and connect the 
two quarters of the city. The remains of antiquity are near- 
ly all gone ; the citadel is a vast mound of rubbish ; the 
mosques are falling to ruin ; and the private houses, though 
in a few cases splendidly decorated within, are shapeless piles 
of mud and timber. Hamath has still thirty thousand in- 
habitants." 

Of the other stations on the northern border, Zedan, Ziph- 
ron, and Hazar-enan, there is not much to be said, so unfixed 



126 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

is our knowledge regarding those localities. Mr. Porter, in 
his " Five Years in Damascus," and in his later book, " The 
Giant Cities of Bashan," has, it is true, conjecturally identified 
these places with some Arab villages visited by him ; still, 
notwithstanding the general sobriety of his judgment, I think 
that in this case he has allowed his fancy to mislead him. 
We have not yet the data for laying down with exactness the 
northern and a part of the eastern boundary -line. 

The eastern border, given in the forty-seventh chapter of 
Ezekiel, differs from that assigned by Moses in the thirty- 
fourth chapter of Numbers. The main difference in the two, 
speaking briefly, is that Moses excluded the kingdom of 
Damascus from the territory which he promised, while Ezekiel 
represents that kingdom as included in what appeared to him 
in his vision. According to Moses' assignment, the eastern 
line was to run southward from Hazar-enan to Riblah ; thence 
to the Sea of Chinnereth, or Galilee ; and so on down the 
Jordan to the Dead Sea. Neither Shepham nor Riblah, on 
the eastern border, is known ; Ain, the fountain spoken of in 
connection with this boundary, has been thought by Porter 
not to be the great spring of Banias ; but not only does the 
importance of that fountain indicate the probability that it 
was the one laid down in the Mosaic narration, but the older 
authorities agree in assigning the name " Ain," or the foun- 
tain, to the great Jordan spring of Banias. The exact laying- 
down of the Mosaic boundary-line is unnecessary ; and we 
can see enough to enable us to discern how clearly he de- 
scribed the leading geographical features of the land, — how 
his mind grasped the truth that the Lebanon and Anti-Leb- 



THE TRANS-JORDANIC DISTRICT. 



127 



anon ranges must terminate the northern border, and that the 
eastern one must follow the line which separates the Anti- 
Lebanon slopes from the great desert on the east. Here was 
the only place which demanded rigid knowledge and sound 
judgment ; and Moses demonstrated, even in this, the same 
wonderful command of resources which characterized his 
whole course. 




DAMASCUS. 



VIII. 



PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN, AND BEGINNING OF THE 

CONQUEST. 

The passage of the Jordan by the Israelites brings us to 
the consideration of some of the geographical characteristics 
of the river. The place was "over against Jericho," and 
probably not far from that Helu ford which was attempted by 
Robinson without success, and which has been crossed with- 
out swimming by no traveler, so far as I am aware, but the 
brave and zealous Seetzen, in 1807. The Jordan is not ford- 
able at all at the time of the spring flood ; its muddy torrent 
is both too deep and too swift. Seetzen waited at least a 
week for the waters to subside so far as to allow him to 
venture to cross, and the transit, even when he did effect it, 
was full of peril. In the summer-time, the Jordan can be 
crossed at countless places ; and the repeated references in 
the Old Testament to passages across the river must be ex- 
plained by the ease with which the river could be forded in 
summer. But in the spring it was and is still different. 
The winter rains fill the wadies with a rushing, impetuous 
tide, and the sides of Hermon early begin to pour down the 
floods which the heat of March and April calls out from the 
snow-masses. To ford the river then would be impossible. 
Yet it was just then that the Israelites effected the passage. 
.It was the harvest season, the last of March and first of 

April ; it was within four days of the feast of the Passover, 
128 



PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. 



I29 



which occurred at the same time. I am as much impressed 
as one can be with the draughts made upon our faith by the 
story of the miracle ; yet one is shut up to the necessity of 
accepting it. We learn the time of the year incidentally ; it 
is not wrought in as an essential part of the story. More- 
over, there is no evidence that any boats or bridges were in 
use then or in latter times to effect the passage of the Jordan ; 
the ford was then as now (except where south of the Sea 
of Galilee some Roman bridges remain) the only method of 
transit. It is singular how faithfully the Jordan maintains at 
the present time the same characteristics which it is repre- 
sented in the Bible as having. It was a larger stream then, 
for it drained a better-wooded country than it does now ; but 
the same dark, muddy water which it had then it has now ; 
and even the same thickets which lined its banks at the time 
of Elisha are there at the present day. At the time of the 
spring flood the stream is about one hundred feet in width ; 
narrow, compared with our American rivers, but deep and 
swift. We find, on the part of the Israelites, no sign of a 
desire to wait till the waters should subside. The same will- 
ingness to trust to the arm of God which had characterized 
Moses at the Red Sea now filled the heart of Joshua at the 
Jordan. The Israelites wind down to the river from the 
acacia-groves where they had tarried, the waters part, they go 
through, and, from the dry bed, they take up twelve stones to 
set up upon the western bank in memorial of the great deed 
which had been wrought in their behalf. 

Still, while it is impossible to see how the herds and the 
flocks, the women and the children, the tabernacle and its ser- 
vice, the embalmed body of Joseph, and the whole mass of 

9 



13° 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



household goods and utensils, could be transferred safely to the 
western bank of the Jordan without the intervention of mira- 
cle ; yet at that season able and sure-footed men could cross 
either by swimming, or as Seetzen did in the spring of 1807. 
And thus we know they did do, for the spies entered Jericho 




CROSSING THE JORDAN IN MODERN TIMES. 



and returned to the east bank of the river before the general 
transit was effected.* 

* A very accomplished English traveler, Mr. Tristram, crossed the Jordan a few years ago at the 
time of the spring flood. To do it, made it necessary to ride horses across, while Arabs swam by * 
the side and held the bridle. Mr. Tristram's account is so brief and graphic, that I gladly quote 
it, as it throws light upon the difficulties which beset an army without horses, and accompanied 
by women, children, and droves of cattle. The place where Mr. Tristram crossed the Jordan 
was a few miles above the ford of Jericho. He says : " On both sides the space was thronged 



PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. 



Gilgal, the place of the Israelites' first encampment west 
of the Jordan, lay on the south-east of Jericho, between it and 
the river. A few shapeless ruins mark the site of what long 
continued the most sacred locality among the Jews, for here 
the ark remained till it was transferred to Shiloh, upon the 
crest of the mountain ridge of Palestine. It lay about three 
miles from the fords of the Jordan, and from one to two miles 
from Jericho. There were several places bearing the name of 
Gilgal ; but this was the one to which the Hebrew mind 
turned for ages with instinctive reverence. The twelve stones 
which were taken up from the bed of the river were carried 
to the hill of Gilgal and piled up there; the whole of the 
Israelites were circumcised there ; and in the immediate 
neighborhood of Gilgal the school of the prophets sat nourish- 
ing itself from the hallowed memories of the past. 

But faint memorials remain at the present day of that 
opulent, proud, and powerful city of Jericho, with its walls 
and towers, which confronted the Israelites directly after 
crossing the Jordan. Near the profuse spring known as that 

by about fifty tall, wild-looking Bedouins, all stark naked, swimming and riding a number of 
bare-backed horses. For a moment my heart beat quick, as two naked men seized my horse, and 

a third snatched my gun from me. I felt as if set upon by naked savages. C was ahead of 

me, and I watched him and his horse led into the water by a naked Bedouin, who had taken off 
the bridle, and held his steed by the halter, while another hung on to his tail, and a third kept on 
the lee side of the saddle. The stream, rushing with tremendous force, was about fifteen feet 
deep. Meantime my saddle-bags were carried off and placed on a man's head ; and, having 
taken off my outer garment, I committed myself and horse to the torrent, his halter being held 
by a mounted guide. The ford was very difficult and oblique, but the leader's horse was evi- 
dently experienced ; while an expert swimmer kept to leeward of my saddle, and held my leg 
close to my horse. Following a little way with the stream, we landed on the other side. Soon 
we had all landed ; and now the scene was of the wildest and strangest beauty. It was such as 
one might expect to see in a picture of Indians crossing an American river, or of the war in New 
Zealand, graced by the accompaniments of almost tropical vegetation. We agreed that such 
a spectacle was sufficient to repay all the negotiations and trouble of reaching the Jordan." 



132 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



of the Sultan, there are indeed unmistakable marks of the 
great natural fertility of that truly tropical plain ; for, lying as 
it does thirteen hundred feet below the level of the sea, and 
shut in as it is by the bare rock-walls on both sides of the 
Ghor, the place has almost the temperature of an oven. A 
single tower, thirty feet square and forty feet high, is the 
most conspicuous object which remains of the Jericho of 
Herod's time ; but of the primitive Jericho, that of Joshua's 




AIN SULTAN. 



day, not a vestige is left. Some of those mounds which dot 
the plain might be found, if opened, to contain fragments of 
the ancient walls and towers, yet there will hardly be encoun- 
tered a traveler enterprising enough to try to pierce the mys- 
tery of those hillocks. Fragments of arches, aqueducts, and 
paved roads may be seen in the neighborhood of the modern 
filthy village of Er Riha ; but they are only faint indications 
at best of that city which, although brought to ruins so early 



PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. 



133 



in the history of Palestine, yet blossomed up again into such 
luxuriant life. Not a trace now remains to show why it was 
called the City of Palms, yet this tree has waved over the site 
of Jericho since the beginning of the present century. The 
rose of Jericho has utterly vanished, however, and little that 
depends upon the aid of man is found in that fertile valley 
to-day but scanty crops of barley and millet and maize. The 
same vices which characterized the oldest known cities of the 
fertile plain, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Zoar, 




BETWEEN BETHANY AND JERICHO. 



characterize the filthy Arabs who inhabit the huts of Er 
Riha ; nor can we be forgetful of the occupation of the 
woman who gave the spies reception within her own house. 
Licentiousness, effeminacy, bestiality, have always been the 
besetting sins of that tropical valley ; and never, from the 
time of its capture down to the time of the Saviour, does 
Jericho appear to have fallen so low as at the present time. 
Yet even in the Saviour's day the narrow pass which leads up 
to Jerusalem was the favorite resort of robbers, as it is to-day ; 



134 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



and nowhere in Palestine is it more necessary to be on one's 
guard. The parable of the Good Samaritan has been re- 
enacted within our own day, an Englishman being the man 
who " fell among thieves." 

The site of Jericho is about seven miles from the banks of 
the Jordan, and the view from the old tower commands a view 
of the whole extent of intervale. Much of the land is 
parched and blasted ; that to the south, and lying between 
Er Riha and the Dead Sea, is a desert. No doubt the whole 
place has been so changed in its outward aspect, that one of 
the inhabitants of ancient Jericho, could he revisit the scene, 
would scarcely recognize the fair, fertile tract which the river- 
bottoms once were, in the sterile plain of the present day, 
showing only after the heavy rains or near the great Sultan s 
Spring, what is the natural capacity of the soil. 

The natural highway from Jericho up to the great water- 
shed of Palestine is not the precipice-lined gorge which runs 
from Jerusalem down to the Jordan by way of Bethany. It 
is the way which follows the broad and well-known Wady 
Suweinit for a distance, and then, under a changed name, 
runs on to Bethel. There are, indeed, three minor wadies 
which radiate from Wady Suweinit ; but the one which 
emerges at Bethel is the most direct and easy. Strange to 
say, however, that tract is most inadequately explored ; the 
great road by which Joshua went up to the summit of the hill- 
country, and the system of wadies which lies in the immedi- 
ate vicinity of Bethel and Ai, are not known as they ought to 
be, though the road was one of those most familiar to the 
Israelites. Not only did they take it in their conquering 
march from Jericho to Ai, but that was the road which they 



PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. 



135 



must follow when they went down to offer their sacrifices at 
Gilgal. Yet the general nature of the pass is known ; we 
can see the thirty thousand men marching up to Ai, south- 
east of Bethel and in full sight of it, though its ruins are not 
identified with certainty ; we can see Joshua cunningly send- 
ing his select champions into a high, unseen place beyond the 
city, while he, with the main body, encamped before it, and 
then withdrawing down the valley toward Jericho as if 
unable to take the city. We see the men of Ai, falling into 
the snare, passing confidently from the walls of their city, 
and pressing rapidly down toward the Jordan in pur- 
suit of the fleeing Israelites. Then we see the delegation, 
five thousand strong, it would appear, emerging from 
their ambuscade between Bethel and Ai, and pressing 
after the men of Ai. Joshua then turns and stems the 
descending tide of Canaanitish mountaineers. Caught 
between the two forces, the men of Ai are utterly cut off, 
and their city reduced to ruins. It was, of course, a mo- 
mentous victory, for it opened the whole line of mountain- 
land to them, and the Israelites could press on without hin- 
derance northward or southward. It was in endeavoring to 
make just such an ascent, south of the Dead Sea, and to 
reach the high land of Southern Palestine, that they were 
driven back to Hormah, in the Arabah, and compelled to 
spend those thirty-eight hopeless years of wandering. The 
military genius of Joshua shines out conspicuously in the 
first instance where he needed to use it. Moses had lived 
just as long as a Moses was needed, and when new emer- 
gencies rose and new talents were required, God had the 
right man ready for the field. 



136 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



The main camp remained at Gilgal, by Jericho, even after 
Ai was taken ; but the next move of any importance was the 
setting-up of the tables of the law on Ebal and Gerizim, the 
two mountains between which lies that plain of Moreh, or 
Shechem, where Abraham lingered long enough to erect an 
altar, and where Jacob lived till the altercations of his sons 
with the Canaanites drove him from the place. Under their 




NABLUS, WITH MT. EBAL AND A PART OF MT. GERIZIM. 



shadow is to be seen even now Jacob's well and the reputed 
tomb of Joseph. It was on Ebal that half of the tribes stood 
and uttered the curses on those who should disobey the law ; 
it was on Gerizim that the other half stood and recited those 
impressive blessings that are recorded in Deuteronomy. It 
was on Ebal, that, according to the Jewish reading of the 
Pentateuch (Deut. xxvii. 4), an altar inscribed with the law 



PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. 



137 



was to be set up ; whereas the Samaritan version has Gerizim, 
in the well-remembered passage. The differences in tbe two. 
mountains are somewhat marked, although, perhaps, not as 
much so as the accounts of most travelers would lead us to 
infer. Ebal is a steep, rocky, bare, and uninteresting peak, 
and has almost never been ascended : a few shapeless ruins 
are almost all the human traces which it offers to the curiosity. 
Its hight has not been closely ascertained, but it is computed 
to be not much short of thirty-five hundred feet. Gerizim, 
which is about five hundred feet lower, has been spoken of by 
most travelers as a " smiling " mountain, covered with ver- 
dure, and showing on its very face why it was chosen as the 
mount of blessings. This is surely an exaggerated statement 
of what rests upon a very slight foundation. Indeed, it would 
not be right to omit saying that some of our most reliable 
modern tourists deny Gerizim any superiority whatever in 
charm over Ebal. It has from the remotest period been ac- 
counted a sacred mountain ; and it is supposed by Stanley to 
have been the hight to which Abraham brought Isaac for 
sacrifice ; though I can not yield assent to this view. Gerizim 
is the resort of pilgrims every year to witness the celebration 
of the passover ; and one of the most interesting portions of 
Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church is that appendix in 
which he gives his own account, as an eye-witness, of the 
celebration, in this age, of that ancient feast, with ritualistic 
observances little changed by the lapse of four thousand 
years. 

The law having been set up on Ebal or Gerizim (according 
as the Jews or Samaritans are right in their respective read- 
ings), the next step of the Israelites was to move quickly 



I38 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

southward along the Palestine watershed, and then down the 
ravine leading from Bethel to Gilgal and Jericho. It was 
during the brief pause after their return that the memorable 
visit of the Gibeonites occurred, which led Joshua into a net, 
not so dangerous as that which he set for the people of Ai, 
but quite as subtle. I need not remind the reader how the 
inhabitants of Gibeon and the neighboring cities of Beeroth, 
Kirjath-jearim, and Chephirah took moldy bread and burst 
wine-skins, and old clothes and worn-out shoes, and traversed 
the ten or twelve miles which separated their homes from 
GilgaL, and pretended to come from a distant country for the 
purpose of testifying their allegiance to the God of the 
Israelites. The trick was at length discovered, and, although 
Joshua could not forfeit his word to spare their lives, they 
were degraded into hewers of wood and drawers of water, 
and compelled to discharge these laborious and menial ser- 
vices for the Israelites age after age. Those places have all 
been brought to light by the indefatigable Robinson. Their 
present names are but little changed from those they bore in 
ancient times, Gibeon being Geba, Beeroth Bireh, and Che- 
phirah Kefur. Kirjath-jearim has lost its name, however, 
and is to be identified with Kuryet-el-enab. They lie from 
six to ten miles north of Jerusalem, a little west of the line 
of watershed, Kirjath-jearim being at the head of an impor- 
tant wady which leads toward the Mediterranean coast. 

The anger which was kindled in the hearts of the Canaanite 
kings against the Gibeonites for not resisting the invaders at 
the point of the sword, led directly to that great and decisive 
battle of Beth-horon which put the Israelites in substantial 
possession of the country. The five kings who conspired to 



BEGINNING OF THE CONQUEST. 



