THEOLOGICAL SEMIT'ARY 
 
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THE LAND OF ISRAEL, 
 
 ACCORDING TO 
 
 THE COVENANT 
 
 WITH 
 
 ABRAHAM, WITH ISAAC, AND WITH JACOB. 
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
 BY ALEXANDEB KEITH, D.D., 
 
 AUTHOR OF “THE EVIDENCE OF PROPHECY,” “SIGNS OF THE TIMES,” 
 “DEMONSTRATION OF THE TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.” 
 
 Kumei'ous 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 harper & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
 
 1 855 . 
 
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TG 
 
 JOHN ABERCROMBIE, M.D., 
 
 2rt)e follohDittfl STrcatlse (s Knscti'bcG, 
 
 IN TOKEN OF CHRISTIAN ESTEEM, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 LIBRARY OF PRINCETON 
 
 TKEOLCGiCAL SEMINARY 
 
j 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following treatise was commenced with the in¬ 
 tention, on the part of the author, of drawing out a few 
 retrospective and prospective sketches of Judea and 
 Judaism. On his return from Palestine, he was urged 
 by the esteemed friend to whom it is inscribed to pub 
 lish the substance of an evening’s conversation in his 
 hospitable house. He naturally reverted to the cove¬ 
 nant with Abraham, as the groundwork of such an 
 essay. That subject alone, in connexion with kindred 
 themes, called for a more full illustration than he at 
 first anticipated. And as the subsequent essay, which 
 thus originated, may be considered as, in part, a se¬ 
 quel to his Treatise on the Evidence of Prophecy, it 
 may also form the introduction to other Scriptural 
 topics, of momentous import to Gentiles as well as 
 Jews. 
 
 The writer has thankfully to express his obligations 
 to Colonel Chesney for the use of his map constructed 
 for his forthcoming work on the Euphrates Expedition, 
 with many of the proof-sheets of which he kindly fur¬ 
 nished him; to Colonel M‘Niven, for the Views of 
 CaBsarea, and the Convent at Zahli; to Mr. Bucking¬ 
 ham, for liberty to use several plates from his Travels 
 among the Arab Tribes ; to Mr. Ainsworth, and to 
 the publisher of his Researches in Assyria, for the View 
 of Mount Casius; and to Messrs. Fisher, for permis¬ 
 sion to insert the first and largest plates, taken from 
 their splendid work, “ Views of Syria.” 
 
 November, 1843. 
 
 A 2 
 
LIST OF ENGRAVINGS 
 
 DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER. 
 
 Map of the Land of Israel according to the Covenant, to face Title Page. 
 
 Map showing the entrance into Hamath.94 
 
 Remains of the Port of Seleucia.109 
 
 Junction of a Tributary Stream with the Orontes . . . .Ill 
 
 Roman Ruin at Gunnawat ^ 255 
 
 Castle and Ruins of Salghud J 
 
 Castle and Plain of Emeza % 253 
 
 Caravan on the Plains of the Haouran ) 
 
 Scene in the Mountains east of the Haouran > 280 
 
 Passage of the Zerka in Bashan j * * ’ 
 
 View of Tiberias.296 
 
 Gate at Antioch.320 
 
 Portico of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec.325 
 
 Temple at Baalbec. 327 
 
 Grand Gallery at Palmyra.337 
 
 Jerusalem from the South .349 
 
 Jerusalem from the North . ih. 
 
 Gardens of Solomon .. ib. 
 
 Convent of Zahle.353 
 
 The Kadischa of Lebanon.358 
 
 Mount Tabor. 362 
 
 Cedars of Lebanon.36^ 
 
INTRODFCTION. 
 
 True in all their emphatic meaning have been tlie 
 words of the prophet for many ages past, Who shall 
 have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem 1 or who shall bemoan 
 thee ? or who shall turn aside to ask how thou doest ?* 
 Yet the time cometh when the truth of other words of 
 more propitious omen shall be as clearly seen: “ PYr 
 the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, 
 say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation 
 cometh; behold his reward is with him, and his work 
 before him, and they shall call them. The holy people, 
 The redeemed of the Lord : and thou shall he called, 
 sought out, a city not for sakenr\ 
 
 While the Jews have been scattered among all na¬ 
 tions under heaven, the land of Israel—except in history 
 and in the associations pertaining to ancient times, 
 which suffer it not to be dissevered from the minds or 
 memories of Christians or Jews—was long almost for¬ 
 gotten as an existing country, and its actual condition 
 in a great measure unknown. After the age of the 
 Crusades, it ceased to exercise any influence on the 
 world at large, or any peculiar general interest in Asia 
 or Europe. Its political importance was gone; and 
 by the discovery of a new passage to India, the line 
 of communication between these two quarters‘of the 
 world was turned far from its shores. Its coast, though 
 the cradle of commerce, was desolate, lone, and unvis¬ 
 ited, the prey of barbarism and the resort of wild 
 beasts. And it was only towards the close of the last, 
 and the commencement of the present century, that 
 Syria began to be inquired after, and to reassert its 
 claim to the notice of the world. Bereaving the na¬ 
 tions of men, as foretold, and partly fulfilled, it became 
 
 * Jer., XV., 5. . t Isa., Ixii., 11, 12. 
 
X 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 during the Crusades the conamon grave of Europe, of ; 
 Asia, and of Africa, yet it could not be rescued from | 
 the hands of infidel but not idolatrous Moslems, but j 
 was left to the unmarked progress of decay and deso¬ 
 lation, till its once vine-clad mountains are bare, and 
 its cities waste, and its plains desolate, and nothing but 
 the scantling of a population left in the land, for the 
 possession of which many myriads had contended, and 
 which in times more ancient had been thickly studded 
 with cities. Yet these, when reduced to desolation, 
 had ruins sufficient in an inquiring age to attract the 
 traveller, and to command admiration. They were 
 successively searched out, visited, and portrayed, till, 
 strange to say, Tadmor or Palmyra, Baalath or Baal- j 
 bee, built by Solomon, Petra and Geresa, became, in 
 succession, novelties to the world. New causes speed¬ 
 ily conspired to attach a higher interest than that of 
 curiosity to Syria. Lying at the extremity of the 
 Mediterranean, between Britain and India, its locality 
 in a commercial view raised it, by the invention of 
 steam navigation, into a new importance ; and the traf¬ 
 fic, or at least communication between Asia and Eu¬ 
 rope, pointed, after the lapse of ages, towards its direct 
 and original channels. And as the contest between 
 these quarters of the globe for its possession had rivet¬ 
 ed on it in former ages the attention of the world, so 
 all eyes were fixed on it again in the course of the last 
 few years, when the question of its subserviency to the 
 Pacha of Egypt or the Sultan of Turkey was a ques¬ 
 tion of the integrity or existence of the Ottoman Em¬ 
 pire, and, consequently, of peabe or war throughout 
 Europe or the world. 
 
 But the heritage of Jocob, however desolate it may 
 lie, or by whatever hordes of Gentiles it may be trod¬ 
 den down, has far higher interest attached to it than 
 that of being a field for the inspection of ruins, and a 
 higher destiny to fulfil than that of a bond of peace, or 
 a cause of war, or any apportioning of earthly king¬ 
 doms. Of that land, even as of the people whose it is 
 by the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, we 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XI 
 
 can speak as of no other. Though it had passed as an 
 existing state into oblivion, and men, in familiar phrase, 
 had lost sight of it, and no one bemoaned it, yet the 
 eyes of the Lord are always upon it, even as he hath 
 declared of Zion,/ have graven thee upon the palms of 
 my hands ; thy walls are continually before me ; thy 
 destroyers and they that made thee desolate shall go forth 
 of thee. Not to regard the peculiarity of the land, as 
 well as of the people Israel, in respect to the threaten¬ 
 ed curses and the promised blessings, is to miss the 
 proper character, and to omit the chief discriminating 
 feature of the one and of the other. It would be as 
 unwise as wicked to qualify an historical statement, or 
 wrest a geographical fact in accordance with a fancy, 
 whether to show that all the history and all the facts 
 pertaining to their land may be explained without a 
 miracle, or whether, more philosophically, we think it 
 be indubitably held, in illustrating the prophecies con¬ 
 cerning both, as miraculous throughout, the hand of 
 the Lord being revealed in it all. The facts are the 
 same, and have to be stated with the same precision 
 and truth, whether predicted or not. The additional 
 fact, that they were foretold, adds a new import to 
 them all, and solves a problem otherwise inexplicable. 
 A mystery, in the marvellous transition it has under¬ 
 gone, seems to hang over the land as over the people ; 
 and the desolation of the one is analogous in character, 
 and coincident in time, with the dispersion of the other. 
 But the sure word of prophecy, to which we do well to 
 take heed, unfolds the future, as it revealed the past, 
 and lays open to the believer’s view the declared, but 
 yet unaccomplished purpose of the Lord, which can 
 never be disannulled. The everlasting covenant with 
 Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, concerning the 
 land as the everlasting possession of their seed, was 
 made with these faithful fathers of the Hebrew race 
 before that covenant was made with the Israelites 
 under Moses and Joshua, the curses of which, not heard 
 of till then, have come upon the land. As it preceded, 
 it is destined to survive them all. Coming history must 
 
i 
 
 Xii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 therefore bear its part, like all the past, in the actual 
 and finally palpable development, in the sight of all 
 men, of the counsels of the Holy One of Israel, the God 
 of the whole earth, as He yet shall he called. And all 
 the idol-devotees of a more 'worldly policy shall be 
 brought to see, as time advances and momentous events 
 ensue with a closeness and velocity hitherto unparallel¬ 
 ed, that all their schemes which accord not with the 
 faith that He is the Ruler among the nations, shall lie 
 as low as the once mighty Babylon, of which nothing is 
 left, and which has crumbled into dust before His word. 
 
 The full accomplishment of the judgments that were . 
 to come upon the land, is the harbinger of the comple¬ 
 tion, in the latter days, of the covenant of 'promise. 
 Expatriated for nearly eighteen centuries as the Jews 
 have been, all connexion between them and the land 
 of their fathers, were they a people numbered among 
 the nations, might well have seemed ere now, so far as 
 human foresight could discern, to have ceased forever. 
 And yet the separate, though similar fates of the land 
 and of the people are, in fact, so closely linked togeth¬ 
 er and interwoven in the unerring Word of the un¬ 
 changeable Jehovah, that clearly as the long-continued 
 blindness and dispersion of the Jews were foretold, so 
 clearly does the very degree of desolation to which 
 their fatherland should finally be reduced, rank among 
 the measures of the time of their return. 
 
 The Lord said to Isaiah, when he beheld his glory, 
 
 “ Go, and tell this people. Hear ye indeed, but under¬ 
 stand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make 
 the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, 
 and shut their eyes ; lest they see with their eyes, and 
 hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, 
 and convert,and be healed. Then said I, How long? 
 And He answered, Until the cities be wasted without 
 inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land 
 be utterly desolate, and the Lord have removed men 
 far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst 
 of the land. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall 
 return, and shall be eaten: as a teil-tree and as an oak, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 1 
 
 xm 
 
 whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, 
 so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.”* 
 
 The land of Israel, as possessed and peopled of old 
 by the seed of Jacob, and also the neighbouring re¬ 
 gions, which, as shown in the following pages, were 
 included within the promised inheritance, are so full of 
 literal illustrations of literal predictions, that, as the 
 author has been enabled to show in successive editions 
 of the Evidence of Prophecy, the truth of more than 
 two hundred texts, or upward of a hundred distinct 
 prophecies, may be read in the history and existing 
 • state of the land, and of its desolate cities.f The 
 curses of the covenant which the Israelites brake are 
 there as legible, word for word, as in the oracles of the 
 living God, whose covenant it was, and who made it 
 with the Israelites when they first entered into Canaan. 
 They have taken effect till nothing more than the pre¬ 
 dicted tenth is left. 
 
 The hope expressed in the preface to the first edition 
 of that treatise, of bringing the subject of the literal 
 fulfilment of prophecy into view, especially as illustra¬ 
 ted by the discoveries of recent travellers, has been 
 amply realized ; and many prophetic topics that need¬ 
 ed illustration are now familiar to thousands. It is, 
 therefore, needless to repeat the proofs of the existing 
 desolation, or to trace anew the discriminating features 
 of the ruined cities, as drawn of old by the prophets. 
 But the hope is cherished of presenting many of them 
 to the Christian public, and of setting them before un¬ 
 believers, without the aid either of the pen or of the 
 pencil. J Yet, as one reason, among many others, for 
 exciting interest in another theme, and for regarding 
 other words’of the Lord that have to be accomplished 
 in another way, the degree of desolation marked in the 
 preceding words uttered by the Lord in the hearing of 
 the prophet, as he looked upon his glory, may here 
 prove a befitting introduction to a covenant without a 
 
 * Isa., vi., 9-13. t Evidence of Prophecy, p. 97-263. 
 
 t By a process which may be said to be natural, the calyotype, or daguerre¬ 
 otype. 
 
 B 
 
XIV 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 curse. No man hath seen the Father at any time ; 
 but centuries before his incarnation, the Lord of hostSf 
 the eternal Word, who is the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever, spake to the prophet of the long-continued 
 blindness and impenitence of Israel, and answered his 
 question. How long? by an appeal to what the land 
 should finally become ere that blindness should cease. 
 But the Lord did not appear in his glory to Isaiah, 
 amid the hallelujahs of the cherubim, and send an angel 
 to touch his lips with a live coal from off the altar, to 
 enable him to ask the question, in order that He him¬ 
 self might return to it an unmeaning or indefinite an¬ 
 swer. It becomes man, who is a worm, to regard with 
 reverence, and to hear with faith, the words which the 
 Lord hath spoken. “ My days are like a shadow, that 
 declineth,” saith the Psalmist; “ and I am withered 
 like grass. But thou, O Lord, shalt endure forever, 
 and thy remembrance unto all generations. Thou 
 shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion : for the time to 
 favour her, yea, the set time, is come. For thy ser¬ 
 vants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust 
 thereof; so the heathen shall fear the name of the 
 Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. When 
 the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in his 
 / glory. He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and 
 not despise their prayer. This shall he written for the 
 generation to come ; and the people which shall be cre¬ 
 ated shall praise the Lord.” As thus it is written for 
 a generation to come, so the Lord appeared in his 
 glory to Isaiah, when He made known to him the 
 time of the final termination of the blindness of Israel. 
 
 Earthly sovereigns are the executioners of the judg¬ 
 ments of the heavenly King; and do, even when it is 
 not in their heart to think so, all His pleasure. Often, 
 as unconsciously, have skeptical writers, like Gibbon 
 or Volney, recorded the things by which His word is 
 illustrated. But it is worthy of remark, as if official evi¬ 
 dence were needed here, that the British government, 
 a few years ago, sent forth a commissioner to make in¬ 
 quiry, and to report on the state of Syria, whose re- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XV 
 
 port, when completed, was presented to both houses of 
 Parliament by command of her majesty.* It supplied 
 some striking additional illustrations, seemingly uncon¬ 
 sciously given, of literal prophecies concerning the 
 iand.f Among these, not the least remarkable is the 
 very first paragraph of the appendix, or the report of 
 Mr. Consul Moore, an intelligent observer, who has re¬ 
 sided for years in the land. 
 
 “ Syria is a country whose population bears no pro¬ 
 portion to its superficies, and the inhabitants may be 
 considered, on the most moderate calculation, as re¬ 
 duced to a tithe of what the soil could abundantly 
 maintain under a wfiser system of administration.”J 
 And in the body of the report it is stated that “ the 
 country is capable of producing tenfold the present 
 produce.Ӥ 
 
 According to the Word of the Lord, They that dwell 
 therein are desolate, and few men left.'^ The city that 
 went out hy a thousand shall leave a hundred, and that 
 which went out hy a hundred shall leave ten, to the house 
 of Israel.^\ Make the hearts of this people fat, and 
 make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, ^c. And I 
 said. How long 1 And He answered. Until the cities 
 be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without 
 man, &c.; but yet in it shall be a tenth, &c. 
 
 Is it not time, then, to look to another covenant than 
 that which bears the curses that have indeed devoured 
 the land, but have also their term assigned them by 
 the Lord ? 
 
 “ The covenant of works, and the covenant of grace,” 
 have often divided Christian theology between them, 
 as in some respects they rightly may. But there are 
 other or more defined covenants in the Word of God, 
 to which it becomes believers to have respect. That 
 which God made with Abraham, of promise and of 
 grace, is everlasting, and knows no other termination 
 than that of the heavens and of the earth. 
 
 *■ Report on the Commercial Statistics of Syria, London, 1840. 
 
 t Evidence of Prophecy, p, 427-9. t Report on Syria, p. 111. 
 
 4 Report on Syria, p. 90. || Isaiah, xxiv., 6, Amos, v., 3. 
 
XVI 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In the subsequent pages the perpetuity of that covC" 
 nant concerning the land, and its connexion with that 
 which was made with the Israelites when the Lord 
 brought them out of Egypt, and with the new and ever¬ 
 lasting covenant which He will make with the house 
 of Israel, and with the house of Judah, and also with 
 the covenant which the Lord made with David con¬ 
 cerning his throne, is, in the first place, brought within 
 the view of the reader. The borders of the land, not 
 as it was anciently possessed, but as set of the Lord, 
 naturally form the immediately succeeding theme, 
 which is treated at so great length as to demand an 
 apology. But so little was the writer aware, ere he 
 entered on the investigation, of the full extent, especial¬ 
 ly on the north, of the Scriptural boundaries of the 
 promised land, that, when requested at a recent date 
 to mark their limits for. the construction of a map, he 
 drew a line a little to the north of Hamath, conscious 
 that it was included ; but, unobservant then of the pre¬ 
 cise Scriptural definition of the entrance into Hamath, 
 he drew it regardless of any entrance, or any natural 
 border whatever, across a double chain of mountains. 
 This obvious error led to a closer examination. And 
 now he can plead only the novelty of the topic in ex¬ 
 cuse for this lengthened illustration, for which, if he 
 mistake not, a few words may henceforth suffice, with¬ 
 out the hazard of a repetition of the error. 
 
 In the sequel of the volume proof is adduced, from 
 its past history and actual condition, of the goodliness 
 of the land ; of its natural fertility, not impaired, but 
 increased ; and also of the facility with which its fallen 
 cities may be raised from their foundation, and forsa¬ 
 ken cities, though not fallen, even cities still existing, 
 though without inhabitants, and houses still standing, 
 though without man, may be repaired or restored to 
 dwell in. 
 
 The land of promise, rightly bearing that title still 
 when looked at as it is, appears, indeed, like an oak 
 which the storms of winter have stripped of its leaves. 
 But in taking up the covenant with Abraham, and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XVU 
 
 Isaac, and Jacob, it is not in that aspect that we would 
 view it here ; but rather would we look to what it has 
 been, and to the substance that is in it still, in order to 
 show what, in accordance with the Abrahamic cove¬ 
 nant, and many precious promises of Scripture, it yet 
 shall be, when that substance which is in it shall put 
 forth its fullest foliage anew, even richer and more 
 beauteous than ever; and the bare and naked land be 
 covered and clothed again, like an oak of Bashan in 
 summer. 
 
 The desolation of many cities, as illustrative of 
 prophecy, might be told in a word; but the practica¬ 
 bility of their restoration demands a closer inspection. 
 Nay, the ruins would all need to be disclosed to view, 
 as has been of late partially the case with some, be¬ 
 fore a complete idea could be formed of the amplitude 
 of the materials ready for reconstruction. The ruins 
 of Syria are not like those of many othpr lands; not 
 like those of Egypt, for instance, often buried beneath 
 the sand; nor like those of other countries, where 
 bi’oken fragments of once connected walls encumber 
 the ground, incapable of being built up again. But 
 better promises than Israel, or any other nation ever 
 yet inherited, have in these pages to be kept ultimate¬ 
 ly in view. And we would here draw from the past, 
 or describe the present, to show how, in respect to the 
 land, all things are ready, or ripening fast for the com¬ 
 pletion—it may be at no distant day, though other 
 judgments yet intervene—of the covenant with faith¬ 
 ful Abraham, to which no curses are annexed ; and 
 also how the past and still visible judgments which 
 come upon the land may be viewed as pointing to, and 
 preparing for, the time when mercy shall rejoice over 
 them, and the world, with all its families, blessed in 
 the seed of Jacob, be a witness that the God of Israel 
 is a covenant-keeping God, who will not suffer his 
 faithfulness to fail, but overrules all things for the final 
 accomplishment of his word, and for the ultimate man¬ 
 ifestation of his glory. 
 
 B2 
 
THE LAND OF ISRAEL 
 
 MY COVENANT WILL I NOT BREAK, NOR ALTER THE THING THAT 
 IS GONE OUT OF MY MOUTH.—Ixxxix., 34. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE COVENANT WITH ABRAHAM RESPECTING THE LAND- 
 
 ITS PERPETUITY. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 The name of “ the land of Canaan” is nearly coeval with 
 the deluge. And the names of ancient cities, still attached 
 to the same localities, serve at once to fix the site of the ter¬ 
 ritory possessed by the Canaanites, when “ the nations were 
 divided after the flood.” Sidon^ the father of the Sidonians, 
 was the eldest son of Canaan, the grandson of Noah. “ The 
 border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to 
 Gerar unto Gaza,”* &c. “ The families of the Canaanites 
 
 were spread abroad,” and they speedily occupied extensive 
 regions in Syria. 
 
 The dwelling of the families of Shem, of whom came the 
 Hebrew race, was in the east.f Abram dwelt in Ur of the 
 Chaldees, beyond the Euphrates.:|: 
 
 From the time that God blessed Noah, after the deluge, 
 there is no record that his voice was heard by man till He 
 appeared unto Abram, when he was in Mesopotamia.§ Four 
 hundred years subsequent to the establishment of the cove¬ 
 nant with Noah and his seed, the word of the Lord came 
 unto the son of Terah, a descendant of Shem, •' Get thee out 
 of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s 
 house, unto a land that I will show thee; and I will make of 
 thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and. make thy name 
 great; and thou shalt he a blessing: and I will bless them 
 that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee 
 shall all the families of the earth be blessed. So Abram de¬ 
 parted, as the Lord had spoken unto him. And Abram took 
 
 * Gen., X., 10. t Ibid., 30. t Ilud., xv., 7. Acts, rii., 2, 
 
20 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 Sarai his wife, and Lot, his brother’s son, and all their sub¬ 
 stance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had 
 gotten in Haran ; and they went forth to go into the land of 
 Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came. And 
 Abram passed through the land unto the 'plain of Sichem, 
 unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the 
 land. And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto 
 THY SEED WILL I GIVE THIS LAND I and there builded he an 
 altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him.”* 
 
 A grievous famine prevailing afterward in Canaan, Abram 
 went down into Egypt, to sojourn for a season. After his 
 return, as on his first entrance into Canaan, the promise was 
 confirmed and renewed more amply than before : “ And the 
 Lord said unto Abram, after Lot was separated from him^ 
 Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou 
 art, northward, and southward, and eastward, and west¬ 
 ward ; for all the land which thou seest, to thee 'will I give 
 it, and to thy seed forever. Arise, walk through the land, in 
 the length of it and in the breadth of it: for I will give it 
 unto thee.”t 
 
 Again, after Abram had long sojourned in the land, the 
 repeated promises of the Lord assumed the form of a cove¬ 
 nant, confirmed by visible signs, by which, as it were, the 
 Lord pledged himself to their fulfilment; and He set the 
 bounds of the destined inheritance of his seed. “ The Word 
 of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying. Fear not, 
 Abram ; I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. 
 Already had he shown his faith by his works; he had left 
 his own country at the Divine command, not knowing whith¬ 
 er he was to go, but as the Lord would show him ; and 
 when the aged and childless pilgrim was told that his own 
 son, and no other, should be his heir, and that his seed 
 should be numerous as the stars of heaven, he believed in 
 the Lord, arid He counted it to him for righteousness. A 
 Chaldean, dwelling in the midst of idolaters, had been call¬ 
 ed by the Lord, and had left his country, his kindred, and 
 his father’s house, at his command; he had gone childless 
 for many a year, till hoary hairs were upon him, a wander- 
 ing pilgrim in a land of strangers; and the steward of his 
 house was Eliezer of Damascus. Had not the Almighty 
 otherwise decreed, his name, in a few short years at the far¬ 
 thest, would have been blotted out from under heaven. But 
 
 * Gen., zii., 1-6. t Ihid., xiii., 14, 15, 17. t Ibid., xy ., 1. 
 
I 
 
 CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 21 
 
 when the Word of the Lord came to him, saying, “ This 
 shall not be thine heir ; but he that shall come forth of thine 
 own bowels shall be thine heir,” he believed. And when 
 “ the Lord brought him forth abroad and said. Look now to¬ 
 wards heaven and tell the stars, if thou be able to number 
 them,” the childless man lifted up his aged, head, and, in a 
 pure and cloudless atmosphere unknown in gloomy regions, 
 he looked upon the untold and numberless stars that thickly 
 studded the whole firmament of heaven ; and when the Word 
 of the Lord said unto him. So shall thy seed he^ he believed 
 in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness. 
 And He said unto him, I am the Lord, that brought thee out 
 of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.* 
 It was enough for Abram that the Lord had spoken. It was 
 counted enough by the Lord that Abram believed. And the 
 time was come when the Lord made a covenant between 
 himself and Abram. 
 
 Believing the promise, and not distrusting the power of 
 God, but knowing that all things were possible utito Him, 
 “ Abram said. Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall 
 inherit it ?” He was commanded to take a heifer, a goat, a 
 ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon ; and he took them, 
 and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece over 
 against the other. All that Abram could farther do was 
 to drive away the fowls from the carcasses till the going 
 down of the sun. Then a great horror of darkness fell 
 upon him. “ And when the sun went down, and it was dark, 
 behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp, that passed 
 between those pieces. In the same day the Lord made a 
 covenant with Abram, saying. Unto thy seed will I give this 
 land., from the River of Egypt unto the great river, the River 
 Euphrates <fec. 
 
 Finally, when Abram was ninety years old and nine, a 
 year before the birth of Isaac, and when Ishmael was thir¬ 
 teen years old,the covenant was renewed with Abraham, call¬ 
 ed Abram no more, but destined to be, as designated, a “ fa¬ 
 ther of many nations.” The boundaries of the promised land 
 having been fixed by the covenant, the perpetual duration of 
 the inheritance, as previously promised, came also specially 
 within its bonds : “ I will e^blish my covenant between 
 me and thee, and thy seed afrer thee, in their generations, 
 for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy 
 
 ' Gen., XV., 1-7. t Ibid., 7-12, 17, 18, &c. 
 
22 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OP THE COVENANT 
 
 seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed 
 after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land 
 of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their 
 God.”"= 
 
 At the same time, circumcision was instituted as a perpet¬ 
 ual token of an everlasting covenant, which it was also call¬ 
 ed ; “ This is my covenant which ye shall keep, between 
 me and you, and thy seed after thee : Every man child 
 among you shall be circumcised ; and it shall be a token of 
 the covenant betwixt me and you : He that is born in thy 
 house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs 
 be circumcised: and rny covenant shall be in your flesh for 
 an everlasting covenant.'’'^ 
 
 After the death of Abraham, and after Esau had sold his 
 birthright to Jacob, a famine arose again in Canaan, and Isaac, 
 once in his life, purposed to leave the land of promise. And 
 once, too, at that very time, the Lord appeared unto him and 
 said, “ Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I 
 shall telfthee of. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with 
 thee, and will bless thee: for unto thee and unto thy seed 
 I will give all these cou7itries; and I will perform the oath 
 which I sware unto Abraham thy father, and I will make thy 
 seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto 
 thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the na¬ 
 tions of the earth be blessed,” &c.j; 
 
 Jacob abode not always, like his father Isaac, in the land 
 bf Canaan. His mother Rebekah, alarmed for his life, be¬ 
 cause of the fury of his brother, and his father, fearful lest 
 he should take a wife of the daughters of Canaan, charged 
 him to go to Padanaram to the house of Bethuel. “ God Al¬ 
 mighty bless thee,” said Isaac to his departing son, “ and give 
 thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with 
 thee ; that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a 
 stranger, which God gave unto Abraham.Ӥ Stranger in the 
 land as he was, Jacob left it not without far more than a pater¬ 
 nal and patriarchal blessing. “ He went out from Beersheba, 
 and went towards Haran ;” but he did not rest the first night 
 on his journey, nor reach the borders of the land, till the God 
 of Abraham and of Isaac gave him to know that He was also 
 the God of Jacob. And w^n stones were his pillow and 
 the earth his bed, the destinro father of the twelve tribes of 
 Israel received the promise that the land should be theirs. 
 
 * Gad., xvii., 7, 8. t Ibid., 9-13. i Ibid.,x 2 vi., 1-4 ^ Ibid., xsviii., 4. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 28 
 
 “ I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of 
 Isaac : the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to 
 thy seed: And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth; 
 and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and 
 to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed 
 shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, 
 I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither 
 thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I 
 will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken 
 to thee off* 
 
 God did not leave Jacob, but did bring him again into the 
 land, and appeared unto him a second time when he came 
 out of Padanaram, and blessed him, and said, The land which 
 I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed 
 after thee will I give the landf 
 
 And when Jacob, in extreme old age, took his journey, 
 with all that he had, to go down to Egypt to his son Joseph, 
 to return no more, as a living man, to Canaan, the Lord at 
 the last, as at the first, suffered him not to reach the border 
 of the land without a renewal of his promise and reassurance 
 of its truth. “ And God spake unto Israel in the vision of 
 the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob; and he said, Here am I. 
 And he said, I am God, the God of thy father; fear not to 
 go down into Egypt; for I will make thee there a great na¬ 
 tion. I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also 
 surely bring thee up; and Joseph shall put his hand upon 
 thine eyes.”| 
 
 Israel, full of faith, before his eyes were closed in death, 
 charged all his sons, and made Joseph swear unto him, not 
 to bury him in Egypt, but to carry him out from thence, and 
 bury him in the field of Machpelah, in the land of Canaan, 
 in the burying-place of his fathers and he recounted the 
 promise of the Lord : “ Behold, I will make thee fruitful and 
 multiply thee, and will make of thee a multitude of people; 
 and will give this land to thy seed after thee, for an everlast¬ 
 ing possessions^ 
 
 Joseph also, dying in the faith, “ said unto his brethren, 
 I die : and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of 
 this land unto the land which He sware to Abraham, to Isaac, 
 and to Jacob ; and Joseph took an oath of the children of 
 Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry 
 up my bones from henceS^ 
 
 Gan., xxviii., 13-15. t Ibid., xxxv., 0-12. I Ibic1.,xlvi., 1-4. 
 
 0 Ibid., xlvii., 29, 30; xlix.,e0-32. !| Ibid., xlviii., 4. 1 Ibid., 1,, 24,23. 
 
24 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 Such is the heaven-chartered right of the seed of Israel 
 to the land of Canaan. And such is its confirmation, by the 
 clear promises, attested covenant, and repeated oath of the 
 Lord God, as recorded in the first book of the Bible. 
 
 In the brief scriptural history of the antediluvian world, 
 there is no record that the Lord spake unto man from the 
 time that the first-born of the human race became the mur¬ 
 derer of the second, and Cain was cursed from the earth, 
 till God said unto Noah, when all fiesh had corrupted his 
 way upon the earth, “ The end of all flesh is come before 
 me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and 
 behold, I will destroy them from the earth.”* And after 
 the sole covenant was made with Noah and his sons, centu¬ 
 ries again passed away, and the voice of the Lord was not 
 heard by man till a descendant of Shem, in Ur of the Chal¬ 
 dees, was commanded to leave his country, and go into anoth¬ 
 er and strange land. There is something strikingly peculiar 
 in the command here given, as pertaining to the land whith¬ 
 er he was to go, as well as to the person, in commanding 
 whom to go thither, the long silence, so very seldom inter¬ 
 rupted since communion with God was lost by sin, was thus 
 broken at last by a voice from heaven, the voice of the Lord, 
 “ Get thee out from thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
 from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.” 
 The Lord who had called him was to show him the land. 
 The one was chosen as well as the other. And the least 
 observant reader can hardly fail to see, from the mere jux¬ 
 taposition and connected sequence of the preceding passages 
 of Scripture, how rapidly, in marvellous contrast with all the 
 previous history of fallen man, vision succeeded to vision ; 
 and the same Divine promise was ratified and renewed, again 
 and again, by a covenant and by an oath, according as Abra¬ 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob, in whose seed all the families of the 
 earth should finally be blessed, entered, or left, or even pur¬ 
 posed to leave, or returned to the land of Canaan. That 
 land was thus set apart as the everlasting possession of the 
 seed of Israel, as never was any land to any other people. 
 
 The covenant was made with Abraham, and with Isaac, and 
 with Jacob. Not all of Abraham’s nor of Isaac’s seed were 
 destined to possess the land ; for both of them had other de¬ 
 scendants, to whom the promise did not pertain, and who 
 had no inheritance in Israel. But the covenant, limited to 
 
 Gon., vi., 12, 13. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 25 
 
 the seed of Jacob, and embracing them all, no longer per¬ 
 tained to any single mortal, as to him, but embraced all the 
 tribes of Israel, to whom the land was allotted, and among 
 whom in after ages it was apportioned. And whenever it 
 was thus completed, generation after generation passed 
 away ; and, for a long season, the voice of the Lord was si¬ 
 lent again. 
 
 But the faith of the patriarchs was not in vain. The chil¬ 
 dren of Israel, in the appointed time, went up into the land 
 to which the dead body of Jacob had been carried, and Jo¬ 
 seph did notin vain give commandment respecting his bones, 
 which were carried up by Moses and buried by Joshua in 
 Canaan. In that land, save the cave of Machpelah, and a 
 parcel of a field in Shechem, each a burying-place, the seed 
 of Jacob had not a foot of ground, which, by any human 
 right, they could call their own. Nor, though these had 
 been purchased by their patriarchal fathers, could the pos¬ 
 session of them be claimed by a race of slavms in Egypt. 
 Their right—-'not to a spot or two for a burying-place—but 
 to the whole land for an everlasting possession, rested not on 
 an agreement with the sons of Heth or the sons of Harnor, 
 but on the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers. 
 
 Prescription for forty, or four hundred years, or even, as 
 now, for a far longer period, cannot be valid against the word 
 of the living God, in whose sight a thousand years are as 
 one day, and to whom the earth belongs. It runs not against 
 titles, guarantied by human compact, and sanctioned by hu¬ 
 man laws. But there never was a right or title to any in¬ 
 heritance or possession, given not by man, but by God, as 
 that with which the seed of Israel was invested over C’ana- 
 an. “ The lot of their inheritance,” “ the heritage of Jacob,” 
 was defined, decreed, and confirmed to them by the prom¬ 
 ise, the covenant, and the oath of the Lord of the whole 
 earth. That covenant, as they were foretold and forewarned, 
 might, as to its operation, be suspended for a season, and 
 seem to be annulled forever ; but, however hr)peless its ex¬ 
 ecution might at any time appear, it was never repealed, and 
 would not always be forgotten. As Abraham, against hope, 
 believed in hope, when, bordering on his hundreth year, he 
 trusted and knew that the promised blessings would rest on 
 the innumerable descendants of his then unborn son, so, 
 when generation after generation of ihe children of Israel 
 was held in Egyptian bondage, and the very straw was 
 
 C 
 
26 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 withheld from them* which was needful to make bricks to 
 their masters, they would have believed against hope, or all 
 conceivable likelihood that it would ever be realized, in 
 thinking that the goodly land of Canaan would be theirs. 
 God might have seemed to be the God of any other race 
 than of the enslaved and toilworn children of Israel, under* 
 the rods of Egyptian taskmasters. Yet it was not hid from' 
 Abraham, but from the word of God he knew assuredly that 
 his seed should be a stranger in a land not theirs, wherein 
 they should be long afflicted ; but he knew also that they 
 should come with great substance into the land of Canaan 
 again, though more than four centuries should elapse from 
 the time the promise was given ere it should begin to be re¬ 
 alized.! 
 
 The Lord, in his appointed time and way, saves, from 
 troubles however great or enemies however strong, by many 
 or by few. It was when the lives of the children of Israel 
 were bitter with hard bondage, and the commandment had 
 been given by the King of Egypt that every newbora. male 
 child of the Israelites should be killed, that an infant lying 
 in an ark of bulrushes amid the flags by the river’s brink 
 was raised up to be the deliverer of Israel. Atter being 
 trained in the house of Pharaoh, he fled from his face. A 
 stranger in a strange land, keeping the flock of Jethro on 
 the farther outskirts of the desert, he saw a bush, like Israel 
 then as in after ages, burning with fire and not consumed— 
 for the selfsame reason, because the Lord was there. The 
 time was come for Jacob’s deliverance, when his destruc¬ 
 tion was threatened; and the voice of the Lord, who is a 
 covenant-keeping God, was uttered again. Turning aside 
 to see the great sight, Moses heard the voice of the Lord 
 calling to him, “ Moses, Moses. And the Lord said. I have 
 surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, 
 and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters ; 
 for I know their sorrows, and am come down to deliver 
 them out of the hands of the Egyptians, and to bring them 
 up out of that land, unto a good land and a large, unto a 
 land jiowing with milk and honey ; unto the place of the Ca- 
 n'aanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Ferizzite, 
 and the Jebusite. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of 
 Israel, I j»M (Jehovah) hath sent me unto you. The Lord 
 God of your fathers, the God of Abraham^ the God of Isaac, 
 
 * Exod., V., 7. t Gen., w., 13-18. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 27 
 
 and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you ; this is my 
 
 NAME FOREVER, AND MY MEMORIAL UNTO ALL GENERA¬ 
 TIONS.”* 
 
 The Lord did begin to prove the truth of his covenant by 
 putting it into effect against all the resistance of Pharaoh 
 and that of all their enemies. 
 
 When the King of Egypt refused to let the people go, 
 and yet more grievously oppressed them, one Divine com¬ 
 munication followed after another, more rapidly than ever 
 since the days before the fall. The Lord said unto Moses, 
 “ Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: I am the 
 Lord. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto 
 Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Je¬ 
 hovah was I not known unto them. And I have also estab¬ 
 lished my covenant with them, to give them the land of Ca¬ 
 naan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were stran¬ 
 gers. And I have also heard the groanings of the children 
 of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage ; and I have 
 remembered my covenant. Wherefore say unto the children 
 of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from 
 the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you of their 
 bondage ; and I will take you to me for a people, and I will 
 be to you a God. And I will bring you into the land, con¬ 
 cerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, 
 and to Jacob, and I will give it to you for an heritage : I am 
 the Lord.”t 
 
 Although, in maintaining the unchangeableness and invi¬ 
 olability of that covenant, the Lord was first known to Isra¬ 
 el by his name Jehovah, the self-existent and ever-living 
 God, the Divine right of the seed of Israel to the possession 
 of Canaan may now be a startling statement in the ears of 
 those who have not perfectly considered, however frequent¬ 
 ly they may have read, the oft-repeated covenant of the 
 Lord, and the oath which He sware to Abraham, to Isaac, 
 and to Jacob. But if their notions come short of absolute 
 incredulity, their wavering faith is stronger than that of 
 those whose groanings God heard and remembered his cov¬ 
 enant; but who, when this very message from the Lord 
 was told them, would not, after the first disappointment of 
 their hopes, hearken unto Moses for anguish of spirit and 
 for cruel bondage.^ 
 
 Abraham was a stranger in the land of Canaan. There 
 
 * Exod., iii., 1-15. t Ibid., vi., 1-8. i Ibid., 9. 
 
28 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 for three generations he and his descendants had sojourned 
 as pilgrims. The possession declared to be everlasting 
 not, after the lapse of centuries, been once entered on for a 
 single day. In Egypt, long their dwelling-place, the land 
 of Goshen, though once held in free tenure from the king, 
 had been turned into the house of bondage. Gathering 
 stubble in the fields, and beaten for a fault that was not 
 theirs,* they looked not like the heirs of a divinely-cove¬ 
 nanted inheritance ; and when their hope was once cast 
 down, and their burdens increased because they dared to 
 cherish it, their hearts were crushed, and their hope was 
 lost, and to the tidings of deliverance they would not listen. 
 
 But though another king had arisen that knew not Joseph, 
 and the Egyptian dynasty had been changed, the same un¬ 
 changeable Jehovah, making himself known by that name, 
 declared the immutability of his covenant with the seed of 
 Jacob. Their cry came up unto God by reason of their bond¬ 
 age, and God looked upon the children of Israel, and had re¬ 
 spect unto them.f And when their oppression was increased 
 beyond endurance, and the ordained slaughter of each male 
 child threatened the annihilation of their race, their deliv¬ 
 erance was signal and glorious ; and whenever the word 
 for its ratification came forth from their God, all earthly 
 power was tried in vain to prevent or to suspend the exe¬ 
 cution of the covenant. 
 
 Because Pharaoh would not let the people go, miracle 
 after miracle brought plague upon plague, till the last hour 
 had come in which the children of Israel were to remain in 
 Egypt. At midnight the Lord smote the first-born in every 
 family of the Egyptians ; and the hardened heart of the 
 king being humbled at last, he was constrained to urge them 
 to depart, at the very moment when they were equipped for 
 their journeyWhen, again infatuated to pursue them, 
 his horse, and chariots, and horsemen were entombed in the 
 Red Sea, while Israel passed over on dry ground, the wa¬ 
 ters being a wall to them on the right hand and on the left,^ 
 the Lord, triumphing gloriously, redeemed the seed of Ja¬ 
 cob with a strong hand, and a stretched-out arm, and with 
 great judgments and fury poured forth upon their enemies. 
 
 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some 
 men count slackness. His covenant with Israel could not 
 fail. Rather should the Red Sea be a pathway for hundreds 
 
 * Exod., V., 12-17. t Ib., ii., 25. t Ib., xii., 31. ^ Ib., xiv., 22, 28, 29. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 29 
 
 of thousands to pass over dry-shod—rather should manna, as 
 from heaven, fall down daily in abundance for them all, and 
 the stream flow from the flinty rock—rather should a pillar 
 of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, guide them on 
 their way—rather should the waters of Jordan fly back be¬ 
 fore the feet of those who bore the ark of the covenant, and 
 the walls of Jericho fall down at the blast of the smallest 
 horns, than the Lord should not plant his people in the land 
 which He had promised to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and 
 to Jacob, and to their seed forever. Nay, rather should the 
 sun and the moon stand still, as his witnesses in the heav¬ 
 ens, at the commandment of a man who was steadfast in the 
 covenant of the Lord, and led the Israelites into Canaan, 
 than the word of the Eternal fail in driving out their ene¬ 
 mies before them. 
 
 SECTION 11. 
 
 But God is not a respecter of persons ; and merciful and 
 gracious as He is, yet He will by no means clear the guil¬ 
 ty, Known to the Israelites as the God of Abraham, of 
 Isaac, and of Jacob—as the Almighty, and as Jehovah—He 
 made himself known to them also as the Holy One of Isra¬ 
 el; and He chose them unto himself for a peculiar and a 
 holy people. He entered into a covenant with //tm, ivhen 
 He brought them out of the land of Egypt. The law was 
 then given them ; and life and death were set before them. 
 The words of the covenaiit—the ten coinmandments —were 
 written on tables of stone by the finger of the Lord ; and 
 after the tenour of these words He made a covenant with Is¬ 
 rael.*' 
 
 Sin can have no fellowship with God ; He is angry with 
 the wicked every day ; and sinners, as such, cannot enter 
 into covenant or communion with Him. A sinner, however, 
 like all other men, Abraham was ; and even when the Lord 
 had made and confirmed his covenant with him, he confess¬ 
 ed that he was but dust and ashes in his sight.f But he 
 believed in the Lord, and He cou7ited it to him for righteous¬ 
 ness. His faith was shown by his obedience to the voice 
 of the Lord, even till his hand was lifted up to sacrifice his 
 beloved son, the very heir of promise. The covenant con¬ 
 cerning the land was made with believing men. They be¬ 
 lieved in a righteousness not their own ; they saw the day 
 
 , * Exod., xxxiv., 27. t Gen., xviii., 27. 
 
 C 2 
 
30 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 of Christ afar off, and were glad ; and the covenant between 
 God and them was gracious and everlasting, and bears its 
 token in all generations of their race. But, even under the 
 Old Testament dispensation, circumcision became as uncir¬ 
 cumcision, and availed nothing, if, with uncircumcised hearts^ 
 they were not the children of faithful Abraham. An Isra¬ 
 elite according to the flesh alone had no right to the inher¬ 
 itance of the land, if faith was wanting. 
 
 Of this their earliest history supplies an obvious illustra¬ 
 tion, a fearful “ example of unbelief,” in the multitudes that 
 were brought out of Egypt, and were led to the very bor¬ 
 ders of the promised land, and were commanded to enter it; 
 but who, fearful of their enemies, and distrusting the power 
 and disbelieving the promises of God, “ could not enter in 
 because of unbelief.”* “ How long will this 'people provoke 
 me 7 how long will it be ere they believe me 7 for all the signs 
 which I have shown them, said the Lord.”f He threaten¬ 
 ed to disinherit them, and in their stead to make of Moses a 
 greater and mightier nation than they. But, jealous for the 
 glory of the Lord, their magnanimous leader, regardless of 
 the promised exaltation of his own house, pleaded fervently 
 for Israel, that the name of their God might not be blasphe¬ 
 med by the Egyptians and other nations. “ They will say,” 
 said Moses, “ that the Lord was not able to bring this peo¬ 
 ple into the land which He sware unto them, therefore He 
 hath slain them in the wilderness.” “ And the Lord said, 
 I have pardoned according to thy word ; but as truly as I 
 live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord; 
 but because these men have not hearkened unto ray voice, 
 surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fa¬ 
 thers ; to-morrow turn you, and get you into the wilder¬ 
 ness There, according to his word, that unbelieving and 
 evil generation fell. And not till all above twenty years 
 old, who had come out of Egypt—save Caleb and Joshua, 
 who had another spirit in them—had perished there, did Is- 
 rael, when another generation had arisen, enter into Ca¬ 
 naan. 
 
 A most striking and instructive illustration is thus pre¬ 
 sented, in the very beginning of their national history, of 
 the fact that their unbelief could not make void the prom¬ 
 ises of God to their fathers ; and that their breakinor of the 
 covenant made with them could not annul the covenant with 
 
 * Heb., iii., 14. t Num., xiv., 11, 12. i Ibid., 15, 16, 21-25. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 31 
 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which the Lord confirmed as 
 everlasting, centuries before the law was given by Moses. 
 The whole nation might have been disinheriled^ as threat¬ 
 ened, and slain as one man; but God, as He declared, would 
 have made, even of a single individual left in Israel, a great¬ 
 er and mightier nation, in whom He would fulfil his prom¬ 
 ises. An unbelieving generation did perish in the wilder¬ 
 ness, and yet the Lord, in contradiction of the averment of 
 the heathen, did bring his people into the land which He 
 sware unto them. Whatever might seem to frustrate the 
 covenant with Abraham ; whatever, in the wisdom of this 
 world, which is foolishness with God, might seem in human 
 view to annul and to annihilate it, by rendering its execu¬ 
 tion apparently impossible ; still, as truly as the Lord liveth 
 —and his name Jehovah tells that He is the ever-living 
 God—his covenant should stand fast as his very being ; 
 and, neither mutilated nor marred, either by the unbelief of 
 his people for a season, however long, or by the blasphe¬ 
 mies of the heathen, whatever hard speeches they might utter 
 against Him, it would be established at last, in very faith¬ 
 fulness, as at first He had confirmed it bv his oath. Hath 
 He said ? hath He sworn? a7id shall He not do it? Assu¬ 
 redly the promises to the fathers shall be fulfilled, and the 
 everlasting possession of the land by the seed of Abraham 
 shall be conjoined with the simultaneously promised bless¬ 
 ing to all the families of the earth. For then, and not till 
 then, in that glorious consummation alone, shall these words 
 be true, which, swearing by himself, as He could not sivear 
 by a greater, the Lord spake at the very time when even 
 Moses feared that his name would be blasphemed, and his 
 power derided, if his people should perish in the wilderness: 
 
 “As TRULY AS I LIVE, ALL THE EARTH SHALL BE FILLED 
 WITH THE GLORY OF THE LoRD. To-morrow, tum ye, and 
 get ye into the wildernessP Whatever the nations might say, 
 or whatever the Israelites might do, the Lord himself would 
 see to the execution of his covenant in all its parts ; into 
 his own hand He had taken it; and it rested with Him, 
 and with Him alone, that the unbelief of the Jews and the 
 ungodliness of the nations should finally everywhere cease ; 
 and that not even one word should fall from the covenant 
 any more than from the law, till all the earth should be fill- 
 ed with his glory, and see and acknowledge that the Holy 
 One of Israel is the Lord, with whom all things are possi* 
 
32 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 ble. The whole earth itself is the witness to this hour that 
 the time is not yet: none, but worse than Egyptian blas¬ 
 phemers, can say that it never shall be, for the promise is 
 as true as the Lord Hveth. 
 
 Another, illustration here arises, plain and palpable in the 
 sight of all believers in Moses, and in the history of which 
 he was the sacred penman; a truth which is also confirm¬ 
 ed as clearly at every step in all the progress of Israelitish 
 history, as the apostle hath declared it— the law makes no¬ 
 thing perfect."^ Luminous as this is in the eye of faith, it 
 is a hard saying to those sinners of the Gentiles, who, like 
 the Jews in many generations, bearing everywhere the cur¬ 
 ses of that covenant, go about to establish a righteousness 
 of their own. The fact stands out most prominently in 
 Jewish history, and forms its commencement. In the very 
 first year after the law was given, the children of Israel, re¬ 
 leased from bondage and first united as a people, could not, 
 notwithstanding the promise, enter into Canaan. The 
 whole nation had broken it. From the sin of unbelief it. 
 could not save them. And the God of their fathers, at the 
 very time his promises would otherwise have been fulfilled, 
 threatened to smite them with pestilence, and to disinherit 
 them ; and Moses, by whom the law was given, prayed that 
 the whole nation might not be killed as one man, because 
 of their transgressions and unfaithfulness in the covenant 
 made under the law. They were commanded back from 
 the borders of Canaan to die in the wilderness. But while 
 the law condemned them, the covenant with their fathers 
 stood ; and therefore, as in ages after, Israel was not wholly 
 consumed. 
 
 Unlike to that unconditional covenant which God made 
 with Abraham, and which He will doubtless fulfil to the 
 praise of the glory of his grace, the covenant which He 
 made, and repeatedly renewed with the Israelites under the 
 law, was coupled with the most express conditions, on the 
 breach of which fearful judgments were denounced. And 
 the blessings and the curses, which pertained to this cove¬ 
 nant, according to their obedience or disobedience, were set 
 before them, and read in the hearing of all the people, both 
 before and after they entered the land promised to their 
 fathers. 
 
 “This day,” said Moses, “the Lord thy God hath com- 
 
 * Heb., vii., 19. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 33 
 
 manded thee to do these statutes and judgments ; thou shalt 
 therefore keep and do them with all thy heart and all thy 
 soul. Thou hast avouched the Lord to be thy God, and to 
 walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his com¬ 
 mandments, and his judgments, and to hearken to his voice ; 
 and the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his pe¬ 
 culiar people, as He hath promised thee, and that thou 
 shouldst keep all his commandments ; and to make thee high 
 above all nations which He hath made, in praise, and in 
 name, and in honour ; if that thou mayest be a holy people 
 unto the Lord thy God, as He hath spoken.”"^ Ye stand 
 all of you this day before the Lord your God, your captains 
 of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the 
 men of Israel, that thou shouldst enter into covenant with 
 the Lord thy God, and with his oath which the Lord thy God 
 maketh with thee this day, that He may establish thee to-day 
 for a people unto himself, and that He may be unto thee a 
 God, as He hath said unto thee, and as He hath sworn unto 
 thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob ; neither 
 with you only do I make this covenant and this oath, but 
 with him that standeth before the Lord thy God, and also 
 with him that is not here with us this day, lest there be 
 among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe whose heart 
 turneth away this day from the Lord our God, &c. The 
 Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and 
 his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the cur¬ 
 ses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the 
 Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven, and the 
 Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Is¬ 
 rael, according to all the curses that are written in this hook 
 of the law : so that the generations to come of your children 
 that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come 
 from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of 
 that land, and the sickness that the Lord hath laid upon it, 
 Wherefore hath the Lord done this unto this land ? what 
 meaneth the heat of this great anger ? Then men shall 
 say. Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord 
 God of their fathers, which He made with them when He 
 brought them forth out of the land of Egypt: and the anger 
 of the Lord was kindled against this land to bring upon it 
 ail the curses that are written in this book.f 
 
 Such is the tenour of the covenant made with the Israel- 
 
 * Deut., xxvii., 16-19. 
 
 t Ibid., xxix., 10-25. 
 
34 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 iles when they came out of Egypt, and before they entered into 
 Canaan. After their entrance into the promised land, it was 
 renewed by Joshua, and again before his death ; and in his 
 last words he said unto the people, “Ye are witnesses 
 against yourselves that ye have chosen the Lord to serve 
 Him ; and they said. We are witnesses : the Lord our God 
 will we serve, and his voice will we obey. So Joshua 
 made a covenant with the people that day.”* These were 
 all but several renewals of the covenant which the Lord 
 made with Israel on the day when He brought them out of 
 Egypt, and when the law was given by Moses. 
 
 Greatly does this covenant differ, as it is thus manifestly 
 distinct, from that made by the Lord with Abraham, and 
 with Isaac, and with Jacob. That covenant was full of 
 promises and blessings alone, the final and full completion 
 of which the»Lord took into his own hands, and ratified by 
 his own oath; this had conditions annexed to it, the breach 
 of which, on the part of the children of Israel, would bring 
 on them all the curses of the covenant. The one was made 
 with men of faith, who were thus accounted righteous before 
 the Lord ; the other was made after the tenour of the words 
 of the law, by which no sinful mortal can be justified in his 
 sight. The one gave unreservedly to the seed of Jacob a 
 large and goodly land for an everlasting possession ; the oth¬ 
 er conveyed only a conditional tenure of the land, and point¬ 
 ed, as with the finger of the Lord, to the tribes of Israel root¬ 
 ed out of their inheritance, and scattered among all the na¬ 
 tions of the earth, while the curses of a broken covenant 
 also rested on their blasted heritage. The first conferred 
 on the seed of Jacob the blessed privilege of being a bless¬ 
 ing to all the families of the earth; the other denounced 
 against transgressors the blotting out of their name from un¬ 
 der heaven. 
 
 If a distinction be not made between one covenant, rest¬ 
 ing securely on the faithfulness of God, and another sus¬ 
 pended tremblingly on the obedience of man, it is not to be 
 wondered at that doubts should be cast by thousands on the 
 restoration of Israel, and the fulfilment of the promises of 
 God to the fathers. But if things that so essentially differ 
 be distinguished, and the one covenant be not confounded 
 with the other, that concerning which God lifted up his 
 hand to Abraham, and to Isaac, and to Jacob, will be seen 
 
 * Joshua, xxiv., 22, <S:c. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 35 
 
 to stand entire as at the beginning in all its indiminishable 
 force, and to shine forth as a lamp lighted from heaven in 
 all its bright, unalterable truth, even as the other has been 
 confirmed in the desolation of Judea, and the dispersion of 
 the Jews to this day. If the first had been like unto the 
 second, with such conditions and “ curses” annexed to it, 
 the signs of its confirmation might have been, not a smoking 
 furnace, but a consuming fire; not a burning lamp, but a 
 flickering gleam. 
 
 If the Israelites had been steadfast in the covenant which 
 the Lord made with them when He brought them out of the 
 land of Egypt, then the covenant would have been fulfilled 
 to them, in ages past, which He made with the faithful pa¬ 
 triarchs when they were wanderers in Canaan. But, faith¬ 
 less as they were, another, a new, and an everlasting cove¬ 
 nant has yet to be entered into with them; and under it 
 alone, and not under a broken covenant and a broken law, 
 can they ever retain, though they may regain, possession 
 of their fatherland, or ever inherit it in the full extent, as 
 given to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and to their seed 
 forever. Not a jot or tittle has fallen or can fall from the 
 law, as the Lord has shown, and will yet show, by aven¬ 
 ging the quarrel of his covenant, which He made with the 
 Israelites when He brought them out of the land of Egypt; 
 and not a jot or tittle can fail of the better covenant, con¬ 
 firmed as everlasting, and which can never be annulled. 
 
 Most clearly does Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, or, 
 rather, the Spirit of truth by which he speaks, distinguish 
 between the covenant made with Abraham and that which 
 the Lord made with the Israelites under the law. 
 
 In addressing “the foolish Galatians” concerning one of 
 the covenanted promises to Abraham, he thus speaks, in 
 reason as in faith : “ This I say, that the covenant which 
 was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law which was 
 four hundred and thirty years after, cannot annul, that it 
 should make the promise of none effect. For if the inher¬ 
 itance be of the law, it is no more of promise : but God 
 gave it to Abraham by promised* 
 
 The same distinction is maintained by all the prophets. 
 And throughout the history of the Israelites of old, whether 
 prophetic or actual, even while the curses of the covenant 
 which the Lord made with them when He brought thern 
 
 * Gal., iii., 17,18. 
 
36 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 out of Egypt, and which they broke, fell most heavily upon 
 them, the immutability of the promises to Abraham were 
 ever declared anew. And express provision was made by 
 the Lord, as declared in his word, for the perpetuity of that 
 covenant in the fulness of its blessing, however distant the 
 time of its completion. 
 
 Heaven and earth were called to witness against the 
 children of Israel, that if they did evil in his sight, they 
 would utterly perish from off the land which He had given 
 them ; and the Lord would scatter them among all nations, 
 even among all people, from the one end of the earth unto 
 the other. But, notwithstanding this, however much they 
 should denude themselves of all right, on their part, to the 
 possession of the land, and exclude themselves, by their 
 sins and their impenitence, from the covenanted blessings of 
 their fathers’ God, and therefore certainly bring upon their 
 own heads, in all their fulness and in all their terribleness, 
 age after age, in every country under heaven, all the judg¬ 
 ments denounced against them, such as the heathen had not 
 known, even all the curses of the covenant; whatever might 
 be the degree of their iniquity, or the duration of their mis¬ 
 eries, while their multiplied transgressions should meet with 
 sevenfold punishments ; however severely the Lord would 
 punish them, and however long his hand might be stretched 
 out against them, till his anger should be turned away, yet 
 He would not abhor them to destroy them utterly as a peo¬ 
 ple ; and no sin of theirs could ever annul the covenant 
 concerning which He had lifted up his hand to their fathers. 
 They might forget it, but the Lord would remember it still. 
 Scattered as they should be among all people from the one 
 end of the earth unto the other, and set for evil and not for 
 good, as the eyes of the Lord should be everywhere upon 
 them during all the ages of their unfaithfulness and impen¬ 
 itence, yet hath the Lord never said to any of the seed of 
 Jacob, Seek ye m}' face in vain. And long prior in time 
 as the promises to the fathers w'ere, before the giving of the 
 law, so, when all the curses of their own broken covenant 
 shall have passed over them, that with Abraham should be 
 remembered, and remain the everlasting covenant of un¬ 
 changeable Jehovah. Ere, in his faithfulness. He first 
 planted them in Canaan, and warned them that if they kept 
 not the covenant which He made with them then, they 
 should not only cease to possess the land of their inherit- 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 37 
 
 ance, but seek in vain, throughout all the earth, a place 
 whereon the sole of their feet could hnd rest—these were 
 still the words of the same God who had called Abraham 
 from Ur of the Chaldees. 
 
 “If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of 
 their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed 
 against me, and also that they have walked contrary to me, 
 and that I also have walked contrary to them, and have 
 brought them into the land of their enemies ; if then their 
 uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of 
 the punishment of their iniquity, then will I remember my 
 covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Israel, and 
 also my covenant with Abraham will I remember, and I will 
 remember the land. The land also shall be left of them, and 
 shall enjoy her Sabbaths (rest), while she lieth desolate 
 without them ; and they shall accept of the punishment of 
 their iniquity, because, even because they despised my 
 judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes. 
 And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their ene¬ 
 mies I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them 
 to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them, 
 for I am the Lord their God. But I will for their sakes re¬ 
 member the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought 
 ,forth out of the land of Egypt, in the sight of the heathen, 
 that I might be their God : 1 am the Lord.”* “ When all 
 these things are come upon you, even in the latter days, if 
 thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shall be obedient to his 
 voice (for the Lord thy God is a merciful God), He will 
 not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the cove¬ 
 nant of thy fathers which He sware unto them.'’A 
 
 “ And it shall come to pass, when all these things are 
 come upon thee, the blessing and the curse which 1 have 
 set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all 
 the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and 
 shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice 
 according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy 
 children, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that then 
 the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have com¬ 
 passion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all 
 nations whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. If 
 any of thine be driven out into the outmost parts of heaven, 
 from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from 
 
 * Levit. xivi., 40-45. t Deut., iv., 30, 31. 
 
 D 
 
38 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 thence will He fetch thee : and the Lord thy God will bring 
 thee into the land which thy fathers possessed^ and thou shall 
 possess it; and He will do thee good, and multiply thee above 
 thy fathers. And the Lord thy God will circumcise thy 
 heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest 
 live. And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon 
 thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecu¬ 
 ted thee. And thou shall return and obey the voice of the 
 Lord, and do all his commandments which I command thee 
 this day. And the Lord thy God shall make thee plenteous 
 in every work of thy hand, and in the fruit of thy land for 
 good; for the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good, as 
 He rejoiced over thy fathers—if thou shall hearken to his 
 voice.”* “ I call heaven and earth to record against thee 
 this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing 
 and cursing; therefore choose life, that thou mayest dwell 
 in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to 
 Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give themJ\ 
 
 The covenant of God with the fathers concerning the land 
 was thus to stand forever unrepealed, and the promises to 
 them would survive all the curses of that covenant which 
 was made with the Israelites when they came out of Egypt. 
 Scattered as they have been unto the uttermost parts of the • 
 earth, and come upon them as the curses of the covenant 
 have—resting on them till they return unto their God, and 
 upon their land till they be brought back to it— yet for all 
 that, the covenant of the Lord is as fresh in his remembrance 
 as when He first brought their ancestors out of the land of 
 Egypt. 
 
 But, now as then, the very promises annexed to a covenant 
 made under the law, in conformity with the better and prior 
 covenant, necessarily and expressly involve the condition of 
 perfect obedience, which, were it but for them alone, could 
 never be fulfilled. And if the first covenant with the Isra¬ 
 elites had been the last, it would not have been for man or 
 angel to tell how the holy law of the Lord could have been 
 vindicated, and the oath of the Lord have been performed. 
 
 The law does indeed seem to interpose a barrier to the 
 completion of the promise. Exacting just vengeance on a 
 faithless race, it drove them from the borders of the land 
 when first they approached it. When they entered Canaan, 
 
 * Deut., XXX., 1-10. t Ibid., ver. 19, 20. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 39 
 
 it soon stayed their progress, and kept many an enemy within 
 their borders, to harass them in every age. With sevenfold 
 severity it inflicted punishment after punishment, and brought, 
 at last, in guardianship of the covenant made under it, as the 
 avenger of its quarrel, the mightiest nation of the earth to 
 root out the last remnant of Israel from the land of their in¬ 
 heritance, iciih wrathy and anger, and great indignation,'^ 
 and with all the unequalled miseries of the siege, and sack, 
 and destruction of Jerusalem. 
 
 But God did not call Abraham, and make Jacob faithful, 
 and then promise by an oath to believing men that He gave 
 the land of Canaan to be the everlasting inheritance of their 
 seed, in order to keep them forever under that legal cove¬ 
 nant by which they could claim and keep the land only in 
 virtue of a righteousness of their own. The spirit of the 
 Pharisees has not yet altogether departed from Israel. The 
 traditions of men have more weight with many besides them 
 than the testimony of God. But we cannot pander to such 
 a spirit by closing the proof of the restoration of Israel’s in¬ 
 heritance, in terms of that covenant which was coeval with 
 the law. Rather, while looking to it, would we say with 
 Joshua, even when the most faithful generation ever in Is¬ 
 rael heard him, “ Ye cannot serve the Lord : for He is a 
 holy God ; He is a jealous God ; He will not forgive your 
 transgressions and your sins. If ye forsake the Lord, and 
 serve strange gods, then He will turn and do you hurt, and 
 consume you, after that He hath done you good.”! 
 
 The Mosaic covenant did indeed point to, without provi¬ 
 ding for, thd^time when its curses would be no more, but all 
 the promises should survive them in blissful completion. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 For the full understanding of the promises that guaran¬ 
 ty the everlasting possession of their inheritance to the 
 seed of Israel, not only many things that differ be distin¬ 
 guished, and the oath to Abraham be kept clear of the 
 curses of another covenant, which unbelieving men, not the 
 children of/azM//// Abraham, have brought upon themselves 
 age after age, but the mutual relations of things that assimi¬ 
 late and are destined to co-operate in the one glorious con¬ 
 summation may be severally marked. The means are here 
 prepared whereby the crooked may be made straight, and 
 the rough places plain. 
 
 * Deut., xxix., 28, 
 
 f Joshua, xxiv., 19 20. 
 
40 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 Not two merely, but four covenants of the Lord are men¬ 
 tioned in Scripture, which have an important or essential 
 bearing on the completion of the promises to Abraham con¬ 
 cerning the land, as well as the promised blessing to all the 
 families of the earth in his seed. Some allusion to them all 
 may be needful here, before adducing the farther testimony 
 of the Spirit, as recorded by David and the succeeding 
 prophets, concerning the perpetuity of the territorial inherit¬ 
 ance of the seed of Israel. 
 
 These are, 1. The covenant with Abraham, and with 
 Isaac, and with Jacob, which is one and the same, repeat¬ 
 ed and confirmed successively to them. 2. The covenant 
 of the Lord with the Israelites, on the day in which He 
 brought them out of the land of Egypt. To these, already 
 noticed, are added, 3. The covenant with David, respecting 
 the establishment of his house and of his throne forever ; 
 and, 4. The new and everlasting covenant which the Lord 
 will make, in the latter days, with the house of Israel and 
 with the house of Judah. 
 
 Each word, as well as each covenant of the living God, 
 is a law—an irresistible power, which must fulfil the pur¬ 
 pose for which He sent it. Like the laws which He has 
 given to physical nature, and which govern it all, and exist 
 in perfect harmony, as manifested in the movements of the 
 orbs of heaven, which all obey his voice, so these covenants 
 of God with children of men, in their combined efficacy, 
 under the sovereignty of his grace as of his power, have 
 their decreed purpose to fulfil, in finally evolving an analo¬ 
 gous harmony in the moral world here below, •vhen Israel 
 shall he saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, and 
 the will of the Lord he done on earth as it is in heaven. 
 
 Indiscriminately commingled, these covenants, in the 
 dimness of human apprehension, without regarding the dis¬ 
 tinctness of the Divine testimony, have sometimes been 
 considered rather as conflicting elements that jar against 
 each other when brought into contact, than conspiring 
 causes whose ultimate result is the salvation of Israel and 
 the glory of Israel’s God. And when viewed apart, or 
 looked at singly, not only has not due weight been assigned 
 to each word of each covenant, but, as if commentators had 
 been handling the Koran rather than the Bible the latter 
 has been made to explain or to absorb the former, and the 
 .ingenuity of Christians has been exercised in attempting to 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 41 
 
 accomplish what the unbelief of the Jews could not effect, 
 and to make void the promises of God. 
 
 The blessed consummation which it is designed to.se¬ 
 cure would not indeed be seen, were the covenant of God 
 with Abraham limited to the everlasting possession b}^ any 
 race of mortals of any land on earth. But jointly with the 
 completion of the promise concerning the land to Israel is 
 that of the extension of blessings in the selfsame covenant 
 
 O 
 
 to all the families of the earth; and instead of these being 
 repulsive elements, none in nature can have a closer affinity 
 than those must ultimately be seen to bear to each other, 
 which are thus joined together in the covenant concerning 
 which the God of nature and of nations, of heaven and of 
 earth, has lifted up his hand, and SAvorn to as everlasting. 
 And in Christian faith it may be asked. What shall the re¬ 
 ceiving of them be but life from the dead? 
 
 The next chapter will form a more appropriate place for 
 showing that the Abrahamic covenant concerning the land 
 has never yet been fully completed, even in regard to the 
 extent of the promised possessioii. Flow far it should have 
 been fulfilled, or how long it should have borne even a ves¬ 
 tige of actual fulfilment among the Israelites under the law, 
 depended on the observance or the breach of the special 
 covenant which God had made with them. It had no 
 clause bearing a blessing to all nations ; nor was it de¬ 
 clared to be everlasting. But, on the contrary, its curses, 
 which assigned to all transgressors their merited doom, 
 were sufficient for the extermination of any race of mortals, 
 or of all na^ons upon earth. It ever cried for blood, and 
 Avrought death and destruction, even as it exacted perfect 
 obedience ; and said. Cursed is every one that continueth 
 not in all things that are Avritten in the book of the law to 
 do them.* “ As many as are of the Avorks of the law are 
 under the curse.”t And looking only to it, and to its curses 
 resting visibly both on the Jews and on their land, the 
 promise might well seem to be annulled, except on condi¬ 
 tions sinful mortals could not fulfil, and the hope of Israe^ 
 to be cut off forever. 
 
 But, according to the testimony of the Old 1 estament 
 and the doctrine of the Nevv, which are perfectly accordant 
 in all things, that coAmnant made with the Israelites in the 
 day when the Lord brought them out of the land of Egypt 
 
 * Deut., xxvii., 26. Jer., xi., 3. t Galat., iii., 10. 
 
 D 2 
 
42 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 was not, with its curses, to stand forever, but has to be su¬ 
 perseded by a new and everlasting covenant made with the 
 same people. The law was not to be destroyed, but to be 
 fulfilled, and to be transferred from tables of stone to the 
 fleshy tablets of the heart, and to be written there by the 
 same finger of the Lord. 
 
 The Apostle Paul maintains the immutalility of the cove¬ 
 nant confirmed by an oath to Abraham, centuries before the 
 law was given by Moses, by which, therefore, it could not 
 he annulled."^ He speaks as explicitly, quoting the testi¬ 
 mony of the Spirit as recorded by Jeremiah, of the ceasing 
 of the covenant made under the law, as finally superseded 
 by another. “ If the first covenant (with the Israelites) 
 had been faultless, then should no place have been sought 
 for the second. But, finding fault with them. He saith. Be¬ 
 hold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a 
 new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house 
 of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with 
 their fathers in the day when I took them hy the hand to lead 
 them out of the land of Egypt, because they continued not 
 in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. 
 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of 
 Israel: After these days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws 
 into their minds, and write them in their hearts; and I will 
 be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people; and 
 they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every 
 man his brother, saying. Know the Lord: for they shall all 
 know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be 
 merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their 
 iniquities wdll I remember no more. In that He saith a 
 new covenant. He hath made the first old, now that which 
 decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.”t 
 
 Amply did the Lord provide for the accomplishment of 
 his promises to the fathers. Though the “ curses of that 
 covenant” which He made with their seed have driven both 
 Israelites and Jews, long distinct from each other, from the 
 land of their inheritance, He will make a new and everlast¬ 
 ing covenant of mercy and peace with the house of Israel 
 and with the house of Judah. Bearing the two tables of the 
 law, the ten commandments, written on stone, their hearts 
 failed them for fear at the sight of their enemies, and even 
 at the tidings of their strength. The curses of their broken 
 Gal., iii., 17. 
 
 t Heb., viii., 7-13. Jer., xxxi., 31, &c. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 43 
 
 covenant followed them in every age, rooted them out of 
 their own land, and have everywhere pursued and overtaken 
 them, and have been upon them for a sign and for a wonder 
 for many generations in every country under heaven. But 
 after these days, when they shall bear in their hearts the 
 law of their God according to his own everlasting covenant 
 of mercy and of peace, and when they all shall know Him 
 from the least unto the greatest, and He will be merciful unto 
 their unrighteousness, and remember their sins and iniqui¬ 
 ties no more, then the curses of the old covenant, itself van¬ 
 ished away, shall no longer be a barrier against their en¬ 
 trance, nor a hinderance to the full possession and final re¬ 
 tention of the land ; nor shall they in any way interpose, as 
 heretofore, to retard the full performance of the oath which 
 the Lord sware to Abraham, to give the land of Canaan to 
 his seed for an everlasting possession. Surely the promi¬ 
 ses made to the believing fathers shall be fulfilled to their 
 believing children, even as truly as the Lord liveth. The 
 days of their mourning shall be ended. Thy people also 
 shall he all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever* 
 The Israelites continued not in the first covenant which 
 the Lord made with them : therefore are they wanderers 
 throughout the world, who have nowhere found a place on 
 which the sole of their foot could rest—a people without a 
 country ; even as their own land, as subsequently to be 
 shown, is in a great measure a country without a people. 
 The one and the other have been smitten with a curse. 
 But let that curse be taken away—let the Lord remember 
 the people and remember the land, and there shall be no more 
 scattering nor wandering, no more desolation, no more sep¬ 
 aration between Zion and her children. Israel has ruined 
 himsell’; but in the Lord his help is to be found, even plen¬ 
 teous redemption. The broken fragments of the tables of 
 the law were not gathered up and cemented together, but 
 new tables were made, on which the law was written, at 
 the command of the Lord, by the hand of Moses. And a 
 broken covenant is not renewed, but a new and everlasting 
 covenant is established upon better promises, and appointed 
 by the Lord in the hand of a Mediator. 
 