I 39 



destroy Gibeon for its pusillanimous conduct, were those of 
Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon, — all of 
them places of unquestionable importance. Of Jerusalem 
and Hebron I need not speak, except to say that these two 
cities, which have before met us only in the attitude of peace, 
here confront us with the stern face of war. Abraham and 
Jacob were men who passed up and down through Palestine, 
cherishing a promise of future possession, but taking no steps 
to attain it, and carefully abstaining from coming into conflict 
with the people, always buying land instead of wresting it, 
and speaking not imperiously but peaceably to the Canaanites. 
But when Joshua came, there was a change ; and the chief 
city of the Jebusites and that of the Hittites arrayed them- 
selves against the man who came not with flocks and herds, 
but at the head of a powerful army. Jarmuth, Lachish, and 
Eglon lay south-west of Jerusalem and west of Hebron ; the 
first of them on the western margin of the hill-country, the 
last two on the rich plain below. Jarmuth is identified, 
beyond much doubt, with the modern village of Jarmu ; 
Lachish and Eglon, with Um Lakis and Ajlan. It was not 
at those places, however, that the kings encountered the 
Israelites. They united their forces and marched up to Gib- 
eon, on the high land north of Jerusalem, the modern Geba, 
for the purpose of destroying it. The people sent a messen- 
ger directly to Joshua at Gilgal. The Israelitish army was at 
once on the move up the rocky denies which lead from the 
Valley of the Jordan to the top of the mountain-land ; their 
first duty being to defend their new and crafty allies, the Gib- 
eonites ; their next, to go forward and capture the country for 
themselves. The news reached Joshua in the night, and 



140 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



before it was aay the Israelitish host had traversed the 
ravine, and were before the walls of Gibeon. And then 
began that memorable battle of Beth-horon, one of the deci- 
sive struggles of the world. The Israelites pursued their 
enemy northward for about four miles, over a tract sufficiently 
broken, but along the main coast-line of the country. At 
Upper Beth-horon, its place perfectly marked at the present 
day by the village of Upper Beit-ur, the Canaanites turned 
down to the west through the broad and steep pass which led 
to the village of Lower Beth-horon. It is the same pass 
which is taken by all the heavy travel between Jaffa and Jeru- 
salem. The lighter travel comes up by a pass west of Jerusa- 
lem, and more direct ; but the pass of Beit-ur, the ancient 
Beth-horon, is one of the most striking features of the coun- 
try. Mr. Grove says graphically of it, " With the upper 
village the descent commences ; the road, rough and difficult 
even for the mountain-paths of Palestine, now over sheets of 
smooth rock flat as the flagstones of a London pavement, 
now over the upturned edges of the limestone strata, and now 
amongst the loose rectangular stones so characteristic of the 
whole of this district. There are. in many places, steps cut, 
and other marks of the path having been artificially im- 
proved." Near the lower end of the path is the side-valley 
passing by the low hill on which stood the village of Ajalon, 
the modern Yalo, and whose name is always remembered in 
connection with Joshua's prayer, as he set forward that event- 
ful morning. It is plain that the Canaanites were taken by 
surprise, when, in the cool of the day, they found the Hebrew 
troops upon them. There was a continual rout all the way 
from Gibeon to Upper Beth-horon ; and, to add to all, just as 



BEGINNING OF THE CONQUEST. I4I 

the Canaanites were taking that steep and dangerous pass 
from Upper to Lower Beth-horon, a tremendous hailstorm 
broke upon them, effecting more slaughter than even the 
arms of the Israelites. This pitiless storm followed them till 
they reached the city of Azekah, identified by Porter with the 
modern village of Zechariah, on the verge of the highlands 
south-west of Jerusalem. It would appear that the Israelites 
did not pass on at once to Azekah, but in the early morning, 
the victory being complete, left the hailstorm on the western 
slope of the hill-country to do its devastating work, while 




MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE BATTLES OF AI AND BETH-HORON. 



they went back to Gilgal. But soon a messenger brought 
word that the five kings had taken refuge in a cave at Makke- 
dah, near Azekah. Up from Gilgal on the same day the Israel- 
ites marched, reached the highlands about Gibeon, and swept 
down the pass of Beth-horon to Makkedah. The slaughter 
of the kings, their burial in the cave, and the destruction of 
Makkedah, closed that memorable day. It does not need any 
argument to convince us of the miraculous answer to Joshua's 
prayer, " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, 
in the valley of Ajalon." The march up from Gilgal to Gib- 



142 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



eon was effected in the night, it is true ; but between the 
break of the next day and its close, Joshua marched from 
Gibeon to Upper Beth-horon, some distance down the pass, 
back to Gilgal, up from Gilgal to Gibeon again, and down the 
whole length of the pass to Makkedah. These things, being 
told in a simple, unaffected manner, would seem to shut us up 
to one of two conclusions : either that the Israelites could 
pass over rough roads and through narrow defiles with super- 
natural speed, not to speak of the immense draughts on their 
energy and strength, or that the day was of no common 
length that could permit them to do all this. The distance 
traversed can not have been less than forty miles, not to 
reckon the night-march. The nature of the roads is such 
that to go up from Gilgal to Gibeon and back in a single day 
is all that strong travelers can accomplish. The whole route 
is now, and must have been then, one with which hardly any 
mountain-path that any of us are familiar with can be com- 
pared. Twenty miles of such toilful marching through the 
defiles and up the declivities of the White Hills of New 
Hampshire would task the powers of the strongest man to . 
the utmost ; yet here is a whole army doing a feat of twice 
that magnitude. I am aware that the miraculous prolonging 
of the day of that battle is one of the special targets of those 
who hold the supernatural element of the Bible up to ridi- 
cule ; but I confess that the power of doing all that Joshua 
and his men did that day without supernatural help seems 
just as opposed to all that we know of human possibilities 
as the prolonging of the day can have been. 



IX. 



THE COMPLETED CONQUEST. 

The kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and 
Eglon being slain and buried together in the cave of Mak- 
kedah, Joshua's next step was to visit a portion of those 
cities, and others which were in more or less close alliance 
with them, and bring them, and with them all the southern 
part of Palestine, into subjection. Jerusalem was too strong 
a position to be taken. Its king had been taken and put to 
death, but that natural fortress was impregnable to all the 
skill or power which Joshua could command. Yet that was 
the only place that could offer resistance. We see the Israel- 
ites passing along the western base of the hill-country, taking 
one place after another, all of them important : first Libnah, 
its site unknown to us, but doubtless not far from the scene 
of the recent battle ; then Lachish, its site displayed by the 
mass of ruins and rubbish, bearing, in Lakis, the old name 
very slightly changed, — a place, then as now, on the regular 
highway down to Egypt ; then Eglon, a little farther eastward, 
the present Ajlan, on the very slope of the Judaean hills ; 
then they pressed up the pass to Hebron, a point of great 
natural strength, and then westward to the city of Debir, 
whose exact site is unknown, but which was near neighbor to 
Hebron. These places, mere names to us now, with the ex- 
ception of Hebron, were all that were worthy of taking high 

*43 



144 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

< * 

rank then as military positions ; nearly all of them in the 
Shefelah, or rich plain west of the hill-country, and formida- 
ble, it would seem, not so much from their natural position 
as from the number of people living in those fertile neighbor- 
hoods. The hill-country was crowded with towns, it is true ; 
but although their names are given to us by scores in the 
fifteenth chapter of Joshua, yet they must have been, taken 
singly, small, and able to offer little resistance. More than 
all, there was no thorough alliance in the south. The kings 
were like feudal chieftains ; each jealously guarded his little 
hill-city, with its fort and its cluster of houses, but the polity 
of the country admitted of no complete organization against 
a mighty and compact body of invaders. A few leading cities, 
Hebron, Eglon, Lachish, Libnah, and Debir, being taken, the 
whole of Southern Palestine fell at once, and the concluding 
story of the conquest is summed up in a few lines in Josh. x. 
40, et seq. " So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and 
of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their 
kings and Joshua smote them from Kadesh-barnea [in 

the Arabah, a few miles south-west of the Dead Sea] to Gaza 
[on the Mediterranean, the modern Ghuzzeh], and all the 
country of Goshen [a name given, I think, to the rich plains 
west of the hills, the fertile tract where Lachish, Eglon, and 
Libnah lay] even to Gibeon." 

Southern Palestine being reduced and brought under the 
sway of the Israelites, it required one vigorous blow more to 
bring the north into subjection. The want of any principles 
of coherence, any organic unity, among the petty chieftains 
of the south, made those of the north draw together in a 
league far more comprehensive than that which had allied the 



THE COMPLETED CONQUEST. 



145 



five kings whom Joshua slew at Makkedah. The story of 
that brief northern campaign is summarily given in the 
eleventh chapter of Joshua. Just where that city of Hazor 
was, whose king Jabin was the center of the great alliance, 
we do not know ; the name was discovered by Burckhardt 
clinging to a village on the south-eastern slope of Hermon, 
* yet the site is too far north. Were we to judge by natural 
fitness, no site is so likely as that one occupied by the ancient 
castle of Hunin, just under the shadow of Hermon, and hard 
by that noble spring of Banias, which is one of the most 
striking sources of the Jordan. In the time of the Saviour, 
the city of Caesarea Philippi occupied nearly the same ground. 
There can never have been a time when that place must not 
have been of commanding importance. Still, Robinson's 
conjecture that Hazor lay farther south, that it was on an 
eminence west of the southern part of Lake Huleh, the 
waters of Merom, appears, in view of all the circumstances at 
our command, most likely to be the correct one. It may be, 
too, that a part of the prominence which Hazor takes in the 
Bible account may be owing to the skill and power of its 
king Jabin, whose name is specifically given us, while, with 
one exception, that of the chieftains allied with him is with- 
held. The names recorded in Joshua eleventh are not all of 
them identified with places now known ; but enough is made 
out to show us how broad was that alliance which intended to 
sweep those Hebrew invaders from the land. It extended to 
Phoenicia on the northward, to the foot of Carmel on the west, 
and even to the hights of Dor, south of Carmel ; it com- 
prised the fertile strip on the western shore of the Sea of 

Galilee, the Cinneroth, or Chinnereth, of Joshua's narrative ; 
10 



146 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

it comprised the now unknown cities of Madon, Shimron, and 
Achshaph, and embraced territory belonging to the Amorites, 
the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Hivites. 
It is clear that it was a most formidable alliance, — -one 
which no one but Joshua would have dared to oppose. The 
place where the great and decisive battle was fought was 
upon the western level shores of that marshy and stagnant 
lake known now as El Huleh. Its shores are so flat, partic- 




LAKE MEROM, FROM THE SOUTH. 



ularly on the north-west, as to allow free play for those 
dreadful chariots which the Israelites appear to have en- 
countered there for the first time. Yet the tremendous im- 
petuosity of Joshua seems to have given him an immediate 
advantage. The enemy fled, and were pursued westward as 
far as to Sidon, then a great and powerful Phoenician city, to a 
place called Misrephoth-maim, apparently the place where the 
Leontes torrent breaks through the Lebanon range, and east- 



THE COMPLETED CONQUEST. [47 

ward as far as to the Valley of Mizpeh, a term obscure indeed, 
but which may be interpreted as referring to the great Valley 
of Bekaa, between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, the later 
Ccele-Syria of literature. This was the second great victory ; 
and the Scripture again tersely sums up the whole double 
conquest, that in the south and that in the north. The 
passage is in Josh. xi. 16, et seq. " So Joshua took all that 
land, the hills, and all the south country [the old patriarchal 
possessions], and all the land of Goshen [the rich plain, as, 
I infer, west of the southern hill-country], and the valley 
and the plain and the mountain of Israel [the whole hill- 
country at. the south], and the valley of the same : even from 
Mt. Halak, that goeth up to Seir [plainly one of the north- 
ern mountains of Edom], even unto Baal-gad [a heathen 
shrine consecrated to Baal] in the valley of Lebanon under 
Mt. Hermon." 

There remained nothing more but to sweep from the earth 
the surviving remnant of those ancient giants who had once 
mustered in great force east of the Jordan, but who had also 
lived in the country around Hebron. We find Joshua un- 
earthing and destroying them at Hebron, at Debir, a city 
already conquered, lying west or south-west of Hebron, al- 
though not identified as yet, and at Anab, a place bearing at 
the present day its ancient designation, and lying among the 
hills a few miles south of Hebron. The only members of 
the Anakim who survived Joshua's assault took refuge in the 
cities of the Philistines, which were too strong for the Israel- 
ites. We shall have to speak of them in another place ; but 
now it is enough to say that with the exception of Gath they 



148 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



lay near the Mediterranean coast, west and south-west of the 
hill-country which Joshua conquered after the battle of Beth- 
horon. 

Looking now at the general aspect of the land after the 
wonderfully brief and decisive conquest of Joshua, and at the 
time when it was broken up into the shares allotted to the 
tribes, we see that in truth it extended from Dan to Beer- 
sheba, and from the Mediterranean away eastward indefinitely 
beyond the Jordan. Dan was at the southern base of Her- 
mon, not far from the scene of that great rout of Jabin and 
his allied forces. Beersheba we have already noticed, just 
where the hills of Judaea melt away into the desert. We see 
that in a certain sense the Israelites were masters of the 
whole country which they coveted, with the exception of the 
Philistine territory on the south-west, the rock of Jerusalem, 
and the territory contiguous to the southern portion of the 
Lebanon range. The thirteenth chapter of Joshua gives in 
its opening verses a brief but perfectly intelligible sketch of 
the territory which the great captain coveted, but which he 
was not strong enough to win. It would seem from that 
account that he had expected to conquer the powerful city of 
Sidon, and to advance even to Aphek, a city to be identified 
with the modern Afka, on the western slope of Lebanon. 
The fertile vale of Ccele-Syria was not in his possession, and 
he could not feel content till he saw his nation master of the 
whole of that fruitful tract from the heathen shrine of Baal- 
gad, at the foot of Hermon, northward to where the valley 
narrows as one approaches the ancient city of Hamath, where 
the Orontes cleaves its way in its northward course through 



THE COMPLETED CONQUEST. 



149 



a narrow mountain-pass. On the slopes of the Lebanon 
range lived the Giblites, an unconquered tribe ; and all the 
tract which we know as Phoenicia was eagerly longed for by 
Joshua. In one word, the plain on the west of Palestine, and 
the mountain frontier of the north, were not subdued. 




TIBERIAS. 



X. 



THE PRIMITIVE TRIBES OF PALESTINE. 

The present is, perhaps, as good an occasion as may pre- 
sent itself for speaking of the various tribes in possession of 
Palestine at the time of the Israelitish invasion. Those who 
wish to consult the fullest discussion of this subject must have 
recourse to the second volume of the translation of Ritter's 
work. Leaving an exhaustive treatment out of the question, 
as unsuitable to this series, I should not do right, however, 
to wholly omit referring to those ancient tribes whose names 
occur so often in the early books of the Bible. And yet it is 
but just to say that with all that has been done by Ewald 
Hitzig and Ritter, the sum total of our knowledge respecting 
them is very small. Take one tribe, for example, the Girgas- 
ites. Of them we know literally nothing. Not a statement 
has been given us where they lived, and scarcely a hint. We 
may, with probability, locate them west of the Jordan, but we 
can go no farther. This is an extreme case ; of all the 
others we have more than the name given us. And yet it is 
but fair to state that it is impossible to assert that this tribe 
lived in this place, that tribe in that place, and so on. They 
were strangely broken up. We find Hivites in Northern and 
in Central Palestine ; we find Hittites in the north, center, 
and south ; we find Amorites east and west of the Jordan, 

Geshurites in the north and in the south-west. Still, there 
150 



THE PRIMITIVE TRIBES OF PALESTINE. 1 5 1 

are certain tribal designations which have a general applica- 
tion. Some of them have already lain in our path, and been 
noticed in the previous pages. These form headlands, as it 
were, and should always be kept in sight. They may be 
quickly learned and easily retained. We find in Genesis that 
Canaan, the fourth son of Ham, received Syria for his pos- - 
session ; and his sons are seen, as early as in Gen. x., occupy- 
ing a large portion of the country. Some of those names, 
the Arkite, the Sinite, the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, do 
not, from the fact that the territories involved lay beyond the 
domains of the Israelites, come into prominent notice in the 
Bible ; we know of them, in general, that they lay in Pheni- 
cia and in the Lebanon district, but farther than that our 
biblical investigations do not lead us. Others, like the Amor- 
ites, the Jebusites, the Hittites, or descendants of Heth, are 
among the most familiar names of the Bible. 

The land of Canaan, so far as the history of the Israelites 
is concerned, means Palestine, highland as well as lowland. 
Strictly, and so far as the western sea-coast is concerned, 
it means lowland. We find this distinction made even in the 
Bible, and we know that it was made by the primitive inhabit- 
ants of the country. Yet Abraham went to the land of 
Canaan, meaning the country of Palestine in its whole length 
and breadth. The Israelites crossed the Jordan and entered 
Canaan, in a word, Western Palestine, in contradistinction to 
the lands east of the Jordan. Once or twice we find the word 
Canaan referring to the plain along the Mediterranean. 
There is little reason to doubt that the Israelites understood 
by the term a country little different from that which enters 
our minds when we read or sing about Canaan. But the 



c 

I52 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

Canaanites are distinguished carefully from Canaan. They 
are brought into sharp contrast with the Amorites, the dwell- 
ers in the mountain-land. Moreover, we are definitely told 
that the Canaanites lived on the shore of the Mediterranean 
and on the banks of the Jordan. In one word, they were the 
Lowlanders of the country, while the Amorites were the 
Highlanders. Wherever we meet the latter they are a war- 
like race, living either on the high plateau of Moab east of 
the Jordan, or on the great central line of hills from the Leb- 
anon to Hebron. We find sporadic traces of them north of 
Sidon even ; we find them in the high Tih plateau of the 
Sinai Peninsula. The Amorites lived in cities, and seem to 
be discriminated by their higher civilization from the Periz- 
zites, another race of mountaineers, not descended from 
Canaan, but the wandering, straggling, tent-loving Bedouins 
of that day. They have, or seem to have, no local site with 
which their name is identified. We find them living on Car- 
mel, it is true ; yet this appears to be but one of their many 
homes. These three tribes seem to have been the most for- 
midable of all, although those Girgasites of whom we know so 
little were among the fiercest foes whom the Israelites en- 
countered. The Hittites come clearly into view as early as 
the time of Abraham, and of them he buys his grave. So far 
as we can judge, their chief home continued to be in and 
around Hebron, where we find them at the first. They were 
never a powerful tribe ; and although they always have a lead- 
ing place, yet it appears to be simply from the fact that their 
ancestor Heth was the second son of Canaan ; Sidon, the 
founder of the great city at the north, being the first. Traces 
of this tribe are found even in David's time, and the name of 



THE PRIMITIVE TRIBES OF PALESTINE. 1 53 

Uriah the Hittite will last as long as man shall continue 
to honor valor, unselfishness, a childlike want of suspicion, 
and entire fidelity. 

Of the other tribes it is hardly necessary to say more than 
that the Hivites' true home was at the north, under the 
shadow of Mount Herrribn ; the Hamathites lived farther 
north, at the narrowing of the great valley between the Leb- 
anon and the Anti-Lebanon ranges ; the Jebusites held Jeru- 
salem and the mountain district immediately contiguous. 

The names of the great tribes external to Palestine proper 
have been frequently encountered during these articles, and 
the reader needs but be reminded of them here. The Moab- 
ites and the Ammonites we found living east of the Jordan, 
not strictly opponents of the Israelites, but rather their allies ; 
the invasion of their country by the fierce Amorites causing 
them to look to the Hebrews for deliverance. The Moabites 
and Ammonites were descendants of Lot ; and hence, when 
Moses approached their territory, he would not march upon 
its people as enemies, but contented himself with reducing 
the Moabites to a subordinate place, and apportioning their 
valuable pasture-lands to the tribe of Reuben. Yet the ter- 
ritory south of the Arnon was never claimed by the Israelites, 
and after the conquest of that tract, the " field of Moab," as 
it is called in the Bible, remained the undisturbed possession 
of the tribe. They lived, however, in their old city, and there 
practiced that idolatrous worship of Chemosh which contin- 
ued, down to the latest day, to call down upon Moab the 
imprecations of the Jewish prophets. The Ammonites were 
a wilder and more predatory tribe than the Moabites, and 
come less conspicuously into notice. It is difficult to point 



154 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



out the boundaries of their territory, so roving and Bedouin- 
like were they by nature ; yet it is clear that their dominion 
was north of Moab and east of Gilead, extending as far as to 
the Jabbok. 