 Such is the connexion between the covenant with Abra¬ 
 ham and the new and everlasting covenant which the Lord 
 will make with the house of Israel, that the words of Jere- 
 
 * Isaiah, lx., 30, 31. 
 
44 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 miah, quoted by Paul, in which it is so explicitly announced, 
 are ushered in by the declaration of the Lord himself, that 
 He will bring again their captivity; and that, like as He 
 watched over them to pluck up and to break down, and to 
 throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict, so will He watch 
 over them to build and to plant.* And the words which 
 immediately follow the description of the nature of the new 
 covenant are, “ Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun 
 for a light by day, and the ordinance of the moon and of the 
 stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the 
 waves thereof roar — the Lord of Hosts is his name. If 
 those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then 
 the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before 
 me forever. Thus saith the Lord, If heaven above can be 
 measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out be¬ 
 neath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they 
 have done, saith the Lord. Behold, the days come, saith 
 the Lord, that the city shall be built to the Lord ; and the 
 measuring line shall go over against it; and it shall not be 
 plucked up nor thrown down any more forever.”! Such 
 shall be the issue of the establishment of the new covenant 
 with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 
 
 The first foundation of it is, indeed, the first promise to 
 sinful man : the seed of the woman shall bruise the head 
 of the serpent. The promise assumed a more definite form 
 when Abraham, at the command of the Lord, had gone to 
 Canaan ; and again still more expressly when David had 
 taken the stronghold of Zion. The covenant with Abraham 
 secured ultimately, though not immediately, a special boon 
 to a peculiar people, and the blessing of redemption to all 
 the families of the earth. Justice interposed so soon as, 
 under the law, the march was begun from the house of 
 bondage to the land of promise. But when David was 
 called from the sheepfold to the throne, and when he who, 
 while a stripling, had gone forth in faith against Goliath, 
 was seated there, a covenant was made with him, of which 
 the character is mercy, and by which the faithfulness of 
 God is made known and established to all generations, and 
 a horn of salvation was raised up in his house for Jew and 
 Gentile. 
 
 “ I will sing,” says the royal and inspired Psalmist, “ of 
 the mercies of the Lord forever: with my mouth will I 
 
 * Jer., xxii., 23, 28' t Ibid., xxn., 35-40 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 45 
 
 make known thy faithfulness to all generations. For I 
 have said, mercy shall be built up forever ; thy faithfulness 
 shall thou establish in the very heavens. I have made a 
 covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my 
 servant. Thy seed will I establish forever, and build up thy 
 throne to all generations.* Then thou spakest in vision to 
 thy holy One, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is 
 mighty ; I have exalted one chosen out of the jjeople. I 
 have found David my servant; with my holy oil have I 
 anointed him—with whom my hand shall be established. 
 My faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him ; and in 
 my name shall his horn be exalted. Also, I will make 
 him my first-born, higher than the kings of the earth. My 
 mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant 
 shall standfast with him. His seed also will I make to en¬ 
 dure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven. I will 
 not suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not 
 break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of ?ny lips. Once 
 have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. 
 His seed shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun 
 before me.”t 
 
 In virtue of this covenant, the evangelical prophet pro¬ 
 claims the free Gospel call to all the ends of the earth, 
 which shall finally see the salvation of the Lord. “ Ho, 
 every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that 
 hath no money ; come ye, buy and eat ; yea, come, buy 
 wine and milk without money and without price : incline 
 your ear, and come unto me ; hear, and your soul shall live ; 
 and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the 
 sure mercies of David f\ &c. 
 
 In denouncing on Israel, because of unfaithfulness, the 
 curses of the covenant under the law, the same prophet said, 
 The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon 
 Israel.*^ And Moses, by whom that covenant was given, 
 declared, that if the children of Israel would repent and re¬ 
 turn unto the Lord, and love him with all their hearts, the 
 Lord would take these curses from them and put them upon 
 their enemies.H But it may be feared that while the Gen¬ 
 tiles, professing the faith of the Gospel, have accounted the 
 sure mercies of David theirs, they have often left nothing 
 but “ the curses” as the appointed portion of the people to 
 
 * Ps. Ixxxix., 1-4. t Ib., 19, 20, 24-36. X Isa., Iv., 1-3. 
 
 $ Isa., ix., 8. II Deut., xxx., 7. ' 
 
46 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 whose fathers the promises were given. Or if, as cannot 
 be denied, it be admitted, that were the door at which the 
 Son of David now stands and knocks, opened by any man, 
 whether Jew or Gentile, who hears his voice. He will come 
 in to him,* yet there may be, in the minds of many, a linger¬ 
 ing apprehension, if not a positive belief, that the Jews have 
 long been shut out from the covenanted promises of the 
 God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, as in any way pe¬ 
 culiar to their seed, or pertaining to the land of their inher¬ 
 itance. 
 
 Such an opinion derives a seeming sanction from the 
 high attributes with which it seems to clothe the everlasting 
 covenant of grace and mercy by a Redeemer, and forbids, 
 as it were, the overshadowing of “ the glory of the latter 
 days” by any merely territorial allotment to any peculiar 
 people, when the same great salvation, in all the fulness of 
 the Gospel, shall extend alike to all. 
 
 That glory is not to be defined, which since the begin¬ 
 ning of the world men have not heard, neither perceived 
 with the ear, neither hath the eye seen, but the Lord alone 
 —even the glory which He hath prepared for him that wait¬ 
 ed for Him.f But these words, which set forth that glory 
 as indescribable, because inconceivable, follow the prayer 
 of the prophet, and may be regarded as its answer ; “ Re¬ 
 turn, for thy servanCs sake, the tribes of thine inheritance. 
 The people of thy holiness have possessed it for a little 
 while : our adversaries have trodden down thy sanctuary. 
 We are thine : thou never barest rule over them ; they were 
 not called by thy name. Oh that thou wouldst rend the 
 heavens, that thou wouldst come down,”{ &c. 
 
 True it is that we now see through a glass darkly, but 
 then face to face. It is well to cast down high imagina¬ 
 tions, and not vainly seek to be wise above what is written. 
 But it is also well to give heed to the sure word of prophecy: 
 and it is written. Shake thyself from the dust: arise, and 
 sit down, O Jerusalem : loose thyself from the bands of thy 
 neck, O captive daughter of Zion. The watchmen shall 
 lift up the voice ; w’ith the voice together shall they sing; 
 for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring 
 AGAIN Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste 
 places of Jerusalem ; for the Lord hath comforted his peo¬ 
 ple, for He hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath 
 
 * Rev., iii., 20. I Isa., Ixiv., 4. 
 
 t Isa., Ixiii., 17-19 ; Ixiv., 1. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 47 
 
 made bare his holy arm in the sight of all nations ; and all 
 the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of the Lord.* 
 
 The introduction of the Gospel dispensation, and the 
 adoption of Gentiles into the household of faith (of others 
 than those who have trodden down the sanctuary), the scat¬ 
 tering of the Jews among all nations, their long-continued 
 impenitence, and seeming excision forever, have often led 
 Christians to forget not only the sure word of prophecy, 
 but also the testimony of an apostle. That God hath not cast 
 away Israel, that they are beloved for the father^s sake, and 
 that the gifts and calling of God are ^ithout repentance, or 
 change of purpose.f 
 
 There is no arguing against facts ; there is no arguing 
 against texts, which declare the will and purpose of Jeho¬ 
 vah, and sometimes even his covenant and his oath. The 
 tenour of these we have already seen. But, were it possi¬ 
 ble, assurance becomes doubly sure when we look at such 
 objections in the light of Scripture, as it still more fully re¬ 
 veals this very thing, and shows that the covenant with Da¬ 
 vid, and the new and everlasting covenant with Israel con¬ 
 joined, are the very completion of the covenant, the very 
 confirmation, in fact, of the oath which the Lord sware to 
 Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, that He would give the 
 promised land to be their everlasting possession, and also, 
 simultaneously realized as recorded, that in their seed all 
 the families of the earth shall be blessed. The restoration 
 and redemption of Israel are often associated in Scripture, 
 as originally in the covenant, with the salvation of the world. 
 
 These two things which God hath joined together, and 
 over both of which alike He has lifted up his hand, ought 
 not to be put asunder by man; and are not to be separated 
 by any words that can come from human lips. They are, 
 we believe, equally true; and in their harmony, when all 
 nations shall hear the joyful sound, and see the glorious 
 sight, the restoration^ of the moral harmony of this world is 
 dependant. 
 
 There is no room here for any jealousy for the honour of ^ 
 the Gospel; rather is it here that the headstone shall be 
 brought forth with shoutings, Grace, Grace unto it.X The 
 restoration of Israel stands on the promise of God, and is 
 not to be achieved through the merit of man. And the Gos¬ 
 pel was preached at the time when that promise was given. 
 
 * Isa., Hi., 1, 8-10. [ Rom,, xi , 28, 29. t Zech., iv., 7. 
 
48 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 “ The Scriptures, foreseeing that God would justify the 
 heathen through faith, preached before the Gospel unto 
 Abraham, saying. In thee shall all nations be blessed.”* 
 This fact enters into the faith of all believers; and it forms 
 the very hope of the Gentiles, never to be renounced, never 
 to be forgotten. And is it well to let oblivion pass over the 
 other promise to Abraham, no less clearly given, no less 
 solemnly guarantied ? Is there no danger to faith itself 
 in quashing the question of the fulfilment of the promise, 
 and the performance of the oath of the Lord, concern¬ 
 ing the land, as if itwere not to be raised from the dor¬ 
 mancy of ages into which it has fallen among Christian 
 men ? It is by these two immutahle things^ his promise and 
 his oath, in which it was impossible for God to lie, that we 
 have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay 
 hold upon the hope set before us.f And it was by these 
 two immutable things that Israel’s charter to the land was 
 confirmed ; and on them it reposes, as secure as the hope 
 of the faithful. 
 
 But it may be asked, in words more expressive of dis¬ 
 belief than of faith. What are the Israelites as a people, - 
 hitherto a reproach and by-word among the nations, that 
 they should possess any distinctive privilege 1 What is 
 the land of Israel more than any other land ? Or, save for 
 the memory of the past, what is Jerusalem more than any 
 other city ? That, in each case, which the Lord hath 
 declared that they shall be. What—for the question is 
 equivalent—is the truth and faithfulness of God ? What 
 his covenant and his oath? What the purpose which He 
 hath declared ? and what the consequent glory of his name ? 
 We ask not here what the Israelites were under the first 
 covenant and its curses, but what they shall be under the 
 second and its blessings. What say the Scriptures ? and 
 are they to be believed or not ? 
 
 No testimony can be more explicit and decided that) that 
 of David himself, as twice recorded in Scripture, that the 
 part of the covenant with Abraham which Christians are so 
 prone to overlook, ought to be hold in perpetual remem- 
 orance, as well as the other, “ Seek ye the Lord and his 
 strength ; seek his face coiuinually. Remember his marvel¬ 
 lous works that He hath done, his wonders, and the judg¬ 
 ments of his mouth ; O ye seed of Jacob his servant, ye 
 
 * Gal., iii., 8. t Heb., vi , 18. 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 49 
 
 children of Jacob, his chosen ones. He is the Lord our 
 God ; his judgments are in all the earth. Be ye mindful 
 always of his covenant, the word which He commanded to a 
 thousand generations ; even the covenant which He made 
 with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac; and hath enjoined 
 the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an ever/astins 
 covenant; saying. Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, 
 the lot of your mheritance; when ye were but few, even a 
 few, and strangers in it.”* 
 
 David feared no infringement of the covenant with his 
 house, because of that which the Lord had made before 
 with the fathers. Nay, rather, when seated upon his 
 throne, an anointed and covenanted king, exercising a 
 sovereignty which was recognised from the borders of 
 Egypt to the banks of the Euphrates, he looked back for 
 twelve, thirteen, and fourteen generations, to the days when 
 the covenant was made with Abraham ere he had a son for 
 an heir, attested to Isaac, whose two sons were all his 
 family, and confirmed as a law and an everlasting covenant 
 to Jacob, all of whose descendants, on leaving Canaan, num¬ 
 bered threescore and ten persons ; and he did not limit its 
 duration to a few more generations of shortlived mortals, 
 but, knowing in whom he believed, he spake like a king, 
 with whom and with whose house the Eternal had made a 
 covenant forever; and in words which earthly monarchs 
 cannot use in speaking of their dynasties or kingdoms, he 
 called on all the sons of Jacob to be always mindful of the 
 covenant which the Lord had commanded to a thousand 
 generations, that the land of Canaan should be the lot of 
 their inheritance. 
 
 So far was the covenant with David from annulling this 
 or any other of the promises of God, that, ever after its an¬ 
 nouncement, the prophets, who testified of the coming of 
 the Messiah, speak in other strains than those of Moses 
 and Joshua touching the final return of the seed of Jacob to 
 the land of their inheritance. The promises, expressed in 
 positive terms, are again free and unconditional as when 
 first made to Abraham, and are no longer dependant on the 
 obedience or merit of man, but on the faithfulness and 
 mercy of God. They are, indeed, to be fulfilled, as they 
 were first uttered, to believing men. But for the redemp¬ 
 tion of Israel the Lord hath provided; and He who said to 
 * 1 Chron., 11-19. Ps. cv,, 4-13. , 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 Jacob, I will make Ihee faithful —I will not leave thee till I 
 have done all that I have spoken to thee of, will give his 
 seed a heart to know him, and put a new spirit within them* 
 and make with them an everlasting covenant of peace. 
 
 Dark as the history of any nation, and often utterly im 
 pervious to all human hope, as that of Israel in past ages 
 has been, yet there has ever been a light sufficient to illu¬ 
 minate the darkest place, and the radiance of the sure word 
 of prophecy has shone throughout the gloom, and, where 
 all else was the blackness of darkness, has often opened up 
 to view, as a lamp that burneth, the covenanUthat standeth 
 forever. 
 
 When, as the Lord had also sworn, the curses of the 
 covenant which He made with the Israelites when they 
 came out of Egypt, fell most heavily on all the evil family 
 that had brought them on their own heads, and threatened 
 to lay the house of Jacob in the dust forever, there was still 
 some token or testimony from the Lord that these curses 
 would not be of everlasting duration ; and there was yet 
 hope for Israel, founded on the promise to the fathers, and 
 the assurance that the covenant with David would finally 
 lead to the completion of the covenant with Abraham. 
 
 Before Israel became an outcast people, idolaters as they 
 had been, multiplying transgressions, and, though chasten¬ 
 ed, refusing to return, and revolting more and more, yet the 
 Lord addressed them like a father whose heart yearns on 
 banishing from his household the child of his bowels, though 
 a rebellious son, “ How shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? 
 how shall I deliver thee, Israel ? how shall I make thee as 
 Admah 1 how shall I set thee as Zeboirn ? my heart is turn¬ 
 ed within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will 
 not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return 
 to destroy Israel.”! And when the righteous sentence 
 must come forth from the Holy One of Israel, it is wound 
 up with a promise of that final deliverance which shall be 
 found in the Son of David, for vfhom mercy shall he kept 
 forever, and with whom the covenant shall stand for ever¬ 
 more,\ 
 
 Before the ten tribes were plucked from their land, and 
 led captive into Assyria, their return in the latter days was 
 explicitly declared in the words of Hosea, as in many other 
 passages of Scripture. “ The children of Israel shall abide 
 
 * Jer., xxiv., 7. Ezek., zxzvi., 26. 
 
 t Psalm bczzix. 
 
 t Hosea, zi., 8, 0. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND- 
 
 SI 
 
 many days without a king, and without a prince, and with¬ 
 out sacrifice, and without an image, and without ephod, and 
 without teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel 
 return^ and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; 
 and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days.^^’^ 
 
 Even when outcast Israel was like a child banished from 
 a father’s house, the words of the Lord are still those of a 
 Father to Israel. Is Ephraim my dear son 1 is he a pleas- 
 ant child 1 for since I did speak against him, I do earnestly 
 remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for 
 him ; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord, 
 Turn again, O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy 
 cities,^ 
 
 Though Israel was cast out, but not cast away forever, 
 the sceptre was not to depart from Judah till Shiloh should 
 come; and that tribe continued unbroken till the Messiah 
 was cut off, and the city and the sanctuary, as Daniel fore¬ 
 told, were destroyed by the Romans, and desolations ap¬ 
 pointed even to the consummation. But long ere then they 
 suffered, though in a slighter degree, the penalties of a bro¬ 
 ken law, and Judah could not always retain Jerusalem. 
 Yet before their seventy years’ captivity began, a pledge 
 was first given by the prophet who foretold the extirpation 
 of the Jews from the land of their fathers, that the covenant 
 with Abraham, as finally to be fulfilled, was not abrogated 
 for an hour. 
 
 When, after having possessed Judea for eight hundred 
 and fifty years, the Jews were about to be led captive to 
 Babylon, and Jerusalem to be given into the hands of the 
 Chaldeans, as the word of the Lord declared; and, in hu¬ 
 man seeming, the covenant was to be broken by the depar¬ 
 ture forever of the last remaining tribe of Israel, Jeremiah, 
 at the command of the Lord, bought a field in Anathoth, the 
 redemption of which was his right, from Hananeel, his un¬ 
 cle’s son. He subscribed the evidence, and sealed it, and 
 took witnesses, and weighed the money in the balances, 
 and took the evidence of the purchase, and gave it unto 
 Baruch, in the sight of Hananeel, in the presence of the 
 witnesses that subscribed the book, before all the Jews that 
 sat in the court of the prison. And he charged Baruch be¬ 
 fore them, saying, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God 
 of Israel, Take these evidences, and put them in an earth- 
 
 * Hosea, iii., 4, 5. t Jer., ixxi., 20, 21. 
 
52 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 en vessel, that they may continue many days. For thus 
 saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Houses, and 
 fields, and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land. 
 And Jeremiah prayed unto the Lord, saying, Ah, Lord God! 
 behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy pow¬ 
 er and stretched-oijt arm, and there is nothing too hard for 
 thee, &c. He spake of the signs and wonders which the 
 Lord had wrought in bringing them to that land, which He 
 did swear to ihtir fathers to give them. He acknowledged 
 that their transgression was the cause of their calamities ; 
 and he appealed to the enemies around Jerusalem as a sure 
 evidence that they would be led captive, and to the pur¬ 
 chase he had made as a sure token of their return. And in 
 the word that came to him, we read, “ Now, therefore, thus 
 saith the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city 
 whereof ye say, it shall be delivered into the hand of the 
 King of Babylon, by the sword, and by the famine, and by 
 the pestilence : Behold, I will gather them out of all coun¬ 
 tries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my 
 fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto 
 this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: and they 
 shall be my people, and I will be their God. And I will 
 give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me 
 forever, for the good of them and of their children after 
 them : and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, 
 that I will not turn away from them to do them good; but I 
 will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart 
 from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, 
 and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole 
 heart and with my whole soul.”* 
 
 These words, though heard in the court of the prison of 
 the besieged city of Jerusalem, sound not like a repealing 
 of the everlasting covenant. The decree of Heaven, an¬ 
 nounced by the prophet, had indeed given that city to the 
 Chal leans, and doomed its inhabitants to exile and captivi¬ 
 ty. But even while the mounts of its enemies and destined 
 captors were raised around Jerusalem, a valid purchase of 
 a field in the adjoining country of Benjamin could be made, 
 and the evidence of that purchase be deposited in an earth¬ 
 en vessel, to rest secure till the seed of Jacob should return 
 to their own land. While of themselves they were as hope¬ 
 less a6 helpless, it was given to the prophet, ere the van- 
 
 * Jer., xxxii. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 53 
 
 quished captives were exiles from Judea, to know and to 
 record, that the Lord would assuredly plant them in their 
 own land again. The long-suffering patience of the Holy 
 One of Israel, wearied with repentiiig, could not bear with 
 their iniquities any more ; and, in fulfilment of his own 
 word, the last remnant of the seed of Jacob was to be pluck¬ 
 ed from the land promised to their fathers and to their seed 
 forever. But, even at the very time when the Lord had 
 brought a sword upon them to avenge the quarrel of his cov¬ 
 enant, and they were about to be delivered into the hand of 
 their enemy, and the land to be emptied of the children of 
 Israel, as Moses and Joshua had forewarned them, yet the 
 covenant itself was ratified by the Lord, with his whole heart, 
 and with his whole soul, as “ assuredly” as it had been, at 
 the beginning, by the oath which He sware unto their fa¬ 
 thers, ere ever Abraham or Jacob, at any time, departed out 
 of the land of Canaan. 
 
 True indeed it is, that in the last siege of Jerusalem, 
 when the judgments of the Lord came upon them to the ut¬ 
 termost, there was not a prophet to tell again that their ex¬ 
 patriated race ever would return. No field in the whole 
 land of Israel could be purchased then to be inherited in 
 the next or any succeeding generation. Among all the sons 
 of Jacob, scattered everywhere throughout the wide world, 
 there has not for many past ages been a man who, like the 
 sojourner Abraham, had a right to a cave in Canaan, and 
 to the field and trees around it, nor to a parcel of ground 
 such as Jacob gave to his son Joseph ; nor is there an earth¬ 
 en vessel now containing the evidence of the purchase, or 
 the chartered fight to the possession of a single field in the 
 country of Benjamim, or of any of the tribes of Israel, which 
 has continued since Jerusalem was besieged by the Ro¬ 
 mans, like that in which the prophet put the record of the 
 egal purchase of the field in Anathoth. In the dark day 
 of Judah’s fall, the sun had gone down over the ’prophets, and 
 they had a vision* And once in all their history, Israel 
 left Canaan without a renewal*of the covenant, and was 
 driven out in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, 
 without one word from the Lord of comfort or of hope. 
 Even irrespective of the termination of the limited and ap¬ 
 pointed time, “ the end” of Jerusalem declared that the time 
 was come in which the words of Daniel were fulfilled, in 
 
 * Mic., iii., 0. 
 
 E2 
 
54 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 the next and greatest destruction of the city: “ And the 
 people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city 
 and the sanctuary ; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, 
 and unto the end of the war desolations are determined: 
 and He shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease, and 
 for the overspreading of abominations He shall make it des¬ 
 olate, even until the consummation,”* &c. But prior to 
 that time, according to the same prophetic word, Messiah 
 the Prince was to come, and be cut off. And no prophet, 
 possessing the Spirit only in measure, was needed to speak 
 when Jesus had spoken. And He, of whom all the proph¬ 
 ets testified, wept over Jerusalem, and thus bewailed its 
 coming destruction : “ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest 
 the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how 
 often would I have gathered thy children together, even as 
 a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye 
 would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. 
 For I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth till ye 
 shall say. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the 
 Lord !”f “ Ye shall be led captive into all nations ; and 
 
 Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the 
 time of the Gentiles be fulfilled.’’^ These words imply that 
 the time, however distant, would come at last, when Jeru¬ 
 salem shall no longer be trodden down of the Gentiles. 
 Upon his cross was the inscription written, in Hebrew, 
 Greek, and Latin, so that Jews and Gentiles alike might 
 read, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. After his resur¬ 
 rection He instructed his disciples in the things pertaining 
 to the kingdom of God ; and, as if seeking to know more 
 than He had seen meet to reveal, immediately before his 
 ascension they asked the Lord if He would at that time re~ 
 store again the kingdom of Israel,^ without the expression 
 of a doubt that He would some time restore it, but resting 
 the question which they put upon the certainty of the fact, 
 their faith in which the answer of Jesus did not shake, “ It 
 is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the 
 Father hath in his own pawer.” 
 
 When the armed band laid hold on Jesus, and when He 
 commanded Peter to put up his sword, into its sheath. He 
 said, “ Thinkest thou that 1 cannot now pray unto my Fa¬ 
 ther, and He shall presently give me more than twelve le- 
 
 * Dan., ii., 26, 27. 
 t Luke, xxi., 24. 
 
 t Matt., xxiii., 37-39. 
 § Acts, i., 3, 6. 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 55 
 
 gions of angels 1 Bui how then shall the Scri'ptures he ful¬ 
 filled that thus it must be How could they have been 
 fulfilled, notwithstanding the unbelief of the Jews, if the 
 Messiah had not been cut off, if the righteous servant of the 
 Lord had not been led as a lamb to the slaughter, and cut 
 off out of the land of the living, and if He had not poured 
 out his soul unto death, an offering for sin ?t But the proph¬ 
 ets testified beforehand not only the sufferings of the Mes¬ 
 siah, but the glory that should follow. And how, notwith¬ 
 standing the unbelief of Gentiles, shall the Scriptures be 
 fulfilled, if the kingdom be not restored to Israel, if the cov¬ 
 enant which God made with Abraham, and confirmed by 
 an oath to Isaac, and for a law to Jacob, and for an ever¬ 
 lasting covenant to Israel, to give to their seed the land of 
 Canaan for an everlasting possession, be not ratified in fact? 
 Nay, how shall the oath which the Lord hath sworn be per¬ 
 formed, if, contrary to his word, the thing that hath gone out 
 of his lips be altered, or be not done ? 
 
 Speaking after the manner of men, the apostle says. If 
 hut a maii’s covenant he confirmed^ no man annulleth or add- 
 eth thereunto.\ The covenant of God with Abraham as ex¬ 
 pressly bears that the promised land, as meted out and de¬ 
 fined, was given to him and to his seed for an everlasting 
 possession, as that all the families of the earth shall be bless¬ 
 ed in him. And if a man’s covenant cannot be annulled or 
 bear abatement, how much less shall the Lord’s ? In cov¬ 
 enants between man and man the parties may be perfectly 
 sincere, and hold themselves absolutely bound to the com¬ 
 pletion of every word that is written in the bond ; and yet 
 things unforeseen and uncontrollable may render the deed 
 abortive, and turn into utter worthlessness every guarantee 
 that man could offer. And though an oath for corjfirmation 
 be the most solemn and sacred of pledges, it may secure 
 nothing, and its violation only prove that man is not guilt¬ 
 less before God. But Christians surely may hear and be¬ 
 lieve what Balaam spake by the Spirit of the Lord, when 
 Balak asked him concerning Israel, “ What hath the Lord 
 spoken ? And he said. Rise up, Balak, and hear; hearken 
 unto me, thou son of Zippor: God is not a man, that He 
 should lie ; neither the son of man, that He should repent: 
 hath He said, and shall He not do it ? or hath He spoken, 
 and shall He not make it good ? He hath blessed, and I 
 
 * Matt., ixvi., 53, 54. t Isa., lidi. t Gal., did., 15. 
 
56 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 cannot reverse it.”* Reassurance of the same eternal truth 
 was given by Samuel, when he announced to Saul that his 
 kingdom, the first in Israel, was rent from him and given to 
 another: “ The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; 
 for He is not a man that He should repent.”f Neither can 
 any unforeseen contingencies frustrate his purpose—for with 
 him there are none—nor can any casue arise of potency 
 enough to annul the covenant which He hath declared to 
 be everlasting. When He lifted up his hand to the fathers 
 concerning it. He saw, as He had decreed, the end from 
 the beginning. And age after age He declared its perpetu¬ 
 ity, even when it seemed to have ceased forever. 
 
 The Lord did confirm his covenant. A smoking furnace 
 and a burning lamp were its visible confirmation on the day 
 He made it with Abraham. He is not unmindful of his 
 covenant, or of the sign He gave to the father of the faith¬ 
 ful that his seed should inherit the land forever. The Lord 
 thus speaks : For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and 
 for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness 
 thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as 
 a lamp that burneth. And the Gentiles shall see thy righ¬ 
 teousness, and all kings thy glory. Thou shalt no more be 
 termed Forsaken, neither shall thy land be any more termed 
 Desolate; but thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah {my delight 
 is in her), and thy land Beulah {married), for the Lord de- 
 lighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married, ^ &lc. They 
 shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former 
 desolations, they shall repair the waste cities, the desola¬ 
 tions of many generations, &c.^ 
 
 So numerous, clear, and positive are the prophecies 
 which declare the final restoration of the Israelites to the 
 land of their inheritance, that the denial of it may well 
 seem to be an impeachment of the truth of God, in regard 
 to the very thing on which He hath staked his faithfulness. 
 On that topic, with its collateral themes, of momentous im¬ 
 port to the world, the author may enter in other pages than 
 the present. But as to their final possession of the land, a 
 single text, after the general view which has been given of 
 the subject, more than a thousand arguments, may serve to 
 show how assuredly the covenant with Abraham concern¬ 
 ing the land shall yet be accomplished. “ Thus saith tho 
 
 * Num., xxiii., 17-19. 
 t Isa., Ixii., 1-4, &c. 
 
 t 1 Sam., XV., 20 
 ^ Ibid., Ixi., 4v 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 57 
 
 Lord God, Behold, I will take the children of Israel from 
 among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather 
 them on every side, and bring them into their own land. 
 And I will make them one nation in the land upon the 
 mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king to them all; 
 and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they 
 be divided into two kingdoms any more at all. And David 
 my servant shall be king over them, and they shall have 
 one shepherd ; they shall also walk in my judgments, and 
 observe my statutes, and do them. And they shall 
 
 DWELL IN THE LAND WHICH I GAVE UNTO JaCOB MY SER¬ 
 VANT, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall 
 dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their chil¬ 
 dren’s children,ybreuer ,• and my servant. David shall he their 
 ■prince forever. Moreover, I will make a covenant of peace 
 Avith them: it shall be an everlasting covenant with 
 them : and I will place them, and multiply them, and will 
 set my sanctuary in the midst of them/or evermore.’^* 
 
 The unbelief of the Israelites could not make void the 
 promise of God, either when they first reached the borders 
 of Canaan, or when the last tribe was rooted out of their 
 land. Neither can it now. The Egyptians, seeing an un¬ 
 believing generation dying in the wilderness, mi^dit say that 
 the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which He 
 had promised unto them. But others than they have doubted 
 and disbelieved ; and objections against belief in the res- 
 toration of the kingdom to Israel have not been wanting in 
 modern times. And now that Israel and Judah have for 
 ages been expatriated, the conclusion may seem to be ra¬ 
 tional that the Lord hath cast them ofi’, and abolished his 
 covenant. All such reasonings, then, when fully consider¬ 
 ed, may finally be cast at once into the balance of the sanc¬ 
 tuary, that their weight, if any, may be tried. And all such 
 objections may be answered by the word of the Lord which 
 came to Jeremiah, saying, “ Considerest thou not what this 
 people have spoken, saying. The two families which the 
 Lord hath chosen. He hath even cast them off? thus they 
 have despised my people, that they should be no more a 
 nation before them. Thus saith the Lord, If my covenant 
 be not with the day and night, and if I have not appointed 
 the ordinances of heaven and earth, then will I cast away 
 the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not 
 
 ♦ E 2 ek,. xxxvii.. 19-26. 
 
68 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THE COVENANT 
 
 take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob, for I will cause their captivity to return, 
 and have mercy on them.”* 
 
 Finally, as at the first, “ To the law and to the testimony ; 
 if they speak not according to this word, it is because there 
 is no light in them.”! Thus saith the Lord, the King of 
 Israel, and his Redeemer the Lord of Hosts, I am ihejirst^ 
 and I am the last, and besides me there is no God. And 
 who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in order 
 for me, since I appoirUed the ancient 'people! and the things 
 that are coming, and shall come, let them show unto them. 
 Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from 
 the beginning? I the Lord, the first, and with the last; I 
 am He.I David testified of his Son, and yet his Lord, 
 Thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave, neither wilt thou 
 suffer thy Holy One to see corruption,^ Thou hast ascend¬ 
 ed on high,II &c. To the prisoner in Patmos, who bare 
 record for the testimony of Jesus Christ, that Holy One 
 appeared after his ascension; and these were the first 
 words, like those of a great trumpet, that burst on the apos¬ 
 tle’s ear : “ I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.”T[ 
 He that is holy. He that is true. He that is the beginning 
 and the end,** He that hath the ke'y of David, He that open- 
 eth and no^an shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth, 
 thus uttered the first word of his Revelation, repeating what 
 the prophet had testified of him as the King and the Re 
 deemer of Israel, “ I am the first and the last.” 
 
 He is the first. The same apostle testifies of him, “In 
 the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, 
 and the Word was God.” When the everlasting covenant 
 had its origin, the Word of the Lord came to Abraham, 
 saying, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. 
 Ere Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, there wrestled 
 with him a man till the breaking of the day. And of that 
 wrestling it is written. By his strength he had power with 
 us; he had power with God, and prevailed ; as it is also 
 said. In Bethel he spake with us, even the Lord God of 
 Hosts ; the Lord is his memorial.ft When Israel first en¬ 
 tered into Canaan, at the time when the manna ceased, 
 and when they did first eat the fruit of the land, there stood 
 
 + Isa., viii., 20. t Ibid., ili., 4 ; xliv., 6, 7. 
 
 II Ibid., Ixviii., 18. % Rev., i., II. 
 
 tt Hos., xii., 5, 
 
 * Jer., xxxiii., 24-26. 
 ^ Psalm xvi., 10. 
 
 ** Rev., i., 11, 
 
CONCERNING THE LAND. 
 
 59 
 
 a man over against Joshua with a drawn sword in his hand, 
 and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us 
 or for our adversaries ? And he said, Nay ; but as the captain 
 of the Lord’s host am I now come. And Joshua fell on his 
 face to the earth, and did worship.* When, in the fulness 
 of time, the new and everlasting covenant was first brought 
 in, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among iis.f But 
 He is the last as well as the first, the end no less than 
 the beginning. When that covenant of mercy and of peace 
 shall at last and forever be established with the house of 
 Israel and with the house of Judah, the prophetic testimony, 
 no longer shadowed by a veil on the mind of Gentile or of 
 Jew, shall be read of all men, even as it is written : “ Be¬ 
 hold, the days come that 1 will perform that good thing 
 which I have promised unto the house of Israel, and to the 
 house of Judah. In those days, and at that time., will I 
 cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; 
 and He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the 
 land. In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem 
 shall dwell safely; and this is the name wherewith He 
 shall be called, the Lord (Jehovah) our Righteousness,^ 
 &c. I w'ill gather the remnant of my flock out of all 
 countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them 
 again to their folds, and they shall be fruitful and increase. 
 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I wdll raise 
 unto David a righteous Branch, and a king shall reign and 
 prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. 
 In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell 
 safely; and this is the name whereby He shall be called, 
 The Lord our Righteousness. Therefore, behold the 
 days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, 
 The Lord liveth which brought up the children of Israel 
 out of the land of Egypt. But the Lord liveth which 
 brought up, and which led the seed of the house of Israel 
 out of the north country, and from all the countries whither 
 I had driven them ; and they shall dwell in their own 
 land.”^ In the same chapter, it is said by the prophet who 
 testifies of these things. He that hath ray word, let him 
 speak my w'ord faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat 1 
 saith the Lord. Is not my word like a fire ? saith the 
 Lord ; and like a hammer, that breaketh the rock in pieces ? 
 