South of the Dead Sea, in the mountain range which runs 
along the eastern side of the Arabah, and which extends from 
the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Akabah, or eastern arm of the 
Red Sea, was the home of an ancient tribe bearing the name 
of Horites. Sometimes, however, they are mentioned as 
Seirites, taking the well-known name of the mountain range 
in whose romantic and wild ravines they lived. Of these 
Horites or Seirites we get but few glimpses ; they were early 
dispossessed by the descendants of Esau, the Edomites, who 
entered the hills on the north-west, and conquered their way 
'southward, till, at last, they held the whole country, and extir- 
pated the ancient possessors. This process of destruction is 
often witnessed in the earlier books of the Bible. Just as the 
Philistines destroyed the ancient tribe of Avites or Avim, 
who lived on the south-west plain of Palestine ; just as the 
Amorites and Moabites caused the giant races, the Zuzim or 
Zamzummim, and the Emim, to fade away before them ; just 
as everywhere we see the Rephaim race, the Anakim, the 
men of gigantic stature, disappearing, leaving only such men 
as Goliath to show what the hight and size of the earlier 
inhabitants had been ; so here we see the Horites giving way 
to the Edomites, the race of Esau. With the latter we have 
already come in contact, seeing them refuse a passage to the 
Israelites across their country, by the way of the huge clefts 
in the mountains (probably Wady Ghaweir), and compelling 
them to go southward as far as to the Red Sea, and double 



THE PRIMITIVE TRIBES OF PALESTINE. 1 55 



the southernmost extremity of the Seir range. As the Isra- 
elites advanced northward along the eastern base of the 
mountains, we saw the Edomites give up the old, ungracious 
bearing, come out from their fortresses, and traffic peaceably 
with their distant kinsmen, manifesting, by this act, that no 
deep-settled hostility had sprung up between the races, like 
that which at a later period made the curses poured out upon 
Edom more bitter and violent than those which fell upon the 
heads of any other nation. 

Edom and the lands contiguous to it are continually meet- 
ing us in the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi. Most 
of them are unknown. Kadesh lay just on the north-west 
boundary of what was recognized as Edom, and yet we do 
not know, to-day, just where that Kadesh was ; Bozrah, long 
the capital of Edom, and unquestionably a place of great 
splendor in its day, has been identified with the modern Bas- 
sera ; Teman, the home of Eliphaz, was near the well-known 
caravan-station of Maan. The precise location of Uz, the 
home of Job, is unknown ; so, too, is that of Bildad the 
Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite, and Elihu the Buzite : but 
all of them, Uz, Naamah, Shuh, and Buz, were doubtless 
within the confines of Edom, or in the desert wastes east- 
ward of the Seir range. That wonderful city, Petra, which 
lies in the heart of the Edomite mountains, — that city of 
tombs cut in the heart of the rock, and of houses which 
remain to-day just as they were left thousands of years ago, 
because chiseled into the very sides of the lofty cliffs, — that 
city whose stream of running waters and whose gorgeous 
coloring have fascinated so many travelers within the present 
century, and given a tone of romance to the pages of Burck- 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



hardt, Laborde, Robinson, Stephens, Stanley, indeed of all 
who have visited the place, — is mentioned very early in the 
Bible (2 Kings xiv. 7), under the names of Selah and 
Joktheel, unmistakably the wonder-city of Petra. Edom, too, 
comprised within its borders, or, at least, under its jurisdic- 




TEMPLE IN PETRA (EL KHUSNe). 



tion, those parts of Ezion-geber and Elath which lay side by 
side at the northern extremity of the Gulf of Akabah, and 
which assumed such marked importance to Israel at the time 
of Solomon, when his fleets sailed thence to Ophir. It can 
be seen, at a glance, that Edom was a country whose com- 



THE PRIMITIVE TRIBES OF PALESTINE. 1 57 



manding position insured it great power ; and it ought not to 
surprise us that one of its kings, Hadad, married the sister of 
an Egyptian queen, and that the children of this marriage 
were reared in all respects as Egyptian princes. The wars 
between the Israelites and the Edomites were incessant, the 
main object in view being the possession of the important 
harbors of Elath and Ezion-geber, on the Red Sea. 

West of the Arabah Valley was the home of those powerful 
robbers, the Amalekites. They come into view at the time 
of Chedorlaomer and the other kings of the East. They are 
seen at a later period contending with Moses for the pos- 
session of the one fertile spot in the Sinai Peninsula, the 
Wady Feiran, at the foot of Serbal, and on the direct route to 
Sinai. Compelled to retire from that oasis, they appear to 
have been scattered through the whole northern peninsula ; 
indeed, we find them at times occupying parts of the southern 
hill-country of Palestine, and the western plain as far as to 
Gaza. They appear to have been a savage race, and when 
Saul spared one of their kings who fell into his hands, it 
seems to have been accounted ill-judged leniency, and as "evil 
in the sight of the Lord." They were not put at all upon the 
same footing with many of the conquered tribes, but " were 
looked upon as a race of robbers (1 Sam. xv. 2-7) ; and it was 
thought right, in the time of David and Saul, to exterminate 
every man, woman, and child of the race." They seem to 
have been numerous and powerful, a fact which seems to in- 
dicate that though their true home was that south country 
which was once the patriarchal possession, and the whole 
desert country farther south, yet they drew no small portion 
of their support from the fertile hills and plains of Southern 
Palestine. 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



The Kenites, a tribe strongly allied to the Israelites 
through the marriage of Moses into it, Jethro being a Kenite, 
were evidently identical with the Midianites, or, to speak 
more strictly, were a subordinate tribe of the Midianites. 
We find them first living in the Sinai Peninsula ; but, follow- 
ing the fortunes of the Israelites, they entered Palestine, and 
always lived in harmony with the Jews. Their chief cities 
were in the southern portion of the country, although we 
find the Rechabites, a branch of the Kenites, far to the north 
in Samaria. The Kenezites and Kadmonites are, so far as 
definite knowledge of them is concerned, mere names, and I 
need not dwell upon them. 

Far different from these rough and savage tribes were 
those powerful and civilized Philistines, who gave their own 
name to the country we are studying, Palestine being but a 
corrupted form of the appellation which the Greeks gave to 
the land of the Philistines. They were, in a measure, a soft 
and effeminate race, certainly a corrupt and idolatrous one ; 
but they were immensely in advance of the Israelites in all 
the arts, in commerce, and in taste. Different from the Phoe- 
nicians at the north, on the borders of Asher, the Philistines 
were a race of strangers ; and the Bible gives us the name of 
the tribe, the Avim, who occupied the Philistine territory 
before it passed into the hands of its later possessors. Of 
the Avites, or Avim, we have, however, nothing but the 
name. Nor do we know with certainty whence the Philis- 
tines came. It would seem to have been from the Island of 
Crete, although there are some indications that Asia Minor 
was their former home. But, strangers though they were, 
they came into possession, after driving out the Avim from 



THE PRIMITIVE TRIBES OF PALESTINE. [59 

a goodly inheritance, — a tract which has well been called a 
smaller Egypt, — a land of plenty, filled with cornfields and 
with gardens fragrant with fruit. The territory extended 
from the Wady Arish, a few miles south-west of Gaza, and 
reached north as far as to Ekron, embracing, in addition to 
these two cities, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ashdod. Of these, 




GAZA, MODERN GHUZZEH. 

Gaza and Ashkelon were so near the sea as to have ports of 
their own, while Gath and Ashdod and Ekron were inland. 
Yet in ancient times commerce was not carried on in ships, 
and Ashdod [Azotus] was the key to Egypt, commanding, as 
it did, the great caravan-road which led down into that 
country. Gaza" seems, however, to have been the chief city 
of the Philistine confederacy, although Ashkelon would ap- 



l6o STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

pear to have been the chief religious center. These five 
powerful cities possessed a tract of boundless fertility. It 
extended back nearly to the base of the Jewish hills, leaving 
only a narrow strip of rich soil for Judah to till. Even at the 
present day the gardens of Jaffa and the tracts of young corn 
in the " low country " attest that magnificent fertility which 
made the land of the Philistines the natural granary of the 
Israelites when their own supplies failed. We are too much 
inclined to overlook the superiority of the Philistines to the 
Hebrews in almost every thing, — in the quality of the land 
they held, and in all the arts of civilization. That Joshua 
and the Judges and Samuel and Saul were not able to con- 
quer them, tells the story of their great strength. Not till 
the time of David and Solomon were they brought into sub- 
jection ; and, indeed, even then, and still more in the later 
period of Jewish history, we see that the conquest was by no 
means a final one, — that Philistia still continued to be for- 
midable, and that the Philistine cities, one by one, put forth 
tremendous efforts to regain their old rank and power. But, 
in the earlier time, they tolerated the existence of the Jews in 
the mountain country without yielding to them. Every now 
and then they would go forth in their strength, defile up the 
passes which led into the mountains, and harass and over- 
throw and disarm and spoil the Israelites, sometimes carrying 
their victorious arms even across the Jordan. Saul was killed 
by the Philistines on the Gilboa hill, south-east of the Plain 
of Jezreel. 

The knolls or gentle undulations on which the Philistine 
cities were built were so marked, in comparison with the rest 
of the country, as to cause the continuance of those cities 



THE PRIMITIVE TRIBES OF PALESTINE. l6l 

down to the present time. Only Gath has passed beyond 
recognition ; and the recent investigations of Mr. Porter give 
good reason for supposing that the white and prominent hill 
ten miles east of the site of Ashdod, or Azotus, was the loca- 
tion of Gath. The other names are seen in Ghuzzeh, Esdud, 
Akir, and Ascalon. So far as ruins are concerned, those of 
the last-named are the most imposing in extent ; and, in the 
opening years of the present century, their magnitude was 
brought conspicuously into view, in consequence of the 
search instituted by Lady Hester Stanhope for lost treasure. 
Esdud and Akir are unimportant villages, while Ghuzzeh, the 
ancient Gaza, is a large and thriving town. Lying just in the 
highway of travel to Egypt, and accessible as it is to the 
Arabs of the Sinai Peninsula, it has long been a favorite 
resort for traders, and is a place of some wealth. Gath must 
have lain the most inland of all the Philistine cities, and just 
on the confines of the territory of Judah. There are two or 
three sharply-defined eminences which claim the honor of 
having once been crowned by this powerful citadel ; yet were 
it not that the old city of Libnah has strong claims to be 
identified with this white hill of Tell es Safieh, the question 
would be considered as settled by Prof. Porter's researches. 
But all these places are of minor importance compared with 
what they once were. Not that the Philistines were ever 
what those great sea robbers, the Phoenicians, were ; not that 
Gaza and Ashkelon were ever what Tyre and Sidon were : 
yet they were populous and strong, and defied Israel age on 
age. All that Samson and the other judges could do was to 
irritate and annoy : not till David came was there any thing 

like a descent with forces commensurate with the skill of the 

11 



162 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



Philistines. The latter even went so far as to utterly disarm 
the Israelites ; and such was the dearth of mechanical arts 
among the latter, that no one could do any work, however 
rude, in iron ; and all instruments must be carried down to 
Philistia to be repaired. Such and so powerful was that race 
of Lowlanders, a race shamelessly idolatrous, it is true, and 
worshiping their fish-goddess, Doceto, and knowing nothing 
of a spiritual faith, but strong in all those elements which 
gave them material advantage. Only in cunning were they 
inferior ; in the encounter of wits, the Israelites were always 
the superior. This trait comes out conspicuously in Samson, 
but it is salient in all the dealings of the Hebrews with the 
Philistines. 




THORN-TREE. 



XI 



THE TERRITORY OF THE JEWISH TRIBES. 

More important to the student of the Bible than a knowl- 
edge of the general localities where lived the great tribes 
with whom the Israelites came into collision in taking posses- 
sion of the country, or by whom they were environed, is an 
acquaintance with the partition of the territory by the con- 
queror. The Book of Joshua is one of the most perfect geo- 
graphical records ever written, and yet it is, in a measure, 
unintelligible to us ; not from any want of fullness or 
accuracy, but because many of the smaller places mentioned 
have faded out of view. That fifteenth chapter of Joshua has 
appropriately been called the Doomsday Book of Judaea, and 
its tabulated lists of cities can scarcely be paralleled in any 
other record. Yet many of the names are lost never to be 
found again. That Robinson, Smith, Van de Velde, and 
others, have been able to trace in the modern Arabic names 
the ancient Hebrew forms, and so make the list of the cities 
of Judaea measurably intelligible, is a triumphant result of 
patience and scholarship ; and there is now scarcely a group of 
those " villages " whose location is not known through the iden- 
tification of one or more of the ancient names in each group. 
Those Arabic names which are inserted in most of our best 
maps of the Holy Land confuse and perplex the student at 

the outset, but they become at last one of the most interest- 

163 



164 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



ing features. The name looks uncouth to the eye, but to the 
ear there is the most striking similarity to the ancient He- 
brew name. There was a time when the Romans endeavored 
to impose Greek and Latin names upon the cities of Pales- 
tine ; but those designations never took root : they appear 
occasionally in the New Testament in such words as Caesarea, 
Decapolis, Antipatris ; but after a short time the European 
name faded away, and a corruption of the old Hebrew names 
came into general usage again. These names have perpetu- 
ated themselves in the mouth of the people of the country down 
to the present time. The most distinguished travelers of 
the past hundred years have all made use of the Arabic names 
in endeavoring to identify ancient sites ; even the pedantic 
Pococke occasionally took advantage of this method, while 
Seetzen and Burckhardt availed themselves of it repeatedly. 
It was, however, left for our own countrymen, Robinson and 
Smith, to reduce this method to a system, and take the 
Arabic names of the villages and natural features as the 
most conspicuous mark in identifying places alluded to in the 
Old Testament. And no one can look at the modern maps 
and fail to be struck with their signal success. Take a few 
places as instances : Shiloh is Seilun, Bethel is Beitin, Beth- 
lehem is Beitlahm, Carmel is Kurmul, Emmaus is Amwas, 
Maon is Maan, Ashdod is Esdud, Gaza is Ghuzzeh, Joppa is 
Jaffa. Indeed, they might be named by scores. Once in a 
while a Roman name can be seen in the modern form, such 
as, for example, Tiberias in Tubarieh ; but of such words as 
Scythopolis, Nicopolis, Eleutheropolis, no trace remains. 

Still, from the want of more protracted researches than 
those of Robinson and Smith, not to speak of the more mod- 



THE TERRITORY OF THE JEWISH TRIBES. 1 65 



ern gleaners in the same field, the greater proportion of the 
cities mentioned in Joshua, in the various tribal allotments, 
are not yet identified. In some parts of the country, almost 
no examination, in fact, has been attempted. The extreme 
north, for example, and even the tract south of the plain of 
Esdraelon, have never been examined with any approach to 
completeness. Even in the neighborhood of Hebron, where 
Robinson and Smith were extremely successful, Van de 
Velde states, in his " Travels," that careful investigation would 
doubtless find many more of those ancient Hebrew names 
living still in the language of the country ; and even he, 
though a chartographer and no linguist, unearthed, in a few 
days, some of the primitive designations. We see how this 
is with ourselves. The name of the town Billerica is a mean- 
ingless word now ; yet it is but a corruption of the Spanish 
Villa Rica, rich city, a name to be found on the map of 
Brazil ; Middlesex is Middle Saxony ; Essex, East Saxony ; 
Norfolk and Suffolk', North and South Folk. Chester, Col- 
chester, Winchester, Chichester, Worcester, are the Latin 
castra, camp, with names like collis, hill, and others, which 
once gave local force to the name as the site of a Roman 
camp in England. And so, in fact, in all our names, like 
Boston (Botolph's Town), Roxbury, Cambridge, Bradford, 
Haverhill, Concord, Providence, Salem, there lies an ancient 
significance altogether lost in the mouths of most men, and 
of interest to others only as the objects of antiquarian curios- 
ity, yet real, and, in many, visible at a glance. Indeed, so 
marked is this, that the history of the Danish invasion into 
Great Britain can be read by the names that were left, and 
the frontier line of that conquest is as plainly marked on the 



1 66 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 




English map as the line which the tide makes is upon the 
beach sand. 



THE TERRITORY OF THE JEWISH TRIBES. 1 67 



But leaving this, and the possibilities of future discovery 
which may be in store for the patient scholars whom the 
English Exploring Fund is sending into the Holy Land, to 
subject the whole country to a more detailed and thorough 
investigation than it has yet known, let us come back to the dis- 
cussion of the tribal allotments. It must be said at the outset 
that we do not possess data enabling us to run lines with any 
approach to that precision which characterizes a modern map ; 
yet the general configuration of each of the divisions is known 
to us. And, in truth, detail here is not to be ardently desired : 
what we want most of all is to know what were the natural 
advantages and disadvantages which were shared by each 
tribe. In such a study as that which occupied us when we 
were discussing the crossing of the Jordan, the taking of Ai, 
and the battle of Beth-horon, it is difficult to know too much ; 
and the more detail we have, the more clearly do we under- 
stand the difficulties which lay in the path of the Israelites. 
But it is doubtful if the exact identification of the boundaries 
of the tribes would throw any additional light upon the least 
unsolved problem of Jewish history. We know the lands 
which each held sufficiently accurately for every purpose, 
excepting that of the chartographer, who wishes to draw his 
lines from village to village. 

A glance at the map will show that there was great inequali- 
ty in the size of the divisions allotted to the tribes. One would 
suppose that Judah, with its great possessions, was much 
richer in numbers than Dan, with its extremely diminutive 
territory ; but it was not so. Yet, in spite of great inequali- 
ties of size, that Providence which has set one thing over 
against another so equalized their lot that there was little 



1 68 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



reason for jealousy. Take Benjamin's portion, for example, 
just north of Judah, one of the most sterile, rocky, unpromis- 
ing parts of the whole country, yet rich in its sacred places, 
having Jerusalem, Gilgal, Bethel, Mizpah, Gibeon, Ramah, 
Kirjath-jearim, within its borders, all of them bound up with 
the memories of the most exalted personages or of the most 
solemn religious rites. 

Looking at the southern portion of Palestine, our eye rests 
first on Judah. It was a large tract, about fifty miles square, 
bounded on the east by the Dead Sea, and on the west 
nominally by the Mediterranean, although the Philistines 
were never dislodged from the fertile strip along the coast. 
That row of five cities, Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, 
with their dependent villages, always looked defiantly up to 
the hights on which the lion of Judah crouched. They were 
all apportioned by Joshua, but never conquered. The south- 
ern boundary of Judah was coincident with that of the 
country, extending from the southern extremity of the Dead 
Sea, first southward a little distance, and then westward as 
far as to Wady el Arish, or River of Egypt. Its northern 
limit was a line passing from the northern extremity of the 
Dead Sea westward to the Mediterranean, leaving Jerusalem 
just outside of it on the north. To the tribe of Simeon, 
eighteen cities, occupying the southern portion of this terri- 
tory, were given, Beersheba being the most important. 