 * Josh., V., 13, 14. 
 t J«r., xxxiii., 14, 16. 
 
 t John, i., 1. 
 Vtbid., xziii., 3-S, 
 
60 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 Thus shall ye say every one to his neighbour, and every 
 one to his brother, What hath the Lord spoken 1* 
 
 Such an injunction has only to be regarded,*that the per¬ 
 petuity of the covenant of the Lord with Abraham concern¬ 
 ing the land may be seen. But it is no less requisite in re¬ 
 gard to our next inquiry than the present. And as the last 
 proof which may here be given that the covenant still stands, 
 it may be conclusive to hear what the Lord did speak con¬ 
 cerning the inheritance of Israel, in anticipation of those 
 days when it shall be apportioned in a manner altogether 
 new amonor all the tribes, at a time when Israel was out- 
 cast in Assyria, and Judah captive in Babylon, and when 
 they had far less liberty than they have now to return to 
 their own land. “ Thus saith the Lord God, This shall be 
 the border w^hereby ye shall inherit the land, according to 
 the twelve tribes of Israel. And ye shall inherit it one as 
 well as another, concerning the which I lifted up my hand 
 to give it unto your fathers.”! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES, OR BORDERS OF THE LAND, GIVEN BY 
 COVENANT TO THE ISRAELITES, AS DEFINED IN SCRIP¬ 
 TURE. 
 
 “ A good land and a large.”— Exod., iii., 6. 
 
 SECTION 1. 
 
 Abraham, obedient to the word of the Lord, having left 
 his country, his kindred, and his father’s house, went from 
 Haran to Canaan. Having entered it, not knowing whither 
 he was to go, or where he was to take up even a temporary 
 abode, he continued his journey, and passed through the 
 land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. 
 There “ the Lord appeared unto him and said. Unto thy 
 seed will I give this land.”f The first act of Abraham was 
 to build there an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto 
 him. From thence, no longer journeying onward, he re¬ 
 moved unto a mountain on the east of Bethel ; and there, 
 
 * Jer.> xxiii., 28, 29, 37. t Ezek., xlvil., 13, 14. t Gen., xij., 7. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 61 
 
 as we read for the first time since he left his father’s house, 
 he “ pitched his tent,” having Bethel on the west, and Hai 
 on the east; and though he had no city or house to dwell 
 in, “ he built an altar unto the Lord, and called on the name 
 of the Lord.”* On the plain of Moreh, where his journey 
 from his fatherland was stayed, the first promise was given 
 him of another land unto his seed, even that to which he 
 had come at the command of the Lord. That promise was 
 renewed, after his return from Egypt, when he had come 
 again unto “ the place where his tent had been placed at the 
 beginning, unto the place of the altar which he had made 
 there a,t the first.” Appearing to him there, not on the plain 
 of Moreh, but upon a mountain east of Bethel, from whence 
 the land, afterward called Holy, stretched on every side to 
 the farthest extent of view, “ the Lord said unto Abram, Lifl 
 up now thine eyes, and took from the place where thou art, 
 nortfmard, and southward, and eastward, and westward : for 
 all the land which thou seest, to thee will 1 give it, and to thy 
 seed forever. Arise, walk through the land in the length of 
 it, and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee'f 
 On so elevated a site, and in so pure an atmosphere as that 
 of the land of Canaan, places far distant seem comparative¬ 
 ly near, and a large territory is encircled within range of 
 view. But nowhere, on any side, could the patriarch see a 
 single spot, though the peak of a far-distant mountain, that 
 formed not a portion of the land given by that word to him 
 and to his seed forever. The Canaanite and the Perizzite 
 then dwelt in the immediately circumjacent lands, but his 
 eye could not reach to other regions, as yet to himself un¬ 
 known ; and he was commanded to walk through the land 
 in its length and in its breadth, as his own by the promise 
 of the Lord, whose voice he had obeyed in coming forth 
 from Ur of the Chaldees, never to return. The Lord had 
 promised to show him the land whither He would have him 
 to go; and now He gave that land in all its extent to him 
 and to his seed forever. 
 
 Again, still more specifically and extensively, and farther 
 than the eye of man could any where reach or circumscribe, 
 the already repeated promises were confirmed by a cove¬ 
 nant, at the time when the Lord announced to the aged pa¬ 
 triarch that He would give unto him a son for his heir, the 
 heir—no less than the land— oi promise. Abraham believed 
 
 * Geru, T., 8. t Ibid., xiii., 14,15, 17. 
 
 F 
 
62 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness; 
 and the land, no longer undefined, was marked out more 
 clearly and largely by the word of the Lord, than before it 
 had been by the eye of the houseless stranger to whom He 
 gave it. With no stinted bounds assigned, it was a boon, 
 rich and large, worthy of the Lord of the whole earth to 
 give to Abraham his servant, and as such, his friend. “ In 
 the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, say¬ 
 ing, Vnlo thy seed have I given this land, from the River of 
 Egypt unto the great river, the River Euphrates: the Ken- 
 ites, and the Kcnizzites, and the Kadmonites, and the Hit- 
 tites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, and the Amorites, 
 and the Canaaniles, and the Girgashites, and the Jehusites.''*" 
 All the countries possessed by these various inhabitants 
 were given unto the seed of Abraham ; and while the places 
 in which some of these nations dwelt might in after ages 
 be unknown, the farthest borders of the inheritance were 
 named, and every intermediate region was included in the 
 land of promise. Abraham had not a child, nor a foot of 
 ground. He believed in the Lord, and trusted in Him as 
 his portion. Lest the King of Sodom should say that he 
 had made Abraham rich, the faithful patriarch, appealing to 
 the Most High God, the possessor of heaven and earth, re¬ 
 fused to take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet of any¬ 
 thing that was his,t though he might have retained the 
 spoils which he had retaken from the kings he had van¬ 
 quished, and which were freely offered him. He continued 
 a stranger and sojourner in the land, which in faith he al¬ 
 ready held as his own, and the inheritance of his seed for¬ 
 ever, from the River of Egypt to the River Euphrates. 
 
 The covenant with Abraham had no terms but those of 
 a free and a full gift: Unto thee and to thy seed vnll I give 
 this land, from the River of Egypt to the River Euphrates. 
 There is no restriction, nor condition, nor reservation what¬ 
 ever ; nor is there any exclusion even of a foot-breadth of 
 the wide-extended region that lies between these far-separ¬ 
 ated rivers. Such is the covenant of the Lord with Abra¬ 
 ham concerning the inheritance—the land which He lifted 
 up his hand to give unto the fathers. 
 
 The same covenant was renewed, alike unconditionally, 
 in all its freeness and in all its fulness, to Isaac and to Ja¬ 
 cob, the heirs with him of the same promise. And uniformly 
 
 * Gen., XV., 18-23. t Ibid., xiv., 23. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 63 
 
 too, when renewed with them, as when made with Abra¬ 
 ham, the covenant of the Lord—comprehensive as that of 
 the God of the whole earth, who had called Abraham in or¬ 
 der to the final execution of his purposes of grace and mer¬ 
 cy, not to one nation only, but to all—associated with the 
 gift of the land in its fullest extent to their seed, a Messing 
 in their seed to all the families of the earth. 
 
 Unto Isaac the Lord said, “ Unto thee and unto thv seed 
 will 1 give all these countries; and I will perform the oath 
 which I sware unto Abraham thy father: and I will make 
 thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give 
 unto thy seed all these countries ; and in thy seed shall all 
 the nations of the earth he blessed; because that Abraham 
 obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, 
 my statutes, and my laws.”* Abraham believed and obey¬ 
 ed ; and Isaac, though famine prevailed, sojourned in the 
 land at the* word of the Lord. 
 
 Again, when the covenant concerning the land was con¬ 
 firmed to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting 
 covenant, the assigned extent of the inheritance was large 
 and undiminished; and the same blessing as before, and 
 from the same source, was ultimately destined to be shed 
 abroad throughout the world, till it should reach all the fam¬ 
 ilies of men from the seed of Jacob. The Lord said unto 
 the father of all the tribes of Israel, “ I am the Lord God of 
 Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac : the land where¬ 
 on thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy 
 seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shall spread 
 abroad to the west and to the east, and to the north and to the 
 south, and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the 
 earth be blessed?'’^ “ The land which I gave Abraham and 
 IsaaCy to thee will I give it, and to thy seed after thee will 
 I give the land.”J 
 
 When the Lord first appeared unto Moses, with the de¬ 
 clared purpose of fulfilling his promise, as the God of Abra¬ 
 ham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, He said, “ I am come down to 
 deliver my people, and to bring them up out of the land of 
 Egypt, and to bring them unto a good land and a large. 
 And before any part of their inheritance passed into the 
 possession of the children of Israel, the limits of the land 
 were farther defined. “ By little and by little I will drive 
 
 * Gen., xxvi., 3-5. 
 tExod.,xxxv., 12. 
 
 t Ibid., xxviii., 1, 3, 14. 
 Ibid., iii., 8. 
 
64 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OT 
 
 them out before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit 
 the land. And I will set thy bounds by the Red Sea, even 
 unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the 
 river ; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into 
 your hand, and thou shalt drive them out before thee. Thou 
 shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. 
 They shall not dwell in the land, lest they make thee sin 
 against me.”* “ If ye shall diligently keep all these com¬ 
 
 mandments which I command you, to do them, to love the 
 Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto 
 him, then will the Lord drive out all those nations from be¬ 
 fore you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier 
 than yourselves. Every place whereon the soles of your feet 
 shall tread shall be yours ; from the wilderness and Lebanon, 
 from the river, the River Euphrates, even unto the uttermost 
 sea shall your coast be. There shall no man be able to 
 stand before you ; for the liOrd your God shall lay the fear 
 of you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall 
 tread upon, as He hath said unto you. Behold, I set before 
 you this day a blessing and a curse,”f &;c. 
 
 After the tribes of Reuben and of Gad, and the half tribe 
 of Manasseh, had received their inheritance on the east of 
 the Jordan, the land of Canaan was assigned to the remain¬ 
 ing nine tribes and a half. Its borders, or those of the Is- 
 raelitish possessions which were then farther allocated, as 
 specified in the thirty-fourth chapter of Numbers, do not in¬ 
 clude, as sometimes represented, the whole of the land of 
 Israel, for they passed not the Jordan, instead of reaching 
 to the Euphrates. The western, and partly the southern 
 and northern borders of the land are defined, but not the 
 eastern, except as marking the bounds between those who 
 then had, and those of their brethren who had not received 
 their inheritance. On the south, the land of Edom was 
 also excluded, as “ the brotherly covenant” was not to be 
 broken. But on the north, there was no such nor any other 
 cause of limitation, and they were thus left free to reach 
 the utmost bounds assigned to Israel. What these on every 
 side were, the irrepealable charter, as written in the Scrip¬ 
 tures, alone can determine. 
 
 “ As for the western border,ye shall have the great sea for 
 a border: this shall be your west border. This shall be your 
 north border; from the great sea ye shall point out for you 
 
 * Exod., xxiii., 30-33. t Deut., xi., 22-26. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 65 
 
 Mount Hot (hor-Jia-hor). From Mount Hor ye shall point 
 out your border unto the entrance of Hamath ; and the gohigs 
 forth of the border shall be to Zedad. And the border shall 
 go on to Zi.phron, and the goings out of it shall he at Hazar- 
 enan : this shall be your north border. And ye shall point 
 out your east border from Hazar-enan to Shephan ; and the 
 coast shall go down from Shephan to Riblah, on the east side 
 of Ain, &c. 
 
 Again, when all these tribes had dwelt in Canaan till 
 Joshua was old and stricken in years, the land that remained 
 to be possessed was defined, according to the word of the 
 Lord, who had promised it to their fathers ; and the defini¬ 
 tions of these territories show, as the Lord himself declared, 
 that VERY MUCH LAND pertained by covenanted right to the 
 seed of Jacob, besides that which they inherited in the days 
 of Joshua.f 
 
 “ This is the land that yet remaineth: all the borders of 
 the Philistines, and all Geshuri,yrowi Sihor, which is before 
 Egypt, even unto the borders of Ekron northward, which is 
 counted to the Canaanite : five lords of the Philistines ; the 
 Gazathites, and the Ashdothites, the Eshkalonites, the Gil- 
 tites, and the Ekronites ; also the Avites. From the south, 
 all the land of the Canaanites, and Mearah that is beside the 
 Sidonians, unto Aphek, to the borders of the Amorites : and 
 all the land of the Giblites, and all Lebanon towards the sun¬ 
 rising, from Baal-gad under Mount Hermon, unto the enter- 
 ing into Hamath ; all the inhabitants of the hill-country, from 
 Lebanon unto Misrephoth-maim, and all the Sidonians, them 
 will I drive out before the children of Israel; only divide 
 thou it by lot unto the Israelites for an inheritance, as I have 
 commanded thee.”:{; 
 
 But the borders of the land, which was finally and forever 
 to be inherited by the twelve tribes of Israel, were as ex¬ 
 pressly and explicitly defined, after the last of them had 
 been plucked from off it, and while Judah was captive in 
 Babylon, and Ephraim in Assyria, as they were thus marked 
 out by the word of the Lord to Joshua, when all the seed 
 of Jacob dwelt in Canaan ; and when the large portion that 
 remained was divided among them by lot, as if they had 
 held it in actual possession, while yet faithful to the cove¬ 
 nant of their God, “ the land was subdued before them.” 
 Moses, a wanderer in the wilderness, and Ezekiel, an exile 
 
 * Numb., xxxiv,, 6-11. t Josh., xiii., 1. t Ibid., 2-6. 
 
 F 2 
 
 / 
 
66 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 in Chaldea, were alike privileged to record the sure word of 
 a covenant-keeping God, by wliich the borders of the in¬ 
 heritance are defined, and the perpetuity of the covenant 
 declared; whether, in the one case, its truth had, for the 
 first time, to be tried, or in the other, it seemed to have 
 ceased forever, when all the tribes of Israel were exiled 
 bondsmen, in countries far distant from Jerusalem and Sa¬ 
 maria. 
 
 “ Thus saith the Lord God, This shall be the border 
 whereby ye shall inherit the land according to the twelve 
 tribes of Israel; Joseph shall have two portions. And ye 
 shall inherit it one as well as another ; concerning the which 
 I lifted up my hand to give it unto your fathers: and this 
 land shall fall to you for inheritance. And this shall be the 
 border of the land towards the north side, from the great sea, 
 the way of Hethlon, as men go to Zedad; Hamath, Bero- 
 thah, Sibraim, which is between the border of Damascus 
 and the border of Hamath ; Hazar-hatlicon, which is by the 
 coast of Hauran. And the border from the sea shall be 
 Hazar-enan, the border of Damascus, and the north north¬ 
 ward, and the border of Hamath. And this is the north 
 side. And the east side ye shall measure from Hauran, and 
 from Damascus, and from Gilead, and from the land of Is¬ 
 rael by Jordan,yVom the border unto the east sea. And this 
 is the east side. And the south side southward, from Ta¬ 
 mar to the waters of strife in Kadesh, the river to the great 
 sea. And this is the south side southward. The west side 
 also shall be the great sea from the border, till a man come 
 over against Hamath, This is the west side. So shall ye 
 divide this land according to the tribes of Israel. Now 
 these are the names of the tribes. From the north end to 
 the coast of the way of Hethlon, as one goeth to Hamath, 
 Hazar-enan, the border of Damascus northward, to the coast 
 of Hamath (for these are his sides east and west), a portion 
 for Dan. And by the border of Dan, from the east side 
 unto the west side, a portion for Asher,”* &c. 
 
 The territory, secured by such charters to Israel, is not 
 undefined, and cannot be forever doubtful. Its peculiar po¬ 
 sition, in relation to the other kingdoms of the world, as 
 well as its peculiar features, and qualities, or capabilities, 
 as anciently exemplified, or yet more fully to be developed, 
 require to be separately considered; but these scriptural 
 
 * Ezek., xlvii., 13-23; xlviii., 1. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 67 
 
 records at once attest that its bounds are ample, and that it 
 is a large^ as it will also be sliown in the sequel that it is a 
 goodly land. The terms of the covenant, were it only man’s, 
 are not to be tampered with, nor is their plain significancy 
 to be at all abated. That of the Lord is not to be explained 
 away in any manner that does not give a full meaning to 
 every word of promise it contains. It is not needful, and 
 it is not meet to qualify the words of the Holy One of Isra¬ 
 el, whose promises to the fathers cannot fail. His word 
 has its vindication in itself—its infallible certainty in his 
 own Almighty power. He who set the bounds of the peo¬ 
 ple according to the number of the children of Israel, at the 
 time when He divided among the nations their inheritance, 
 and separated the sons of Adam, or the whole race of man, 
 fixed such borders of the inheritance of Israel as best befit 
 an everlasting possession, and such as, though questioned 
 or displaced in ages past, shall assuredly be knowm of all 
 men when the covenant shall be fulfilled, and the whole 
 earth shall be filled with his glory. 
 
 From the new and final division among all the tribes of 
 Israel, as described by Ezekiel, whereby they shall inherit 
 the land, concerning the which the Lord lifted up his hand to 
 give it unto their fathers, it is perfectly manifest, as speci¬ 
 fied in every instance, that the borders of each tribe shall be 
 from the east side unto the west side, or in parallel lines 
 slretchiog throughout the whole “ breadth of Immanuel’s 
 land.” And thus—in respect to the extreme boundaries, 
 comprehending them all—from the River of Egypt to the 
 River Euphrates, setting the bounds by the Red Sea on the 
 south, and from the River Euphrates to the great sea, or the 
 Mediterranean, on the north, including all Lebanon, and all 
 the hill-country to the entrance into Hamath with the Eu¬ 
 phrates on the east, from the border to the east sea, and on 
 the west, from the border to the River of Egypt, and from 
 thence along the Mediterranean coast to the entrance into 
 Hamath, lines have been drawn and borders have been set, 
 which, if looked at with a single eye, might place the land 
 in visible perspective before us, as the Lord espied it for 
 the people whom He created for his glory, and to whom 
 He gave it by an everlasting covenant, which He will yet 
 remember. 
 
 Though thus definitely marked, “ the promised land” has 
 often been measured by the far narrower bounds which Is- 
 
68 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 rael of old actually possessed. Error is congenial to error, 
 as truth to truth. While the perpetuity of the covenant 
 concerning the land has been disregarded, the extent of the 
 inheritance has shrivelled irHo mean dimensions. As if the 
 kingdom were never to be restored to Israel, and the per¬ 
 petual covenant had ceased forever, many critics and com¬ 
 mentators, in dealing with the word that abideth forever, 
 have set themselves to a merely antiquarian task, and have 
 sought rather to fix the borders of the promised land by the 
 limited region which the Israelites occupied of old, than to 
 measure the guarantied inheritance itself by the borders 
 which the Lord of the whole earth assigned it. The bor¬ 
 ders, as prescribed, can alone rightfully determine what the 
 extent of the land is which they bound and comprehend. 
 They alone fix what the everlasting possession shall be. But 
 they are not to be drawn from their true stations and trans- 
 ported from them, in order to form an imaginary boundary 
 around a temporary and partial possession, which in reality 
 never reached them. The borders must determine the 
 promised land, and not the land, as actually possessed, the 
 borders. The territory solely possessed as their own, by a 
 people faithless to their God, who broke the covenant into 
 which they had entered with Him, does not necessarily 
 form the measure of the whole inheritance promised to their 
 fathers, and which shall be finally bestowed upon their 
 faithful offspring, any more than the short time, according to 
 the plaint of Isaiah, during w’hich they held that portion of 
 it as their own, limited the term of the everlasting covenant 
 of unchangeable Jehovah. The time has not come, and 
 never shall, till the sun and moon be no more, when they 
 shall cease to be a people, and their name and nation fail 
 before the Lord. More numerous than they were when 
 they were rooted out of their father’s land, they are still 
 looking in millions to their return. And the sole question 
 here is, not What were the limits of the land anciently oc- 
 cupied by their race 1 but What is the land, as defined in 
 the Word of God, in its length and in its breadth, concern¬ 
 ing which the Lord lifted up his hand to their fathers, as 
 decreed from the beginning, and as it shall yet fall to the 
 twelve tribes of Israel for their inheritance ? 
 
 The investigation is important, not as limited merely to 
 the illustration of the ancient, though scriptural, history of 
 a rebellious race—for such, save only by a temporary and 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 69 
 
 often partial suspense, they were—but as pertaining to the 
 immutability of the covenatit, and of the words of promise it 
 contains, by which the extent of Israel’s inheritance—the 
 gift of God to the patriarchs and to their seed—is defined ; 
 and as thereby pertaining, too, to the future history of the 
 world, and to the high destiny of Israel, when the covenant 
 shall, in its full extent, be realized at last, and the large and 
 goodly land, as the Lord himself has set its bounds, shall, 
 according to his everlasting covenant, be their everlasting 'pos¬ 
 session. 
 
 Though often held to be identical, it is abundantly plain 
 that the land possessed by the Israelites in ancient times 
 formed but a portion of the promised inheritance. The 
 covenant was made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as we 
 have seen, on absolutely unconditional and unrestricted 
 terms. The promises were Yea and Amen. The oath 
 was essentially irrevocable. The arm of the Almighty 
 would finally effectuate all that his hand had been lifted up 
 to avouch to the believing patriarchs. But though He will 
 never draw back his covenant, it must be ever known as 
 that of a holy, as of a faithful God. Before his people en¬ 
 tered into Canaan, nay, before they had reached either of 
 the northern points of the Red Sea, by which the bounds 
 of their inheritance were set—though they had passed that 
 sea itself by a miracle as on dry ground—the law was given 
 in thunder, and in lightning, and in fire from Sinai. It was 
 added by reason of transgression long after the promise had 
 been made. The condition of obedience was annexed to 
 the covenant made with the Israelites ; and on that depend¬ 
 ed not only the extent of the inheritance they would occu¬ 
 py, but, save for the forbearance and long-suffering patience 
 of their God, the possession of any part of it, even for a 
 single day. If righteousness had come by the law to sinful 
 man, then the borders of Israel of old might have been iden¬ 
 tical with the bounds of their inheritance as set down in 
 the covenant. Or if a priesthood, with all its paraphernalia, 
 or, as the Gospel speaks, heggarhj elements, could have 
 drawn from bulls and goats blood efficacious for the atone- 
 i; ment of sin, the transgressors of Israel might have broken 
 • the covenant and have kept the land. But explicit truths 
 of the Old Testament, as well as fundamental doctrines of 
 the New, are overlooked in maintaining that the covenant, 
 even as respects the land, was fulfilled in all its extent to 
 
70 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 Israel of old. The law, broken and imperfectly obeyed, 
 makes nothing perfect. And under it Israel entered into 
 Canaan ; under it their enemies, though idolaters, were 
 never driven out wholly before them ; under it even the pro¬ 
 verbial extremities or borders of all Israel were not the Red 
 Sea, nor the entrance into Hamath, nor yet the River of 
 Egypt and the Euphrates, but Dan and Beersheba, with 
 comparatively a small space between them ; under it the 
 ten tribes were carried captives into Assyria, and Judah and 
 Benjamin into Babylon ; under it, though not forever, the 
 tabernacle and the throne of David fell; and trusting in it, 
 and not submitting to the righteousness that is of faithj the 
 tribe of Judah, which remained unbroken and retained its 
 lawgivers till Shiloh came, was cut olf; Jerusalem was laid 
 even with the ground, and the Jews dispersed throughout 
 all countries under heaven. The law was broken ; the 
 condition of the Mosaic covenant was not kept; and the 
 land, in its full extent, was never possessed by a faithless 
 people. 
 
 Not only was the retention of the land, or the possession 
 of any part of it, expressly conditional, on the first entrance 
 of tbe Israelites into their inheritance, but they were from 
 the first as expressly precluded from occupying as their 
 own the smallest portion of the territories of the Edomites, 
 Moabites, or Ammonites, which spread over an ample space. 
 Yet all these were clearly included within the bounds of the 
 everlasting inheritance of Israel. The land of Ammon lay 
 on the opposite side of the valley of Jordan, straight over 
 against the mountain east of Bethel, on which Abraham 
 stood, when commanded by the Lord to look eastward, as 
 well as in every other direction, on the land which He 
 gave to him and to his seed forever. The mountains of 
 Moab were among the most conspicuous in his view. And 
 these regions, together with Mount Seir, unquestionably lay 
 to the north of the Red Sea, the west of the Euphrates, and 
 the east of the River of Egypt, and were thus contained 
 within the terms of the covenant. But, though the iniquity 
 of the Amorites was then full, the time was not come when 
 the Moabites and Ammonites, the descendants of Lot, the 
 brother’s son of Abraham, or the Edomites, descended of 
 Isaac, were to be dispossessed of their inheritance, and 
 “the brotherly covenant” was not to be broken by the chil¬ 
 dren of Israel. It is as clear that the countries in which 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 71 
 
 they dwelt were excluded from the ancient land of Israel, 
 of which, though afterward subjugated, they did not form a 
 part, as that they were comprehended within the borders 
 specified in the Abrahamic covenant, and that they are des¬ 
 tined to form part of the inheritance of the Israelites on their 
 final restoration. 
 
 The reader will at once perceive how different is the 
 scriptural record concerning them respectively, in these 
 different circumstances and times. 
 
 “ The Lord spake unto Moses, Command the people, 
 saying. Ye are to pass through the coast of your brethren, 
 the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir. . . . Meddle 
 not with them ; for I will not give you of their land, no, not 
 so much as a foot-breadth, because I have given Mount 
 Seir unto Esau for a possession.* . . . Distress not the 
 Moabites, neither contend with them in battle ; for I will 
 not give thee of their land for a possession, because I have 
 given Ar unto the children of Lot for a possession.! . . . 
 And when thou comest nigh over against the children of 
 Ammon, distress them not, nor medcUe with them ; for I 
 will not give thee of the land of the children of Ammon any 
 possession, because I have given it unto the children of Lot 
 for a possession.”! 
 
 But when Israel had compassed Edom, without possess¬ 
 ing of it a foot-breadth, and lay encamped in the plains of 
 Moab, and Balaam was brought forth by a heathen king to 
 curse Israel, even he was constrained to take up a testi¬ 
 mony for the far-distant times when there should be no re^ 
 straints, as there then were, on the full completion of the 
 covenant. “ I shall see him, but not now : I shall behold 
 him, but not nigh : there shall come a star out of Jacob, and 
 a sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners 
 of Moah and destroy all the children of Sheth. Edom shall 
 be a possession ; Seir also shall be a possesion for his ene¬ 
 mies ; and Israel shall do valiantly.”^ 
 
 The prophets of Israel speak in terms alike consonant 
 with the covenant with Jacob, in looking to that day when 
 the root of Jesse shall stand for an ensign of the people of 
 Israel. 
 
 “ He shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather 
 together the dispersed of Judah from the four quarters of 
 the earth. They shall spoil them of the east together: 
 
 * Deut., ii., 2-5. t Ibid., 9. t Ibid., 19. ^ Nura., xxiv., 17, 18. 
 
72 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab, and the 
 children of Ammon shall obey them,”* &:c. “In that day 
 will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, &c. 
 That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the 
 heathen, that are called by my name, saith the Lord, who 
 doth this. And I will plant them upon their land, and they 
 shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have 
 given them, saith the Lord.”! “ And it shall be said in that 
 day, Lo, this is our God ; we have waited for him, and He 
 will save us. For in this mountain shall the hand of the 
 Lord rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under him, even 
 as straw is trodden down for the dunghill. And He ^hall 
 spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he that 
 swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim,”| &c. “ I 
 
 will bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter day, 
 saith the Lord.”^ “ I will bring again the captivity of the 
 children of Ammon, saith the Lord.”! “ The remnant of 
 my people shall possess thejnT^ The house of Jacob shall 
 be a fire, and the house of Esau for stubble ; and they of 
 the south shall possess the mount of Esau.** 
 
 It is not, therefore, a theme for argumentation, but a 
 Scriptural truth to be believed, that, were it in this single 
 instance alone, the borders of ancient Israel are not those 
 of the covenanted heritage of Jacob. Edom, Moab, and 
 Ammon, excluded in the one case, are included in the 
 other. Yet all these, though a hundred and fifty miles 
 intervened between their extreme boundaries, were but a 
 <»mall part of that large portion of the promised inheritance 
 which never ranked of old in the land of Israel. 
 
 The condition of the covenant was not fulfilled ; and be¬ 
 sides the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites, who had a 
 claim on the forbearance of Israel, more numerous enemies, 
 who had none, were never driven out before them, and their 
 lands were net’^r left for the occupancy of the transgressors 
 of God’s holy law. 
 
 Once, indeed, we read of a single, or, at most, a second 
 generation that held undisturbed and unchallenged posses¬ 
 sion of the land, which had everyw'here been subdued before 
 them. Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all 
 the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, and which had 
 
 * Isa., xi., 10, 14. t Amos, ix., 11, 12, 15. t Isa., xxv., 9-11. 
 
 i Jer., xlviii., 47. Ij Ibid., xlix., 6. IT Zeph., ii., 9. 
 
 ** Obad., 18, 19. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 73 
 
 Known all the works of the Lord that He had done for Israel* 
 They had known the works of the Lord, and they believed ; 
 and they were the children faithfal Abraham. And to 
 them the dying Joshua could thus make his last appeal ; 
 
 Behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth : and 
 ye know in all your hearts, and in all your souls, that not 
 one thing hath failed of all the good things whicli the Lord 
 your God-spake concerning you ; all are come to pass unto 
 you, and not one thirig hath failed thereof.”! There was no 
 restriction on them as to the land, save that which was re¬ 
 served by a brotherly covenant. The tribes of Reuben and 
 Gad might have fed their flocks in peace, had their number 
 permitted, on the banks of the Jordan on one side, and of 
 the Euphrates on the other. Neither had the rest of the 
 tribes reached their bounds. Their enemies, wherever they 
 went, had been driven out before them ; they had entered 
 into the possession of all that they had sought to occupy— 
 of a land wherein they did eat bread without scarceness, and 
 lacked not anything in it. The Lord was not slack con¬ 
 cerning his promise, which had been fulfilled unto the utter¬ 
 most; and instead of there being any limit to their land, till 
 its appointed borders should be reached, they had been al¬ 
 ready charged by Joshua with being slack to go to possess 
 the land which the Lord their God had given theni.\ They 
 were, indeed, to drive out their enemies, and to possess the 
 land by little and little, lest the wild beasts should multiply 
 among them. But free as it then was for their possession, 
 the slackness was on their part alone ; for God was not then, 
 as He shall not be at the last, slack concerning his promise^ 
 as some men count slackness.l^ And large regions within the 
 range of Israel’s inheritance which yet remained to be pos¬ 
 sessed, were allocated amomg them, as if they haJ been ac¬ 
 tually held in free tenure by a people faithful to their God. 
 Yet they gave not heed to the charge and command of Josh¬ 
 ua, to go in and possess the land that remained ; and, be¬ 
 cause of a broken law, no other generation could, under the 
 covenant which the Lord made with their fathers when Ho 
 brought them out of Egypt. 
 
 In the same breath with which the dying Joshua set forth 
 the unfailing goodness of their G(3d towards them, and his 
 faithfulness in his covenant, he warned them to take good 
 
 * Josh., xxiv., 31, 
 t Ibid., xviii., 3, 
 
 G 
 
 t Ibid., xxi., 45 ; xxiii., 14. 
 <) 2 Peter, iii., 9. 
 
74 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 heed unto themselves that they loved the Lord their God, 
 else, as he said, “ If ye do in any wise go back, and cleave 
 unto the remnant of these nations, know for a certainty that 
 the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these na¬ 
 tions from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto 
 you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, 
 until ye perish from off this good land which the Lord your 
 God hath given you. Therefore it shall come to pass, that 
 as all good things are come upon you which the Lord your 
 God promised you, so shall the Lord bring upon you all evil 
 things, until He have destroyed you from off this good land 
 which the Lord your God hath given you.”"* 
 
 Whether Israel under the law should keep or hold in full 
 possession, even for once, all the land, soon ceased to be 
 doubtful. And the fact is most clear, that except for a 
 small strip along the seashore, from Ascalon to Acre, the 
 land peopled wholly by Israelites nowhere reached near to 
 any of the borders which God in his bounty had assigned 
 them, concerning which it is not yet to be forgotten, as 
 often repeated in Scripture, that the Lord has lifted up his 
 hand. 
 
 Even the next generation of the children of Israel knew 
 not the Lord as their fathers had done, but did evil in his 
 sight, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. The Lord, because 
 of their iniquities, instead of subduing any more of the land 
 before them, sold them into the hands of their enemies round 
 about j and his hand was against them for evil, as He had 
 sworn unto them. But they continued to multiply trans¬ 
 gressions before him, and corrupted their ways in following 
 other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them.f 
 They ceased not from their evil doings, nor from their stub¬ 
 born way ; so that the second chapter of Scripture, after that 
 which records the death of Joshua, is not closed till we 
 read that “ the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; 
 and he said^ Because this people hath transgressed 
 
 MY COVENANT WHICH I COxMMANDED THEIR FATHERS, AND 
 HAVE NOT HEARKENED UNTO MY VOICE, I ALSO WILL NOT 
 HENCEFORTH DRIVE OUT ANY FROM BEFORE THEM OF THE 
 NATIONS WHICH JoSHUA LEFT WHEN HE DIED ; that through 
 them I may prove Israel^ whether they will keep the way of 
 the Lord to walk therein, as their fathers did keep it, or not. 
 Therefore the Lord left those nations, without driving them 
 
 * Josh., xxiii., 11-15. t Judges, ii., 11-14. 
 
THE PROMiSEp LAND. 75 
 
 out hastily; neither delivered He them into the hand of 
 Joshua.^'* 
 
 Transgressions were multiplied in Israel; false gods 
 were followed and served; and when the people did not 
 cease from their evil doings and from their stubborn way, 
 the promised blessings ceased ; the threatened curses took 
 effect; the progress of the Israelites in the land of promise 
 was arrested; however much of it remained to be possess¬ 
 ed, it was to continue unoccupied by them; and however 
 many enemies remained within the proper borders of a 
 faithful people, a faithless race were not to dispossess any 
 of them, but they were left by the Lord for the trial and the 
 punishment of those, before whom, if faithful, they would 
 have fled with terror. Under the curse of a broken cove¬ 
 nant, that soon pressed heavily on Israel, and from which 
 it never has recovered, the sentence came forth, that though 
 finally they themselves should all be rooted out of every 
 part of it, the Lord would no more drive out any of those 
 nations before them, whose land previously they had only 
 to “ go in and possess.” 
 
 It is not on any human authority, nor even on any direct 
 inference from Scripture, but on a word which, when con¬ 
 sidered, carries conviction to every believing mind—even 
 the word of the Lord—that we plainly learn that the limited 
 region occupied by Israel in the last days of Joshua, as thus 
 also in after ages, was very far from reaching the borders 
 of the large inheritance which He had originally marked 
 out, and has still in reserve for Israel. 
 
 “ Now Joshua was old and stricken in years, and the 
 Lord said unto him. Thou-art old and stricken in years, and 
 there remaineth yet very much land to he possessed. All the 
 borders of the Philistines, and all Geshuri ; and from the 
 south, all the land of the Canaanites—all the land of the 
 Giblites, and all Lebanon, from Baal-gad to the entering 
 into Hamath; all the inhabitants of the hill-country, from 
 Lebanon, and all the Sidonians,”t &c. These were num¬ 
 bered among the nations which were greater and mightier 
 than the Israelites ; and the countries which they possessed 
 formed, as will afterward be seen, extensive regions. But 
 tke undoubted facts that very much land then remained to be 
 possessed, and that the Lord would not drive out any of 
 these nations from before them, which Joshua left when he 
 
 1 Joshua, xiii., 1, <fec. See above, p. 65. 
 
 * Judges, ii., 20-23. 
 
76 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OP 
 
 died, might lead the believer to look for the borders of the 
 covenanted inheritance far beyond the bounds that Israel 
 occupied of old, rather than to limit it to them. 
 
 It is, therefore, rather to be unmindful of the covenant 
 itself, than to bear it in remembrance, to deny their proper 
 place, as their names and the definition of their locality- 
 bear, to the prescribed borders^ because a people whom 
 their iniquities, according to the word of the liord, ex¬ 
 cluded from the actual possession of them, could not rank 
 them as their own. Yet all in general that is said in works 
 on Scripture geography, of divers of these places, as Bero- 
 thah, Hazar-enan, Hethlon, &c., is, that they were towns on 
 the northern border of Israel. The River of Egypt, in or¬ 
 der to bring it nearer to Judea, has been placed in the land 
 of Philistia ; the entrance into Hamath to the south both of 
 Lebanon and Sidon ; and Emath.itself, where no city of the 
 name, so far as can be known, ever stood, has been placed, 
 as in the map of Cellarius, close by Dan, as being on the 
 northern border of Israel; and not a few Christian writers 
 of high name have discarded as incredible the covenanted 
 borders of Israel, as believed in by the Jews themselves, 
 the heirs of the covenant, because these assign to the true 
 heritage of Jacob ampler borders than those which hemmed 
 in their faithless ancestors. 
 
 In entering more fully on a theme which thus stands so 
 obviously in need of elucidation, some degree of minute, or 
 even tedious detail, may not be altogether inexcusable. 
 The “ goodly” land of Israel has been blasphemed or 
 spoken against; and its presumed diminutive size has also 
 given rise to the taunting blasphemy, that “ the God of 
 Israel was a little god, because he gave to his people but a 
 little land.” A land full of judgments might put scoffers to 
 silence. But it is right that falsehood should be confronted 
 and confuted by truth, and that the word of God should be 
 vindicated, as it declares that the land given by covenant to 
 Israel is both large and good, especially where Christian 
 w'riters have unwittingly given a seeming sanction to the 
 impious sarcasm. More than at other times, or th^n in 
 past ages, the subject seems now to demand investigation, 
 and may well excite attention, when the possession of 
 Syria by one people or another is a question among others 
 than the chief potentates of Europe, and when many Chris¬ 
 tians are thinking, who thought it not before, that the land 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 77 
 
 of Israel shall yet be Israel’s own. Among the Gentiles, 
 eyes keen and quicksighted as the wolf’s are looking on 
 the various provinces of the Turkish Empire; and among 
 those who are ‘‘ not numbered among the nations,” eyes 
 beaming like the exile’s as he looks towards his home, 
 while the days of his expatriation and imprisonment are in 
 his fond hope expiring, are looking wistfully to the promised 
 inheritance of Jacob’s seed. Alas! that they should yet 
 stream anew with bitter tears, even though they were re¬ 
 turned to it again, till they loak on him whom they have 
 pierced, and tears of penitence, and faith, and love be inter¬ 
 mingled, and a broken law be no longer a barrier to the 
 completion of all the covenanted blessing^ still in store for 
 faithful Israel. Yet, in blissful anticipation of that time, the 
 word of the Lord, as written for a time to come, and never 
 yet fully realized, may guide our way to the various bounds 
 He has set, irremovable by man, around the decreed “ heri¬ 
 tage of Jacob.” 
 
 If we look to the kingdom of Israel when it attained to 
 its highest glory in ancient times, in the days of David and 
 Solomon, the fact presents itself to view, that the land oj 
 Israel, as peopled hy the seed of Jacob, was far from being 
 commensurate with the promised inheritance, within the 
 bounds of which other nations still remained. The very 
 conquests of David give proof how numerous and powerful 
 these were. But the Philistines, and other enemies of Is¬ 
 rael, held possession of their own territories, which were 
 expressly, and by name, included in the covenant, as given 
 by the Lord to Israel. Two or three verses need but to be 
 read, to prove beyond contradiction—except Scripture be 
 contradicted—that the conditional promises of the covenant 
 made with the Israelites failed because of their unfaithful¬ 
 ness, and that at no time, not even when Solomon’s king¬ 
 dom was in its highest glory, were these promises comple¬ 
 ted. “ I will send an angel before thee ; and 1 will drive 
 out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hitlite, and the 
 Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite,”* &c. “ Observe 
 
 thou that which I command thee this day : behold, I drive 
 .out* before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the 
 Hitlite,”!' &LC, “ There shall no man be able to stand be¬ 
 fore thee, until thou have destroyed them.”! Yet of these 
 very nations we read again, “ All the people that were left 
 
 * Exod., xxxiii., 2. t Ibid., xxxiv., 11. t Deut., vii., 24 
 
 G 2 
 
78 
 
 Tlir. B JUNDALliK.^ OF 
 
 of the x\morites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, 
 which were not of the children of Israel, their children 
 that were left after them in the land, whom the children of 
 Israel also were not able utterly to destroy^ upon these did Sol¬ 
 omon levy a tribute.”* 
 
 Solomon’s reign, compared to others, was peaceful. “ Ju¬ 
 dah and Israel dwelt safely from Dan even to Beersheba, 
 all the days of Solomon.”! But these were still the limits 
 of the land, within which they dwelt as their own. The 
 sceptre was swayed from the throne in Jerusalem over all 
 Israel only during these two reigns. But a king did not 
 reign in righteousness then. David transgressed, and 
 brought a pestilence on the land. He sinned yet more, and 
 for a season was a fugitive from his capital. Solomon’s 
 heart was turned from the God of Israel, and the Lord was 
 angry with him. He raised up adversaries to Solomon— 
 Hadad the Edomite, and Rezon, who reigned in Damascus, 
 and was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon. 
 And even Jeroboam, Solomon’s servant, lifted up his hand 
 against the king ; and to him the kingdom of Israel was 
 given, when, according to the word of the Lord, it was rent 
 out of the hand of Solomon’s son.J 
 
 But the law was the shadow of good things to come, 
 though not the very substance of the things.§ And the 
 kingdom of Israel in its ancient glory was a shadow of the 
 kingdom yet to be restored to Israel, when, as assuredly as 
 the covenant with the Israelites was broken, and its curses 
 came upon them, the covenant with Abraham shall be ful¬ 
 filled, and its blessings, in lighting upon Israel at last, shall 
 be spread throughout the world. Though the nations which 
 remained within the bounds of Israel’s promised inheritance 
 were never driven beyond them, nor utterly destroyed by 
 the Israelites, yet the shadow of the kingdom of Israel, as 
 that kingdom shall be finally restored, reached to the ut¬ 
 most borders of the land from the high throne of the house 
 of David, which was set up in Jerusalem. “ Glorious 
 things” are written of that city which comport not at all 
 with any more straitened borders than the God of Jerusa¬ 
 lem has assigned. When that throne was first established, 
 which the Lord, according to his covenant with David, 
 shall build up to all generations, and when the ark of the 
 
 * 1 Kings, ix., 20, 21. t Ibid., iv., 25. 
 
 t Ibid., xi,, 9, 12, 14, 23, 26. ^ Heb., x., 1. 
 
 > 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 79 
 
 covenant was set up in Jerusalem, David smote the Philis¬ 
 tines and subdued them ;* he smote the Moabites, and they 
 became David’s servants; he smote also Hadad-ezer, the 
 son of Rehob, king of Zobah, as he went to recover his bor¬ 
 der at the River Euphrates.^ He smote the Syrians, and 
 he put garrisons in Syria of Damascus ; he took the shields 
 of gold that were on the servants of Hadad-ezer, and brought 
 them to Jerusalem, and from Betah and from Berothai, cities 
 of Hadad-ezer, King David took exceeding much brass.J 
 Toi, king of Hamath, senihxs son to salute him and to bless 
 him, and he brought with him vessels of silver, and gold, 
 and brass. These and the spoils of Syria and of Moab, of 
 Ammon, of the Philistines, of Amalek, and of the King of 
 Zobah, he dedicated to the Lord.(^ Throughout all Edom 
 he put garrisons, and all they of Edom became David’s ser¬ 
 vants.[j When the various nations were subdued, or owned 
 his supremacy, the scriptural record immediately after bears, 
 “ So David reigned over all Israel, and executed judgment 
 and justice in all his dominion.” Other nations than the 
 seed of Jacob dwelt within his borders. Though very much 
 land remained to be possessed as in the days of Joshua, 
 countries which Israel did not fully possess or people, and 
 from which their enemies were never driven out, owned the 
 supreme sovereignty of David, and did him homage. And 
 though the Euphrates watered not the land of Israel, but 
 the kingdom of Hadad-ezer, that great river was the border 
 of David’s dominion. 
 
 So was it also with Solomon. The twelve tribes united 
 under him were but one people in the midst of many. His 
 kingdom, like that of his father David, extended far beyond 
 the land actually occupied and possessed by the Israelites ; 
 and he exercised a nominal or real sovereignty over all the 
 regions which the Lord had given to the seed of Jacob. 
 Solomon reigned over all the kings from the Euphrates unto 
 the land of the Philistines, and to the border of Egypt; they 
 brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his 
 life. He had dominion over all the region on this side the 
 River Euphrates, from Tipzah unto Azzah, over all the kings 
 onHhis side of the river. Solomon went to, Hamath-Zobah 
 
 * 2 Sam., V., 17-25^ riii., 1. 1 Chron., xviii., 1. 
 t 2 Sam., riii., 2, 3. 1 Chron., xviii., 3. 
 
 t 2 Sam., viii., 5-8. 1 Chron., xviii., 5-8. 
 
 () 2 Sam., viii., 11. 1 Chron., xviii., 9-13. 
 
 II 2 Sam., viii., 14. 1 Chron., xviii., 13. 
 
 ir 1 Kings, iv., 21-24. 2 Chron., ix., 26. 
 
80 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 - ■; 
 
 /!?■ 
 
 and prevailed against it. And he built Tadmor in the wil¬ 
 derness, and Hamath, and all the store-cities which he built 
 in Hamath, and in Lebanon, and throughout all the land of 
 his dominion* He made a navy of ships in Ezion-gaber, 
 which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the 
 land of Edom.f And he laid a tribute of bond-service upon 
 the children of the Amorites, Hiltites, Perizzites, Hivites, 
 and Jebusites, which were left in the land, whom, as em¬ 
 phatically stated, the children of Israel were not able utter¬ 
 ly to destroy.^ 
 
 But rieither in the reign of David nor Solomon were their 
 enemies driven out before the children of Israel, whose 
 proper bounds were still the same as at the time of the death 
 of Joshua. For when the fullest limits recorded in scrip¬ 
 tural history were assigned to the kingdom over which these 
 monarchs reigned, it is added, as descriptive even of the 
 farther glory of Solomon’s reign, and Judah and Israel 
 dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig- 
 tree,yro??? Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.”^ 
 
 The extent of the covenanted inheritance may therefore 
 be seen, not in the land of Israel of old, but in the dominion 
 of Solomon, including all the lands of tributary kings, from 
 the land of Hamath, its king in the number, to the shores of 
 the Red Sea, and from the border of Egypt to the Euphra¬ 
 tes, including all the kings on the west side of that river. 
 But the borders of Judah and Israel, viz., Dan and Beer¬ 
 sheba, within which the children of Israel dwelt in safety, 
 were not the borders of Solomon’s dominion, and no more 
 are they the borders of Israel’s decreed and destined inher¬ 
 itance. The terms of the Abrahamic covenant rise far 
 higher than the record of Solomon’s reign. * In them there 
 is no word of nations that should not be driven out, nor of 
 any other kingdom than that of Israel alone, from the River 
 of Egypt to the River Euphrates. But the sovereignty 
 which he exercised over all the kingdoms of his dominion, 
 reaching to the heaven-appointed borders, give a practical 
 illustration of the extent of the inheritance of Israel, when¬ 
 ever, in the completion of the covenant, all these countries 
 shall be the land of their possession. David and Solomon 
 acknowledged no other “ borders” than the border of Egypt, 
 the Euphrates, the Red Sea, and Hamath: and none who 
 
 * 2 Chron., viii., 3-6. t 1 Kings, ix., 28. 2 Chron., vjii., 17. 
 
 i 1 Kings, ix., 21. 2 Chron., viii., 7, 8. Kings, iv., 25. 
 
 ' .4 
 
 1 I t 
 
 -Lie., 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 81 
 
 look as they did to the covenant of the Lord with Abraham, 
 and Isaac, and Jacob, can acknowledge limits more circum¬ 
 scribed. And the spirit of faith breaks through the bonds 
 with which a false theory concerning the limits of Israel 
 has fettered inquiry, and gives full freedom to read the 
 words as they are written, and to seek the “ borders” where 
 they are to be found, in the utmost bounds of Solomon’s do- 
 minion. 
 
 At no other time did the Israelites so fully possess their 
 promised inheritance as in the days of Solomon. After his 
 death the glory of Israel was greatly diminished, and the 
 kingdom was rent in twain. The seed of Jacob, a divided 
 and often mutually conflicting people, did cleave to the rem¬ 
 nant of the nations that were left around them, and forsook 
 the Lord God of their fathers. Ephraim vexed Judah, and 
 Judah Ephraim. The tide of conquest, renewed by David, 
 was turned back, and never rose so high again. The ene¬ 
 mies of Israel prevailed. The inheritance which the Lord 
 had given them, they lost. Ephraim was given up to his 
 idols, and fell in his iniquity. Ten tribes were destroyed 
 from off the land of Israel, and their place was occupied by 
 aliens from their commonwealth. Judah never regained 
 what Ephraim had lost. And for the perfect completion of 
 the covenant of God with their fathers, in respect to the ex¬ 
 tent as well as the perpetuity of the promised inheritance, 
 we must look to the days when “ Judah and Ephraim shall 
 be one in the hands of the Lord,” and when, according to 
 the new division of the land, as defined by Ezekiel, the 
 twelve; tribes of Israel, one as well as another, shall inherit 
 the land,* froyi the River of Egypt to the great River Eu¬ 
 phrates 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 THE RIVER OF EGYPT. 
 
 The River of Egypt, from which to the Euphrates the 
 inheritance of Israel extends, might at once and univer¬ 
 sally, without an explanatory word, be identified with 
 the Nile, which is emphatically and exclusively, as 
 known to all the world, the River of Egypt. But because 
 the Holy Land, as possessed by the Israelites in ancient 
 times, never reached to Egypt, and the Nile never form- 
 
 * Ezelc., xlvii., 13, 14. 
 
82 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OP 
 
 ed its boundary, the brook Besor, in the land of Philistia, 
 a mere streamlet compared to the Nile, and sometimes 
 nearly, if not altogether dry in summer, without being 
 transported to its borders, has been exalted into the. River 
 of Egypt. If the terms of the covenant be not altogether 
 disregarded, such an opinion is unworthy of confutation, 
 as a brook, were it even worthy of being the boundary 
 of a large kingdom, cannot, while flowing only in one 
 country, be the river of another which it never reaches. 
 
 The translation of the term Jfahal Mitzraim 
 vHp in a single instance in the Septuagint, into Rhino- 
 corura (ftvoKopovpog), seemed to give warrant for the 
 opinion to which it gave rise, that a river or stream 
 near the town of that name was the River of Egypt. This 
 opinion was ably controverted and refuted by Dr. Shaw, 
 who states that, “ in geographical criticism, little stress 
 can be laid on the authority of the Septuagint version, 
 where the phrase so frequently, as he shows, varies from 
 the original, and where so many different interpretations 
 are put upon one and the same thing.”* 
 
 Pelusium, situated on the banks of the eastern branch 
 of the Nile, formed the extreme boundary of Egypt on 
 the coast of the Mediterranean, and the region between 
 it and the Red Sea pertained, as Strabo relates, not to 
 Egypt, but to Arabia.f But, as the covenant concern¬ 
 ing the land has evidently respect to the latter days, 
 even as the inheritance is declared to be an everlasting 
 possession, the fatal objection against Rhinocorura is that 
 there is no stream, or river, or torrent there, that could 
 in any way form as a river the boundary of a kingdom. 
 Amid sandy hills all around, there is indeed something 
 like the form of a valley close upon the sea, wide enough 
 for a large river, but, in the summer at least, as the 
 writer witnessed in passing it, there was no stream, or 
 even streamlet, or drop of water there ; and the ground, 
 nearly on the level with the seashore, was as dry as the 
 parched wilderness. The River of Egypt, as a border 
 of the large dominion forming the everlasting inheritance 
 
 O o O 
 
 of Israel, is not surely such as cannot be seen. The 
 country around Rhinocorura is as it was in the days of 
 
 * Shaw’s Travels, Supplement, p. 23, 24. See APPENDIX 1. 
 t Strabo, cap. 17, tom. ii., p. 1138, ed. Falcon. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 83 
 
 Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, and Strabo, as their au¬ 
 thorities are adduced* on this very point by Dr. Shaw, a 
 barren country deprived of the necessaries of life j with¬ 
 out the walls there are several salt-pits 5 within, the wells 
 yield only a bitter, corrupted water. Herodotus con¬ 
 firms this account by telling us that in those deserts 
 there was a dreadful want of water to the distance of 
 three days’ journey from Mount Casius, bordering on 
 Egypt, on the Sirbonic Lake. Strabo relates that the 
 whole country between Gaza and the Sirbonic Lake was 
 barren or sandy. There was no “ River of Egypt” there 
 either in ancient or modern times. The writer has not 
 been able to discover any mention of it as a stream or 
 streamlet (though such in winter there possibly may be) 
 by any modern or ancient author, though it has been so 
 placed in many maps. 
 
 The River of Egypt is doubtless the JVt7e, to which 
 the Mahal Mitzraim of the Hebrews seems to have given 
 its name. From it, in the estimation of the learned 
 Bochart, that name by which the River of Egypt is uni¬ 
 versally known, was “ most certainly derived.”* For 
 Mahal the Jewish interpreters read the Nile. 
 
 The River of Egypt bears, in parallel passages of Scrip¬ 
 ture, the name of Sihor^ which is plainly identified with 
 the Nile. Like other names given to that river by va¬ 
 rious nations, who, according to Dr. Hales and many 
 other authors, have translated it into their own lan¬ 
 guages, it literally signifies “ black.” These are too nu¬ 
 merous to owe their origin to any other than a common 
 cause, which gave in them all its significancy to each 
 name of the selfsame river. According to Pliny, Soli- 
 nus, and Dionysius, the Nile was ealled Siris, “ its Ethi- 
 opic name derived from Sihor or Sihr^ The words 
 Melas and Melo^ like the Hebrew Sihor, also literally 
 signifying “ black,” were among the Greeks names of 
 the Nile. The Egyptian name of the river, according 
 to Diodorus, was OkeameSy from Okema^ or Okem^ signi¬ 
 fying “ black,” whence also it was styled by the Hindus 
 “ Ca/^,” all names of the same import.f 
 
 * Nahal torrens pro Nilo accipitur, ut in scriptura passim. Num., xxiiv., 5, 
 pro Hebrseo Nahal, legitur Nilus Olb'J in Jonathane et Jerosolymitano 
 
 interprete, atque hinc Niii nominis origo certissima est.— Bochart, iii., 764. 
 
 t Shaw’s Trav., ibid., p. 31.. Hales’s .Chronology, vol. i., p. 413, 414, 
 
84 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 Thus the name given in Scripture to the bounding 
 river of Israel’s inheritance on the side of Egypt is sim¬ 
 ilar in sound and in significancy to Sihr, the Ethiopian 
 name of the Nile, and is precisely of the same import 
 with the names which it beays in other languages. The 
 name is specially appropriate to the Nile, loaded as it is 
 with the dark loam of Abyssinia and Upper Egypt, and 
 flowing for hundreds of miles through its own dark de- 
 posites, with which, as in the days of Virgil and in earli¬ 
 er times, it fertilizes the land in annual overflow. 
 
 Viridem Egyptam nigra fecundat arena. 
 
 Its dark and muddy waters, though sweet to the taste, 
 need first to be filtered, and leave a large dark sediment. 
 The name of Sihor is most appropriate to the Nile ; but, 
 having passed by both, the writer may remark, that it 
 would but ill apply to a river of Rhinocorura, were there 
 a river there; for the sandy hills around it, and bound¬ 
 less sandy plains joining the desert, might so filter any 
 stream, or purify even the Nile itself, as to rob it of all 
 title to this scriptural name. 
 
 The Nile, forming emphatically, and, it may well be 
 said, exclusively, “ the River of Egypt^^ —the name by 
 which it is now universally known being most certainly, 
 on high authority, derived from the very word which is 
 translated in our own version the river or stream of 
 Egypt—the eastern branch of the Nile having been the 
 boundary of that country, according to Strabo, who is 
 second, in accuracy at least, to none of the ancient ge¬ 
 ographers, and its dark waters having given it the name 
 which it bears in Scripture, in exact analogy to other 
 appellations by which it was known in their own tongue 
 to various heathen nations, strong and conclusive proof 
 may hence arise that the River of Egypt “ could be none 
 other than the Nile.” The fact, too, that “ none of the 
 old geographers—Strabo, Mela, Pliny, Ptolemy, &c.— 
 notice any stream or torrent at Rhinocorura,” and no 
 river, or, in summer at least, not even the smallest 
 streamlet now existing there, it is left without an actual 
 competitor. And yet the proofs and authorities are not 
 exhausted, that the River of Egypt is the Nile, even as 
 assuredly as the Nile is the River of Egypt. 
 
 That the Sihor, as Gesenius states,* is “necessarily” 
 
 * Apud rocem. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 85 
 
 w 
 
 the Nile, is farther evident from other passages of Scrip¬ 
 ture. In describing the commerce of Tvre, the mart of 
 nations, Isaiah records, in terms applicable to the Nile 
 alone, that “ by great waters the seed of Silior, the har¬ 
 vest of the river (or, as translated in the Vulgate, the 
 JVite) is her revenues.”* That river is alike pointedly 
 referred to by Jeremiah, as the Lord did plead with Is¬ 
 rael concerning the judgments brought on them for their 
 iniquities. “ Is Israel a home-born slave 1 The children 
 of Noph (Memphis, on the banks of the JVile) and Ta- 
 haphanes have broken the crown of thy head. And now 
 what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt^ to drink the 
 waters of Sihor ? or what hast thou to do in the way of 
 Assyria, to drink the waters of the river I”! Associated 
 as Egypt thus repeatedly is with its river, or the Sihor, 
 and Assyria with its river, or the Euphrates, there seems 
 no room for doubt, that as the Euphrates is the River 
 of Assyria, so the Nile is the River of Egypt. 
 
 The same identical word is descriptive of them both 
 in the original covenant, as the promise was made to 
 Abraham, Gen., xv., 18. The word translated river is 
 not, as in other passages, J^ahal, but JVehar^ or JVehar- 
 J\Iitzraim,‘the^Hivep of Egypt; even as in the same pas¬ 
 sage JVehar Phraat is the River Euphrates. The same 
 word, too, in the plural number, is applied undoubtedly 
 to the separate branches of the Nile (forming rivers, 
 though divided) in a passage that cannot possibly apply 
 to any other river, Exod., vii., 19 : “ And the Lord spake 
 unto Moses, say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thy hand 
 with thy rod, over the streams, over the rivers {neharim), 
 and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon 
 the land of Egypt.” 
 
 It may here be remarked, though anticipating another 
 branch of the subject, that the boundaries of Israel thus 
 approach as closely on the one side to Egypt, as to 
 Assyria on the other, as if preparation had thus been 
 made from the beginning for the completion of the 
 farther promise, that the Egyptians shall serve with the 
 Assyrians, when these nations shall be joined, though in 
 subserviency, to Israel, “whom the Lord of Hosts shall 
 bless, saying. Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria 
 the work of my hands, and Jsrael mine inheritance.”t 
 
 * Isa., xx'il 3. 
 
 t Jer., ii., 14-18. 
 
 ll 
 
 t Isa., xix., 23-25, 
 
86 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 “ The River of Egypt,” says Dr. Hales, “ which is con¬ 
 trasted with the River Euphrates, must also be a ‘great 
 river,’ and a marked boundary about which there could be 
 no dispute ; and this was no other than the Nile, whose 
 eastern or Pelusian branch was reckoned the boundary 
 of Egypt.”* 
 
 It may be presumed that the other boundaries, as 
 set by a divine hand, and engrossed in the covenant, 
 are also marked, that ultimately, whatever discrepancy 
 of opinion may have heretofore existed, there shall be no 
 doubt or dispute concerning them on any side. Look¬ 
 ing to the scriptural definition of the borders, which 
 alone can prescribe the extent of the promised inherit¬ 
 ance, ample proof, if the author errs not, may be ad¬ 
 duced to show that the heritage of Jacob, however vast 
 its range, is everywhere encompassed by marked un¬ 
 questionable bounds. 
 
 In order to this proof, and to clear our way to attain 
 it, it is needful to protest in every instance against the 
 idea that the fraction of the land occupied by the Israel¬ 
 ites of old comprehends the full limits of the “ ever¬ 
 lasting possession” of a people whom the Lord will bless 
 in the full and final comoletion of all his promises. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 THE WEST AND NORTH BORDERS. 
 
 The WESTERN BORDER is as defined as are the shores 
 of the Mediterranean from the River of Egypt to the 
 north side of the promised land. In the definition of 
 the borders of the tribes who had not received their por¬ 
 tion on the east side of the Jordan, it is said, “As for 
 the western border, ye shall even have the great sea for 
 a border ; this shall be your west border.”! It thus ex¬ 
 tends along the Mediterranean shore, from the River of 
 Egypt to the entrance into Hamath^ which both rank as 
 borders in the same chapter. In defining the general 
 boundary of all the tribes, when they shall all finally in¬ 
 herit the land, Ezekiel, speaking by the same Spirit, 
 says, “ The west side shall also be the great sea, from 
 the border till a man come over against Hamath. This is 
 the west “ The borde'g of the land towards the north 
 
 * Hales’s Chron., vol. i., p. 413. . t Num., xxxiv., 6. t Ezek^, xlvii., 20. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 87 
 
 Side is from the great sea.’’"'* From the border—on the 
 River of Egypt, as previously stated, which formed it— 
 the western border extends till its termination along 
 the shores of the Mediterranean, and thus leaves no 
 place on its coast, from south to north, in all the inter¬ 
 mediate distance, that does not pertain to Israel. 
 
 The definitions of the north border, which fixes the 
 termination of the western, demand special regard. 
 
 “ This shall be your north border. From the great 
 sea ye shall point out unto you Mount Hor ; from Mount 
 Hor ye shall point out your border unto the entrance of 
 Hamath; and the goings forth of the border shall be to 
 Zedad; and the border shall go on to Ziphron, and the 
 goings out of it shall be at Hazar-enan; this shall be 
 your north border: and ye shall point out your east bor¬ 
 der from Hazar-enan to Shephan j and the coast shall 
 go down from Shephan to Riblah, on the east side of 
 Ain; and the border shall descend,”! &c. “This shall 
 be the border of the land towards the north side, from 
 the great sea, the way of Hethlon, as men go to Zedad, 
 Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim, which is between the bor¬ 
 der of Damascus and the border of Hamath; Hazar- 
 hatticon, which is by the coast of Hauran. And the 
 border from the east shall be Hazar-enan, the border of 
 Damascus, and the north northward^ and the border of 
 Hamath. And this is the north side.”! “ From the 
 north end to the coast of the way of Hethlon, as one 
 goeth to Hamath, Hazar-enan, the border of Damascus 
 northward, to the coast of Hamath : for these are his 
 sides east and west, a portion of Dan.Ӥ Of the land 
 that remained to be possessed at the death of Joshua, 
 peopled by the nations that were not driven out of the 
 promised land, these were included: “ from the south all 
 the land of the Canaanites^ and Mearah, that is beside 
 the Sidonians ; and the land of the Giblites^ and all Leba¬ 
 non towards the sun-rising, from Baal-gad unto Mount 
 Hermon, unto the entering into Hamath^ all the inhabitants 
 of the hill-country^ from Lebanon unto Misrephoth-maim, 
 and all the Sidoniansy\\ 
 
 Clear as these scriptural definitions are, yet on the 
 
 * Ezek., xlvii., 15. Num., xxxiv., 7-11. t Num., xxxiv., 7-11. 
 
 t Ezek., xlvii., 15-17. ^ Ibid., xlviii., 1. || Jo.shua, xiii., 4 6 
 
88 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 same principle—that the borders of ancient Israel were 
 identical with those of the covenanted land—the valley 
 of the Kasirniyeh, or Leontes, near to Tyre, and over 
 against Dan^ has, from its vicinity to that city, been 
 generally deemed the entrance into Hamath. The care¬ 
 ful perusal of these texts, with a glance at the map, may 
 show at once that the north border of the promised land 
 cannot possibly be there. Such an entrance into Ha¬ 
 math from the sea would exclude, instead of including, 
 at least all the Sidonians^ all Lebanon^ all the hill-country 
 from Lebanon^ all the land of the Giblites^ all the kingdom 
 of Damascus y and all the land of Hamath ; and would leave 
 forever the north border of the l.and what it was in the 
 days of Joshua. But very much land^ as the names of 
 these regions suffice to indicate, remained to be possessed; 
 and the proof is plain, that the north end of the inherit¬ 
 ance of Israel was very far from the mouth of the Leon¬ 
 tes. The great sea^ or the Mediterranean, is the border^ 
 till a man come over against Hamath; but coming thus 
 from the south along its shores, when the Leontes is 
 touched, no part of Lebanon is reached, instead of it all 
 being passed; and instead of a man being there op¬ 
 posite to Hamath^ a journey from thence of about forty 
 miles lies between him and Beyrout, that is opposite to 
 Damascus, which city, in difference of latitude alone, is 
 more than a hundred miles south of Hamath ; while the al¬ 
 lotted territory of a whole tribe of Israel lies beyond the 
 border of Damascus northward^ and has first to be passed 
 through before the entrance into Hamath can be reached. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of looking for the real north bor¬ 
 der of Israel’s destined inheritance in the latitude of Dan 
 —which formed, indeed, the bounds of the limited ter¬ 
 ritory possessed by the seed of Jacob in the days of 
 Joshua, as in after agres—the word of the Lord which 
 came unto him teaches us first to pass over much land 
 from the south, and tells us the very regions which have 
 to be traversed from thence before the north border has 
 even to he sought for, or can anywhere be found. 
 
 All the SidonianSy no mean people, whose land lay 
 along the seashore and the southwestern part of the 
 mountains of Lebanon, occupied no diminutive space. 
 Lebanon is an extensive mountainous range, which 
 stretches to the north of the embouchure of the Leontes 
 
THE PROMISED LAND* 
 
 89 
 
 at least a hundred and twenty miles, or, according to Dio- 
 d6rus Siculus, till it reaches the mountains of Cilicia or the 
 mouth of the Orontes. But besides Lebanon, strictly so 
 called, Israel’s unoccupied territory included all the hill- 
 country from it to Mizrephoth-maim, which, by seemingly 
 another ample space, extends the land in a mountainous 
 country beyond the bounds of Lebanon. All the land of the 
 Canaanites, and of the Gihliies^ expressly mentioned among 
 the regions that remained to be possessed after the borders 
 of Israel reached the Leontes, have yet to take their place 
 —though, like others, for the first time—within the inherit¬ 
 ance of the Israelites, as the land of their possession. And 
 of them we may still more definitely speak. 
 
 Gabala, mentioned by Ptolemy (Gebal of the Greeks), 
 was one of the maritime towns of Phoenicia, between Ara- 
 dus and Laodicea. In his account of the Arvadiles, as one 
 of ike families of the Canaanites, Bochart, unbiased by any 
 opposing theory on another theme than the borders of Isra¬ 
 el, states that Gabala was probably Gebal mentioned in 
 Ezekiel’s description of the greatness of Tyre. Gebal 
 seems plainly to announce itself as the capital of the Gib- 
 lites, concerning which there seems not to be a question ; 
 and Bochart is free to testify that Gebala is probably the 
 Gebal of Scripture. The English translation has retained, 
 with obvious propriety, the original Hebrew word. But as 
 the River of Egypt was transformed, rather than translated, 
 into Rhinocorura, the Septuagint has changed Gebal into 
 Byblus, and the Giblites into Bublioi (Bv6?itoi.). Byblus 
 otherwise bears the names of Esbeli, Gibyle, or Jebeil; and 
 it is said by Maundrel and others—following the Septua¬ 
 gint, from which he quotes*—to be probably the country of 
 the Giblites, though, as Pococke states, “ the names Gib¬ 
 lites and Gebal, according to our literal translation from the 
 Hebrew, would incline to think that Gabala, north of Ortho- 
 sia, was meant.”! Gebal or Gabala, now Jebilee or Gibili,! 
 has uniformly borne from ancient to modern times the same 
 name (the locality being precisely the same), so slightly 
 changed as not to admit of a doubt as to its identity. 
 
 Even if Byblus, or Jebeil, was the chief city of the Gib¬ 
 lites, whose land lies within the inheritance of Israel, that 
 fact alone annihilates the assumption that the valley of the 
 
 * Maundrel’s Trav., p. 45. t Pococke’s Descrip, of the East, p. 98. 
 
 t Map in G; Robinson’s Trav. in Syria. 
 
 H2 
 
90 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 Leontes is “ the entrance into Hamath,” or “ the north end” 
 of the promised heritage ; for even Byblus is above seventy 
 miles north of the entrance of that river into the sea, and 
 therefore as far beyond the ancient northern border of 
 Israel. 
 
 But not only is it “ probable that Gabala was the ancient 
 Gebal,” but it is certain that the country of which it was 
 the capital lay in the immediate vicinity, if it did not form a 
 part, of the land of the Arvadites, one of the families of the 
 Canaanites* all whose territories that were unoccupied by 
 the Israelites at the death of Joshua were included in the 
 land that then remained to be possessed. Not only all the 
 Sidonians, who were descended of the first-born of Canaan, 
 but ALL the land of the Canaanites, is expressly named by 
 the Lord, and included in the very much land which the Is¬ 
 raelites did not occupy in the days of Joshua, or ever after. 
 The Arvadite was one of the families of the Canaanites, as 
 much as any other.f Translating literally from Bochart, 
 we read that “ the Arvadites, or Aradites, occupied the isl¬ 
 and of Aradus on the coast of Phmnicia, and part of the 
 neighbouring continent, where are Antaradus, Marathus, 
 and LaodiceaS Hence the Jerusalem interpreter (or Tar- 
 gum of Jerusalem) has for the Arvadites Anlardios, 
 
 and Jonathan ’’NDD’b, corruptly for ''Noni'?, i. e., Laodicenses. 
 Near to Laodicea, says Strabo, are Posidium, Heraclium, 
 Gebala (Gebal, Ezek., xxvii., 9 ) ; then the maritime region 
 of the Aradi, Paltus, Balanea, and Caranus, afterward Eny- 
 dra and Marathus, an ancient Phoenician city. The famous 
 city of Tripoli (three cities), according to Scylax (in Perip- 
 lo), Strabo, Diodorus, and Pliny, was built by the Aradi 
 (Arvadites), the Tyrians, and Sidonians.”;]: These cities 
 along the Phoenician coast, pertaining to the Arvadites, lead 
 us near to its northern termination, or close by the site of 
 Mount Casius and the mouth of the Orontes, the position of 
 which is marked by these eminent ancient geographers as 
 between Laodicea and Seleucia. It is worthy also of re¬ 
 mark, that Giblites literally mean borderers; and that the 
 land of the Giblites and Canaanites (all included in Israel) 
 brings us thus, in passing, according to scriptural guidance, 
 along the loestern border, or the great sea, till the entrance 
 into Hamath may be sought for, close to the mouth, not of 
 the Leontes, but of the Orontes. 
 