In the general allotment of territory, Simeon had no share : 
that tribe had to be content with its cities and their villages. 
The share of Simeon seems to have been one of the most 
meager of all ; and in an apportionment where inequalities 
were singularly well shunned, here seems to have been an un- 
equal allotment. 



THE TERRITORY OF THE JEWISH TRIBES. 1 69 



The territories of Judah and Simeon are one ; yet the cities 
awarded to the latter doubtless were contiguous, and must 
have occupied, in connection with their dependent villages, 
most of the territory south of Hebron. Of the characteris- 
tics of that country little need be said. There could never 
have been great fertility in the territory actually possessed by 
Judah and Simeon ; yet had the former been able to conquer 




MODERN HEBRON. 



Philistia, and possess that rich mountain plain, even the rich 
lands of Ephraim, Issachar, or Zebulon would scarcely have 
surpassed it. As it was, Judah possessed a strip of rich corn- 
land, the Shefelah of the Hebrew Scriptures, just at the foot 
of its hill-country, and between it and the land of the Philis- 
tines ; and in the Shefelah it found its greatest wealth. True, 
there were some places which must always have been noted for 
their fertility, — that Vale of Hebron, which the spies had found 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



so attractive, and whence they brought back the heavy grape- 
clusters ; and that rich vale about four miles south of Jerusalem 
known now as Wady Urtas, the king's gardens which Solomon 
once loved, and which he brought to so high a degree of per- 
fection. But the most of the country must have always 
yielded in natural resources to all that lies north of it, except- 
ing the rocky passes of Benjamin. Yet all that could be 




SOLOMON S POOLS, IN WADY URTAS. 



done to redeem it was done ; and even to the present day the 
traces of that most laborious terrace-culture which was once 
practiced on the rocky hillsides of Judah show the consum- 
mate patience with which the Israelites labored. The whole 
country is now a field of rubbish and ruins, — a perfect waste 
of desolation. Hebron alone bears any marks of prosperity ; 
and even that city is a mere monument of the past, and all 
that makes it sought now is Abraham's grave. 



THE TERRITORY OF THE JEWISH TRIBES. I 7 1 



North of Judah lay the small, barren, and unpromising 
tract assigned to Benjamin. The border-line from the Jordan 
westward ran under the very brow of Jerusalem, but on the 
south side of it, so that the Jebusite stronghold lay within the 
Benjamite domain. I have already alluded to the richness of 
this little tract — about twenty-five miles east and west, by 
twelve north and south — in celebrated cities. The wealth of 
Benjamin lay in its historical associations, and in the very 
wildness of its territory. Of all the districts of Palestine, it 
was the one best adapted to raise up a body of men with war- 
like natures, — fierce, predatory, wild. The mild traits of 
their founder entirely disappeared in the descendants ; none 
were more unlike Benjamin than the Benjamites themselves. 
The fact that the passes from the southern fords of the Jor- 
dan ran up through their territory kept them always ready for 
battle ; and the fact that all the territory which they could 
profitably till lay on the Jordan, exposed to constant invasions 
from the eastern bank, doubtless added to the need of being 
in constant readiness. Their domain extended, from the 
Jordan to the town of Kirjath-jearim, at the western base of 
the hill-country, and eight miles from Jerusalem ; while Bethel 
was the most northern point, as Jerusalem was the most 
southern. 

West of Benjamin lay the small but fertile and exposed 
territory of Dan. The numbers of this tribe were so great 
that that circumscribed lowland was not enough for them ; 
and many of them went far to the north, to the tract just 
south-west of Hermon ; and there, on a hill still visible, at 
whose foot the most profuse spring which feeds the Jordan 
breaks from the earth, they planted that city of Dan which 



172 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



marked the northern limits of actual conquest, and whose 
name, coupled with that of Beersheba, has been familiar even 
to the present day. It would seem that no insignificant por- 
tion of the tribe removed to this well-watered and secure 
tract ; for it is singularly secure, while the true domain of 
Dan was the most exposed of all. Lying just between the 
Philistine territory and that of strong and warlike tribes, it 
was subjected to the same fate which befell the Shenandoah 
Valley during our war, — it was the scene of constant 
strife. Had Joshua been able to conquer the Philistines, Dan 
would have been rich even with its small possessions ; for that 
whole plain of Sharon shows, even to-day in its sad neglect, 
the mighty richness of its soil, and what it must have been 
in that time of its virgin strength. 

North of Dan and Benjamin lay the lands of Ephraim, and 
the western portion of Manasseh, the eastern being a part of 
the Gilead range, and the rich tract of Bashan beyond the 
Jordan. It is hard to draw the line which separated Ephraim 
and Western Manasseh, although the Scripture gives the data. 
Yet it is clear that the most of that great mountain region, 
extending from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, and from 
Bethel to the Plain of Esdraelon, belonged to Ephraim. 
Manasseh had possession of the gentle passes which are so 
numerous and yet so little known, even now, leading down 
from the mountain-land to the rich plain on the north. The 
whole of the well-wooded Carmel was assigned to Manasseh. 
Indeed, all that territory, including Ephraim's possessions as 
well as Manasseh's, was once covered with a forest growth, of 
which we now have few remaining traces. Manasseh had no 
sites which are remarkable, excepting the Carmel hump ; but 



THE TERRITORY OF THE JEWISH TRIBES. 1 73 

Ephraim comprised two no less celebrated mountains than 
Ebal and Gerizim, the plain of Shechem, with its well of 
Jacob and tomb of Joseph, and the secluded retreat of Shi- 
loh, so long the resting-place of the sacred ark of the cove- 
nant. Though the territory of both Ephraim and West- 
Manasseh was, as a whole, not remarkable for richness, still it 




MOUNT CARMEL. 



was, and is to the present day, rich in vales and sheltered 
plains of rare excellence. Of the wood that once graced that 
whole mountain-country, we have now, as has been remarked, 
little hint ; but its plains, and more especially that wonder- 
fully beautiful vale of Shechem, retain the same charm which 
won the eyes of Abraham and Jacob. 



174 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



The domain of Issachar coincided almost literally with the 
Plain of Esdraelon, or Jezreel, as it is called in the Old 
Testament. Rich beyond measure, it yet lay in an extremely 
exposed situation ; for it extends, in contracted form, to the 
Jordan itself. There is no natural barrier which prevents the 
Arabs of the trans-Jordanic region sweeping across the 
stream in the seasons when it is fordable, and pouring past 
the ancient city of Bethshean, past the northern extremity of 
the Gilboa hills, flooding the whole of the rich Plain of Jez- 
reel with their destroying hordes. Manasseh could watch the 
gentle passes which led through its territory, and prevent 
these savages from visiting the mountain-land of Ephraim ; 
but there was nothing to prevent the invasion of Issachar's 
territory from the east. True, there was the strong tribe 
of Half-Manasseh just across the Jordan in the Gilead hills ; 
but they were not in that secure and undisputed possession 
that would make them like a breakwater to Western Palestine, 
though doubtless they were a not insufficient protection on that 
side. Indeed, so well did Eastern Manasseh perform this garri- 
son duty, that Issachar settled into habits of indolence and ease, 
gave itself up to the tillage of the plain, grew rich and peace- 
loving. That plain — which is now deserted, given over to 
its rank growth of weeds and wild grass, that plain over 
which every traveler grows eloquent as he speaks of its deep 
black soil and its wonderful capacities — was once studded with 
cities, and was filled with rich fields of grain. In its center 
rose the gentle hill on which stood the once proud city of 
Jezreel ; on the slopes around stood the well-remembered 
cities of Nain, Endor, and Shunem ; while just at the north- 
ern end of the plain rose the graceful, cone-shaped Tabor, the 
most beautiful of all the mountains of Palestine. 



THE TERRITORY OF THE JEWISH TRIBES. 1 75 

North and north-west of Issachar was the charming hill- 
country of Zebulon, a rich, delightful tract, embracing a no 
less celebrated place than Nazareth. Mount Tabor was a 
prominent feature in the boundary between it and Issachar. 
North-eastward its limits extended to the Sea of Galilee, and 
comprised the western shore of that lake as far north, certain- 
ly, as Tiberias. Westward, it reached across the narrow end 
of the great Plain of Esdraelon or Jezreel, and touched the 




MOUNT TABOR. 

northern base of Carmel ; yet it did not reach to the sea, for 
Asher possessed the maritime strip three or four miles wide. 
Without any striking features, it was a "goodly" country. 
The whole of the tract north of the great plain is radically 
different from that south of it. In Judah and Benjamin, in 
Ephraim even, and West-Manasseh, sterility is the rule and 
fertility the exception ; but north of the great plain, the hills, 
no longer rugged and sharp and bold, but gentle and rounded, 
are covered with vegetation, which grows luxuriant the farther 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



we advance northward. The tribe of Zebulon inhabited a do- 
main naturally far superior to that allotted to the southern 
tribes ; but its contiguity to the powerful Phoenician cities soon 
began to influence its fate, and we find that it became, as did 
Asher and Naphtali, largely corrupted by that profligate civili- 
zation ; not to the extent of Asher, it is true, but so much so 




TIBERIAS AND THE LAKE OF GALILEE. 



as to lay the foundation for that cold, unbelieving spirit which 
later characterized the whole of Galilee, in contradistinction 
to Judaea. The blessing pronounced by Jacob on Zebulon 
strongly hints at the future situation of the tribe near the 
Mediterranean, its commercial as well as agricultural interests, 
and its contiguity to one of the strongest of the Phoenician 
cities : — 



THE TERRITORY OF THE JEWISH TRIBES. I J J* 



" Zebulon dwells at the shore of the seas, 
Even he at the shore of ships : 
And his thighs are upon Zidon." 

North-east and north of Zebulon dwelt Naphtali, possessing 
the fine, rich country west of the northern portion of the Sea 
of Galilee, the Upper Jordan, and the Lake el Huleh, or 




ALL THAT REMAINS OF CAPERNAUM. 



Waters of Merom. It reached northward to the very base of 
Hermon, and took in some of the finest plains and most 
romantic hills of all Palestine. It comprised Capernaum, the 
home of the Lord, at the northern extremity of the Sea of 
Galilee ; Magdala, the birthplace of Mary Magdalene, on the 
western shore ; Hazor, the mountain-fortress of Jabin, the 

12 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS 



great king whom Joshua overthrew at the head of the north- 
ern Canaanitish princes. It took in the noble spring of 
Banias, later Caesarea Philippi, under Hermon, one of the 
profuse fountains of the Jordan ; and would have compassed 
the other spring, still more profuse, a few miles westward, 
had not refugees from Dan, far at the south, conquered and 
held it. Naphtali is the most romantic district in all Pales- 
tine : Safed, that " city set on a hill " to which Jesus referred, 




SIDON FROM THE NORTH-EAST. 



is in it ; and the rich hills west of Lake Huleh all lie within 
the confines of this tribe. 

But one more northern tribe remains, — Asher. Its 
territory lay west of Naphtali, and was, in a measure, the only 
good seaboard which the Israelites possessed. It extended 
southward, even south of Carmel, as far as to Dor ; took in 
the maritime edge of the great Plain of Jezreel, and the coast 



THE TERRITORY OF THE JEWISH TRIBES. 1 79 



northward, as far as to the great Phoenician cities. It occu- 
pied also a portion of the western slope of Lebanon. Its 
contiguity to Tyre and Sidon early influenced the fortunes of 
the tribe. The men of Asher became the menials of the 
more civilized Phoenicians, enlisted in their service as sailors, 
boatmen, fishermen, and rapidly relapsed into that idolatry 
which was always so fascinating to the Israelites. While the 
other tribes were frequently at war with hostile tribes, Asher 
was at peace ; for the Phoenicians would not war with their 
neighbors ; and the arts of peace which they practiced, while 
shutting off all strife and bloodshed, yet were more insinuat- 
ing and hurtful than marauding expeditions would have been. 
With a fine tract, though not equal to many other of the 
divisions, Asher became sordid, corrupt and time-serving ; it 
lost not only the old national tone, but the old faith, and of 
all the tribes became the one most given over to idolatry. 

I have, in a previous section, defined the limits of the two 
and a half tribes which occupied the lands east of the Jor- 
dan, — Reuben, Gad, and East-Manasseh. Only one re- 
mains, — the tribe of Levi. It is hardly necessary to state 
that no especial district was allotted to this tribe ; that to it 
were distributed forty-eight cities scattered throughout the 
length and breadth of the whole country. Some of these 
cities were, in the course of time, wrested from the Levites ; 
and they were compelled to seek a home in those which were 
not assigned them, and so became, in a certain measure, the 
vagrants of the land. But the original apportionment was 
ample, and studiously adapted to the mission of the tribe, and 
its relation to the Jewish polity. 



4 



XII. 



SCENES IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. 

We have now, in a certain sense, concluded our survey of 
what may be called Palestine ; hereafter we shall only have 
to review the great general features which we have already 
examined. We have the outline of our map complete : we 
have now little more to do than to fill it up with details. Any 
one who has carefully mastered the ground already gone over, 
can go on with his Old-Testament reading without much 
difficulty, feeling all the while that the general configuration 
of the country and its main features are familiar. We can 
henceforth pass much more rapidly on, touching lightly on 
the great events in the Hebrew history, and letting each drop 
into the niche which it fills. Here and there it may be neces- 
sary to linger for the purpose of showing the character of a 
battle-field, or the journey of some hero ; but we shall find 
few places which are utterly disconnected from the territory 
which has already been under discussion. Let me remark, in 
passing, that a very large number of the smaller places men- 
tioned in the historical books of the Bible have not yet been 
identified. Many of them never will be ; still, it is not an ac- 
quaintance with these which is needed to make the biblical 
narrative interesting and intelligible ; it is the holding of the 
great and characteristic features clearly in mind. That we 
may do this, a certain degree of repetition is necessary ; 

180 



SCENES IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. l8l 

names which have already lain in our path must be men- 
tioned again and again, as they occur in new relations, and 
from this constant reviewing we may hope at - length to gain 
clear insight into the nature of the whole country that wit- 
nessed the history of the Chosen People. 

Those six cities of refuge, which were appointed to serve as 
places of safety for those who had accidentally committed 
manslaughter, all lie, for example, in territories which we have 
examined, — three being east and three west of the Jordan. 
Some of them are already known to us by name, — Kedesh, 
the lofty hill in Naphtali west of the head waters of the Jor- 
dan ; Shechem, in the fertile plain of Ephraim, between 
Gerizim and Ebal, the later Sychar and the present Nabliis ; 
and Kirjath-arba, or Hebron, in Judah. Those east of the 
Jordan are not known to us in their precise locality ; still, 
Golan, in Bashan, was in the territory of East-Manasseh, and 
could not have been far from the eastern shore of the Sea of 
Galilee ; Ramoth in Gilead was not remote from the Jabbok, 
and appears to have been not far from the Mizpah where 
Jacob and Laban parted; while Bezer was farther south, some- 
where in Moab. It will be seen at a glance that the arrange- 
ment was a wise one. The places were all of them important 
ones, and they were so judiciously placed that every tribe lay 
contiguous to a city of refuge. And this was of the first 
consequence. A man having committed manslaughter, al- 
though in pure accident, could be instantly put to death by a 
near relative of the deceased ; he must flee with all speed to 
a city of refuge in order to be safe. The avenger could not 
follow him there. Asher, Naphtali, Zebulon, and Issachar 
were all within easy reach of Kedesh ; Ephraim, Dan, Ben- 



1*2 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



jamin, and West-Manasseh environed Shechem ; Simeon and 
Judah were close to Hebron ; Reuben had its Bezer, Gad its 
Ramoth-Gilead, and East-Manasseh its Golan. 

We are prepared, too, to understand where Shiloh was, 
whither the ark was removed from Gilgal, and which long 
remained the sacred gathering-place of the tribes. The 




SHILOH (MODERN SEILUn). 

description given in Judges xxi. is so full and clear that it can 
be located at once. Shiloh is there said to be on the north 
side of Bethel, " on the east of the highway that goeth up 
from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah." 
The modern traveler does not pass it on the regular route 
from Jerusalem northward ; he is obliged, a little north of 
Beitin, or Bethel, to turn to the right for a short distance, in 



SCENES IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. 1 83 

order to reach the secluded place, where, encircled by hills, 
the ancient oracles were given at Shiloh. Here, too, Robin- 
son led the way, and was the first to bring this interesting 
spot to the light of our day. Singularly enough, the ancient 
name still hovers over the place, and Shiloh is merely Seilun 
in the mouths of the scanty population there. The ruins 
found there are of no importance ; but the true site of the 
ancient town is designated by a small hill which rises within 
this solitary basin. Its silence is most impressive. A little 
to the north may be seen the ruins of the ancient Lebonah, 
merely corrupted into Libneh ; and the true site of Shiloh is 
identified beyond all doubt. The place was a remarkably 
central one, and its seclusion was such as to make it well 
suited to its oracular character. Besides, it was a place of 
great natural strength. The narrow valleys which led 
through the hills that girded Shiloh were easily protected, and 
it would have required a mighty host to tear the ark away 
from the Israelites while it remained there. It was only lost 
when it was taken away by the Jews themselves from its rest- 
ing-place, and carried down to the battle-field, that its pres- 
ence might bring strength during the battle with the pow- 
erful Philistines. It was captured then, carried down into 
the low country, and brought that misfortune with it at Ash- 
dod, Gath, and Ekron which made the Philistines more 
anxious to part with it than they had been to win it. It did 
not return to Shiloh on the hills again, however. The milch 
kine, yoked to the cart which contained the ark, and driven 
by no man, went lowing from Ekron, south-eastward, to 
Beth-shemesh, the present Ain-shems, in the Valley of the 
Sorek. 



1 84 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



From Beth-shemesh the ark was conveyed to Kirjath- 
jearim, about ten miles to the north-east, if Robinson's iden- 
tification of this place with Kuriet el Enab is correct, — a 
village lying on the regular road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, just 
where the real ascent from the Philistine country begins. 
Here, hard by the Philistine country, were the only two 
places, Beth-shemesh and Kirjath-jearim, where the ark made 
any prolonged stay, after leaving Shiloh, before it was trans- 
ferred by David to its new resting-place in Jerusalem. 




TRADITIONAL TOMB OF JOSHUA. 



So, too, we need only glance at the south-western portion 
of Ephraim, where the mountain-land begins to soften and 
decline into the Sharon plain and the level domain of Dan, to 
discover the general location where the tract assigned to 
Joshua lay, — Timnath-heres, or Timnath-serah ; we have 
both names. The place is not yet identified beyond a doubt, 
though Eli Smith discovered ancient tombs in the side of a 



SCENES IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. 1 85 

hill, which he thought might be the hill Gaash, coupled, in 
the last chapter of Joshua, with the old hero's burial-place. 

The whole of the Book of Judges brings up names which 
are familiar. Once in a while a geographical fragment of 
importance has defied our investigation thus far, but there are 
not many such. We can not tell, for example, where Bezek 
was, named in the first chapter in connection with the name 
of its savage monarch, Adoni-bezek, who boasted of having cut 
off the thumbs and great toes of seventy kings, and com- 
pelled them to pick up their meat from under his table. 
Such a man must have been lord of no small domain ; and 
yet we do not know where Bezek, his capital, was. But 
Hebron, the home of Caleb, and Debir, its neighbor, the city 
which Caleb gave to his son-in-law, have already come into 
notice in connection with Joshua's conquest. Jerusalem, 
which emerges into view in the first chapter of Judges as 
overrun by the tribe of Judah, and yet not captured as a per- 
manent possession, but instantly in the hands again of the 
powerful Jebusites, has often lain in our path as we have fol- 
lowed the wanderings of the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob. 
Jericho, the " city of palm-trees," whither Eglon, the king of 
Moab, had removed after crossing the Jordan and gaining 
that temporary dominion over Israel which was only termi- 
nated by his assassination by Ehud near Gilgal, and Hazor, 
the city of the north, hard by the head waters of the Jordan^ 
though its precise site is unknown, have both become familiar 
names in the previous articles. We must pause, however, 
and devote a moment to the great victory gained by Deborah 
and Barak over the powerful Jabin, king of Hazor. 

The second Jabin, like the first, in conjunction with his 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



general, Sisera, had united against the Israelites the whole 
body of chieftains between the Lebanon district and the 
Plain of Jezreel. The battle in which Joshua achieved his 
greatest victory was fought on the shores of Lake el Huleh, 
the Waters of Merom ; that in which the second Jabin, and 
Sisera, his chief, encountered Barak, was on the shores 
of the brook Kishon, and at the foot of Tabor. This beau- 
tiful mountain rises from the northern edge of the great 
plain. Not far from its base the Kishon begins its course 
and wantons along its winding way, leisurely reaching the 
sea at length. Sometimes, however, its waters are swollen 
with the rains, and then it, like the Jordan, is an angry flood, 
and rushes tumultuously to the Mediterranean, its waters 
discolored with the black soil through which it flows. In this 
Plain of Jezreel, or Esdraelon, Jabin and Sisera had gathered 
their army and those nine hundred iron chariots which were 
so deadly and terrible. Nothing but the fiery enthusiasm of 
Deborah could have prevailed on the Israelites to venture on 
an encounter with enemies so strong in numbers and in the 
means of effecting destruction. But ten thousand men, 
chiefly from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, Zebulon, 
Issachar, and Naphtali, took their stand on the sides of Tabor, 
and waited for the signal. The tactics introduced by Joshua 
were those which were followed by his successors. Raising 
the fierce battle-cry, they rushed down the sides of Tabor in 
such a tremendous onset that Sisera's columns were unable 
to resist the shock. The Israelites at once were victorious, 
and pursued the flying Canaanites over the plain as far as 
Taanach and Megiddo, on the southern margin of the plain, 
and close by Carmel. The Kishon was filled with the bodies 



SCENES IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. 



187 



of the slain, and "swept them away." The victory, every 
way complete, was crowned 
by the barbarous assassina- 
tion of Sisera, as, exhausted 
by the contest, he lay in the 
tent of a supposed friend, and 
slept. 

The story of the exploits of 
Gideon carries us to a terri- 
tory already familiar to us, and 
not far distant from that which 
has just been under review. 
We are transported to the 
eastern portion of the Plain of 
Jezreel, where it is narrowed 
between Gilboa and Tabor, 
and begins to slope toward 
the Jordan Valley. It is true, 
most of the minor names have 
been lost, and we can not 
gather up the details of the 
victory and the pursuit ; but 
the more striking character- 
istics can be identified at once. 
The Midianites had come up 
from their distant home, east 
and south of Moab, and had 
swarmed over the whole south- 
ern portion of Palestine, as 
far to the south-west as Gaza. The decisive battle was fought, 



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1 88 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



however, almost within sight of the Jordan. Down the gen- 
tle slope east of the Plain of Jezreel, Gideon and his fiery 
trusty three hundred pursued them, routing them all the way. 
The Midianites forded the stream at Succoth, the same place 
where we saw Jacob cross, and plunged up the cleft of the 
Jabbok, as far as to Penuel, — that scene of the wrestling 
which we have already witnessed, — a few miles eastward, on 
the high bank of the defile through which the torrent runs. 
Still onward, to the unknown sites of Nobah and Jogbehah, 
the Israelites pursued the discomfited foe ; and there we 
lose sight of them, while Gideon returns triumphantly home. 

The adventures of Abimelech take us to the familiar city 
of Shechem, the site of the present Nabliis ; to Gerizim, al- 
ready an often-mentioned name ; and to Thebez, the modern 
Tubas, a place on the road from Shechem to the Jordan. It 
was here that Abimelech came to his tragic end, though the 
most of the events of his ambitious, boastful, and cruel life 
took place at Shechem. 

The strangely tragic story of Jephthah and his daughter 
transfers us to the eastern bank of the Jordan once more, and 
takes us over scenes which are already well known to us. 
The Ammonites had turned fiercely against the Israelites, 
and more especially against those of the tribes of Gad and 
East-Manasseh which occupied the high Gilead range. The 
people of Gilead, alarmed at what was impending, summoned 
this wild, wandering Jephthah to a convocation at Mizpeh, on 
the eastern outposts of that range, and, after taking counsel 
together, sent a message to the warlike Ammonites, demand- 
ing their instant surrender. A refusal was sent back, and 
Jephthah swept down from the mountain-country upon the 



SCENES IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. 1 89 

Plains of Ammon and the territory which had been taken 
from Moab, — from Aroer on the Arnon to Minnith, sup- 
posed to be a few miles northward, — took twenty cities, and 
entirely routed the Ammonites. It was to Mizpah and the 
Gilead mountains that he returned to execute his dreadful 
vow upon her whose name and fame, as Jephthah's daughter, 
have been spread as widely as hearts are found to sympathize, 
or eyes are found to overflow with tears. 

The mirthful story of Samson takes us into the west 
country again, to the low Plain of Dan, north-west of Judah 
and south-west of Ephraim, and to the land of the Philis- 
tines. Timnath, the home of Samson's wife, is identified, be- 
yond much doubt, with the modern village of Tibneh, about 
two miles west of Aim Shems, in the rolling country which 
intervenes between the hill-country of Judah and the true 
Plain of Philistia. It is that district especially which is im- 
mortally connected with the memory of those exploits of his 
which have such a grim humor upon them, and which were 
yet so irritating, and, in some cases, so really destructive. It 
is true we see the Philistines pressing him, in one instance, 
up the passes of Judah, and to the region a little south of 
Bethlehem, although the rocks Etham and Lehi have not 
yet been discovered. Here it was, in the domain of Judah, 
that he broke the cords with which the Philistines essayed to 
secure him ; here it was, that, with the jaw-bone of an ass, he 
wrought such destruction : but his later deeds were all in 
the low country of Philistia. Gaza, the scene of that carrying- 
away of the gates to the distant hill near Hebron, . and of 
Samson's death, and the Valley of Sorek, the home of Delilah, 
in the immediate neighborhood of Gaza, were in the Philis- 



I9O STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

tines' land ; and even to this day, the memory and traditions 
of the strong man cling to the modern city which occupies 
the site, and, with the slightest of changes, adopts the name 
of the ancient Gaza. 

The remaining chapters of the Book of Judges bring no 
new field into view, with the exception of Gibeah, the scene 
of that dark tragedy which roused the indignation of the 
tribes against Benjamin, and caused the thousands from the 
north and the south to issue forth in array against the men 
who shared- in that dreadful deed of lust, and suffered it to 
pass unpunished ; Gibeah, the scene of the wanton and 
brutal outrage offered to a woman, who, although not herself 
a wife, was yet protected by her womanhood against the 
fierce and abandoned passions of the Benjamites, and who 
died in consequence of the indignities to which she was ex- 
posed for a whole night. Gibeah, now Tuleil el Ful, the 
scene of those mad excesses, lay only about four miles north 
of Jerusalem, a little south of Ramah, and not far from Gib- 
eon and Mizpah. It was at the latter hight that the Israel- 
ites gathered, preliminary to the onslaught upon the obdurate 
Benjamites. Familiar as its name is in the Bible, often as it 
comes into view after the allusions to the Mizpah east of the 
Jordan become infrequent, its location is not yet determined 
*with any degree of certainty. Robinson, after a thorough in- 
vestigation, decided in favor of the lofty ridge north of Jeru- 
salem, known to this day as the Neby Samwil ; others, 
including Stanley and Bonar, have pronounced in favor of 
Mizpah's being identified with Scopas, the lofty plain just 
north of Jerusalem. The weight of evidence seems to be in 
favor of the Neby Samwil, a very marked spot, whence a 



SCENES IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. I9I 



distinct view not only of Jerusalem may be gained, but a 
noble survey of the entire country. Such a spot as that was 
well adapted to perpetuate the memory of that eastern Miz- 
pah, where Jacob and Laban parted, and whose memorial pile 
of stones made it the most sacred spot east of the Jordan. 
Rock Rimmon, to which the defeated Benjamites fled for 
protection, lies seven miles north-east of Gibeah of Benjamin, 
the name still clinging to a white limestone cliff, bare and 
ragged, and unchanged in its rough outline from what it was 
when the Benjamites sought its shelter. 

The story of Ruth, pathetic and touching as it is, involves 
little that needs geographical explanation. It revolves around 
Bethlehem, only drawing its characters from the distant Moab. 
The last verse of the. first chapter gives us all that we need 
to know in these papers. " So Naomi returned, and Ruth the 
Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, which returned out of the 
country of Moab ; and they came to Bethlehem in the begin- 
ning of barley-harvest." 



XIII. 

t 

SCENES IN THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL. 

With the First Book of Samuel we come to a broader field 
of action : the movement of history is more imposing and 
heroic than in the Book of Judges. Men of a grander type 
come into view. Yet there are few points which need more 
than a brief allusion ; we have already surveyed the whole of 
Palestine proper in so much detail, and have encountered the 
names of so many important places, that we may pass rap- 
idly on. 

In a former passage I have alluded to the loss of the ark, 
anticipating the narrative of I st Samuel ; I have spoken of 
the fatal effects experienced by the Philistines during the 
seven months that they retained it, and of its return to Beth- 
shemesh and Kirjath-jearim, two places lying west and north- 
west of Jerusalem, in the rolling country intervening between 
the hill-country of Judah and the Philistine Plain. 

The three great characters who come into view in 1st Sam- 
uel, are Samuel himself, Saul, and David. The careers of 
Samuel and Saul are portrayed in full, and that of David till 
his period of persecution ended, and he could take his right- 
ful place before the people. Many of the places mentioned in 
connection with the lives of these three great leaders are not 
now to be identified ; yet where light is needed to make the 

moral intent of the narrative clear, we have all the requisite 
192 



SCENES IN THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL. J 93 

insight into the details and coloring of the book. We do not 
know where the birthplace of Samuel was : that Ramah or 
Ramathaim-zophim, so often mentioned, has thus far defied 
the search of all investigators ; nor are the most probable 
inferences of sufficient value to warrant my even alluding to 
them here. So, too, that wandering course of Saul, in search 
for his asses, brings us in contact with some familiar names, 
— the grave of Rachel near Bethlehem, and Bethel ; but 
beside these, we get no clue to the tract which he wandered 
over. Yet here are data enough, and they probably present 
the extreme points, north and south, between which his rov- 
ings lay. With these in view we can read the obscure names 
of Shalisha, Shalim, Zuph, Zelzah, and the oak of Tabor 
(mistranslated Plain of Tabor, and beyond question without 
relation to the noted mountain of that name), and they need 
not perplex us, for the purport of the story comes out full and 
clear, in spite of this geographical indistinctness. So, too. 
with Samuel's signal victory over the Philistines at the place 
where he raised the great stone Ebenezer, though the place is 
unknown, yet as we read that it was between Mizpah and 
Shen, we know that it must have been not far from the lower 
opening of one of those defiles which lead from the district 
north of Jerusalem down to the Philistine Plain. So, too, 
though we do not know whether that Cave of Adullam, 
where David found refuge, and hid from the band of Saul's 
emissaries, lay in the district south-east of Bethlehem, near the 
Frank Mountain, or near the ancient city of Adullam, in the 
rolling country south-west of Jerusalem, and at the western 
base of the hill-country ; yet the story of his persecution, and 
his painful exile and long hiding from the light, would hardly 

13 



1 



194 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



gain new vividness were we acquainted with the precise 
scene of his sufferings. We know enough of that southern 








CAVE OF ADULLAM, NEAR BETHLEHEM. 



tract to follow the general course of David in his repeated 
flights from Saul, and there stands no insuperable difficulty 

* Rev. A. Bonar, in his Palestine for the Young, from which our illustration is taken, says : — 
" The Cave of Adullam was not very far from Engedi, and was very near the birthplace of David. 
Though not quite certainly, yet with very great probability, this cave has, of late years, been iden- 



SCENES IN THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL. 1 95 

in the way to prevent all the unanswered questions being 
answered hereafter. 

But respecting such momentous battles as that of Saul and 
Jonathan with the Philistines at Michmash, and of Saul with 
the same nation on the Plain of Esdraelon, where the Israeli- 
tish king came to his tragic end ; respecting such border war- 
fare as that of David with the Amalekites of the desert- 
country south of Palestine ; respecting the help extended by 
Saul to the men of Gilead, when the latter were threatened 
with an Ammonite invasion ; respecting the geographical 
details involved in David's contest with Goliath of Gath, — no 
future investigation can do more than to fill in the minute de- 
tails of a picture which is now quite perfect. 

tified with one near Bethlehem ; and if this be correct, David, from his earliest years, would know 
it as a place of resort. When a boy, he and his youthful companions would often scramble up to 
its entrance and make acquaintance with its general character, little aware of its predestined con- 
nection with the future history of some of their party. 

" This caverned spot is near a village called Khureitun, a name which has been supposed to be 
a remnant of the old " Hareth " (1 Sam. xxii. 5), a village with a forest near it, — that very forest 
helping to make the region the more inaccessible. The cave is reached only by climbing a precipi- 
tous ascent, the full hight of which is a thousand feet. Half way up you find a slope that leads 
off to a ledge of rocks ; along this ledge you must walk for half a mile, sometimes creeping under 
projecting crags, sometimes over them ; at one time stepping over a gap, at another pressing 
through a fissure, all the while conscious that you have nearly six hundred feet of perpendicular 
rock below you ! When you reach the entrance at the end of this ledge, you find it guarded by 
two masses of rock, over which you make your way into the cavern, and are soon lost in an innu- 
merable succession of chambers. Each of these chambers is a sort of hall, in which you might 
imagine the rocks to be gothic pillars, they are so arranged. The whole of this mountain of rock 
seems to be honey-combed ; it is all natural excavation. No one has explored more than five hun- 
dred yards of it, though the natives believe that the cave reaches as far south as Hebron. Some 
of the chambers are only a few feet high, others are like the inside of a church. It was here, we 
believe, that David found a safe retreat from Saul. It was here he was led by the Holy Ghost to 
write Psalm cxlii., — ' A prayer when he was in the cave.' It was here, too, that he longed for a 
drink of water from the well of Bethlehem, remembering, no doubt, the quiet, unanxious days of 
boyhood, when he wandered at his will, and slaked his thirst at that well as he returned from 
rambling over wild, romantic crags, i Chron. xi. 15 ; 2 Sam. xxiii. 11." 



196 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



Look, for a moment, at the appeal, made by the men of 
Jabesh-gilead for help against the approaching Ammonites. 
Just where Jabesh was, we do not know with absolute cer- 
tainty ; yet it is identified, with great probability, with a mod- 
ern village known as Ed Deir, on the south side of a wady 
known as Jabes, running eastward from the Jordan, near the 
eastern side of the Plain of Jezreel or Esdraelon, and extend- 
ing up into the massive Gilead range. We can see the mes- 
sengers crossing the Jordan at the ford at that place, and 
dashing across the hill-country of Ephraim and Benjamin, till 
they reached Gibeah, a few miles north from Jerusalem. We 
can appreciate the tremendous energy and determination 
involved in Saul's answer, " To-morrow, by that time the sun 
be hot, ye shall have help." We know how signally he ful- 
filled his promise ; and some of us may remember the faithful 
love of those rescued Gileadites, which wrought itself out in 
deeds when Saul was no more, and his unburied body, after 
lying where he fell, on the Gilboa range, between the Jezreel 
Plain and the Jordan, was taken by the Philistine conquerors 
and fastened to the walls of Beth-shean, the great city in the 
pass from Jezreel to the Jordan. You may remember that 
the people of Jabesh crossed the river, took down the body, 
carried it to their own city, and buried Saul's ashes among 
their own dead. Let this loyalty, this unforgetting gratitude, 
be always set to the credit of the men of Jabesh-gilead. 

The pursuit, traced in a former article, of Joshua from Gil- 
gal up the mountain pass to Ai, Gibeon, and Beth-horon, 
makes it unnecessary to follow in detail the character of the 
great battle between Saul and Jonathan and the Philistines at 
Michmash. This formidable people had poured into the very 



SCENES IN THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL. 1 97 



heart of the Benjamite country, and taken possession of one 
of the towns at the head of the Wady Suweinit, a gully 
which is about a mile wide at Michmash, but which narrows 
to a mere ravine as it runs steeply down to Gilgal and the 
Jordan Plain. The Israelites were in dismay, and were flying 
across the Jordan in their terror, while Saul and the main 
army were at Gilgal. Never had the Philistines been so bold 
before. The contest had hitherto been an irritating border 
warfare ; now the foe had struck boldly up the hills, dragging 
their chariots with them. Yet Jonathan, evidently a valiant 
and wary young man, was equal to the occasion. Large 
numbers of the Israelites advanced up the wady, and found 
themselves lurking-places in the caves and recesses which 
abound in that wild region. The main army advanced with 
Saul and Jonathan up the regular road from Gilgal and 
Jericho to Jerusalem, and so reached Gibeah by this short 
detour. The Philistines were at this time in possession of 
♦ Michmash, the place where Saul had withdrawn but a few 
days before. Jonathan had already gained a decisive advan- 
tage over the Philistines at Geba, the present Jeba, south 
of Michmash, a mile distant from it, and at Michmash, the 
gate of the ravine. Saul remained at Gibeah, three miles 
farther south, the modern Tuleil el Ful, where he could have 
a good view of the Philistine camp at Michmash. He could 
see the Philistine spoilers issue from the place and go out in 
three different directions to rob his own people, — northward 
to Ophrah, the modern Et Tayibeh, on a hill four miles north- 
east of Bethel, westward to Beth-horon, and eastward down 
the wady to the Valley of Zeboim, unquestionably the Jordan 
Plain. Southward they could not go, for there were Saul and 



198 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



Jonathan with the army. Two great rocks seem to have lain 
in the wady between Geba and Michmash, their names pre- 
served faithfully, — Bozez and Seneh. Issuing from behind 
them, Jonathan and his armor-bearer wrought their great 
deed. Coming upon the Philistines single-handed in the dim 
light of dawn, as we learn from Josephus, the audacity of the 
attack paralyzed the Philistines, and Jonathan pressed on 
with the impulse and irresistibleness of a thousand men, car- 
rying dismay throughout the camp. Saul, watching at 
Gibeah, perceived the confusion, and knew that a conflict 
must be raging there. Quickly ascertaining that Jonathan 
was missing, he pressed on to the scene with his men, and at 
the same time the Israelites emerged from their hiding-places 
and rushed against the foe. The Philistines could not use 
their chariots, their chief reliance, and were utterly discom- 
fited. Onward the Israelites pressed, their enemies flying to 
Beth-horon, and the same pass which had, in Joshua's time, 
seen the flight of the Canaanite kings, and the same valley, 
Ajalon, which had witnessed the moon's impressive halt, now 
looked upon the downward rushing of those beaten and hu- 
miliated Philistines. 