 * The Arvadites, Gen., x., 18. t Gen., x., 18. 
 
 t Vide Bochart, Phaleg., p. 305, 306. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 91 
 
 But other families of the Canaanites dwelt on the coast 
 of Phoenicia, to the north of the kingdom of Sidon ; and it 
 may be clearly seen what vast acquisitions beyond all that 
 their fathers possessed have to be made by Israel. That 
 coast, more than any other on earth, was studded with mag¬ 
 nificent cities ; and there is no portion of it to which their 
 scriptural title may not be clearly shown. 
 
 After the death of Joshua, it is recorded that Asher did 
 not drive out the inhabitants of Accho (Ptolemais), nor the 
 inhabitants of Zidon, &;c., which lay within the lot of that 
 tribe, that included also the strong city of Tyre, which, in¬ 
 stead of being possessed by the Israelites as theirs, had its 
 own king in the days of Solomon. All the Sidonians were 
 included in the land that remained to be possessed ; and the 
 unreserved and unrestricted term, “ all the land of the Ca¬ 
 naanites,” clearly comprehends within Israel’s everlasting 
 possession all the Canaanitish territory, besides that of the 
 Sidonians and all that the Israelites had previously occupi¬ 
 ed. There was no exception of any of the Canaanites, nor 
 of a foot-breadth of their land. 
 
 Clear as this fact is, there is as little difficulty or doubt 
 in ascertaining that very much land of the Canaanites 
 stretched along the Phoenician shore. Sidon, Area, Simyra, 
 Arad or Arvad, announce themselves as the respective cap¬ 
 itals of the Sidonians, Arkites, Zemarites, and Arvadites, 
 four of the twelve families of the Canaanites ; while Jebilee, 
 or Gibili, has ever retained its ancient name as the capital 
 of the Giblites. 
 
 From simply reversing the order of the Itinerary of An¬ 
 toninus, corresponding with that of Jerusalem, and introdu¬ 
 cing from Ptolemy’s Geography the name of a single city 
 (not included in the Itinerary, as it lay five miles to the 
 west of the road which it denotes), the reader may perceive 
 what light is thrown by heathen records on the position of 
 those lands which remain to he possessed. What and how 
 extensive they there are, may thus be seen at a glance, the 
 distance being marked in Roman miles. 
 
 Sidon to Berytus (Beyrout). 30 
 
 “ Byblus. 34 
 
 “ Tripoli. 36 
 
 “ (Simyra) . 
 
 “ Area (from Tripoli). 18 
 
 “ Ant-Aradus (Arvad) .. 32 
 
 “ Balanea. 24 
 
 “ Gabala . 27 
 
 Laodicea..... 18 
 
 219 
 
92 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 Thusyroffi the south much land remained to be possessed, 
 and it can only be beyond these regions that the real north¬ 
 ern border lies. They embrace the whole of the Phoenician 
 coast to the north of Sidon, from the southern extremity of 
 Lebanon to the termination of the Anzeyry Mountains, or all 
 Lebanon and the hill-country to the entrance into Hamath, 
 which necessarily lies beyond all the land of the Canaanites. 
 
 That the territories of these Canaanitish nations met, 
 even where their capitals were farthest separate, may be 
 manifest from the facts that the great Sidon, as it is denomi¬ 
 nated by ancient geographers as in Scripture, was situated 
 near to the one extremity of Lebanon, and Area on the oth¬ 
 er, and that the Sidonians and Arvadites had each a portion 
 of the city of Tripoli. 
 
 The site of Area (of which more in the sequel) is un 
 doubted ; the testimonies of Ptolemy and Antoninus, of Wil- 
 lerm, archbishop of Tyre, and of Dr. Shaw and Burckhardt, 
 &;c., correspond precisely concerning it. In the Itinerary 
 it is placed, as above, at the distance of eighteen miles from 
 Tripoli, and by Burckhardt at about five hours and a half, 
 which, at the usual rate of three miles an hour, is the same. 
 It was a strong and wealthy city at the close of the eleventh 
 century, and its inhabitants at first feared not to assault ma¬ 
 rauding crusaders. 
 
 That it was the capital of the Arkites is equally clear. 
 According to the tradition of the ancients, Willerm says, it 
 was built by Archeus (or Arkeus),the seventh son of Cana¬ 
 an, from which it took its name.* Bochart, in his account 
 of the Canaanites, states in positive terms, as beyond ques¬ 
 tion, thut the Arkites possessed Arka or Area, a city situa¬ 
 ted in Lebanon, of which mention is made by Ptolemy and 
 Josephus. In it, according to Macrobius Sturnal (lib. i., c. 
 27), was the temple of Venus Archites.f As Hamath, an¬ 
 other chief city of the Canaanites, owned the sovereignty 
 of Solomon, so also, as Josephus testifies, did Area, where 
 one of his governors was stationed, who had the seacoast 
 about Arce.|: Its ruins were visited by Dr. Shaw, who terms 
 it the city of the Arkites, the offspring of Canaan ; and he 
 mentions, in like manner, Simyra .as the seat of the Zema- 
 rites.§ 
 
 “ All the Sidonians, all the land of the Canaanites and the 
 
 * Will. Tyr., Hist., p. 737. t Boch., Phaleg'., p. 305. 
 t Josephus, Aut., viii., 2, 3. ^ Shaw’s Travels, p. 327, edit. Oxford, 173R 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 93 
 
 Gibilites” t-hat remained and still remain to be possessed, 
 thus occupied successively and conjointly the Syrian and 
 Phoenician coast for the space of 219 Roman miles, exclusive 
 of the land pertaining to these cities that lay to the south of 
 Sidon and the north of Laodicea. 
 
 Instead of limiting the northern border to Dan, the need¬ 
 ful proof may be given, that before reaching the entrance 
 into Hamath, or ascending the mountain from whence it has 
 first to be seen, much land, as that word came worthily from 
 the mouth of the Lord, remained to he possessed. 
 
 Wherever the children of Israel entered the land of their 
 enemies to keep it as their own, they changed the names 
 of the cities. But all these names remaining unchanged de¬ 
 clared at once their Canaanitish origin, and that the time is 
 yet to come when all these lands shall actually form a por¬ 
 tion of the inheritance of Israel. 
 
 But in the interior of the country, as well as along the 
 Phoenician coast, much land remained to be possessed after 
 Dan had become a city of Israel. 
 
 “ Syria of Damascus” bordered wdth ancient Israel on the 
 north, and be^yond it lay the land of Hamath. “ The border 
 of Damascus,” “ the border of Hamath,” manifestly denote 
 not the cities, between which an extensive region, contain¬ 
 ing several noble cities, intervened,* but the borders of these 
 two countries or kingdoms, which touched each other, and 
 which embraced wide-extended territories. 
 
 Damascus was the metropolis of a kingdom and the head 
 of Syria.t Though Hadad-ezer Was defeated by David, 
 his successors reigned at Dantascus as kings of Syria for 
 ten generations,;!; and Israel had not long the mastery over 
 Syria. It was laid waste, and Samaria was grievously be¬ 
 sieged by the King of Syria, who reirned at Damascus ; 
 and “ Israel was delivered into the nand of Hazael, and 
 into the hand of Benhadad his son, all their days.”<^ Strabo 
 speaks of the renowned region, as well as of the noble city 
 of Damascus.! Numerous coins exist which show that in 
 
 * These cities, with their respective distances, are noted in the Itinerary of An¬ 
 toninus. From Damascus to Abila, 18 Roman miles; from Abila to Heliopolis (Ba- 
 nlbec), 38; from Heliopolis to Lybon, 32 ; from Lybon to Laodicea (ad Libanum), 32; 
 horn Laodicea to Emesa, 18; from Emesa to Areihusa, 16; from Arethusa to Epi- 
 phania, or Hamath, 16—or, in all, 170 miles.—Vide in Chalcidina, et Cielosyria, Itin- 
 er. Antonini Augusti, p. 11, 12, edit. Amstetodami, 1619. 
 
 t Isa., vii., 8. t Nicolas of Damascus, quoted by Josephus, Ant., vii., 5, 2. 
 
 1) 2 Kings, xiii., 3. 
 
 II 'H ^a^aaKrivr] 5ia<pepovT(iJi eiraivoviievrj tort 6c Kai t) AanaaKOS iraiXis 
 
94 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 the times of the Caesars it was “ the metropolis of the Da¬ 
 mascenes,” and the metropolis of the colony of Damascus 
 —the name of the country being Damascene.* Not only 
 does Hamath lie on its farther side from Israel’s ancient 
 border, and not only did David and Solomon exercise a 
 sovereignty over it, and seek their “ borders” far beyond it, 
 but such is the change to be yet wrought by one word of 
 promise, that the southern border of Dan, in the land yet to 
 be possessed, is fixed on the border of Damascus north¬ 
 ward,! whereas its north border (which antiquarians are 
 so fearful to pass) anciently lay on the south border of Da¬ 
 mascus. Beyond that renowned region ample space must 
 be found for a whole tribe of Israel, when the land shall 
 overfow for the multitude of men. 
 
 Hamath was the capital of the Hamathites, one of the 
 families of the Canaanites, all whose lands, though not pos¬ 
 sessed at the death of Joshua or in past ages, pertain to 
 Israel by promise. It formed a part of the kingdom of Is¬ 
 rael, though not of the land which the seed of Jacob occu¬ 
 pied as their own in full possession. Not only did Solo¬ 
 mon build store-cities in Hamath, but Jeroboam recovered 
 Damascus and Hamath, which belonged to Judah, for Israel. 
 He restored the coast of \sra.^i. from the entering in of 
 Hamath unto the sea of the plain.! 
 
 Hamath and its land, once a kingdom, thus pertains to 
 the promised inheritance. In that region the Euphrates 
 approaches comparatively near to the Mediterranean ; and 
 as these form “ the sides east and west,” the portion of a 
 tribe calls for comparatively larger bounds from south to 
 north. “ From the north end to the coaSt of the way of 
 Hethlon, as one goeth to Hamath, Hazar-enan; the border 
 of Damascus northward, to the coast of Hamath ; for these 
 are his sides east and west, a portion for Dan.” Conjoined 
 as the north-northward, or far north, is with the northern 
 border of Damascus and the border of Hamath, the north 
 end of the Israelitish inheritance, when it shall all be their 
 own, may not, or, rather, cannot come short of the north 
 
 aJtoXoyoj <t%£5ov rt Kai eirKpaviarar] re ravrifl Kara ra TlzpaiKa. Damascenus ager 
 apprime nobilitatus. Damascus urbs est insignis, omnium fore nobilissima, quas in 
 ea sunt regione, Persis vicina.—Strabo, p. 1074. 
 
 * Nummi hujus civitatis plures prostant—August! AAMASKHNflN, Damasce 
 norum: Commodi MHTPOilOAEjQC AAMACKHNflN, Metropoleos Damasceno 
 rum: Caracallaj KOAfiNlAC AAMACKOY MHTPOH, Colonite Damasci me 
 tropolis, &c.—Cellar., Geograph. Ant., tom. ii., p. 270. 
 t Ezek., xlviii., 1. 
 
 i 2 Kings, xiv., 25-28. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 95 
 
 end of that land which once owned the supremacy of Israel, 
 and formed a part of its coast as a subjugated country, and 
 which bore the name of a family of the Canaaniles—as its 
 ancient capital still does —all whose land Israel was finally 
 to possess. 
 
 Hamath, as Josephus states, was called Epiphania by the 
 Macedonians. Jerome says that it received that name from 
 Antiochus, by which it was afterward known to the Greeks 
 and Romans. He marks its site as near to Emesa, with 
 which it has erroneously been identified by some geogra¬ 
 phers. For in the Syrian language it never lost its original 
 name; but, on the other hand, having long lost its Greek 
 appellation, it is known only as Hamah, the expletive term 
 attached to which, as in modern maps, is Epiphania. Abul- 
 feda, the celebrated geographer, who himself was its prince 
 (in the fourteenth century), calls it “ an ancient city, of 
 which mention is made in the books of the Israelites.”* 
 Its site is well known in the valley and on the banks 
 of the Orontes. The Orontes bore the name of Nahr 
 Chamat, or River of Hamath,\ through the midst of which 
 it flowed. It was also called Nahr al Maklub (the river 
 reversed), because, as Abulfeda states the reason, it flowed 
 from the south to the north, in an opposite direction to the 
 Leontes, the Jordan, and the Euphrates. Lebanon, and the 
 hill-country beyond it, intervening, it found no other course 
 to the sea but that which was the reverse of theirs. Ha¬ 
 math has not only retained its original name, but has also 
 somewhat resumed its comparative importance, though it 
 retains but a shadow of its ancient greatness. It is the 
 largest and most populous town on the banks of the Oron- 
 tes,| while Antioch, that long outrivalled it, is in ruins ; 
 and with a name not limited to a spot, there still exists, 
 though within narrowed bounds, “ the government of Ha¬ 
 mah,” which, when visited by Burckhardt in 1814, com¬ 
 prised, in a thinly-peopled and “ little cultivated” country, 
 “ about one hundred and twenty inhabited villages, and 
 seventy or eighty which have been abandoned.”^ 
 
 Jerome, without questioning its identity with Epiphania, 
 which he repeatedly asserts, distinguishes it from Hamath 
 the Great, spoken of by the Prophet Amos, which name he 
 
 * Abulfeda, Tabula S)Tiae, p. 108. t Ibid., p. 149. 
 
 t “ The town (Hamah) is of considerable extent, and must contain at least thirty 
 thousand inhabitants.”--Burckhardt’s Syria, p. 146, 
 
 ^ Burckhardt’s Syria, p. 147. 
 
96 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 applies to Antioch, that had been for ages not only the 
 chief city in the land of Hamath, but the capital of the As¬ 
 syrian Empire. It was called “the great,” as he relates, 
 “to distinguish it from the lesser Hamath (Emath), which 
 is called Epiphania,” The name of the region in the vicinity* 
 of Antioch was called Rehletka^ which he identifies with 
 Riblah in the land of Hamathf repeatedly mentioned in 
 Scripture, and subsequently named Antioch, after Antiochus. 
 It became, assuredly, the greatest city in the land, and 
 might well have taken the name of Hamath the Great. It 
 was early the resort of Egyptian and of Babylonish kings ; 
 thither Zedekiah, king of Judah, was led captive ; and there 
 his eyes were put out, after they had witnessed the slaugh¬ 
 ter of his sons. Antioch was afterward the seat of Assyrian 
 raonarchs and of Roman emperors. It is accounted, by the 
 most ancient Jewish writers, the capital of Hamath. The 
 learned Bochart, in the preface to his Sacred Geography, 
 identifies Riblah (which assuredly was in the land of Ha¬ 
 math) with Antioch, and Hamath with Epiphania.f And 
 as Solomon not only built store-cities in Hamath, but went 
 to Hamath-ze6«^, and prevailed against it, or maintained his 
 sovereignty over it, as lying within the bounds of his do¬ 
 minions, it may not be unworthy of notice, that “the fount¬ 
 ain of Zof6a,” in the vicinity of Antioch, retains its name. 
 
 Though there be thus some discordance of opinion re¬ 
 specting the town of Hamath, there is none concerning the 
 land. Epiphania and Antioch were both situated in the 
 same country, and on the banks of the same river, which 
 was called the River Chamat, or Hamath. Were there two 
 separate entrances from the sea to these cities north of 
 Hamah, a question might then be raised as to the proper 
 border of Israel’s inheritance. But the valley of the Orontes 
 is so hemmed in on the western side by a hill-country^ or 
 long, continuous mountain chain, from beyond Hamah to 
 Antioch, called Hamath the Great, that there is but one 
 entrance from the sea to them both that can have any claim 
 to be reckoned the north border of Israel. The entering in 
 of Hamath is the bounding line, and not the city itself, in 
 whatever quarter of the land it stood. 
 
 Strange indeed it may seem, and the fact would be imac- 
 
 * Reblatha, sive urbs quae nunc Antiochiam vocant.— Hieron. de situ et reonotiiinibut 
 locorum Hebratenrum, tom. iii., p. 263. 
 t Ribla et Hamatha, id est, Antiochia et Epiphania.—Boch., prasf., 41. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND, 
 
 97 
 
 countable, were not a false theory thereby maintained, that 
 the highest authorities in scriptural geography among Chris¬ 
 tian writers in modern times could have stumbled in a path 
 so plain. Instead of seeking the entrance into Hamath 
 wherever it could truly be found, Bochart, Cellarius, and 
 many others discard the testimony of Jewish writers, be¬ 
 cause they fix the northern borders far beyond the ancient 
 bounds, and believed that they reached to Antioch. 
 
 “ 'Fhe Hamathites” (descendants of Canaan), says Bo¬ 
 chart, “ were the inhabitants of Hamath, of which Antioch 
 was the capital, if we believe Olyinpiodorus and the para- 
 phrasts (or commentaries) of Jonathan and of Jerusalem, and 
 Rabbin Solomon. But opposed to this is the fact that, in 
 Scripture, the northern boundary of the Holy Land is often 
 fixed at the entrance into Hamath, which no one skilled in 
 the geography of the country can affirm to have reached 
 unto Antioch.”*" The difficulty, as he states, is easily solv¬ 
 ed from Jerome, Antioch being “ Hamath the Great,” and 
 Epiphania Hamath. And he rather inadvertently adds, that 
 though the former city was far remote from the boundaries 
 of the Jews, Epiphania was not very distant. 
 
 No one, indeed, who know's where those cities stood, can 
 say that Dan bordered on Antioch, or that the ancient bound¬ 
 ary of the Holy Land lay near to the capital of the Assyr¬ 
 ian Empire. But every one acquainted with the geogra¬ 
 phy^ of Syria can tell that with the intervening distance of 
 more than a hundred and fifty miles, Dan was as far from 
 Epiphania on the north as from Beersheba on the south. 
 And every one who gives due heed to scriptural testimony 
 must know, as the Lord himself has declared, that very 
 much land, including kingdoms, lay'- beyond the ancient fron¬ 
 tier of Israel, which belongs to the promised inheritance. 
 And the fact admitted by IBochart, that Antioch lay in the 
 land of Hamath, may possibly aid in the solution of the only 
 question now worthy o-f consideration, viz., where the en¬ 
 trance into Hamath really’' is; for that, and that alone, can 
 determine where is the border of the heritage of Israel on 
 the coast of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Hitherto we have passed along the west border, or the 
 shores of the Great Sea, till we have seen that much land, 
 as defined, remained to be possessed; and—with the sea on 
 one side, and a hill-country on the other, first the Lebanon, 
 
 * Bochart, Phaleg., p. 307. 
 
 I 
 
98 
 
 THE BOUA'UARIEri (;F 
 
 and afterward, as every map shows, the Anzeyry Mountain j 
 —till we have reached the territory over against Hamath, and 
 seek from thence an entrance into that land ; and after hav- » 
 ing passed the countries of the Sidonians, Arkites, Arva- 
 dites, and Giblites, and approached to the mouth of the Cron- j* 
 tes, in the midland region of Northern Syria, we have trav- '■ 
 ersed the kingdom of Damascus to reach the destined south- y 
 ern border of the tribe of Dan. We have passed to Hamath, 
 which itself, with its kingdom, owned of old, and must for- ‘ 
 ever own, the sovereignty of Israel, and be a portion of their ! 
 
 possession, as well as a part of their coast; and from thence ! 
 
 we have looked in vain for any opening in the mountainous 
 range by which the Orontes could flow into the Mediterra¬ 
 nean, or an entrance be found from it into the land of Ha¬ 
 math, till Antioch is reached, and another mountain chain, 
 stretching across the land, forbids our farther progress. But | 
 to the Great Sea we must return, to seek, by the guidance 
 of the word that never errs, and that misleads none who, 
 with a single eye and steady step, do closely follow it, to 
 find an entrance into Hamath from thence, or the place 
 where the western border of Israel terminates and the north 
 begins. And here we need not seek in vain, but have only 
 to look to the very high mountain which the Divine word 
 points out, ascending which the entrance into Hamath lies 
 at our feet, and at once an open way is there, and there 
 only, seen, from the Great Sea into the land of Hamath. 
 
 Where, then, according to the scriptural definition of its 
 locality, is the entrance into Hamath ? or what defined line 
 is there, if any there be, which has a paramount and exclu¬ 
 sive right to bear that name, and which, as that very thing 
 which Scripture calls it, suffices as a marked and distinct¬ 
 ive border of that “ everlasting possession” which God gave 
 to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and to their seed forever ? 
 
 How is it to be found, or, in other words, what saith the 
 Scripture ? 
 
 This shall he your north border; from the great sea ye 
 shall point out for you Mount Hor (Heb., Hor-ha-hor); from 
 Mount Hor ye shall point out unto the entrance into Hamath. 
 
 “ The west side also shall be the great sea, till a man come 
 over against Hamath.” “ And this shall be the border of 
 the land towards the north side, from the great sea, the way 
 of Hethlon, as men go to Zedad, Hamath, Berothah, &lc. 
 From the north end to the coast of the way of Hethlon, as 
 one goeth to Hamath, &c. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 99 
 
 The entrance into Hamath is thus manifestly from the 
 great sea, or the Mediterranean ; and the limits of the west 
 border along the coast are not to be sought till a man come 
 over against Hamath. Here, then, Lebanon is passed ; for 
 Hamath lies on the east of the Anzeyry Mountains. The 
 special direction is, from the great sea ye shall point out for 
 you Mount Hor, or Hor-ha-hor. Hor, in Hebrew, signifies 
 mountain; and a repetition of the same word, according to 
 the Hebrew idiom, denotes the superlative degree. It is 
 thus translated in the Vulgate, or common Latin version of 
 the Old Testament, a very high mountain, and the passage is 
 rendered, “ coming even to a very high mountain, from lohich 
 they go into Emaihi'* 
 
 Lebanon, and the territory of the Gihlites, and all the 
 land of the Canaanites on the coast, had to be passed be¬ 
 fore such a mountain could be reached, however conspicu¬ 
 ously it might rise to view. Captains Irby and Mangles, 
 advancing from south to north along the Phoenician coast, 
 without the thought of bearing testimony concerning the 
 borders of Israel, or previously of looking for any such 
 mountain there, thus connect, in the same paragraph, the 
 brief notice of Gabala (or Gebal), of the vast plain bounded 
 by mountains (which intervened between them and Hamath, 
 opposite to it as then they were), and of the most conspicu¬ 
 ous object before them, after Lebanon was passed. “ At 
 Jibilee, the ancient Gabala, are Roman ruins, the principal 
 of which are the remains of a fine theatre at the north side 
 of the town. The whole journey from Tripoli—with a sin¬ 
 gle exception near Markab, where the coast is rocky—is 
 along a vast plain at the foot of the Ansanar (Anzeyryf) 
 Mountains. Mount Lebanon was in sight the w'hole way 
 from Tripoli. Mount Casius was before 
 
 The reader, in quest of the entrance into Hamath from 
 the sea, must remember his position here, that, as Captains 
 Irby and Mangles were acltially doing, he journeys north¬ 
 ward along the Mediterranean shore, in the land of the Ar- 
 vadites, who were Canaanites, or of the Gihlites, all of 
 which lay within the promised heritage of Jacob’s seed, sit¬ 
 uated directly opposite ^o Hamath ; the Anzeyry Mountains, 
 beyond which it lay, shutting out wholly that land from - 
 
 * Pervenientes usque ad montem altissimura, a quo venient in Emath. 
 t Burckhardt’s orthography is adopted, 
 i Captains Irby and Mangrles’ Travels, p. 222, 223. 
 
100 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 view, and separating it from the Phoenician plain. And to 
 know where the entrance into Hamath is to be found, he has 
 not, even where he stands, to look for it, but, iti obedience 
 to the Divine direction, to use the prescribed means of find¬ 
 ing it. From the great sea ye shall point oMTjor you a very 
 high mountain. That is literally the yoint for which he has 
 to look. The eye has not to wander inland over a wide 
 mountainous range, stretching for more than a hundred 
 miles ; but a very high mountain has to be pointed out, a 
 precise place has to be fixed on, from whence—it may be 
 from whence alone on all the northern Phoenician shore— 
 the entrance into Hamath has next to be pointed out or to be 
 seen. Such a high mountain, to be there singled out from 
 the sea, may, or, rather, inust be seen also on its coast, there 
 to stand alone or unrivalled as a landmark, and as a point 
 commanding an inland view. Such a mountain is Casius. 
 While Lebanon was still in view, though left behind, no 
 other mountain is seen along the shore to compete in height 
 with Casius ; nay, the whole land is there a plain—the great 
 plain, as it is called ; and, terminating the last of the lahd 
 of the Canaanites that dwelt in Phoenicia, Mount Casius is 
 ever in the eye of the traveller journeying northward, and, 
 as if without a competitor or rival claimant, is ever before 
 him in the maritime territory opposite to Hamath. The in¬ 
 quirer has to hold on his way along the coast of the great 
 sea, and cannot leave it, or reach the proper, because pre¬ 
 scribed, point, till such a mountain be found, from which 
 again he has to point out the entrance into Hamath. That 
 Mount Casius, which can thus be pointed out, upon the coast 
 and in the proper direction, along all the region in which 
 alone the required mountain can be rightly looked for, an¬ 
 swers all the conditions of the problem, admits of a demon¬ 
 stration that may be said to be ocular ; and the distance at 
 which it is seen, while Lebanon, which had been passed, is 
 at the same time in view, might alone prove its title to the 
 name of Hor-ha-hor, or a very high mountain. 
 
 After passing over hills richly wooded, without descend¬ 
 ing into a plain. Captains Irby and Mangles reposed during 
 night in the village of Lourdee, irt an elevated situation, close 
 by the side of “ the highest pinnacle of Casius.”* It thus 
 
 * Hor-ha-hor has been translated a mountain of a mountain, a double mountain. 
 If such a translation be preferred, Casius and Anti-Casius stand re«dy to respond to 
 it as definite points. But the entrance into Hamath has not to be pointed out by a 
 man standing- on two mountains(!), but on one, especially if these mountains, like 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 101 
 
 rises like a mountain on (or of) a mountain, in a manner of 
 which its scriptural name may be said to be literally signif¬ 
 icant or expressive. 
 
 Mount Casius, rising abruptly from the sea, high above 
 all the hills in its vicinity, and peculiarly of a pointed form, 
 and situated between the once famous cities of Seleucia and 
 Laodicea, is repeatedly mentioned by ancient writers; and 
 the preposterous terms in which they describe it sufficient¬ 
 ly show how greatly it was renowned for its height, so as 
 appropriately to bear the designation of a “ very high mount¬ 
 ain.” Its locality is undoubted, as marked by Strabo* and 
 Pliny, near to Seleucia, and by Ammianus Marcelliniis, as 
 the Orontes flows by its base.f Its height is described by 
 Pliny and others, in an oft-repeated statement, which merits 
 ridicule alone, as such, that at the fourth watch, the sun 
 (three hours before its rise) is to be seen from its summit; 
 so that the spectator, by turning round, or looking from the 
 east to the west, can equally see both day and night at 
 once and somewhat less extravagantly, he marks its alti¬ 
 tude as four miles by the steepest ascent. Its bare and lofty 
 pinnacle, as reflecting the first rays of the sun, might in¬ 
 deed be the first herald of the morning, after—if not, as 
 alleged, before—the crowing of the cock.§ Noted as Mount 
 Casius of Syria thus was for the early rising of the sun as 
 ‘seen from its summit, the fact may plainly be inferred, that 
 of all the hilly region around, the “ pinnacle of Casius,” 
 from its superior elevation, was daily first gilded by the so¬ 
 lar rays. For the same reason, it would prove the first and 
 most conspicuous landmark from the sea, situated as it is on 
 the lip of the ocean. Without attempting to define its sit¬ 
 uation, Pococke, who passed it, affirms that it is certainly 
 (giving unconsciously the very translation of Hor-ha-hor in 
 the Vulgate) a very high mountain, though, as he very safe¬ 
 ly states, “ Pliny’s testimony seems to exceed the truth.”1| 
 
 Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, stretch from south to north for more than a hundred 
 miles. * Strabo, p. 1068. 
 
 t Orontes imos pedes Casii Montis illius celsi prsetermeans.—Amm. Marcel., lib. 
 xiv., c. 8 (al. 26), p. 33, edit. Lugd. Bat., 1693. 
 
 f Super Seleuciam Mons Casius, cujus excelsa altitude quarta vigilia orientein pei 
 tenebras solem adspicit, brevi circumactu corporis diem noctemque pariter ostendens. 
 —Piin., lib. V., c. 22. In Monti Casio, quara videndi solis ortus gratia noctu ad- 
 scendisset, &c.—Had. Spartian., c. xiv. 
 
 i) Praestituto feriarum die Casiurn nnontem adscendit nemorosum, et terreti ambitu 
 in sublime porrec/um, unde secundis galliciniis videtur primi solis exortus.—Arnmian., 
 lib. xxii., c. 14, (33), p. 236. Hi omnes de Syriae Monti Casio illam de premature solis 
 ortu narrationem habent.—Vide Cellarii Geograph, Ant., tom. ii., p. 251. 
 
 II Pococke’s Description of the East, p. 187, 
 
 I 2 
 
102 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 The reason which he assigns why a southern summit of the 
 same mountain could alone, in his estimation, be Anti-Ca- 
 sius, viz., that “ all the other hills being very low with regard 
 to (in comparison with) Mount Casius,"^^* may serve at once 
 to show why it has been so peculiarly celebrated for its 
 height, and how it is thereby aptly fitted, as if raised on pur¬ 
 pose by the God of Nature, who is also the God of Israel, 
 for forming the termination of the western border of Isra- 
 el’s inheritance along the Mediterranean Sea, and the point 
 where the northern begins. 
 
 The peculiar position of Mount Casius, not only on the 
 very verge of the sea, but also at the northern termination 
 of a long maritime plain, and the termination, too, of the riv¬ 
 er and valley of the Orontes (or, according to Abulfeda, of 
 the River of Elamath), tends, together with its pointed form, 
 to render it more conspicuous and remarkable than loftier 
 mountains in other regions, whose pre-eminence is not so 
 marked. Thus while, in that pure atmosphere, it is seen 
 for so long a distance in the northern coast of Syria, and 
 also from the sea, it is no less conspicuous at the distance 
 of more than sixty miles in an opposite direction ; for the 
 same travellers by whom we have been led to the first view 
 of it, state that Mount Casius was in sight from Serniain, 
 which lies on the farther side of the land of Hamath. Mount 
 Casius is, we may confidently affirm, the only mountain on * 
 any part of the coast which lies over against the land of 
 Hamath, that is anywhere visible from it, or from any region 
 beyond it. 
 
 But if Mount Casius be the very high mountain from 
 which the entrance into Hamath has to be pointed out, 
 where is such an entrance to be seen from it 1 That en¬ 
 trance is the very object in immediate view lying at its 
 base, and stretching inland to Antioch, as from the north 
 end of the land one goeth unto Hamath, &c. The Orontes 
 empties itself into the sea at the foot of Casius, a narrow 
 plain intervening at its entrance. And that mountain is as 
 fitting a station from whence the entrance into Hamath may 
 be pointed out, as it is itself a peculiar landmark yVom the 
 sea, 
 
 “ From the sea ye shall point out to you a very high 
 mountain, and from that mounimn ye shall point out the 
 entrance into Hamath.” And not till Mount Casius is as* 
 
 * Pococke’s Description of the East, p. 187. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 103 
 
 cended is any entrance into Hamath seen ; but its northern 
 side is that also of a valley, which needs but to be pointed 
 out as the sought-for border of Israel. Descriptions by un¬ 
 conscious travellers may show that the relative connexion 
 between the high mountain and the entering in of Hamath 
 is as close in fact as in the text. 
 
 “ The southern part of the city (the ruined Seleucia) 
 commands a view of the sea, Mount Casius, the port, the 
 plain to the south, and the Orontes running through it.” 
 “From the mountains the country appears like a plain all 
 the way to Antioch; but about a league to the east/rom the 
 sea there are low hills almost as far as that city, which have 
 fruitful valleys between them.”* 
 
 “ The valley in which the Orontes winds down and 
 discharges itself into the sea is well seen from hence 
 (Seleucia). Its southern boundary is the range of Jebel 
 Okrab (Mount Casius), the steep sides of which seem to rise 
 abruptly from the sea, and continue their ascent till they 
 terminate in its gray and bare peak, at the height of per¬ 
 haps 5000 feet from the base. Its northern boundary is the 
 range of mountain called Jebel Mousa, the western ex¬ 
 tremity of which slopes down into a cape at the distance 
 of less than a mile north of the moles and entrance of the 
 ruined port of Antioch, and its even summit runs along to 
 the eastward, until it loses itself among more uneven hills. 
 The inner or eastern parts of these ranges gradually ap¬ 
 proach each other till they seem to meet, thus leaving a 
 triangular valley or plain between them, its base-line being 
 the edge of the seacoast, and its whole length from eight to 
 ten miles. It is nearly in the centre of this that the Oron¬ 
 tes winds down its course ; and the whole of the space on 
 its northern bank is occupied by corn-fields, mulberry 
 grounds, gardens of fig-trees, and detached cottages, all ex¬ 
 cellently built.”! 
 
 “ I set out” (from Antioch), says Mr. G. Robinson, “ for 
 Suedieh, situated in a plain five hours and a half southwest 
 of Antioch, and one from the sea. The road to it is over a 
 country slightly undulated, and crossed occasionally by 
 streams, falling from the mountains to the north, and run¬ 
 ning towards the Orontes.” “ From the ruins of Seleucia 
 1 crossed over the plain southward, about four miles, to the 
 
 * Pococke’s Description of the East, p. 186. 
 
 t Buckingham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 550, 551. 
 
104 
 
 THE BOUNBAKIES OF 
 
 mouth of the Orontes. The entrance is marked by the 
 whitened tomb of a Turkish santon. Djebel Okrab (Mount 
 Casius), on the south side of the river, appears from this 
 spot to great advantage, rising abruptly from the sea to the 
 height of between five and six thousand feet, and terminating 
 in a sharp peak. Its lower part is cultivated, but towards 
 the top it is gray and bare of trees, from whence it derives 
 its name Okrab, meaning in Arabic ‘ bald.’ From the mouth 
 of the river I ascended the right bank till I came to a large 
 basin, which I was told was the ancient port of Antioch.* 
 Mr. Robinson returned to Antioch on the southern side of 
 the river, partly along the north declivity of Mount Casius , 
 “ In one hour I reached the banks of the Orontes, near the 
 place where, issuing from the mountains, it enters the plains 
 previous to emptying itself finally into the sea, two miles 
 from hence. At this stage of its course, though not very 
 wide, it is a fine, deep, and steady-flowing river, and navi¬ 
 gable for vessels of about a hundred tons burden. On 
 crossing the river, and reaching the opposite side, we com¬ 
 menced ascending the left bank of the stream, and in a 
 quarter of an hour entered a mountain pass of surprising 
 beauty. For more than two hours from hence the Orontes 
 is seen flowing between a double line of high hills, winding 
 and turning incessantly—as the ground on which it passes 
 presents obstacles to its free course—though enabling it 
 thereby to distribute alternately to either side the fertilizing 
 powers of its waters. In this interval the road is naturally 
 subject to the caprices of the river. At two hours from the 
 western entrance of the pass, the mountains on the right 
 bank of the river sudderdy dwindle into comparative insig¬ 
 nificance, and shortly after the view opens again to the 
 plain of Souedie. Following the path along the hills which 
 overlook the Orontes, in three hours we reached Antioch, 
 making a total of seven from Suedieh. The road we took 
 on our return this day is nearly two miles more than the 
 straight one across the plain, and is, therefore, little fre¬ 
 quented.”* 
 
 Captains Irby and Mangles, after having rested during 
 night at the village of Lourdie, situated immediately by the 
 side of the highest pinnacle of Mount Casius, without as- 
 cending it, descended the north side of the mountains, 
 through woody and wild scenery ; and after having lost 
 
 * Travels in Palestine and Syria, vcJ. ii., p. 294, 298. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 105 
 
 their way several times, reached “ the banks of the Orontes 
 at the place where commences the picturesque part of the 
 river, and immediately below the spot where the chart was 
 marked, the site of the city and groves of Daphne, We 
 began now to follow the banks of the river, and were 
 astonished at the beauty of the scenery, far surpassing any¬ 
 thing we expected to see in Syria, and, indeed, anything 
 we had witnessed in Switzerland, though we walked nine 
 hundred miles in that country, and saw most of its beauty. 
 The river, from the time we began to trace its banks, ran 
 continually between the high hills, winding and turning in¬ 
 cessantly ; at times the road led over precipices in the 
 rocks, looking down perpendicularly on the river. The 
 luxuriant variety of foliage was prodigious ; and the rich 
 green myrtle, which was very plentiful, contrasted with 
 the colour of the road, the soil of which was a dark-red 
 granite, made us imagine we were riding through pleasure- 
 grounds. The laurel, laurustinus, bay-tree, fig-tree, wild 
 vine, plane-tree, English sycamore, arbutus, both common 
 and andrachne, dwarf oak, &c,, were scattered in all di¬ 
 rections. At times the road was overhung with rocks 
 covered with ivy; the mouths of caverns also presented 
 themselves, and gave a wildness to the scene ; and the 
 perpendicular cliffs jutted into the river upward of three 
 hundred feet high, forming corners round which the waters 
 ran in a most romantic manner; and on one occasion the 
 road wound round a deep bay thus, so that, on perceiving 
 ourselves immediately opposite the spot we had so recently 
 passed, it appeared that we had crossed the river. We 
 descended at times into plains cultivated with mulberry 
 plantations and vines, and prettily studded with picturesque 
 cottages. The occasional shallows of the river, keeping up 
 a perpetual roaring, completed the beauty of the delightful 
 scene, which lasted about two hours, when we entered into 
 the plain of the Suadrach, where the river becomes of 
 greater breadth, and runs to the sea in as straight a line as 
 a canal.”* 
 
 The patience of the reader may have been tried in pass¬ 
 ing through the dry details of names and mere localities, as 
 if the whole scene, destitute of all attraction, possessed no 
 other interest, and were bleak as the bare pinnacle of Casi- 
 us. But his perseverance may be rewarded by the enchant- 
 
 * Irby and Mangles’ Travels, p. 225, 226. 
 