Another contest with the Philistines, a short time subse- 
quently, brings a new hero on the field, and invests him with 
the wondrous charm which always attends great results which 
issue from apparently trivial sources. Fitly the scene lies 
not far from Bethlehem, — the birthplace of David. The 
Philistines were advancing from Gath up into the hill-country, 
not by the passes they had usually chosen, north-west of 
Jerusalem, but by the Valley of Elah, the modern Wady 
Sumt, which runs from the border of the hills west of Bethle- 



SCENES IN THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL. 1 99 

hem toward Ekron and the sea. The city of Socoh is to be 
identified, with good degree of certainty, with the modern 
Suweikeh, on the southern slopes of the wady ; but the site of 
Azekah is less sure. Yet the general character of the con- 
test is clear. The Philistines were determined to march up 
into the land of Judah ; and, under the championship of Goli- 
ath, that huge descendant of the old race of Anakim, they 
felt themselves unassailable. In the bed of the torrents, 
which, after the winter rains, pour down that ravine, David 
found the pebble which was to be of such effective service. 
At the bottom of the pass, where the side wadies leave the 
main gully, is the probable scene of the encounter. The 
death of Goliath brought immediate panic upon the Philis- 
tines. They fled precipitately to Gath and Ekron, the men 
of Judah pursuing them, and raising their wonted battle-cry ; 
and a complete rout prevailed. 

Of the places which formed the retreats of David during 
the next few years, till the death of Saul ended the jealousy 
which sought the young man's life, little need be said. Naioth 
in Ramah is subject to the same uncertainty which rests upon 
the site of Ramah. Nob, the city whose priest Ahimelech 
showed kindness to David, in giving him and the young men 
with him the shew-bread, and which was so wickedly de- 
stroyed by Saul, with all its people, lay on the high plain north 
of Jerusalem. The Cave of Adullam, as has been indicated 
previously, is not yet identified ; but that famous grotto, which 
long served as a sure retreat, either lay south-east of Bethle- 
hem, near the Frank Mountain, or near the city of Adullam, 
at the western base of the hill-country of Judah. Keilah 
(identified with the modern Kila), the place rescued by David 



200 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



from a Philistine attack, lay on the road from Hebron north- 
west. Ziph, another retreat of David, was about three miles 
south of Hebron ; the hill on which it stood still bearing its 
ancient name. Carmel, the place of the penurious Nabal's 
great possessions, was about three miles south of Ziph, and 
wears its old name, although generally written Kurmul ; Maon, 
the home of Nabal, its name only corrupted into Maan, is 
close by Carmel ; while Ziklag, the city given to David by 
Achish, the king of Gath, lay in the desert-country south of 
Judah. Its location has often been guessed, but not yet 
satisfactorily identified. It lay, unquestionably, in the heart of 
the Amalekite country. The names of places to which David 
sent portions of the spoil which he took from this barbarous 
tribe, and which are given in I Sam. xxx. 27-31, have mostly 
been identified in the domain of Simeon, or the southern 
portion of Judah. 

There remains but one more scene in the 1st book of Sam- 
uel before the life of David opens upon its larger and grander 
stage. That scene, in which, indeed, David does not actually 
appear, — the battlefield on which Saul met his death, — 
takes us back to that incessant witness of carnage, the Plain 
of Jezreel. Not very far from the place where Barak defeated 
Sisera, the Philistines defeated and slew the first Hebrew 
king. The Israelites took possession of the highland where 
the spring is still to be seen that once supplied the city of 
Jezreel. A little farther to the south-east lies the low, bare 
ridge known as Gilboa. The Philistines, with their chariots, 
took their stand in the plain at a place known as Aphek. 
David, out of favor with Saul, was with the Philistines, and 
was trusted by the king of Gath, his special friend and pro- 



SCENES IN THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL. 201 



tector ; but the other Philistine princes distrusted the fidel- 
ity of the young Hebrew, and, fearing that he would desert 
during the battle, insisted that he should withdraw from the 
field. The battle must have been closely contested, but the 
chariots of the Philistines could do fatal service, and not all 
of Saul's energy nor fierce determination could save him. 
The Israelites fled to the hights of Gilboa, whither the 
chariots could not follow them ; but the panic was too 
great to be stayed, and the Hebrew king fell by his own 
hand, rather than be led to Philistia in the disgrace of 
captivity. Jonathan, the friend of David, fell on the same 
field. This is hardly the place to say it, yet it may be excused 
if I express the conviction that nowhere in the whole career 
of David does his character appear grander than in that lofty 
dirge in which his tender love, his magnanimity, his loyalty to 
the dear memories of past days, are mingled with pity, grief, 
and dismay. 2 Sam. i. 17-27. 



XIV. 



THE EMPIRE OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 

We have now come to the time when the Hebrew power, 
in the hands of David and Solomon, attained its largest 
limits ; when its empire comprised its most extensive do- 
main ; when it was the rival of Egypt and Assyria even in 
extent, and hardly inferior to them in splendor and opulence. 
In speaking of the geography of the land which they gov- 
erned, it will be not at all necessary to dwell specifically upon 
the many points which come up there again, and which are 
the mere repetition of what has been made familiar already in 
our close study of the Books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. 
A mere allusion is enough. Moreover, the accounts given in 
the Books of Kings and Chronicles do not involve geograph- 
ical detail to any thing like the extent which we encountered 
in the earlier records : we have, on the contrary, only the 
summing-up of the results of conquest. David came into 
possession of an empire so strong, that, with his fine military 
talents and great ambition and able generals, he had only to 
put himself at the head of his armies to march to immediate 
victories. He swept with amazing swiftness from one part of 
his long frontier to another, and no enemy could withstand 
;him. His first step was to establish his capital at Hebron, 
where he remained for seven years and a half. He had 
probably long known the strategic value of the rock held by 

202 



THE EMPIRE OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 



203 



the Jebusites, and only nartially conquered by Joshua ; but it 
was reserved for him to complete the taking of Jerusalem, 
and make it his permanent capital. Notwithstanding the 
sacred character of Hebron, from its connection with the 
graves of the patriarchs, it was manifestly too far south to be 
the capital of the whole monarchy. Besides this, it had no 
strategic value ; and David, pre-eminently a soldier, deter- 
mined to preface his work by taking possession of a site, 




JERUSALEM, FROM THE WESTERN SLOPE OF THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. 

• 

which, in his hands, should be impregnable. It is true, the 
selection of Jerusalem was a mistake in other respects. It 
was a strong position, indeed ; but it was altogether too far 
south to be the center of the tribes. Besides, the establish- 
ment of any capital, the centralizing of power at any point, 
was radically hostile to the Mosaic polity. That polity was 
essentially democratic : it demanded, indeed, that the place 
where the ark and the tabernacle should rest should be, in a 
certain sense, a religious center : but the system of govern- 



204 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

ment propounued by Moses favored decentralization entirely ; 
was unequivocally in favor of the development of provinces 
rather than a capital ; looked to the enlargement of the tribal 
character, weight, and authority ; favored the building-up of 
local centers ; and was absolutely pledged to a system diamet- 
rically opposed to that which began with David, and which 
fatally culminated with Solomon. All this is entirely con- 
sistent with the fact that Jerusalem was adopted by Jehovah 
as his Holy City ; for his all-wise plans reached farther than 
the aggrandizement of the one people Israel, and used for 
their fulfillment the folly as well as the wisdom of man. 

David and Solomon were moved by different motives. 
The former fell into the error of over-centralization, by feel- 
ing the need of a strong, and, indeed, inexpugnable fortress ; 
the latter, from his servile copying of the Oriental system, 
which made the monarch and his capital the recipients of all 
the national wealth, and the country the mere feeder of the 
metropolis. David, with all his greatness, never rose to the 
towering eminence of Moses ; never comprehended the vast- 
ness of the Mosaic polity ; never knew the worth of the 
trust committed to him, nor the greatness of his opportunity. 
Solomon, a wise man in little things, a man of large and de- 
tailed knowledge, a man of the world, without steadfast prin- 
ciples, knowing life, indeed, in its worst as well as in its best 
phases, and ready in giving utterance to maxims of shrewd 
worldly wisdom, was, in the higher, larger wisdom, more de- 
plorably deficient than even David was. No writer whom I 
have read, excepting Drew, has fairly grasped the deficiency 
of Solomon, and showed how radically he failed in under- 
standing his mission, and doing the work which God had de- 



THE EMPIRE OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 205 

signed for his nation. The appointment of a king at all was 
as true a solecism in the Hebrew polity as the establishment 
of a capital ; and, in the race of kings, the farther the depart- 
ure from men who rose, like the Judges, to meet a temporary 
exigency, and then went back to the people and to the ordi- 
nary cares of life when the exigency was past, the more fatal 
the discrepancy between the Mosaic scheme and the actual- 
ized government. And when David formed a capital, and 
built him a palace of cedar in it ; and when Solomon came 
and established all the pomp, luxury, voluptuousness, of an 
Oriental monarch there ; built him palaces which rivaled 
those of Egypt and Assyria, if they did not surpass them ; 
established his harem, his gardens, his stables ; appointed his 
retinues of slaves ; furnished his stables with horses (an un- 
known animal then in the hill-country) ; dined on vessels of 
gold, and made silver so common in his capital, that it is dis- 
tinctly said to have been of no account whatever ; had his 
chairs of ivory, and his profuse ornaments of peacocks' 
feathers, and all the jewels of the East, — we can only recog- 
nize in him the ordinary type of the Oriental monarch, in 
comparison with whom a Louis XIV. and an Augustus the 
Strong are but feeble imitators ; a man like the Pharaohs of 
Egypt, or Sardanapalus of Assyria. He may have had more 
wit, more learning, more worldly wisdom, more appreciation 
of talents, more range of character, more experience of life ; 
but in that execrable policy, like that which dominates 
France even at the present day, only far more intense, ex- 
hausting, destructive, than even under Louis XIV., of build- 
ing up a Paris at the expense of the whole country, Solomon 
was like every brother-monarch of the East. Moses com- 



206 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS 



prehended the idea of nationality such as we have in the 
United States, and, in a measure, in England, to-day. Moses 
contemplated no less than an even and uniform development 
of the whole body of his countrymen, of one tribe as 
much as of another tribe, and of the smallest as well as of 
the largest city ; but Solomon thought only of his own splen- 
dor and glory, and of that of Jerusalem so far as it was trib- 
utary to his own magnificence. He ruled over a vast domain, 
— vast in itself, and vast compared with his two rivals, Egypt 
and Assyria ; for Israel comprised sixty thousand square 
miles, Assyria eighty thousand, and Egypt one hundred 
thousand. The Queen of Sheba, coming up from her rich 
tract in Southern Arabia, visited a prince far superior to her 
in extent of domain and princely magnificence, as well as in 
wit and the darkly-worded wisdom of the East ; and Pharaoh, 
in giving Solomon his daughter for his wife, allied himself 
with a prince perhaps his superior in ostentation. But while 
we get a clear picture of what Jerusalem was during the 
reign of Solomon, see its gold and silver, and sandal-wood 
and spices, and ivory and gems, and chariots and horses and 
palaces, and magnificent temple, that reminds one of the 
Madeleine of Paris, once dedicated to all the glories of 
France, we do get hints, brief but not obscure, of the other 
side ; see the conscriptions, the exhausting of fertile districts, 
the onerous taxes laid on cities, the arbitrary exactions of 
every kind, which embittered the land, alienated the people, 
impoverished the country, and paved the way for a revolution 
not unlike that which, in France, brought retribution to the 
Bourbons, and avenged in blood the cruel exactions, and false 
glory, and greedy, carnal selfishness, of Louis XIV. and XV. 



THE EMPIRE OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 207 



It would seem that David saw that the resistance of the 
Jebusite fortress would be obstinate ; and hence he promised 
the greatest prize in his gift to the man who should succeed 
in successfully storming it. The Jebusites felt entirely 
secure in their possession of the place ; although the obscure 
translation of 2 Sam. v. 6-9, and 1 Chron. xi. 5-8, in our 
version, does not convey a clear meaning. What the Jebu- 
sites did answer when David came up against their strong- 
hold was this : " Thou shalt not come in hither : even the 
blind and the lame shall drive thee back." It would seem that 
they did actually proceed to the audacious extremity of post- 
ing their blind and lame upon the walls, to signify their 
absolute confidence in their position. I need not remind the 
reader that Joab mastered it, and was promoted to the chief 
captaincy of the army. 

Jerusalem comprised at that time but a small part of what 
we understand by the same term. The stronghold of the 
Jebusites was, unquestionably, the rock-tongue which we know 
as Mt. Zion, at the south-western portion of the present city. 
It is surrounded by ravines on three sides ; and, in ancient 
times, was separated from the low hill on the north, where 
the so-called Church of the Holy Sepulcher now stands, by a 
depression, not easily traced at present, so much has it been 
raised above its former level by the accumulations of rubbish. 
West of the rock of Zion runs the Valley of Gihon ; and 
south of it, the Ravine of Hinnom, where once lay Tophet 
and its flames. East of Zion was the Tyropceon depression, 
which ran northward for some distance, and which separated 
the two hills of Zion and Moriah. Precisely what the Millo 
which David is said to have taken, and to have connected 



208 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



with his fortifications, was, does not clearly appear ; but it 
seems to have been a Jebusite stronghold, either at the north- 
eastern or the north-western corner of Mt. Zion. The City of 
David, occupying so small a portion even of what is the Jeru- 




I. Robinson's Arch. 2. Jews' Wailing-place. 

PLAN OF MODERN JERUSALEM, SHOWING ITS PHYSICAL FEATURES. 



salem of the present day, much less that of the Herodian 
epoch, was little more than a well-guarded fortress. It is 
true, the limits were soon enlarged ; the new house, or palace, 
of David, if we may apply a word so suggestive of luxury to 



THE EMPIRE OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 20g 

what was probably a very ordinary cedar house, built of wood 
sent by the King of Tyre to Jerusalem, was probably erected 
outside the City of David, and on the northern hill ; while the 
plans for building the future temple contemplated the posses- 
sion of Mt. Moriah, the long rock-tongue which was the 
counterpart of Zion on the east. On the summit of Moriah 
lay the round, bare threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 




robinson's arch. 



This was purchased by David, and became the altar of the 
future temple. That stone, rough as in the days of Araunah 
and David, never touched, except on the margin, by human 
tool, may be seen to-day under the dome of the Mosque of 
Omar. That remarkable out-cropping ledge, guarded with 
its strong iron fence, is what has given the Arabic name to 
the mosque, — Kubbet el Sakhrah, the " Dome of the Rock." 
It is but a few years since this exceedingly interesting histori- 

14 



2IO 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



.cal memorial was displayed to the eyes of Gentile pilgrims ; 
but now the payment of an English sovereign admits any one 
to look upon the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, 
and the foundation of the great altar of Solomon's Temple. 




THE DOME OF THE ROCK. 



Within the Fortress of Zion, or the City of David, as it 
was generally called, was the burying-place, for ages, of the 
Jewish kings ; and beneath those tombs, preserved to the 



THE EMPIRE OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 211 



present day, the ashes of David and his descendants, almost 
beyond question, lie. There is no reason to suppose that the 
structures in their present state date back to the time of 
Solomon ; but there is little doubt that Jewish piety kept the 
site of kingly sepulture well known, and restored, so fast and 
so far as was necessary, the ancient monuments. 




MOSQUE OF THE TOMB OF DAVID, ON MOUNT ZION. 



The reign of Solomon entirely changed the aspect of Jeru- 
salem ; and no one would see in it a trace of the Jebusite 
stronghold. On the Acra, or hill north of Zion, he built his 
magnificent armory known as the House of the Forest of 
Lebanon, and his palace ; the latter a structure worthy of the 
name. On Moriah he completed the building of the temple ; 
an edifice which, although small (it being not larger than an 



2 12 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



ordinary country church), was unquestionably fitted up with 
Oriental magnificence. South of the city, at Etham, near 
Bethlehem, he laid out his sumptuous gardens, and built 
those massive cisterns, to be seen even now, and the wonder 
of all travelers for their extent. From the profuse springs of 
that region he appears to have brought an aqueduct to the 
city, the precursor of the one which was repaired by Pontius 




ANCIENT TEMPLE-WALL AT THE JEWS' WAILING- PLACE. 



Pilate, and which is in existence to-day. Down under the 
walls of the city, near the confluence of the Valleys of Je- 
hoshaphat, east of the city, and of Hinnom, south of it, he 
laid out the " King's Garden," often alluded to, and whose 
scanty remains may be traced even now. From the quarries 
under the northern part of Moriah he took the stones which 
he required ; and those excavations are explored to-day, and 



THE EMPIRE OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 213 

seen just as they were left by the stone-masons of ancient 
time, the floor itself being littered with the chippings. Of 
the works wrought by Solomon in Jerusalem, only one au- 
thentic memorial exists, — the well-known stones which 
formed a part of the foundation of the temple, bearing in 
their beveled edges the Tyrian or Phoenician mark, as do 
those of Baalbec at the north. The size of those Solomonic 
remains has been commented upon by all travelers ; and it is 
sufficient to remark here, that they are three and a half feet 
thick, and attain, in some instances, a length of nearly 
thirty feet. While availing himself of Phoenician skill, and 
using Phoenician workmen, there is little doubt that Solomon 
largely availed himself of Egyptian ideas ; and the blending 
of the elements already existing in the tabernacle with those 
which are even now to be traced in the Egyptian temples 
is extremely curious. Yet this is obviously not the place for 
the discussion of that subject. 