106 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 ing scene which thus bursts upon his view, on being intro¬ 
 duced to the entrance into Hamath. It is not, however, 
 with its beauty that we have here to do, when a rigid scru¬ 
 tiny and strict search as to the reality of its claim, as addu¬ 
 ced for the first time, have alone to be regarded. But these 
 simply and hitherto unapplied facts may conspire, with still 
 farther proof, to make the entrance into Hamath patent to 
 the world. 
 
 Nothing but a hill-country, without any such entrance 
 into Hamath, is to be seen along the whole of the eastern 
 side of the great plain, till that plain, which lies over against 
 the land of Hamath, or great valley of the Orontes, is passed, 
 and Mount Casius is ascended. But immediately from it, 
 as from the lower hills around, the country appears like a 
 plain all the way to Antioch. The Orontes at last, after a 
 course of nearly two hundred miles from south to north, al- 
 most parallel to the coast, is turned by another mountain 
 chain, winds its way between a double line of high hills, and 
 then, straight as a canal, enters by a direct line into the 
 Mediterranean Sea, a fine, deep, and steady-flowing stream, 
 without any obstruction to turn it aside when it had reach¬ 
 ed the junction of the west and north borders of Israel. 
 
 While it is thus manifest that there is in this precise 
 point an entrance into Hamath, the nature of it, as well as 
 the situation it occupies, may add another feature by which 
 it may be recognised. 
 
 Cellarius, who earnestly strives to assimilate the borders 
 of the promised land with those of ancient Israel, states, 
 without adducing any illustration or specifying any locality, 
 that the manner in which the border of Palestine, as he de¬ 
 nominates it, is spoken of as the entrance into Hamath, de¬ 
 notes “ a province to be entered through straits or narrow 
 passes”— per fauces et angustias adeundam.* Plain as is 
 the meaning of these words, it may be more obvious to some 
 readers by a mere reference to the common Latin dictiona¬ 
 ry— ^’■fauces, straits or narrow passages, the mouth of a 
 river,” Such, precisely, is the actual scene. A mountain 
 pass, where for several miles the opposite hills almost meet, 
 forms, near to the mouth of a river, the entrance into Ha¬ 
 math ; while, notwithstanding, from the high mountain from 
 which it is pointed out, and is seen to form a well-defined 
 valley, it appears, however narrowed in some places by low 
 
 * Cellar., tom. ii., p. 2S1. 
 

 THE PROMISED LAND. 107 
 
 hills, like a plain all the way to Antioch, or for the distance 
 of sixteen miles, till extensive plains spread out in the land 
 of Hamath. 
 
 Traversing covenanted, and, therefore, Israelitish ground, 
 we first passed along the shore till the land bordered with 
 the mouth of the Orontes ; and again, in the interior, with 
 a hill-country between, to Antioch. And from more abun¬ 
 dant proof that may still farther be supplied, the reader may 
 judge whether, in the space that intervenes between these 
 two places, the scriptural entrance into Hamath may not be 
 seen, as plainly as was the road—which lay there the whole 
 way—between Antioch and its port. 
 
 But while the Phoenician coast has to be followed till the 
 designated mountain be reached, and very much land has 
 to be passed beyond the ancient frontier of Israel, so that 
 all the appointed territories may be included within the bor¬ 
 ders, yet it is not from the shore, hut from the sea, that the 
 very high mountain was to be pointed out, from which the 
 entrance into Hamath is seen. It is, therefore, necessary 
 to add the testimony of the navigator to that of the traveller. 
 
 Sailing northward from Arvad, the ancient capital of the 
 Arvadites, as Captains Irby and Mangles advanced in the 
 same direction along the shore, another witness, on passing 
 Latakia (or Laodicea), thus points to Mount Casius. “ The 
 scenery soon after became very fine. Mount Casius rose 
 out of the sea with stupendous grandeur, raising its craggy 
 sides and lofty peak of naked rock into the sky ; the woody 
 precipices along the coast seemed to drop into the sea. 
 Their forms were cast in the most magnificent mould, much . 
 finer than the heights of Lebanon. Mount Casius is from 
 every point a sublime feature, but the most beautiful point 
 is the gorge in the mountains through which the Orontes 
 finds its way to the plain and sea ; there is a loneliness in 
 the folding forms of the mountains, a solitude, a wildness, 
 which makes one long to trace the romantic course of this 
 river”^—to see, it might have been said, the entrance into 
 Hamath. 
 
 “ 'I'he entrance by the mouth of the Orontes,” as it is lit¬ 
 erally called, “possesses a grandeur rarely equalled by this 
 beautiful country. Mount Casius rises abruptly from the 
 sea ; its summit is a bold rocky pinnacle.”! 
 
 * Fisher’s Views of Syria. Descriptions by J. Came, Esq., of Cambridg-e, vol. 
 it., p. 28, 29. t Ibid., rol. ii., p. 77. 
 
 
 
108 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 But Other witnesses are not wanting to raise their voice 
 at last from that once frequented but long deserted shore. 
 As if the very first fruits of the Euphrates expedition had 
 been destined to be an offering to the cause of scriptural il¬ 
 lustration, by the concurring solution of another problem 
 than that of the practicability of the navigation of the Eu¬ 
 phrates, Colonel Chesney, in the Journal of the Royal Ge¬ 
 ographical Society, commences an admirable article on the 
 Bay of Antioch by a description of the scene, as the expe¬ 
 dition bore down upon the coast of Syria, in order that they 
 might disembark at the very point which formed of old the 
 port of Antioch. In preference to all other places, he sought 
 an entrance there, whereby to go to Beer on the Euphrates. 
 
 “ The Bay of Antioch is spacious, free from rocks, and 
 well sheltered on every side, with the exception of the 
 southeast, where, in the distant horizon, is seen the lofty 
 island of Cyprus ; the anchorage, however, is good, and the 
 water deep, almost to the very beach. This was the spot 
 selected, in order to avoid the Bei'lkn Mountains, for the 
 disembarcation of the party destined to proceed on the ex¬ 
 pedition to the Euphrates. On the 3d April, 1835, H. M. S. 
 Columbine, followed by the George Canning, under all sail, 
 led the way from the offing towards the anchorage. To 
 the south, as we proceeded, was the lofty Jehel El Akrah 
 [Mount Casius], rising 5318 feet above the sea, with its 
 abutments extending to Antioch. To the north, the Beilan 
 range, 5337 feet, well stocked with forest trees, chiefly oak, 
 walnut, and fir; and in front, the broad expanse of the bay, 
 ^ backed by the hills of Antioch, Mount S. Simeon, or Ben- 
 kiliseh, covered with myrtle, bay, and arbutus, all together 
 forming a striking and magnificent panorama,”* &;c. 
 
 “ The southern horn of the Bay of Antioch trends inward, 
 east by north, about seven miles to the beach. Near its 
 outer extremity is the little bay or fissure called Kasab, and 
 three miles nearer to the mainland that of Kara Mayor, 
 which is rather larger, and has a good anchorage off it close 
 to the shore ; the rest of the distance along the foot of Mount 
 Casius being precipitous, and for the most part inaccessible, 
 as far as the beach, beyond which the range of Jebel El 
 Akrab runs towards Antioch in the previous direction, east 
 by north, with the rich, picturesque valley of the Orohtes at 
 the foot, and the celebrated fountain of Daphne on its slope. 
 
 ■* Geographical Journal, vol. viii., p. 228. 
 

 r ‘ ‘ ’ 
 
 V.> 
 
 . ; 
 
 » ’ L . 
 
 I'j. 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 .V »’ 
 
 3t 
 
 
 
\ 
 
 
 ... 
 
 . ||||H 
 
 ... ■: '/■ . 
 
 .ll'i ;lir ' 
 
 ;^:;;v;;:liifli|iillt 
 ^''':. 
 
 IH . 
 
 -fcv- 
 
 }JL.Iiv:\. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 109 
 
 Eight miles and a half north by west, half west, is the other 
 horn of the bay, which is formed by Jebel Mnsa; on the 
 . base of which, opening northwest, are the ruins of the well- 
 known city built by Seleucus Nicator to celebrate his vic¬ 
 tory over Antigonus ; but it has a much deeper interest to 
 the Christian from being the spot where Paul and Barnabas 
 embarked for Cyprus.”* 
 
 Such a description, by such an observer, may add a still 
 deeper interest to the scene, as showing how the Bay of 
 Antioch has been formed by Nature’s God, and presents the 
 opening on the coast where He has also formed the entrance 
 into Hamath, so often spoken of in his Word. 
 
 The expedition first pitched their tents near to the ruins 
 of Seleucia. “ The scene, with the British flag floating 
 over their heads, and the noble mountains which surrounded 
 them, of which Mount Casius was the monarchy was most 
 animated and picturesque.”! 
 
 That spot, with Mount Casius in the distance, is delinea¬ 
 ted in the splendid work entitled “ Fisher’s Views, or Syria, 
 the Holy Land, &c., illustrated,” to the publishers of which 
 the author is indebted for an illustration of the scene, as 
 well as the view of a portion of the valley, both taken from 
 the original plates. The reader is referred to other views 
 of Mount Casius in the same work, as it is seen from the 
 sea (vol. i., p. 77) ; from Mr. Barker’s village at Suadeah; 
 and from the village of Beit-y-ass (vol. iii., p. 74), where the 
 lofty peak of Casius is seen towering higher than the other 
 less defined mountains. 
 
 In the description of the view of the remains of the port 
 of Seleucia, it is said, “ The scene at present is wild and 
 impressive. A desolate and rocky beach—Mount Casius 
 on the left—a few country barks crossing the Bay of Sua¬ 
 deah, to enter the mouth of the Orontes. The two piers of 
 the ancient port are seen projecting into the sea : the ruined 
 tower on the rock was built for its protection ; and near 
 this one of the piers ran into the sea, constructed of very 
 large stones, some of them twenty feet by six in width and 
 five in depth: they have been fastened together by iron 
 cramps, the remains of which are still to be seen. Mount 
 Casius, that towers on the left far above the other heights, 
 is the finest mountain, and of the most striking appearance 
 of any in Syria; its summit is a pyramid of rock; its sides 
 
 * Geographical Journal, rol. viii., p. 228, 229. t Fisher’s Views, vol. p. 77. 
 
110 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 are broken into deep and precipitous glens. Its larger por¬ 
 tion is bare and naked, yet it is more sublime in its bareness 
 than if sheltered entirely, like many of its neighbours, by 
 magnificent forests. The setting sun, resting long on its 
 aerial deserts of rocks, on its wild and waste crest, is glo¬ 
 rious to behold.”* (See Plate 1.) 
 
 But it is noifrom the sea, but from the mountain, that the 
 entrance is to be seen. The hills of Antioch, Mount S. 
 Simeon, or Ben-kiliseh, shut in the view; and not one man 
 on board the vessels having entered the bay before, great un¬ 
 easiness was felt lest they might have mistaken the intended 
 bay, till, near the shore, the Orontes was seen, from the top¬ 
 mast head, winding towards its estuary. The summit of 
 Ben-kiliseh, a low mountain, is about five miles from the 
 sea, and commands a beautiful view westward, over a very 
 rich plain extending to the sea, closed in by Mount Casius to 
 the southward, and the Jebel Musa range to the northward ; 
 while to the east is the valley of the Orontes, terminated by 
 the castellated hills of Antioch, the general view being 
 closed to the northeast by the Beilan Mountains.! 
 
 A section of the valley near this point is presented in the 
 view of the junction of a tributary stream which descends 
 from Mount Amanus, and falls into the river; in the de¬ 
 scription of which it is said, “ The numerous flocks and 
 their shepherds give a pastoral appearance to this scene ; 
 the old stone bridge [which shows that of old there was a 
 road or entrance there], with its single arch, crosses the 
 tributary stream that loudly pours its tide into the calm, ma¬ 
 jestic bosom of the Orontes. Cultivation is visible even to 
 the water’s edge: the declivities aflbrd the richest pasture 
 to the flocks, whose keepers, seated on the banks or beneath 
 the trees, look every day on a scene that might vie with the 
 fields of Arcadia. The whole valley of the Orontes, up to 
 Antioch, is magnificent, between the ranges of Mount Ca¬ 
 sius and Amanus, and it is cultivated in many parts, and 
 might be made, with industry, as productive as in ancient 
 times : viewed a few miles farther from the heights of Beit- 
 el-ma (a lower prolongation of Casius), the river presents a 
 splendid broad expanse, winding between fhe bold range of 
 Amanus and the mountain of the column.”! (See Plate 2.) 
 
 The view presents only a part of the valley; and even 
 
 * Fisher’s Views, vol. ii., p. 17. 
 t Fisher’s Views, vol. i., p. 18. 
 
 + Geog. Joum., vol. viii., p. 228, 229 
 

 JU\o;riux OF- A 'I’lainA’i-AHV 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 Ill 
 
 from the summit of Ben-kiliseh the view of the valley of 
 the Ororites is terminated to the east by the castellated hills 
 of Antioch, and the termination of the entrance is not from 
 thence to be seen; but from the very high mountain which 
 towers above the other hills, the entrance is seen in all its 
 length, and beyond it part of the land of Hamath, to which 
 it leads. In Mr. Ainsworth’s Researches in Assyria, a view 
 is given of Jehel Akra, or Mount Casius, seen from Gul 
 
 Bashi, the “ head of the lakef with the hills of Antioch in 
 front, which is here inserted, with the kind permission of 
 the author and publisher. As Casius forms a most promi¬ 
 nent landmark as pointed out from the sea, so, on the other 
 extremity of the entrance into Hamath, it forms as conspic¬ 
 uous an object, and is seen to rise as a mountain whose base 
 is the summit of another—Hor-ha-hor, or literally a mount¬ 
 ain on a mountain. The height of the “summit of pass,” 
 or “ the minimum of crest, and summit level of a road,” is 
 2460 feet; the village of Beshkir is 2513;* but another 
 mountain rises above the summit level of the lower to more 
 than twice that height* 
 
 “ Burckhardt, Volney, Adrien Balbi, and others, have 
 looked upon Casius and the Nosairi Hills as effecting a con- 
 
 * Ainsworth’s Assyria, p. 305. 
 
112 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 nexion between the Lebanon and Amanus, and hence geo¬ 
 graphically connecting the systems of Taurus and Libanus ; 
 and this view of the subject,” according to the able testi¬ 
 mony of Mr. Ainsworth, “is farther supported by the geog¬ 
 nostic structure of the chains.”* The entrance into the 
 land of Hamath thus lies between them and the connecting 
 
 O 
 
 point, or base of Casius j and the opposite hill bears the 
 name of Djebel Mousa, as if the name of the Hebrew legis¬ 
 lator were engraven on the northern frontier of Israel. 
 
 An extensive mountain range from north to south, and 
 another from east to west, form, in their respective termi¬ 
 nations, the opposite sides of the valley, which terminates 
 also the course of the Orontes, or the River of Hamath. 
 That river flowed alike by Hamath and Antioch, through 
 the centre of the land ; and it is not an unnatural supposi¬ 
 tion, though other facts were not known to support it, that 
 the entrance into Hamath yVom the sea was, in all likelihood, 
 the same as that by which the River of Hamath entered the 
 sea. Immediately at that point where its waters mingle 
 with those of the ocean, there rises abruptly a very high 
 mountain, from whence an open and direct entrance into 
 Hamath lies in immediate prospect, right inland, which 
 doubtless formed the great thoroughfare from the sea in 
 Northern Syria, and opened up a plain way from thence to 
 the cities in the land of Hamath, and led directly to others 
 in the vicinity or on the banks of the Euphrates. 
 
 Riblah, in the land of Hamath, was the Syrian seat of the 
 King of Babylon in the days of the prophets of Israel. An¬ 
 tioch, in its place or immediate neighbourhood, became the 
 seat of the Assyrian monarchs, and was repeatedly the re¬ 
 sort of Roman emperors. Its port, of which the remains are 
 yet to be seen, was near to the mouth of the Orontes ; and 
 Seleucia, with its port “ capable of containing a thousand 
 vessels,” lay in the vicinity. Along the coast the lofty pin¬ 
 nacle of Casius was the surest beacon/row the sea; and it 
 directed the mariner to the entrance of Hamath, the mari¬ 
 time terminus of which formed the stations of two extensive 
 ports, while at its opposite extremity lay Hamath the Great, 
 or the capital of Assyria. The bounding mountains on both 
 sides precluded any other entrance while a liver, naviga¬ 
 ble for vessels of one hundred tons, with a road on its south 
 side, and a narrow path on the northern bank, where the 
 opposing mountains almost meet, passed through a most en- 
 
 * Aiiurworth’s Assvrin, p. 30S, 30(5. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 113 
 
 chanting scene, which there is thus strong reason for be¬ 
 lieving was consecrated by Divine promise as ultimately a 
 portion of the norlhern border of Israel, before the Grove 
 of Daphne, planted beside it, was desecrated by heathen 
 abominations. Having the celebrated and opulent city of 
 Seleucia, together with its port and that of Antioch, in one 
 end, and the city of Antioch, which numbered eight hun¬ 
 dred thousand inhabitants, on the other, and opening a way 
 from the north end of Syria, not only to the land of Hamath, 
 but also to the countries which environed the Euphrates, the 
 valley in which the River Hamah or Orontes terminated its 
 course was, and is worthy, as the entrance into Hamath^ of 
 being recognised as a heaven-appointed border of that land, 
 which, so soon as it is entered, thus begins to assert or vin¬ 
 dicate the title given it by the Lord, “ the glory of all lands.” 
 
 The entering in of Hamath from Hor-ha-hor, or the very 
 high mountain pointed owX from the sea, opens the way from 
 thence to other places of which mention is made ; and far¬ 
 ther scriptural definitions are given of the north border of Is¬ 
 rael, which need here to be repeated. 
 
 “ And this shall be your north border : from the great sea 
 ye shall point out for you Mount Hor; and from Mount Hor 
 ye shall point out your border unto the entrance of Hamath ; 
 and the goiriffs forth of the border shall be to Zedad. And 
 the border shall go on to Ziphron, and the goings out of it 
 shall be at Hazar-enan: this shall be your north border.”* 
 “ Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread 
 shall be vours ; from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the 
 river, the River Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea 
 shall your coast be,”t &c. “ This shall be the border of 
 
 your land towards the north side, from the great sea, the way 
 of Hethlon, as men go to Zedad ; Hamath, Berothah, Sib- 
 raim, which is between the border of Damascus and the 
 border of Hamath; Hazar-hatticon, which is by the coast 
 of Hauran. And the border from the sea shall be Hazar- 
 enan, the border of Damascus, and the north northward, and 
 the border of Hamath. And this is the north side.”J “ From 
 the north end to the coast of the way of Hethlon, as one 
 goeth to Hamath, Hazar-enan, the border of Damascus 
 northward, to the coast of Hamath, a portion for Dan.”^ 
 
 * Num., xxxiv., 7-9. 
 t Ezek., xlvii., 15-17. 
 
 t Deut., xi., 24. 
 i) Ibid., xlviii., 1 
 
114 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 These different places to which the way lay, from the 
 sea, through the entrance into Hamath, are, in general, 
 slightly, if at all, noticed by geographers of the Holy Land, 
 or are, as by Calmet, &c., merely said to be towns “ on the 
 north border of Israeland hence, on the assumption that 
 the terms of the covenant were fully ratified of old, their 
 places have been sought for in the immediate vicinity of the 
 ancient borders, or even, as Hamath in the land of Naphtali, 
 within the old Israelitish possessions. 
 
 It is not, indeed, said, or necessarily implied, that all the 
 towns or places here mentioned lay on x\iq frontier of the 
 land, or were themselves bordering towns of Israel. The 
 manner in which some of them are spoken of seems to im¬ 
 ply the reverse. The entering in of Hamath manifestly, as 
 repeatedly declared, forms the northern extremity, or border 
 on the seacoast. But in the new allocation of the tribes it 
 is written, “ From the north end to the coast of the way of 
 Hethlon, as one goeth to Hamath^ Hazar-enan, the border 
 of Damascus northward, a portion for Dan.” The border 
 of Damascus northward is here named, not as the north 
 border of Israel, but as the limit of a tribe which had its 
 portion beyond it. And the mention of the way to Hamath, 
 and other places from the north end, seems plainly to de¬ 
 note their relative position, if not towards the east border, 
 to the south, or within the limits of the land. 
 
 Of these different names, scarcely any one has had a 
 “ local habitation” attached to it by commentators but Be- 
 rothah alone ; and, except of it, scarcely any mention is 
 made of them in Scripture. It may thus be inferred, that as 
 unnamed, if not unknown, they rather lay at no inconsider¬ 
 able distance beyond Dan, than either near it, or within the 
 old inheritance of any of the tribes. Berothah thus is in¬ 
 cidentally mentioned when the distant conquests of David 
 are recorded. When he smote Hadad-ezer, and recovered 
 his border at the River Euphrates, and established his do¬ 
 minion there, “ he took much brass from Berothai, a city of 
 Hadad-ezer.”* The proper border of Israel extended from 
 the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and from the entering 
 in of Hamath as men go to Berothah. Berothai and Bero¬ 
 thah, in these corresponding passages, pointing to the same 
 locality, seem evidently identical; and as having pertained 
 to David, it as manifestly lay on the borders which he went 
 
 * 2 Sam., viii., 3, 8. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 115 
 
 to recover, or within the inheritance of Israel. This prom¬ 
 ise was given to the Israelites by the Lord: Every place 
 whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall he yours. 
 From the River Euphrates to the uttermost sea shall your 
 coast he. David did establish his dominion by the Eu¬ 
 phrates, and he was followed by thousands of Israel, whose 
 feet did tread its banks, not as captives, but as conquerors ; 
 and Berothai was one of the cities which owned his do¬ 
 minion, and yielded up its spoil. The fixing of its site, 
 therefore, may tend, in no mean degree, to the more precise 
 determination of the actual borders of Israel. 
 
 On the principle of proximity to Palestine, and from the 
 similarity of the name, Beyrouth the ancient Berytus, has been 
 said to be Berothah ; and hence an argument has been drawn 
 for fixing the border there. The derivatior* which has been 
 given to the word from Beeroth, wells, might seem, if cor¬ 
 rect, to warrant the appropriation. But the authority of Bo- 
 charl, as alike high and here unprejudiced, may be freely 
 appealed to; and the incidental testimony which he addu¬ 
 ces from the famous Sanchoniathon, himself a native of Bey- 
 rout, might be accounted decisive, could the case in other 
 respects admit of a question. We read in Scripture that 
 the Israelites made Baal-berith their god. “ Baal-berith, 
 that is,” says Bochart, “ the idol of Beerith or Berytus,” &.c.; 
 and as Beerith, in the Hebrew form, is always feminine, he 
 thus quotes Sanchoniathon in order to prove that “ Beerith, 
 like Astarte and Astergetes, was the name of a goddess, 
 and not of a god.” Among them there was one called Elion, 
 that is, the highest, and a woman called Beruth (that is, 
 Berith), who dwelt near Byblus (namely, adds Bochart, Be¬ 
 rytus), which was between Byiilus and Sidon.* Such evi¬ 
 dence, of unusual precision and force in such matters, might 
 have set at rest the question of the origin of the name of 
 Berytus, or Beyrout, which is thus bereaved of its chief 
 claim to the title of Berothah. 
 
 The name of Beerith—or Berout of the Greeks—whom 
 the Israelites worshipped after the death of Joshua, mav 
 
 * Ita hie Triv Baa^Scp'iO dicamus res ipsa postulat, quia Hei)raice berith 
 
 semper est feemiuinum. Proinde dese non dei noinenfuit apud PhcEiiices, ut Astaite 
 et Atergates. Quid quod Sanchoniathon ita asserit: Kard rodrouf y/vera/rif’EAtoov 
 K(ihovticvoq vipiaroi Kai &n^£ta Xeyoixivt} Bripdvr; ol khI Kan^Kovv iiepl Bv6Xov, Us 
 aqualis fuit quidam TV'7J7 elion, id est, altissimus dictus, et feemina dicta Beruth (id 
 est, Berith), qui habitarunt circa Byblum, nempe Beryti, quae media est inter Bybluia 
 et Eidonem.—Bochart, Phaleg., 775. 
 
118 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 hence supply a reason why the Israelites ceased to drive 
 out their enemies before them, and why, therefore, the dis¬ 
 tance was so great between the reputed and real borders of 
 the promised land, so that Berytus, though past the one, was 
 far short of the other. 
 
 It is needless to enlarge on other and more direct proofs 
 that Beyrout is not and cannot be Berothah. 
 
 Were not its maritime position fatal to its claim as the 
 north borders of Israel, it would be left far to the south ere 
 a man came over against Hamath. But Berothah, along 
 with other towns, lies evidently inland, as the entering in of 
 Hamath led to ihem from the great sea, and is not, like Bey¬ 
 rout, on its beach. It was situated in the kingdom of Ha- 
 dad-ezer, which stretched along the Euphrates, and of which 
 Phoenicia did not form a portion,* and not, like Beyrout, on 
 the Phoenician coast, with the kingdoms of Hamath and 
 Damascus intervening. And instead of either reaching the 
 defined north border, or having its place on the opposite 
 side from the sea, near the great river, Beyrout is above a 
 hundred and fifty miles from the north end of the land of 
 Hamath, and still farther from the nearest point of the Eu¬ 
 phrates. 
 
 But on that river itself, near to the termination of the 
 mountains of Amanus on the east, even as thev stretch from 
 thence to the great sea on the west, immediately north of 
 the embouchure of the Orontes, there still exists an ancient 
 town, which has a just title to the derivation which has 
 been given to Berytus, without any transmutation, and which 
 lacks noihinof that can be needed to warrant its recognition 
 as the Berothah of Scripture. Beer, or the Euphrates, is 
 the Birat of the Arabs, and the Birtha of the Greeks. Beer, 
 in the singular, literally signifies a well, and “ in the plural, 
 in Hebrew, heeroth, or in Arabic, Inrath, wells.” It has for 
 this very reason! been conjectured, we think, not without 
 cause shown, erroneously, that such was the origin of the 
 name of Berytus. But in respect to Beer on the Euphrates, 
 no heathen goddess interposes to claim the name as her 
 own ; the word has its literal meaning, like Beer in Judea; 
 and conjecture may be dispensed with when proof may be 
 seen. A1 Birat is described by Abulfeda as a strong and 
 impregnable fortress on the banks of the Euphrates. In 
 
 * Nicolas of Damascus, quoted by Josepbus, Ant., vii., 5, 2. 
 
 t Mr. G. Robinson; Travels, vol. ii., p. 321. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 117 
 
 the note by bis learned editor Koehler, the identity of the 
 name and place is still more clearly marked. “ It cannot 
 be doubted,” he states, “ that this is the same as the Beer 
 of Pococke. It is truly the Birtha of Hierocles. It was 
 called by the same name by the Syrians, and was the town 
 of which Sergius was bishop.”* The Birtha, or Birath of 
 the Arabs, may thus clearly be identified with ihe Berothah 
 of the Hebrews. And its right to such a name is made 
 good by the fact stated by Abulfeda, that it has a valley 
 celebrated under the name of Wadi’z Zaituni, or valley of 
 olives, which rejoices in trees •a.udi founlains.^ 
 
 The goings out of the border shall be at Hazar-enan ; this 
 shall be your north border. The border from the sea shall 
 be Hazar-enan. The portion of Dan is assigned, From the 
 north end to ihe coast of the way of Heihlony as one goeth to 
 Ha zar-ena,n, &lc. 
 
 Hazar-enan is described as lying to the north northward, 
 or far north of Damascus ; and it formed the goings out of 
 the north border from the sea ; and as that border necessa¬ 
 rily extended to the River Euphrates, Hazar-enan, it may 
 be inferred, reached unto it. 
 
 The kingdom of Hadad-ezer, which David subjected to 
 his dominion when he went to recover his border on the 
 Euphrates, and within which Berothah lay, constituted the 
 northeastern part of Syria, beyond Damascus and Hamath. 
 From the power and opulence of its king, from whom David 
 took a thousand chariots, seven hundred horsemen, and 
 twenty thousand footmen, and the shields of gold^hat were 
 on his servants, it was evidently neither a poor nor diminu¬ 
 tive region. The Euphrates was its border, as well as that 
 of the promised land of Israel, and Nicolas, as already quo¬ 
 ted, relates that his kingdom extended over Syria. 
 
 Although the author has sought in vain for the name of 
 Hazar-enan in any accessible records concerning that or any 
 other region, it is not unworthy of notice that Comagene, 
 the extreme region of Syria on the northeast, where it as¬ 
 cended farthest on the Euphrates—on which river the go¬ 
 ings out or termination of the north border necessarily lay 
 —bore the name of Azar, as marked in the margin of Ptole¬ 
 my’s geography,J and expressly stated by Adrichomius.^ 
 
 * Abulfeda, Tab. Syr., p. 127. t Ibid. t PtoL, Geogr., lib. v., 1.5, p. 15a 
 
 ^ A Septeniptrione quidem Comagena (regio Syrise) h»c propius adjacet Ciliciae 
 
118 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 The name, as thus written, is peculiar to that region, and, 
 with the want of the aspirate alone, may be a mere abbre¬ 
 viation of that of Hazar-euRn. It was also called Eup/ira- 
 tensis, as Ptolemy and Adrichomius both relate ; and while 
 its position along the Euphrates is thus manifest, it as clear¬ 
 ly lay to the west of that river, being included in Syria, 
 and being distinguished from Mesopotamia and Armenia, 
 which lay beyond it. Samoisat on the Euphrates, and An¬ 
 tioch near the Taurus, the modern Aintab, were mentioned 
 among its cities, which, as Ptolemy, the prince of ancient 
 geographers, states, were the first in order on the north of 
 Syria, 
 
 According as it fell into the hands of different masters, 
 Syria, at various times, was divided into more or fewer 
 provinces. Of the five prefectures of Syria, as stated by 
 Abulfeda, the first, beginning from the Euphrates, was Kin- 
 nesrin, or Kinaserin, which included other provinces be¬ 
 sides Comagene. Kinnesrin, the Colchis of the Greeks 
 and the Romans, was more anciently called Soba, and was 
 identified with it both by Jewish and Arab writers, as stated 
 by the learned Golius, in his notes on Alfergan. And 
 hence, after the destruction of that city, when Aleppo be¬ 
 came in its place the metropolis of that province, as for a long 
 period of the pachalic, in the bonds and similar writings of 
 the Jews of that country, they gave to Aleppo the title of 
 Aram Soba, or Soba of Syria.* The kingdom of Zobah 
 may thus be identified with the prefecture of Kinnesrin, or 
 the pachalic of Aleppo. The mountains of Amanus on the 
 north, and the Euphrates on the west, were its natural and 
 actual boundaries, as they were also those of Syria. Nic¬ 
 olas of Damascus, as quoted by Josephus, relates that Ha- 
 dad-ezer was lord of all Syria (excluding Palestine) except 
 Phmnicia. And when David had smitten all the host of 
 Hadad-ezer, and had garrisoned Damascus, the Syrians be¬ 
 came servants to David,^ and his dominion was extended 
 over the dominions which he had subdued. 
 
 The site of Hazar-enan, as described in Scripture, is pre¬ 
 cisely accordant with that of the northeastern province of 
 Syria. It lay to the north northward, or far north of Da¬ 
 mascus, and it formed the outgoing, or termination on the 
 
 ot a vicino sibi fluvio Euphrati, nunc Euphratensis, e.t Eupbranis, a barbaris vero 
 Azar dicitur.—Adnch., Theat. Sancts Terras, p. 96. 
 
 * Gobi Arfargan, p. 275. t 1 Chron., xviii., G- 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 119 
 
 east, of the north borders of Israel, that extended to the Eu 
 phrates. Beroihah was a city within Israel’s dominion, 
 and the outgoings of the border, which it is not said to form, 
 might well lie beyond it. And where else could they 
 cease but with those of Syria, whose utmost region bore 
 the name of Azar, and formed a portion, if not the whole, 
 of the kingdom of Zobah, as of the province of Kinnesrin, 
 the modern pachalic of Aleppo, to which also Aintab, Sa- 
 moisat, and Beer pertain. 
 
 Long after the sceptre of Jerusalem had ceased to be 
 swayed over the subservient kingdom of Syria, and ten 
 tribes had revolted, and Jews and Benjamites alone bowed 
 before the throne of the house of David, and when the 
 daughter of Jerusalem cried out aloud, Micah prophesied, 
 “ Unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion ; the 
 kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem.”* War- 
 ranUibly, therefore, may we search for the border of that 
 kingdom where David went to recover hi*s. The Israelites 
 assuredly should occupy, as their own inheritance, all the 
 land possessed by the Syrians, and in which they served 
 David. And as on every other side the promised land 
 passed the bounds of Syria, there is still farther cause to 
 show why they cannot come short of them on the north 
 border, where alone, from the want of knowledge of the pre¬ 
 cise localities of some of the various places which seem to 
 mark it, proof may appear to be wanting. 
 
 In the scriptural description of the north border, the 
 names of various places occur, which hence alone have 
 been supposititiously placed along the ancient frontier on 
 a line with Dan, which certainly formed it. But the testi¬ 
 mony of Scripture concerning these places requires to be 
 definitely marked. 
 
 It is declared that the border from the sea shall be Hazar- 
 enan, or, as otherwise expressed, that the goings out of it— 
 or the extremity of the north border on the east, or the Eu¬ 
 phrates—shall be at Hazar-enan. And we have seen that 
 in that very region, on the opposite end of the same mount¬ 
 ain range, the same province bore the names of Euphraten- 
 sis and Azar, and lay within the kingdom of Zobah, which 
 David subdued when he went to recover his border on the 
 River Euphrates. 
 
 Other places are spoken of in connexion with the en- 
 
 * Mioah, iv., 8. 
 