But the reigns of David and Solomon had as great an 
influence in extending the domain of Israel as in enlarging 
the magnificence of Jerusalem. Solomon was no soldier ; 
and the few campaigns carried on in his reign were merely 
supplementary to those of David. That era, considered by 
many the most splendid in the Jewish annals, carried the 
terror of the Hebrew army north, east, south, and west ; 
even Tyre and Egypt being overawed. In some instances, 
it is true, we find conquests sweeping over districts, which, 
like Moab and Ammon, appear to have been reduced to sub- 
mission before ; but David did thoroughly what his predeces- 
sors had done but partially. Northward, we find him carry- 
ing his victorious army through the kingdom of Hamath in 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



the Coele-Syrian Valley, as well as throughout Zobah, Damas- 
cus, Maacah, and Ishtob, districts lying north of the territory 
of East-Manasseh, and extending eastward as far as the 
Euphrates. On the east, we see David reducing the Moab- 
ites to absolute subjection, and treating the Ammonites with 
a degree of cruelty which indicates his determination to 
utterly prevent the future outbreaking of that wild, rapacious 
spirit which made them such destructive and dreaded neigh- 
bors. The reader will recall his complete overthrow of Rab- 
bath, the Ammon capital, whose site is now identified with 
some massive Roman ruins, marking the place where Phila- 
delphia stood at the time of the Caesars' dominion in Pales- 
tine. In accordance with what has already been alluded to 
in these pages, the Graeco-Roman name " Philadelphia " has 
disappeared, and the ancient word " Amman " clings to the 
site. The huge Roman citadel stands near the brook which 
supplied the wants of the people with water ; and here on 
this low ground was the " city of the waters " which Joab 
first took. The citadel stood on higher ground ; but, the 
lower city having fallen, the citadel could hold out but a 
short time. Joab, that curiously ambitious, sullen, dark, 
cruel character, is here seen doing a magnanimous act. He 
sent to Jerusalem to summon David to the spot, that the king 
might have the glory of completing the work which Joab's 
skill and daring had really done, even when the citadel was 
untouched. David hurried away from Bathsheba's embraces, 
that he might win, with no hazard and no pains, this easy 
glory. It was in this same war with the Ammonites that 
David caused Uriah to be put in the front ranks and be 
slain. 



THE EMPIRE OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 215 



Master of all the territory to the Euphrates, we find Solo- 
mon building a city in the desert, on the highway to the 
river, — the Tadmor of that time, and the Palmyra of a 
later day, whose Roman ruins still attract the eye of those 
few travelers who dare to encounter the perils of that Arab- 
haunted wilderness. Farther east, and on the Euphrates, he 
builds another city, Tiphsah, better known to us by its later 
Greek name, Thapsacus, and intended to serve as an entrepot 
for his trade with the remote East. Other cities are men- 
tioned as established in that region ; but of their locations 
we now know nothing. 

Southward, David advanced into the Edomite territory, 
and subjected that also, carrying his victorious army as far 
as to the Gulf of Akabah. Petra, with its secluded rock- 
avenues, and houses cut into the towering cliffs, fell into the 
hands of David. Elah and Ezion-geber, on the Gulf of 
Akabah, grew up into the maritime depots for Solomon's com- 
merce. Their situations have been indicated in a former 
section as at the very head of the gulf. The conquest of 
Edom, with its mountain-fastnesses, was one of David's 
greatest military triumphs. The nature of the country is 
such as to make it inaccessible ; and a hundred men within 
its ravines could easily repel a thousand. But, wherever we 
see David in the character of a warrior, we discover that he 
was unequivocally great. His campaign at the north with 
the kings of Hamath and Zobah must have been a closely- 
contested one ; that with Edom could have been no less so. 
An easier task was it to put down the savage Amalekites of 
Paran ; but to overcome the Philistines required all his skill, 
vigor, spirit, and resolution. Repeatedly they advanced into 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



the hill-country, — sometimes to the very Plain of Rephaim, 
just south of Jerusalem ; but they could not stand before the 
strategy, power, and determination of David, and were in his 
reign, for the first time, fairly brought into subjection. 

The marriage of Solomon with the daughter of the Egyp- 
tian Pharaoh, hostile and fatal as that step was to the Mosaic 

4 

polity, shows how formidable an ally was recognized in the 
Hebrew king. The eager offers of assistance from Hiram of 
Tyre show how promptly that worldly-wise prince assented 
to what he could not prevent, and confessed the power of Is- 
rael ; while the gift of twenty insignificant Galilean cities 
shows how disdainfully Solomon looked down upon his Phoe- 
nician ally, and how unnecessary he thought it to buy his 
favor. The Hebrew king now controlled the very outlet of 
the Tyrian trade eastward. The road from Tyre to Damas- 
cus ran over the hills of Naphtali, and under the shadow of 
Hermon, passing the springs which form the fountain-head of 
the Jordan. This road was now under the absolute control 
of David and Solomon. It was an easy purchase of good-will 
to send the cedars of Lebanon, and skillful artificers "in brass 
and gold, from Tyre to Jerusalem, to help the two kings in 
their sumptuous designs. 

In the reigns of David and Solomon, then, we see the 
greatest extent of the Hebrew Empire. It comprised all 
Syria, with the exception of the Phoenician cities on the sea- 
board ; and these were in a measure overawed by it. It 
extended north of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, 
embraced the fertile valley between them, and reached north- 
eastward and eastward to the Euphrates. Southward it 
extended to the Red Sea. Westward it touched Egypt, rec- 



THE EMPIRE OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 2 I J 



ognized in it simply an equal power, and possessed the Medi- 
terranean as its natural frontier. But, great as it was, it was 
not strong. The conscription introduced by David for the 
purpose of supplying his army was fatally offensive to his sub- 
jects, and the measures employed by Solomon for building 
up his capital were no less so. The latter king never saw, it 
would appear, that if he was to desert the Mosaic polity, and 
centralize power, and establish a despotism, the city which 
should be chosen ought not to lie where Jerusalem did. Un- 
questionably for such a scheme, false and ruinous as it must 
prove to the hopes of that great man who died on Pisgah, the 
only place for a capital was in the fertile lands of Ephraim or 
Issachar, either on the Plain of Shechem, or under the shadow 
of Tabor. But Solomon, with all his science, cunning, thrift, 
and worldly wisdom, did not see this : he failed not only to 
grasp the immense reach of Moses' thought, but he even 
showed the strangest want of breadth in shutting up his mag- 
nificence in this southern city of Jerusalem, away from the 
natural heart of the country, and the obvious object of hatred 
and envy. The rebellion of the northern tribes was in great 
part the protest against this most unwise step : the decay of 
the old Mosaic spirit was the immediate result of the false 
polity of Solomon's entire career. The wide extension of the 
Hebrew commerce merely enriched the capital. It gave 
wealth to no village ; it repeated not even the splendors of 
Jerusalem on smaller scale in any cities save the few where 
Solomon's grandees lived. Those twelve princes to whom 
was appointed the task of rapaciously seizing the lion's share 
of the produce of the country, and whose centers of opera- 
tions were the most fruitful districts, may indeed have estab- 



2l8 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



lished minor courts, and copied, to a certain extent, the 
magnificence of Jerusalem ; but their task was the perfectly 
intelligible one of collecting all that was valuable and useful, 
that the immense retinue of servants, wives, and concubines 
might be sumptuously maintained, and that the magnificence 
of the voluptuous and greedy Solomon might be suitably min- 
istered unto. 

The three important points in the foreign world which are 
brought into view during the reign of Solomon must not be 
passed over without a word. Sheba, or Sabaea, was a large 
and fertile tract in the southern portion of Arabia, and one of 
the most opulent regions in the world. It is noticeable that 
the queen, in making her visit to Solomon, advances by land, 
and not by water ; for, with all her wealth, she had not Tyri- 
ans for her allies, and could not use their ships as Solomon 
could. It would appear that the fertile province of Arabia 
Felix, so rich in tropical productions, was more opulent than 
even Mesopotamia, or Egypt ; and the visit of the prin- 
cess was a tribute to the magnificence and reputation of Sol- 
omon, which that of a Pharaoh would scarcely have surpassed. 

The limits of her domain it would be difficult to define ; 
but they coincided unquestionably with the tract which we 
now know as Yemen, whose wonderful productiveness is cele- 
brated by all Arabian travelers. 

Of Tarshish and Ophir it would be easy to speak at almost 
any length ; yet it is not needful. Those who wish to enter 
upon a detailed examination of the locations assigned to it, 
and the arguments connected therewith, will find all they 
seek in Ritter's volumes, as well as in Mr. Twisleton's no less 
learned article in Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible." It 



THE EMPIRE OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 2ig 



appears to me quite certain that the word " Ophir " is not to 
be applied to any single point ; that it was a term indicative 
of those distant regions where Solomon traded for gold, san- 
dal-wood, apes, and peacocks ; that it may have taken in the 
east coast of Africa and the Southern coast of Arabia ; but 
that it unquestionably comprised the western coast of India, 
from the mouth of the Indus, southward as far at least as to 
Goa. The Indian origin of the words used in describing 
some of the articles imported is unquestionable ; and sandal- 
wood and peacocks could not have been brought from any 
other point. Indeed, taken as a whole, the articles imported 
by Solomon would be recognized at once by any competent 
judge as Indian ; and the prolonged controversy respecting 
the site of Ophir is narrowed down to this, that although it is 
not improbable that the name may have been so broad and 
generic in its character as to bear application to the other 
coasts alluded to above, yet it is unquestionable that the west- 
ern coast of India is to be kept pre-eminently in view in con- 
nection with Ophir. 

Of Tarshish it is less easy to speak. It does not appear 
possible that Solomon could have sent ships westward from 
Joppa to Tartessus, on the southern coast of Spain : that 
would have been interfering too seriously with the domain of 
the Phoenicians, who controlled the commerce of the Medi- 
terranean. Ships of Tarshish are said to have been in use to 
go to Ophir. In one case (2 Chron ix, 21), we are told that 
Solomon's " ships went to Tarshish with the servants of 
Hiram. Every three years came the ships of Tarshish, bring- 
ing gold and silver, ivory and apes and peacocks." The word 
" Ophir " does not occur here : but the word " Tarshish," 



220 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



it is thought by some, has crept in. in the first clause, by 
an error; for in the corresponding account in i Kings, x. n, 
the account which was followed in preparing the subsequent 
chronicles, the word " Ophir " is found. The whole matter, 
so far as the ablest scholars have been able to sum it up, is as 
follows : That there is one, and but one, Tarshish alluded to 
in the Bible, — the one on the Spanish coast to which Jonah 
is represented as flying ; but that the term " ships of Tar- 
shish " came into general use to indicate a class of vessels 
suitable for long voyages. Whenever, then, we meet in the 
account of Solomon's expeditions, the term " ships of Tar- 
shish," it is thought to mean that larger class of ships which 
would unquestionably be necessary for a three-years' journey 
to the distant Ophir. These " Tarshish ships " were built for 
him by the skilled Tyrian workmen at Ezion-geber, at the 
head of the Gulf of Akabah : they were manned with Tyrian 
sailors, hired and paid by Solomon. This commerce did not 
interfere with the Phoenician interests ; they were, of course 
mostly confined, so far as they were maritime, to the Mediter- 
ranean : and Hiram of Tyre gladly permitted his subjects to 
take Solomon's gold in exchange for their services. 



XV. 



THE TWO KINGDOMS. 

It will be impracticable to follow, step by step, the events 
which mark the subsequent histories of Judah and Israel. 
Happily, they do not take us over fields which are absolutely 
new ; indeed, there is scarcely an incident, which is men- 
tioned in the subsequent history of the tribes, whose geo- 
graphical character has not been seen in some of the transac- 
tions which we have already studied. A rapid survey of this 
part of the subject is entirely practicable, without abandon- 
ment of the method which has thus far been our guide. 

We have thus far traced the line of Jewish history from its 
beginnings in Mesopotamia, at Abraham's home, along its 
tenuous upper course ; we have seen it widen and widen, at 
length become a full and swollen stream ; and at its last stage 
under David and Solomon, we have beheld it attain its max- 
imum dimensions, and become, in territory at least, one of the 
great empires of the earth. There are no points to be dis- 
cussed beyond the regions which have come into view in our 
previous studies ; and we can now leave the stream of history, 
and strike here or there, according as the necessity may 
appear to call. 

Any one who has carefully followed what has been said 
respecting the great mistakes of Solomon's policy, is prepared 
to see that the division of Palestine proper into two kingdoms 

221 



222 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



was natural and inevitable. The one grand mistake which 
hurried the catastrophe was the selection of the fortress of 
Jerusalem, far to the south, in a desolate and forbidding dis- 
trict, as the capital of the whole land. It was a task requir- 
ing the utmost patience and genius to bind the Jewish peo- 
ple together, to cause the sentiment of nationality to take 
deeper and deeper root, and to build up the most remote de- 
pendency with as assiduous care as the most populous city 
received. Moses understood this ; but men who are thought 
by some to have been as wise as Moses, David and Solomon, 
did not. The tendencies of the people at the southern part 
of Palestine were toward self-protection, patriotism, a limita- 
tion of boundaries, a simple shepherd-life ; but at the north, 
where the communications with other great nations were 
ready and direct, a centrifugal impulse was quickly imparted 
to the people, and the necessity of coherence became less 
apparent. The purity of Hebrew worship was much more 
closely oberved in the south than in the north. The Jews of 
Asher and Zebulon were easily persuaded to become the 
menials of Tyrian masters, and to do the common service of 
the Tyrian cities. The men of Naphtali were not so far 
removed from Damascus and the other great cities of Syria 
as not to feel a measure of the subtle influences of those 
voluptuous centers. Ephraim, the great tribe farther south, 
was proud and willful, and was most unwilling to be second 
to the no less proud and willful Judah. It did not need 
words as sharp and scornful as those of Rehoboam to make it 
clear that the tribes of the north would not pay allegiance to 
Judah and Benjamin. Matters were in a perilous way when 
that imperious son of Solomon came to the throne, and 



THE TWO KINGDOMS. 



223 



uttered those insulting words, so unlike any which the good 
Lincoln uttered when the revolt of the South seemed immi- 
nent, — " And now, whereas my father did lade you with a 
heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke : my father has chas- 
tised you with whips ; but I will chastise you with scorpions." 
After this the dissolution was inevitable : it could not even be 
postponed. The whole catastrophe was consummated in a 




JEZREEL. 



day : Judah, with its dependent tribes of Simeon on the south 
and Benjamin on the north, became one nation ; and the 
northern tribes became another. 

The natural capital of the kingdom of Israel was Shechem. 
Its ancient associations, bound as it was to the memories of 
Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, made it a hallowed spot : it was 
lovely as a paradise. It was in the domain of the haughty 
and willful Ephraim. At a subsequent period, Tirzah, a 



* 



2 24 STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 

place noted for its beauty, and lying, it is supposed, among 
the hills at the modern Telluzeh, twelve miles north of She- 
chem or Nablus ; Samaria, the noted city, whose ruins are 
still so full of a mournful grandeur ; and Jezreel, the modern 
Zerin, situated on a bluff in the eastern part of the Plain of 
Esdraelon, — -were the residences of the northern kings. 




SAMARIA, FROM THE SOUTH. 



Nearly all of them were built for reasons which manifest 
themselves in the physical character of the sites which were 
chosen. Jezreel commands the wadies which lead from the 
great plain down to the Jordan, and was the key to the whole 
of Middle Palestine. Samaria, that fair, conical hill south- 
west of Shechem, whose strategic worth was so well known 
to Herod the Great that he fortified it with consummate care, 



THE TWO KINGDOMS. 



225 



was a point whose value was at once recognized ; and Tirzah, 
though so beautiful, — "comely as Tirzah," — was selected 
because it, too, crowned a hill, and hence was a place to hold 
easily, as well as to look down from, upon the approach of an 
enemy. Jeroboam's fortifying of Penuel, the place of Jacob's 
prayer, across the Jordan, was a stroke of strategic policy, 
effected both on account of the sacred associations of the 




RUINS OF THE GREAT COLONNADE AT SAMARIA, 



place, and also because it commanded the Jabbok ravine, 
down which fierce Arabs crept, on their way into Western 
Palestine ; and, in setting up an altar in Bethel, he took 
advantage of the sacred associations which clustered around 
that ancient spot, and helped give sanctity to the idolatrous 
worship inaugurated there. 

A casual glance at the map would convey the impression 
that the extent of territory held by Judah was much less than 

15 



226 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



that of Israel ; yet, in this respect, there was very nearly 
equality. Judah for many years comprised not merely the 
south country of the patriarchs, but the long and mountainous 
tract of Edom. It was only in size, however, that they could 
be compared : in other respects, they could only be con- 
trasted. I need hardly remind the reader of the gaunt and 
savage bareness of the southern portion of Palestine ; of its 
naked wadies ; its gray, dreary hillsides ; its few scattered 
bits of green, beautiful indeed, but prized more for their rarity 
than their attractiveness. Solomon's Gardens at Etham near 
Bethlehem, the Vale of Hebron, the snatches of verdure in 
the mountains of Edom, are well known ; but this scanty list 
can hardly be increased. But, at the north, how different ! 
Not to speak of the rich pasture-lands east of the Jordan, the 
instant that one passes from Benjamin to Ephraim, there is a 
change : the hills put on beauty, the vales become lovely, and 
at last, even luxuriant. The great Esdraelon, the equally 
fertile Buttauf and Huleh plains, the delightful hills of Naph- 
tali and Asher, the well-watered passes of Manasseh, are all 
in marked contrast with the sterile spaces of the south. In 
the rivalry, Nature certainly throws all the weight of outward 
charms on the side of the northern kingdom : the poverty 
was Judah's ; the milk and honey Israel's. 

Yet, in making this distinction, I must not fail to point out 
certain sources of revenue enjoyed by the southern kingdom, 
independently of the scanty soil. These were the income 
derived from the commerce of the Red Sea, and the tribute 
levied upon the Philistines. Edom had always been a rich 
kingdom : all of the ships which landed at Elath and Ezion- 
geber paid customs to it ; all the caravans which passed from 



THE TWO KINGDOMS. 



227 



the Red Sea northward to Damascus and Jerusalem had been 
taxed by it. To control the passes of Petra and to hold 
the harbors of the Red Sea was the source of a great 
income : and this was one of the fruits of David's con- 
quests. The Philistines were not conquered by him ; yet 
they were overawed, and held in a kind of subjection : 
— the balance was turned against them. Had David been 
wiser, he would never have ceased till the Philistines were 
entirely overcome ; till the Jews had taken complete posses- 
sion of the whole western coast : but this he did not do. 
The Philistines held their old domain, and paid their tribute ; 
but they were able to intrigue with the Egyptians, and do im- 
measurable harm. It was their intent evidently to array the 
Egyptians against their own masters ; and this we find they 
soon did. The very reign of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, 
shows us the great Egyptian king Shishak in alliance with 
Jeroboam, the able and resolute king of Israel, against the 
southern kingdom. It seems marvelous that David did not 
understand the need of suppressing the Philistines, and of 
putting his own men into their cities. It is perhaps the most 
striking proof that he did not rise to the grandeur of his op- 
portunity, nor appreciate his mission. It was in Moses' 
thought to extend the limits of the nation to the Egyptian 
boundary : he knew its necessity even then. Joshua and the 
judges, unable to cope with the more civilized Philistines, 
could not fulfill the trust committed to them by the great 
founder of the nation ; but David, the first who was able to 
subdue them, and people their cities with the Jews, did not see 
the necessity, and allowed the Philistines to pay their easy 
tribute, and carry on their secret negotiations with the Egypt- 



228 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



ians. -The full extent of the evil thus introduced was not felt 
till the Egyptians had begun their invasions of Palestine ; 
and then, too late, it was found that the corn which had been 
carried up by the Philistines to the Judaean hill-country, in the 
payment of tribute, was diverted from this channel, and used 
to proyision the Egyptian armies. 

The disruption and the formation of the two kingdoms in- 
augurate an epoch far different from any passed before.' 
Thus Hebrew history widens out, and dovetails with the his- 
tory of the world. It can not be sundered from that of the 
great nations of the East. Egypt, Syria, Assyria, and, later 
still, Media and Persia, have part in the destinies of Palestine. 
It was, however, not till the time to which we have now ad- 
vanced that the great empires on the Euphrates and the 
Tigris began to grow, and to assume importance in the eyes 
of men. Down to that time, Egypt had no great rival there, 
and Palestine was not on the highway between great and hos- 
tile powers. Syria on the north, with Damascus as its capi- 
tal, was, it is true, a formidable power ; but there was no 
collision with it till the time of David, and Syria was no rival 
to Egypt. But when Assyria rose, and advanced with giant 
strides, and absorbed in one great nation the countless Meso- 
potamian tribes, Egypt and Assyria came into deadly rivalry ; 
and the possession of the mountain-block of Palestine was a 
gain of great moment to each of these great empires. Here 
may be seen the significance of the invasions made by the 
armies of the Egyptians, and those of the Assyrians and the 
Babylonians. Palestine was a place not important in itself, 
but most important as a strategic position. It lay, a natural 
fortress, on the extreme northeast of Egypt, on the extreme 



THE TWO KINGDOMS. 



229 



west of the Mesopotamian empires. Between the hights east 
of the Jordan and the Euphrates stretches a bare and monot- 
onous plain. Between Philistia and Egypt is another waste. 
Between these two great and desolate spaces, there is the 
mountain-block of Palestine ; its southern portion singularly 
inaccessible and secure. It was in the possession of a vigor- 
ous, united, freedom-loving people. Had Palestine remained 
united, it would have been impossible for either Assyria or 
Egypt to attack it with any hope of success. As it was, even 
Judea fell most reluctantly ; and it was long before Jerusalem 
yielded. But the dissensions of the Jewish nation were 
working both north and south. We see new and strange 
alliances forming and dissolving, — Syria with Israel/ Syria 
with Judah, Assyria with Judah, Egypt with Judah ; and the 
shifting kaleidoscope of events manifests the incessant weak- 
ening of the two rival Jewish powers, till one fell, and then 
the other. Efforts full of zeal were made to stay the down- 
ward course of both Judah and Israel, but all in vain. At 
the time that the northern kingdom was subjecting itself to 
the fatally enervating influence of Tyre, the great prophet 
Elijah, from the hills of Gilead, east of Jordan, was going up 
and down the hills of Ephraim, endeavoring to rouse the peo- 
ple to a sense of shame, and to a need of meeting the tre- 
mendous crisis which was upon them. Not more impressive 
does that single-hearted and heroic man appear, when, stand- 
ing on the hights of Carmel, he humbled the priests who were 
promulgating the Tyrian worship of Baal, than when he con- 
fronted the wicked Ahab, stung him with his taunts, roused 
him with his imprecations, and restored courage and hope to 
the people. It is not too much to say, that, had it not been 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



for that plain-spoken and earnest man, Israel would have ut- 
terly succumbed to Syria, and have perished from the list of 
nations. Independently of coalitions, it is plain that Israel 
and Judah combined were more than a match for Syria, and 
able to stand successfully against either Egypt or Assyria. 
So, too, the last-named great powers were so equally matched, 
that it was a vital matter for Palestine to be in the possession 
of one of them. The division of the Jewish people made 
them a prey to one another, — a prey to Syria on the north, a 
prey to Assyria on the east, a prey to Egypt on the south- 
west. It is a tangled skein, the story of the Assyrian, Syrian, 
and Egyptian invasions : it were entirely out of place to follow 
it here. But the whole intricate history hinges on geographi- 
cal considerations. The situation of Palestine, and its physi- 
cal character, are the key not more to its early isolation than 
to the eager desire to possess it after the short-lived Assyrian 
power rose. Even down at the time of Cyrus, when the king- 
dom of Babylon had absorbed the earlier Assyria, we find the 
working of a high geographical law governing even the poli- 
tics of that clement prince. Doubtless Nehemiah was actu- 
ated by no spirit but loyalty to his nation in endeavoring to 
reinstate the Jews at Jerusalem. His desire to build up the 
city, to protect it with a wall, and to inaugurate worship there, 
sprang from no lower motive than patriotism : it was pure and 
simple. But it was not so with Cyrus. He is generally sup- 
posed to have been actuated by no feelings but clemency in 
allowing the Jews to return from their captivity, and restore 
the waste places of their land. But a more subtle spirit prob- 
ably possessed him : political design was almost unquestiona- 
bly at the basis of that movement. The Assyrian colonies, 



THE TWO KINGDOMS. 23 1 

which had moved into Samaria and the northern tract, took 
root in the land, tilled it to advantage, and grew to be impor- 
tant communities. But the strategic value of the country in 
relation to Egypt, the one great rival to the Asiatic empires, 
lay, not in the northern, but the southern part of Palestine. 
The northern portion was comparatively open and accessible ; 
the southern portion not at all so. Yet the latter was a sin- 
gularly unattractive region. After Jerusalem had been de- 
stroyed, and the Jews carried into captivity, it was a difficult 
task to cause the people of Babylon to leave their fair gar- 
dens, and go up to that barren hill-country. Had they been 
willing to do so, their undoubted allegiance to the throne of 
Babylon would have made them, as a garrison, much more 
effective than Jews would have been ; for it is a noteworthy 
fact, that after Palestine had lost its old independence, and 
passed into the estate of vassalage, it bore the Egyptian much 
more readily than the Mesopotamian yoke. Cyrus, determin- 
ing to keep that natural fortress in his possession as a strong 
frontier defense, and finding it almost impossible to cause his 
own subjects to go up thither and possess it, allowed the Jews 
to do this, and granted to Nehemiah all assistance in rebuilding 
the fallen city and in strengthening the whole country. Nei- 
ther Ezra nor Nehemiah appears to have suspected the deep 
significance of the favor which was shown them and their 
nation : they accepted as a gracefully-given bounty what was 
the induction of a wise and astute policy. It was hard to get 
the more wealthy Jews to leave Babylonia, and go back : they 
had become merchants, and were as unequal in their success 
there as their successors are in the great marts of the world ; 
the poor being very poor, and the rich becoming very rich. 



232 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS. 



There were some, therefore, who were glad to return ; and the 
richer and more successful ones, unwilling to return them- 
selves, did not withhold liberal presents, and co-operated with 
Cyrus in giving to those who went up to Jerusalem all suita- 
ble help. Nothing but religious fervor and patriotism could 
carry them back to their old barren home. This Nehemiah 
and Ezra had in great measure ; this the poorer Jews had ; 
this the wealthy Jews had not commensurately with the sacri- 
fice of worldly advantages which it involved. But Cyrus, 
rather wise than generous in this thing, availed himself of 
what indirectly gave him a hold on Palestine ; and not only 
permitted, but gave valuable aid to the retiring Jews. This 
is the only way of interpreting his conduct. But this makes 
it all clear. And still more manifest does the. character of his 
apparent kindness to the Jews appear if what Herodotus 
affirms be true, — that Cyrus meditated the conquest of 
Egypt. 

The comparative fruitfulness of the northern and southern 
portions of Palestine may be seen, in another direction, to 
have had an immense weight in determining the hands into 
which they were to fall. When the Assyrian monarchs, Pul, 
Tiglath-pileser, Shalmaneser, and Esar-haddon, came up 
against Palestine, entered it by the north, and captured the 
portion which lay open to them (namely, that part which was 
held by the northern tribes), they put Judah into an estate of 
vassalage, it is true, and attempted to overrun her, and take 
Jerusalem, but were unable. The northern and more unpro- 
tected portion, making little resistance, was at their mercy ; 
and their course was the natural one of removing the popula- 
tion, and substituting their own. The country was so attrac- 



THE TWO KINGDOMS. 233 

tive, that Assyrians were glad to exchange their own plains 
for its fertile uplands, its delightful valleys. It was not neces- 
sary, as at a later time, when Assyria had passed away, and 
Jerusalem had been the prey of the mighty nation which had 
ingulfed the Assyrian empire, — it was not necessary to coax 
Israelites to go back to their own land : they lived and they 
died in their new home in Halah and Habor and Hara, on 
the River Gozan. Had that northern portion been sterile, 
the Assyrian princes would hardly have been able to garrison 
it with their own men, and the removal of the tribes would 
have been followed by an utter abandonment of the land. 
And so it was brought about of God, that the Jews were sent 
back, laden with wealth, to till their own hills, and rebuild 
their own chief city ; while the northern tribes, once taken 
away, never returned. 

We hear now and then the question raised, " What became 
of the lost tribes ? " No idler theme was ever started ; and 
the folly of some of the opinions broached in connection with 
it is hardly surpassed by the absurd identification of Ophir 
with Peru. The Scriptures are explicit in their account of 
the places in Assyria to which the Israelites were conducted. 
We know the feeble hold that their faith had on those north- 
ern tribes, and need no further assurance than their history 
gives us elsewhere, that it were a light thing for them to 
abandon their faith, and in all respects ally themselves with 
the people with which they were incorporated. Beyond ques- 
tion, they became a part of the nation living on the banks of 
the Tigris and its tributaries, and lost all national individual- 
ity. Were there prophets among them who endeavored to 
keep alive the national spirit, their voice was unheeded, and 



234 



STUDIES IN BIBLE LANDS 



their names have not lived till this day. The discovery of 
those tribes in China, in India, in America, is one of the idlest 
fancies of the day ; nor is it hardly to be believed that much 
chance exists longer of detecting the faintest vestiges of them 
in the land to which they were transferred. 




POOL OF SILOAM. 



INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PLACES. 







PAGE. 






PAGE. 


Abarim 


• • • 




121 


Bethel (map, 166) 




33. 


135 


Achshaph (map, 166) . 


■ * • 




146 


Beth-horon (map, 166) 




140, 


198 


Admah 


• • • 




36 


Bethlehem (map, 166) 




• 


I98 


Adullam 


• • • 


1 93, 


199 


Beth-shean (map, 166) 




• 


196 


Ai (map, 166) 






135 


Beth-shemesh (map, 166) . 




• 


183 


Ain .... 






126 


Bezek . 




• 


x8 5 


Ajalon (map, 166) 




140, 


198 


Bezer (map 166) 




• 


181 


Akrabbim 






124 


Bozez . 




• 


198 


Alush .... 






84 


Bozrah 






155 


Amalekites . 


• • 38, 


84, 


157 


Buz 




• 


155 


Aramon 


106, 


iS3i 


188 










Amorites 




38, 


152 


Cassarea Philippi 






MS 


Anab .... 




. 


M7 


Canaan . . ■ . 






151 


Aphek (map, 166) 






200 


Capernaum (map, 166) 






177 


Aphek (on Lebanon) . 






148 


Carmel (map, 166) 






200 


Ar 






99 


Carmel, Mt. (map, 166) 




146, 


172 


Aram .... 






26 


Casluhim .... 






27 


Ararat . • . 




12, 


20 


Chaldaea 


. 12, 


27, 


36 


Argob (map, 35) . 






110 


Chephirah .... 






138 


Armenia 






20 


Chinnereth .... 






146 


Arnon (map, 40) . 






106 


Cush . . .... 






26 


Aroer .... 






in 










Arvadite 






151 


Damascus . • . 




32, 


214 


Ashdod (map, 166) 






159 


Dan (map, 166) . 


. 100, 


148, 


171 


Ashkelon (map, 166) . 






159 


Dead Sea (map, 40) 








Ashkenaz 






26 


Debir (map, 166) 




143, 


185 


Ashteroth Karnaim 






36 


Dibon 






in 


Assyria 




15, 


26 


Dophkah .... 






84 


Avim 






iS4 


Dor (map, 166) . 




146, 


178 


Azekah 






141 


Dothan (map, 35) 






61 


Azmon 






124 


Ebal (map, 166) . 




33, 


136 


Baal-gad 






*47 


Eden 


• 12, 


14. 


15 


Baal-zephon 






7 


Edom ...... 


• 99, 


154, 


215 


Bashan 




36, 


108 


Edrei (map, 35) . 






109 


Beeroth 






138 


Eglon , . ... 






139 


Beersheba (map, 166) . 




46, 49-52 


Egypt 




Z2,. 


20 



235 



236 



INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PLACES. 



PAGE. PAGE. 



Egypt (river of) . 






124 


Hiddekel . 






15 


Ekron (map, 166) 






159 








207 


Elah 






198 


Hittites . 






152 


Elam 




26, 


36 








r 53 


Elath . . 






156 


Hor (map, 76) 




37, 


100 


Elim (map, 76) . 






82 


Hor (in Lebanon) 






124 


Elishah .... 






23 








86 


Eraim 






37 








i35 


Endor (map, 166) 






174 










Engedi (map, 40) 






38 


Ishtob . 






214 


En-mishpat 






38 










Ephrath .... 






61 


Jabbok (map, 35) 




59, 


106 


Eshcol .... 






IOI 


Jabesh-Gilead (map, 166) . 






196 


Etham 






68 








i39 


Etham (rock) 






189 








i53 


Etham (near Bethlehem) . 






212 


Jericho (map, 40) 




a 


131 


Euphrates 






15 


Jerusalem (map, 166) . 


44, 139, 


J43> 


207 


Ezlon-geber . . . . 




100, 


156 


Jezreel (map, 166) 


• 174, 


200, 


224 
26 


Gaash 






185 








156 


Gath (map, 166) 






159 








128 


Gaza (map, 166) . 




159, 


189 










Gerar 






5° 


Kadesh (map, 76) 


• 33, 


9°, 


i55 


Gerizim (map, 166) 




33, 


136 








158 


Qeshurites .... 






150 


Kedesh (map, 166) 


. . 


. 


181 


Gibeah . . ' .. 






190 


Keilah . 






199 


Gibeon (map, 166) 






138 








158 


Giblites .... 






149 








158 


Gihon 






15 


Kirjath-arba (map, 35) 








Gihon, Valley of . 






207 


Kirjath-jearim (map, 166) . 


• 138, 




1 84 


Gilboa (map, 166) 






187 


Kishon (map, 166) 


• • 


• 


186 


Gilead (map, 35) 




57, 


188 










Gileal 






1 3 1 








i39 


Girgasites .... 






150 








i47 


Golan (map, 166) 






181 


Lebonah (map, 166) . 


• 




183 


Gomorrah .... 






36 








189 


Goshen . . 






64 






144, 


161 


Goshen (in Palestine) . 






144 








33 


Gozan 






233 








214 


Habor 






233 








55 


Halah 






2 33 








23 


Halak . . 






147 








146 


Hamath .... 




100, 


125 








177 


Hara 






233 


Mahanaim (map, 35) . 


• 


• 


57 


Haran 






30 




* 




141 


Hauran (map, 35) 






112 








34 


Havilah .... 






15 








200 


Hazar-enan 






125 


Marah (map, 76) 


• • 




81 


Hazezon-Tamar (map, 35) . 






38 


Megiddo (map, 166) . 






186 


Hazor (map, 166) 






144 








146 


Hebron (map, 166) . 34, 


52-56, 


169, 


203 


Michmash (map, 166) . 


• • 




197 


Hermon .... 




36, 


"3 








7i 


Heshbon (map, 40) 






108 


Millo . 


• 




207 



INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PLACES. 



2 37 



PAGE. 

Minnith 189 

Misrephoth-maim . " . . . . 146 

Mizpah (west of Jordan) (map, 166) . 190 

Mizpah (map, 35) 57, 188 

Mizpeh . . . . . . . 147 

Mizraim ....... 26 

Moab 33, 106, 153 

Moreh 32, 146 

Moriah . • 207 

Naamah 155 

Nain (map, 166) . . . . 174 

Naioth 199 

Nebo (map, 40) 118 

Nob 199 

Nod 12, 19 

On (map, 66) 64 

Ophir 13, 14, 219, 233 

Ophrah (map, 166) 197 

Paran (map, 76) 98 

Penuel (map, 166) . . . .188, 225 

Perizzites 152 

Phoenicia . . > . . . .146 

Philistia 158 

Phut 26 

Pi-hahiroth 71 

Pisgah 118 

Pison 15 

Pithom 67 

Rabbath (map, 35) 214 

Ramah * . .193 

Ramathaim-zophim 193 

Rameses 67 

Ramoth-Gilead (map, 166) . . . .181 

Rehob 100 

Rephaim, Plain 216 

Rephidim (map, 76) 85 

Riblah . . ." 126 

Rimmon 191 

Riphath 26 

Samaria (map, 166) 224 

Seir 37, 57 

Selah . . . . . . . .156 

Seneh ........ 198 

Shalim ig 3 

Shalisha 193 

Sharon (map, 166) 172 

Sheba 218 

Shechem, (map, 166) 32, 59, 173, 188, 223 

Shen . . . . . . . . 193 



PAGE. 

Shenir . . . . . . .114 

Shepham 126 

Shiloh (map, 166) 182 

Shimron 14 6 

Shinar 12, 36 

Shuh . . . ' IS5 

Shunem (map, 166) . . 172 

Shur (map, 76) 83, 98 

Sidon (map, 166) . . . ... . 148 

Sin (map, 76) 82, 98 

Sinai (map, 76) 90-98 

Sinite ^1 

Sion . .114 

Sirion . . . . . . " .114 

Socoh (map, 166) 199 

Sodom . . 36 

Sorek .189 

Succoth (map, 35) .... 58, 188 
Succoth (in Egypt) . • . . . .68 

Taanach (map, 166) 186 

Tabor, Mt. (map, 166). . . . 174, 1S5 

Tabor (plain) 193 

Tadmor 215 

Tarshish 13, 219 

Teman . . . '. . . . 155 

Thebez (map, 166) 188 

Timnath, (map 166) 189 

Timnath-serah (map, 166) .... 184 

Tiphsah (map, 29) 215 

Tiras ......... 23 

Tirzah 223 

Togarmah . . . . . . .26 

Tophet . 207 

Tyre (map, 166) 168 

Ur 12, 28 

Uz 155 

Zeboim 36, 197 

Zedan 125 

Zelzah 193 

Zemarite 151 

Zephath 100 

Ziklag 200 

Zion 207 

Ziph (map, 166) 200 

Ziphron ... . . . . 136 

Zoan (map, 66) 63 

Zoar (map, 40) 36, 39 

Zobah 214 

Zuph 193 

Zuzim 37 



U 8 68 