120 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 trance into Hamath, or with the north end of the coast, rath¬ 
 er than as of themselves frontier towns. From the very 
 high mountain pointed out from the sea, ye shall point out 
 unto the entrance of Hamath ; and “ the goings forth of the 
 border shall be to Zedad, and the border shall go on to 
 Ziphron,”* &c. “ This shall be the border of the land to¬ 
 
 wards the north side, from the great sea, the way of Heth- 
 lon, as men go to Zedad; Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim, 
 which is between the border of Damascus and the border 
 of Hamath.”t “ From the north end to the coast of the 
 way of Hethlon, as one goelh to Flamatb, Hazar-enan, the 
 border of Damascus northward, to the coast of Hamath, for 
 these are his sides east and west, a portion for Dan.”J 
 
 Of Berothah, which has its place not only among these 
 names, but also among the cities which David took, we 
 have already spoken ; and it may here supply an illustra¬ 
 tion, how words that are seemingly incomprehensible may 
 be read and understood as most literally true. 
 
 Thus, on the supposition that Beyrout is Berothah, what 
 meaning can be attached to these terras,/rom the great sea 
 —and as men go to Berothah, when the fact is, that in dis¬ 
 embarking from that sea, men touch it at a step ? But tvhen 
 men, even from a distant isle of the Gentiles, purpose to 
 go to Beer, or Berothah, and point to Mount Casius as their 
 first landmark, and disembark at the entrance of the Oron- 
 tes, what do we read of their first work, and of their farther 
 progress, when, as in the case of the Euphrates Expedi¬ 
 tion, they pass from the Mediterranean to Beer on the Eu¬ 
 phrates ? 
 
 “ In the neighbourhood of Amelia dep6t the points of 
 most interest were the course of the Orontes, examined by 
 Lieutenant Cleveland, Messrs. Eden, Calderwood, and Fitz- 
 James, &c. These gentlemen, in conjunction with Messrs. 
 Hector and Bell, were in turns employed on different points, 
 repairing and laidening the road from the mouth of the Oron~ 
 tes to Antioch, &:c. Lieutenant Lynch was employed in 
 improving the line of route from Antioch by Jisr Hadid to 
 Bir”'^) (Beer). 
 
 Few such words form a clear and conclusive comment¬ 
 ary ; and, thus passed by British engineers, the road from 
 
 * E25ek., xlviii., 1. t Num., xxxiv., 8, 9. t Ezek., xlvii., 15, 16. 
 
 ^ Colonel Chesney on the Expedition to the Euphrates, Geogr. Journal, vol. vii., 
 p. 415. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 121 
 
 the entrance into Hamath, and from thence as men go to Be- 
 roihali, may no longer be a mystery among biblical critics. 
 
 But other cities are named besides Beroihah, though in 
 other directions, to which the same entrance led from the 
 sea. 
 
 From the great sea, the way of Hethlon, as men go to 'Ze- 
 dad, Hadad, Berothah, &c. From the north end to the 
 coast of the way of Hethlon, as one goetk to Hamath, Hazar- 
 enan, &c. 
 
 Front the same point different lines of communication, 
 “ roads,” or “ lines of route,” led to the north, and in other 
 directions, as vvell as to the east; to Hamath, &c., as well 
 as to Berothah. 
 
 It is a remarkable peculiarity of the entrance into Ha¬ 
 math, that there is no other on the north or on the west 
 by which to pass, without crossing mountains, from the 
 Mediterranean. For this reason it was chosen by Colonel 
 Chesney, and fixed on by Bonaparte, when he purposed to 
 go to the Euphrates. “ In l8ll,” says Colonel Chesney, 
 “Napoleon had prepared a.fleet at Toulon, which was to 
 have disembarked a large force in this bay ; and M. Vin¬ 
 cent Germain was waiting at Antioch for the expected 
 troops, which had, in the mean time, been marched to Rus¬ 
 sia instead of taking the route from Suweidiyah to India. 
 Marash was to have been the centre of his operations, prob¬ 
 ably on account of the fine forests near that town ; but as 
 the Beilan Mountains would have furnished plenty of fine 
 tiinUer close at hand, it is not likely that this great captain 
 would have gone to Marash, when 110 miles through Anti¬ 
 och and Aleppo would have placed him at Beles, 200 miles 
 lower dozen the river. There is reason to presume that Bo¬ 
 naparte meant to carry his troops down the river to Basrah. 
 But the Russian campaign put an end to this.”* 
 
 Whether men were to go from the Mediterranean to Beer 
 or to Beles, the route lay through the entrance into Hamath. 
 And that entrance had to be passed in like manner in going 
 from the north end of the land of Israel, and advancing 
 southward to Hamath, or to the border of Damascus. , In 
 the former direction there is a plain which spreads forth to¬ 
 wards ancient towns on the Euphrates ; and in the latter, 
 the valley of the Orontes, into which, though wholly shut 
 in by a hill-country from access to the sea, other valleys 
 
 * Geograph. Journal, vol. viii., p. 234. 
 
 L 
 
122 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 and plains open to the eastward. The termination of the 
 entrance into Hamath is thus a radiating point, from which 
 various lines of communication stretched out to distant and 
 widely-separated cities. Thus, when the Euphrates Ex¬ 
 pedition passed through the entrance into Hamath, a new 
 road was not made, even for the transit of very heavy mate¬ 
 rials, but the old road was widened and repaired ; and 
 again from Antioch to Bir the line of route was improved. 
 In like manner, in going from the same entrance, or from 
 the north end of the land, and, consequently, southward, an 
 ancient Itinerary* shows the way, and marks the distances 
 from Antioch to Hamath, between which cities there was 
 a Roman, and, doubtless, more ancient road. A view of 
 the valley of the Orontes, near to Apamea, given in Burck- 
 hardt’s map, shows a “ Roman road” passing through its 
 centre, and which is marked at the southern extremity of 
 the chart, the road to Hamah. 
 
 Sudud, a large village, situated to the northwest of Pal¬ 
 myra, and north of a mountain range that stretches eastward 
 in the direction of that ancient city, was visited by Mr. Eli 
 Smith in 1834, and identified by him with Zedad. Two 
 mountain ranges lie between it and the Mediterranean ; but, 
 if the writer errs not, it may be reached without passing one, 
 by the valley of the Orontes. It is marked by Mr. Smith 
 in the list of names of places between Deir Atiych and Ed- 
 Deir on the Euphrates.! 
 
 The site of Hethlon, or of any city of that name, is un¬ 
 known. The manner in which it is mentioned, in the only 
 two places in which it occurs in Scripture, in connexion 
 with Zedad and Hamath, is deserving of notice. “ From 
 the great sea, the way of Hethlon, as men go to Zedad, 
 Hamath,” &c. The definition of the border of Dan thus 
 - begins. “ From the north end to the coast by the way of 
 Hethlon, as one goeth to Hamah, &.c. The first letter of 
 the name Hethlon being r\,cheth, not n, he, Chethlon would 
 be the more correct pronunciation. Abulfeda speaks of a 
 mountain, or hill, A1 Chaith,j near Apamea, in the valley 
 of the Orontes. And in the view given by Burckhardt of 
 that* part of the valley, a village is marked, called Houyeth 
 (evidently the same name, and in the same locality, as that 
 
 * Itin. Antonini. 
 
 t Robinson and Smith’s Researches in Palestine, toI. iii., App., p. 174. 
 
 I Abulfedae, Tab. Syrise, p 123,223. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 123 
 
 mentioned by Abulfeda), and also a small lake, Ayn Houyetli, 
 beside which passed the Roman road from Antioch to Ha¬ 
 math. tb, /w, lun^ signifies to stay or abide, &c., as a name 
 derived from it, Me-lun, a place to lodge and stay in (2 
 Kings, xix., 23 ; Josh., iv., 8), and the name may have thus 
 suffered abbreviation. Chaith lay in the way from the en¬ 
 trance into Hamath, both to Zedad and Hamath ; though, 
 after passing it, the way by which men went, and may yet 
 go, to the former likely diverged to the eastward. 
 
 Sibraim and Hazar-hatticon are also unknown ; but the 
 former lay between the border of Damascus and the border 
 of Hamath^ and the other on the coast of Hauran. They 
 were cities to which men went from the north end of the 
 land, but, obviously, they did not form part of it. The 
 Hauran here named is supposed to have beeii the same as 
 Aurana of Ptolemy, a town on the Euphrates, as noted in 
 the margin in various editions of his Geography.* The 
 only name at all similar to Sibraim, which the author has 
 been able to discover, is that of a village, or ruined town, 
 in the mountains of Rieha, in Burckhardt’s list,t Zer Szab~ 
 ber^ the plural termination of which in Hebrew w'ould be 
 Szabberim. Were it the Sibraim, which is between the 
 border of Damascus and the border of Hamath, though the 
 entrance into the land would remain unaltered, the fact 
 would be in accordance with the opinion of the Jews, that 
 Antioch, not Epiphania, was the capital of Hamath. 
 
 The only other place named is Ziphron, of which it is 
 peculiarly said. And the border shall go on to Ziphron. It 
 would seem to be still unascertained. Jerome supposed it 
 to be Zephurium on the Cilician coast.J If such it were, 
 the passes of the Taurus would be in the hands of the Is¬ 
 raelites ; and the region of Adana, on the Cilician coast, by 
 contending for which Mohammed Ali lost Syria, would be a 
 portion of the coast of Israel, without their passing the 
 mountain chain of Taurus and Amanus. 
 
 The Taurus or Amanus were believed by the Jews to be 
 the Hor-ha-hor of Scripture, and were thus held by them to 
 be the northern frontier of the land promised to their fathers. 
 But, though Hor-ha-hor admits of a more precise definition, 
 the idea that the Amanus, which Jerome adopted, was the 
 north border of Israel, is, as we have seen, warranted by 
 many other facts. Biblical critics and geographers, such 
 * Ptolem., lib. v., c. 19. t Burck., Syria, p. 130. t Tom. e., p. 598. 
 
124 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 as Bochart, Poole, Cellarius^ Reland, &:c.,in looking alone 
 to the ancient borders, and utterly disowning any other, stig¬ 
 matized the idea as absurd and ‘’ridiculous,” as assuredly 
 it would have been had the borders of the land in which the 
 Israelites dwelt, arid that which the Lord promised to Abra¬ 
 ham, been one and the same. In not distinguishing thiriijs 
 that dilfer, they overlooked the covenant and the promi¬ 
 ses of God ; and in ridiculing what they accounted Jewish 
 pretensions as idle fables, though these were false in respect 
 to the past, they forgot that, in respect to the future, this ar¬ 
 rogance was theirs—while they denied that Israel had any 
 part in Amanus—a wiser than Solomon is here ! 
 
 Solomon’s dominion, though only the image~o{ that which 
 shall yet be restored to Israel, may serve as the measure of 
 its borders. The sovereign lord of Hamath and of Zobah, 
 and of cities on the Euphrates beyond them, was not ignorant 
 of Amana (or Amanus), nor does he keep silence concern¬ 
 ing it in his prophetic song. The figure is common to the 
 prophets, that, as the bridegroom rejoiceth over his bride, so 
 will the Lord rejoice over Israel. The very land shall be 
 called Beulah, or married. “ Go,” saith the prophet, “ and 
 proclaim these words towards the north, and say. Return, 
 thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord ; and I will not cause 
 mine anger to fall upon you ; for I am merciful, saith the Lord, 
 and I will not keep anger forever. Turn, O backsliding 
 children, saith the Lord, for I am married unto you. I will 
 bring you unto Zion. At that time they shall call Jerusalem 
 the throne of the Lord.”* Israel is “the married wife.”t 
 How aptly to these words of the prophets do those also of 
 Solomon apply : “ Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, 
 with me from Lebanon ; look from the top of Amana^X 
 
 The mountains of Amanus, as Strabo relates, extend from 
 the Mediterranean to the Euphrates. They formed the 
 northern boundary of Syria, the northernmost of whose lands 
 were those of Hamath and of the kingdom of Hadad-ezer on 
 the Euphrates, within which was Berothah. They were 
 thus from end to end the northern and natural boundary of 
 the dominion of David and Solomon, as also of Syria, which 
 they separated from Cilicia. Beir is distant, in a direct line, 
 a hundred and thirty-three miles from the mouth of the Oron- 
 tes, and touching the one on the entrance into Hamath on the 
 west, and bordering also on the east with the other, the range 
 
 ^ Jer., iii., 12, 14, 17. t Isa., Ivi., 1. t Song of Solomon, 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 125 
 
 of Amanus is Nature’s own barrier, which shuts in the land, 
 and forms a boundary defined as any can be. Amanus, says 
 Cotovicus, who himself looked from the top of it, as we shall 
 hereafter see, extends for a great space like an overhanging 
 wall, and separates Cijicia from Assyria— Amanus instar 
 muri imminentissirni, per longissima spalia sese extendit et 
 Ciliciam a Syria disterminai* Such a noble Alpine barri¬ 
 er from the east side to the west side is a worthy boundary 
 of “ the glorious land and it hems in at once all the land 
 of the Canaanites, all the land of the Giblites, all the land 
 of Hamath, and the ancient kingdom of Hadad-ezer, while 
 the entrance into Hamath is its scriptural witness on one 
 side, and Berothah on the other. Fronting Mount Casius, 
 near the base of which is Laodicea, in the land of the Ar- 
 vadites, it forms the north end of that land ; fronting also the 
 wider valley of the Orontes in the interior, it forms the north 
 end of the land of Hamath, and turns back its river, though 
 long “ rebellious” and reversed, and sends it at length direct 
 towards the sea ; while on the east it reaches towards the Eu¬ 
 phrates, and a high mountain range passes that river above 
 Bir, to which the Euphrates is navigable from the Persian 
 Gulf. From that river to the uttermost sea (or.the extremity, 
 may we not say, of the Mediterranean on the north, for there 
 the Euphrates most nearly approaches it), a mountain chain 
 extends, which, though with separate branches, forms a con¬ 
 tinuous barrier. Of the Amanus and Rhosus, or the Jawur 
 Dagh and Akma Dagh, Mr. Ainsworth states, that “ the two 
 chains are nominally separated by the pass of Beilan; but 
 they are, in reality, continuous with one another. The 
 Jawur Dagh attains a greater altitude than,the Akma Dagh, 
 the culminating points being to the north. The average 
 elevation of the Akma Dagh is a little more than 5000 feet 
 above the Mediterranean ; that of the Jawur Dagh is from 
 5000 to 6000 feet.”! The pass of Beilan, instead of being 
 a valley with a navigable stream like that of the Orontes on 
 the lip of the ocean, is 1584 feet above the Mediterranean.;j; 
 
 Here, then, at the termination of the plain of Phoenicia 
 and the land of Hamath, is a boundarv which is as marked 
 as that of the Nile; and the geographical features of the 
 land unite with the scriptural records in proof that it is also 
 a boundary along all the north end of the land, respecting 
 which, as was said of that river, “ there can be no dispute.” 
 
 * Cotaici Itin., p. 502. + Ainsworth’s Assyria, p. 313. t Ibid., note. 
 
 L 2 
 
126 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 But if there should be any doubt or dispute, both might 
 vanish at the word Amana, as written in the holy oracles, 
 like many others, ybr a time to come. In prophetic vision, if 
 not in fact—we believe, assuredly, the former—Zion’s king 
 could speak of looking, not alone, from the top of Amana. 
 In either case, the conclusion is irresistible, that the land 
 of Israel, intercepted by no other, was from thence in imme¬ 
 diate view. And as. Antioch was said to be the apex of 
 Syria, the word Amana may crown the argument that the 
 border of Israel is here. 
 
 Though that word occurs but once in Scripture, it is as¬ 
 sociated, as we have seen, with a figure common to the 
 prophets, and which recurs again and again in the Old Tes¬ 
 tament and in the New, the significancy of which admits 
 not of a doubt. And we are taught to look from what Israel 
 is, to what Israel shall be when the Lord shall be unto her a 
 husband again. 
 
 “ I will make her that halteth a remnant, and her that was 
 cast far oflT a strong nation, and the Lord shall reign over 
 them in Mount Zion from henceforth, even forever. And 
 thou, O tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of 
 Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion; the 
 kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem.”* Solo¬ 
 mon, in the full extent of his kingdom, and in all his glory, 
 could not utter words that shall not be realized in greater 
 glory then. And when the first dominion and the kingdom 
 shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem, and that city shall 
 be called the throne of the Lord, and when she shall put on 
 her beautiful garments^ and be adorned like a bride for her 
 husband, who that has passed from Dan to the north end of 
 Hamath, without touching a foot of ground that is not, ac¬ 
 cording to the covenant, Israelitish soil, and sees the mount¬ 
 ains of Amanus, with the sought-for entrance on the shores 
 of the Mediterranean on the one end, and Berothah on the 
 banks of the Euphrates on the other, can say that Israel’s 
 heritage does not reach to the natural frontier of Syria on 
 the north ? And although, in past times, biblical critics, 
 groping darkly around the ancient limits, controverted the 
 testimony of the heirs of the promise, and denied that the 
 borders of Israel reach to Amanus, what power on earth can 
 controvert the word, or frustrate the purpose of the Lord, 
 when, as if himself declaring the difference between the an- 
 
 * Micah, iv., 7, 8. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 127 
 
 cient and everlasting borders of his people, He shall say to 
 Israel, as her husband and her king^ “ Come with me from 
 Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon ; look with me 
 from the top of Amana, from the lop of Shenir and Hermon ?” 
 Who can say that, in obeying the command, she would pass 
 her proper borders, though Dan were left far behind ; or 
 look on any other land than her own between Amana and 
 Lebanon 1 And who, beholding the mountain range, as it 
 rises high like a bounding wall, may not conceive a literal 
 signiticancy in the description of the land as a garden en¬ 
 closed, as these everlasting hills await the time when the land 
 shall be, as other prophets tell, like the garden of the Lord ? 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 THE SOUTH BORDER. 
 
 Having passed far beyond Dan in search of the north¬ 
 ern frontier, it is not at Beersheba that we are to look 
 for that of the south. Yet here, again, the conflicting 
 opinion has to be met, that Israel has no other bound¬ 
 aries than those of old ; and the bounds that were set 
 on the south, as those of the inheritance of the Israelites 
 when they entered Canaan, have been hel.d as identified 
 with the utmost limits of the kingdom of Israel. 
 
 But not only did the sentence go forth against the 
 Israelites, when they proved faithless in the covenant, 
 and when they were slack to go in and possess the land, 
 that the Lord would no more drive out their enemies 
 before them, but their prescribed borders on their first 
 entrance were not the same as those which the promises 
 of God have set around their final and everlasting in¬ 
 heritance. Ammon and Moab, beyond Jordan and the 
 Dead Sea, lay to the south of the trans-Jordanic tribes. 
 Concerning the south boundary of the other tribes, it is 
 thus written: “The Lord spake unto Moses, saying. 
 Command the children of Israel, and say unto them, 
 when ye come unto the land of Canaan, then your south 
 quarter shall be from the wilderness of Zin along by the 
 coast of Edom, and your south border shall be the out¬ 
 most coast of the salt sea eastvvard, and your border 
 shall turn from the south to the ascent of Akrabbim, and 
 pass on to Zin : and the going forth thereof shall be from 
 the south to Kadesh-barnea,”* &c. 
 
 * Numb., xxxir., 1-4. 
 
128 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 The salt sea, the outermost coast of which anciently 
 formed a boundary on the souths is doubtless the Dead 
 Sea, “in the vale of Siddim.”* When the Israelites 
 passed the Jordan, “ the waters that came down towards 
 the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed,”! &c. The 
 whole land of Edom was thus excluded. And the bor¬ 
 der was then set at the distance of at least a degree and 
 a half of latitude, or, in a line directly north, more than 
 a hundred miles from the nearest point of the Red Sea, 
 by which the Lord had promised to set the bounds of 
 Israel. 
 
 Joshua recorded the words of the Lord touching the 
 southern border of the land when the Israelites under 
 the law entered Canaan. Ezekiel records that which 
 the Lord hath said, in declaring what are the borders 
 whereby Israel shall inherit the land, concerning which 
 the Lord lifted up his hand unto their fathers. And the 
 south side southward, from Tamar even unto the waters of 
 strife in Kadesh, the river to the great sea.\ 
 
 That Kadesh lay to the south of Edom may be clear 
 from those passages of Scripture in which it is spoken of 
 in connexion with the Red Sea. Kadesh was the inter¬ 
 mediate station between Ezion-gaber and Mount Hor, as 
 the multitudinous hosts of Israel advanced to the south 
 border of Edom. “ They removed from Ezion-gaber, and 
 pitched in the wilderness of Zin, which is Kadesh. And 
 they removed from Kadesh, and 'pitched in Mount Hor, in 
 the edge of the land of Edom.^'’§ And after their long 
 wanderings in the desert had ended, and the time had 
 come when the Edomites dared no lonofer refuse them 
 a passage through their coast, their departure from Ka¬ 
 desh is thus narrated: “So ye abode in Kadesh many 
 days. Then we turned, and took our journey into the 
 wilderness, by the way of the Red Sea, as the Lord spake 
 unto me ; and we compassed Mount Seir many days. 
 And the Lord spake unto me, saying. Ye have compass¬ 
 ed this mountain long enough : turn you northward. 
 And command thou the people, saying. Ye are to pass 
 through the coast of your brethren, the children of Esau, 
 which dwell in Seir, and they shall be afraid of you : 
 meddle not with them,”!] &c. From Kadesh they took 
 
 * Genesis, xiv., 3. t Joshua, iii., 16. 
 
 k Numb., xxxiii., 36, 37. 
 
 t Ezekiel, xlvii., 19. 
 
 II Deut., i., 46 ; ii., 1-5. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 129 
 
 their journey by the way of the Red Sea, and they pass¬ 
 ed northward (ar from the south) through the coast of 
 the Edomites. And the same journey, when over, is 
 thus described: “ When we passed by from our breth¬ 
 ren the children of Esau, which dwelt in Seir, through 
 the way of the plain from Elath and from Ezion-gaber^ 
 we turned and passed by the way of the wilderness of 
 Moab.”* 
 
 There is thus a perfect accordance between the ex¬ 
 clusion of Edom at a time when the children of Judah 
 were not to receive so much as a foot-breadth of that 
 land, and the appointment of the Dead Sea for their bor¬ 
 der j and also, on the other hand, between the prophetic 
 annunciation that Edom shall be a possession, and the 
 promise that the Lord will set their bounds, not, as of 
 old, by the Dead Sea, but by the Red Sea. There is, too, 
 a strictly analogous diversity between the inheritance of 
 Israel with Beersheba for its southern extremity, and the 
 kingdom of Solomon, with Ezion-gaber as his port, or the 
 journeying of the Israelites from Kadesh by the way of 
 the Red Sea and of the plain from Eloth and Ezion-ga¬ 
 ber. Edom was tributary to David and to Solomon, and 
 owned their supremacy. But, great as was the glory of 
 the kingdom of Israel then, it only prefigured a greater. 
 And the kingdom yet to be restored cannot be circum¬ 
 scribed by narrower bounds, or acknowledge as its own, 
 on the south any more than on the north, the ancient 
 border of Judah or of Dan. 
 
 Thus obviously the future and actual allocation of the 
 tribes, when, under the everlasting covenant, they shall 
 inherit the land, is altogether different from that which 
 subsisted at a time when they were expressly prohibit¬ 
 ed from occupying as their own the smallest portion of 
 the lands of Edom, or Moab, or Ammon, whose territo¬ 
 ries are as expressly and ultimately assigned to them, as 
 included in the promises. 
 
 Joshua, who held forth the law like an iron rod, spake 
 not concerning the borders bf the tribes of Israel as did 
 Ezekiel the prophet, who, as a herald, bore the banner 
 of a better covenant. In Joshua’s days, seven tribes, or 
 more than half of Israel, had not received their inherit¬ 
 ance. That of Judah was planted as its lot was cast, on 
 
 * Deut., ii,, 8, 
 
130 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 the southern extremity of the land which was then as¬ 
 signed them. No other tribe lay between it and the 
 coast of Edom, or the extremity of the Dead Sea, to the 
 south of which the restricted border of Israel did not 
 pass. But when the twelve tribes shall all inherit the 
 land, and each have its portion, the one as well as the 
 other, according to the covenant of God with their 
 fathers, the lot shall not be cast as on their first en¬ 
 trance into Canaan, but beyond its bounds, as well as in¬ 
 cluding all the land of the Canaanites; every tribe shall 
 possess its inheritance as that of each has been appoint¬ 
 ed, successively from north to south, and extending 
 from east to west, as the Lord himself has assigned 
 them. Judah is his lawgiver, and shall still inherit Je¬ 
 rusalem. But the kingdom shall be rent no more. And 
 the portion of Judah has its appointed place, not on the 
 outskirts of the other tribes, but rather in the centre, 
 with six tribes to the north, and five to the south. Of 
 its relative position in regard to the last of these, we read, 
 “The border of Judah, from the east side to the west 
 side, &c. As for the rest of the tribes, from the east side 
 unto the west side, Benjamin shall have a portion. And 
 by the border of Benjamin, from the east side unto the 
 west side, Simeon shall have a portion. And by the 
 border of Simeon, from the east side unto the west side, 
 Issachar a portion. And by the border,of Zebulon, from 
 the east side unto the west side. Gad a portion. And 
 by the border of Gad, at the south side southward, the 
 border shall be even from Tamar unto the waters of 
 strife in Kadesh, and to the river towards the great sea. 
 This is the land which ye shall divide by lot unto the 
 tribes of Israel for inheritance, and these are their por¬ 
 tions, saith the Lord God.”* 
 
 But the fixing of the south border of the land respects 
 not these regions alone, or the length of the land of 
 Edom, against which the sentence of desolation has gone 
 forth ; but, by the extension of the bounds of Israel from 
 the Dead Sea, as they were fixed in the covenant made 
 under the law, to the Red Sea, by which they shall be 
 set, an equal space to that of the difference in latitude 
 between these seas is thereby included from north to 
 
 * Ezekiel, ilviii., 23-29. 
 
a 
 
 THE PROMISED LAND. 131 
 
 south, throughout all the breadth of the land, where it 
 is measured by more than a thousand miles. 
 
 The separate portions of each and all of the tribes of 
 Israel, as appointed by the Lord, but never yet possess¬ 
 ed for a day, beginning from the north, extend succes¬ 
 sively, in obviously parallel departments, from the east side 
 to the west side, till the boundary line of the last passes . 
 through Kadesh, and touches the Red Sea. Were the 
 site of that town midway between that of Ezion-gaber 
 and Mount Hor, as its intermediate station might indi¬ 
 cate, still a line from east to west, passing through it, 
 would touch the northern point of the Gulf of Suez, on 
 the one side before reaching the Nile, and that of the 
 Persian Gulf upon the other, where the Euphrates enters 
 it. But, situated as Kadesh was, to the south of Edom,* 
 and journeying, as Israel did, from thence at the com¬ 
 mand of the Lord, by the way of the Red Sea, through 
 the w'ay of the plain from Elath, and from Ezion-gaber 
 on the Elanitic Gulf of that sea, the latter town, which 
 was a port of Solomon’s, may rightfully pertain to the 
 kingdom to be restored to Israel, and form the border 
 of the inheritance, or the bounds by which they were 
 set. And within such bounds, extending in all the lat¬ 
 itude which the Lord has given them, who can tell how 
 many thousands of the seed of Jacob shall find ample 
 space in the five portions south of that of Judah, when 
 the word of the Lord to Abraham shall be fulfilled, and 
 the River of Egypt to the great sea, and the River Eu¬ 
 phrates, be the borders of the inheritance of Israeli 
 
 As the south border cannot come short of the Red 
 Sea, by which the Lord hath set it, so neither, in pass¬ 
 ing from the east side to the west side, can it come 
 short of the west bank of the Euphrates. 
 
 There is a remarkable coincidence in the respective 
 latitudes of the northern extremities of the Red Sea, 
 and of the Persian Gulf, into which the Euphrates flows. 
 Suez is 30° 10', Ailah 29° 33', on the shore of the Elan¬ 
 itic Gulf. The Euphrates enters the Persian Gulf in 
 lat. 30°.* 
 
 The reader, directing his eye across th^ map, may 
 thus point oat for himself the bounding line alopg th© 
 south side of Israel’s inheritance. 
 
 * Map In Ainsworth’s Assyria. 
 
132 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 Though not essential to our subject, the remark may 
 here be pardonable, that while upon the north a mount¬ 
 ain range, rising like a lofty wall, divides the inherit¬ 
 ance of Israel from the land of the Gentiles, and sets a 
 most conspicuous barrier between them^ nothing but an 
 ideal line, though well defined, passes along the open 
 southern frontier. But, unlike the other, that line sep¬ 
 arates between none but the seed of Abraham j and the 
 Lord has not placed a mountainous barrier or any other 
 there. The covenant has respect to the time when 
 Hagar’s son shall be brought back to Abraham’s house 
 —the hojsehold of the faithful—though not to Israel’s 
 peculiar heritage. The children of the bondwoman, in 
 bondage no longer, shall rejoice together with the free. 
 •Kedar and Nebaioth were sons of Ishmael. And con¬ 
 cerning Israel, when returned unto their God, and to the 
 land which He hath given them, it is said, “ Jill the 
 flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams 
 of JJebaioth shall minister unto thee ; they shall come up 
 with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house 
 of my gloryd’’* When the promise was given that the 
 everlasting covenant would be established with Isaac, it 
 was not in vain that Abraham prayed unto God : “ O that 
 Ishmael may live before thee!” For the answer was 
 given, “As for Ishmael, I have heard thee. Behold, I 
 have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will 
 multiply him exceedingly ; twelve princes shall he beget, 
 and I will make him a great nation.”! The promise of 
 the Lord was not forgotten, though Hagar and her son 
 —types of their descendants through many ages—were 
 cast out to wander in the wilderness. The Arabs boast 
 of their descent from Ishmael, as do the Israelites ot 
 theirs from Jacob. Abraham was their common father j 
 and, as descended from him, they all are brethren. 
 Hitherto the fate of the Arab has been strikingly pro¬ 
 phetic, as was the character of Ishmael, as given by the 
 angel of the Lord before his birth—a wild man, whose 
 hand was against every man, and every man’s hand 
 against him. But the prophetic word did not stop with 
 the enunciation of the character of his wild and warlike 
 race. A blessing follows it, more in consonance with 
 the blessing of the Lord on Ishmael. The continued 
 
 * Isaiah, lx., 7. t Gen., xvii., 20 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 133 
 
 independence of his descendants, marked as it has been, 
 instead of being, as heretofore accounted, the sole com¬ 
 pletion of the promise, may prove but secondary, as pre¬ 
 paratory to its full accomplishment, when the very 
 words, in which the blessing to both the sons of Abra¬ 
 ham shall themselves tell, in the simplicity of truth, 
 their full significancy, and even as Israel’s seed shall 
 possess the land, Ishmael’s—their wildness and their 
 wanderings ceased, and the desert itself a desert no 
 more— shall dwell in th& 'presence of their brethren.^ And 
 thus it is, we may warrantably say, that on the south 
 border, where they meet, there is no barrier between 
 them—no physical obstacle in the way, when all moral 
 obstacles shall be removed, to hinder the flocks of Ne- 
 baioth and of Kedar from going freely—without either 
 a mountain range or a stream to be passed, as on the 
 other sides—as an offering unto the Lord, into the land 
 of Israel. That the brotherly covenant was broken be¬ 
 tween Jacob and Esau, the desolation of Edom shall tell 
 forever. But that it never was broken between Isaac and 
 Ishmael, the free ingress and egress to each other’s 
 lands may be as enduring a memorial. 
 
 When Abraham dwelt in Mesopotamia, God said unto 
 him. Get thee into a land that I will show thee. He heard, 
 believed, and went. When Isaac’s name, a year before 
 his birth, was told him by the Lord, and the promise 
 made with him., the pitying father pled for the son he 
 already had, and whom he loved: and Ishmael too was 
 blessed; the prayer was heard that he might live before 
 the Lord. Abraham, in sending Hagar away, took bread 
 and a bottle of water, and put it on her shoulder. Thus 
 she departed, and going southward, wandered in the wil¬ 
 derness of Beer-sheba.f Her seed, according to the 
 word of the angel, has multiplied exceedingly, that it 
 ctljfUnot be numbered for multitude.J Abraham himself 
 individually has a blessing in the covenant, distinct from 
 the promise of the inheritance to his seed ; and spirit¬ 
 ual blessings, not limited to any race, but branching 
 forth in rich fruitfulness to all, are also involved in it, 
 as they formed its final end. Of these it is not our 
 present province to speak. But, standing on the south¬ 
 ern portion of Israel, between the families of Abraham’s 
 
 •* Gen., xvi., 12. t Gen., xxi., 14. t Ibid., xvi., 10. 
 
 M , 
 
134 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 two sons, as they shall yet be seen by a world blessed 
 in the seed of Isaac, who so blind as not to perceive 
 how rich is the promise to faith and the answer to 
 prayer 1 The River of Egypt to the sea, its shores to 
 the entrance into Hamath, the Amanian Mountains ri¬ 
 sing like a wall, and extending from the Mediterranean 
 to the Euphrates, that great river, the Persian Gulf, into 
 which it flows, the Arabian Sea, and the Red Sea, en¬ 
 close the united territory of the two sons of Abraham, 
 which forms no mean part of the habitable globe. No 
 region can be more definitely marked than that which 
 thus pertains, by covenanted title, to the seed of Isaac, 
 and that which pertains in actual possession, as Arabia 
 does, to the seed of Ishmael. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 THE EAST BORDER. 
 
 The only question farther to be resolved respecting 
 the borders of the promised land, is that concerning the 
 respective boundaries on the, east of these two families 
 of Abraham. 
 
 Were the northern and southern borders of Israel tru¬ 
 ly ascertained, those on the east, like those on the west, 
 formed not of land, but of water, either a great river or 
 the sea, would be easily determined. 
 
 The heritage of Jacob, as oft repeated in the original 
 covenant, extends from the River of Egypt to the Eu¬ 
 phrates, and also, on the north, from the Euphrates to 
 the uttermost sea. That great river from Berothah, or 
 the extremity of the land in which it stands, necessari¬ 
 ly forms the boundary on the east. This is not only ex¬ 
 pressed in the promise, but has been manifested in fact. 
 David, whose throne shall be established forever, re¬ 
 covered the borders, of his kingdom on the Euphrates; 
 and Solomon, who also reigned over all Israel, maintain¬ 
 ed a supremacy and sovereignty over all the kings on 
 the east of the Euphrates. If the heart of that mon¬ 
 arch, who once was wise, because in faith he asked for 
 wisdom, had been steadfast in the covenant, and had 
 not departed from the Lord, his kingdom would not 
 have been rent in the hands of his son, as was the gar¬ 
 ment of Jeroboam by the prophet of the Lord. But 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 135 
 
 from his history, and that of his father David, it plainly 
 appears, that whenever a gleam of hope broke in upon 
 the dark and evil days that summed up the history of 
 an else rebellious race, in which the covenant was shroud¬ 
 ed from view, no other borders were recognised by these 
 two kings, who alone reigned in Jerusalem over all Is¬ 
 rael, than the Lord had assigned, whether from the shores 
 of the Red Sea^to the entrance into Hamath, or from 
 the River of Egypt to the Euphrates; and they rested 
 not from maintaining their dominion till all the kings on 
 that side of the Euphrates owned their sovereignty. 
 
 The east border necessarily commences where it first 
 comes in contact with the north on that river, and it 
 can terminate only at the eastern extremity of the south 
 border. How far it ascended the Euphrates we have 
 already seen ; and its point of contact with that of the 
 south alone remains to be shown. 
 
 Let a line be drawn from the Nile in a straight line, 
 east and west, setting the bounds by the Red Sea, and it 
 will be apparent that, whether the Gulf of Suez, or the 
 Elanitic Gulf, be only touched, the southeastern border 
 of the land of promise is not reached till the Euphrates 
 pours its streams into the Persian Gulf. 
 
 After describing the north border, Ezekiel adds, ^nd 
 the east side ye shall measure from Hauran, and from Da¬ 
 mascus, and from Gilead, and from the land of Israel by 
 Jordan, from the border to the east sea. Jlnd this is 
 the east side. 
 
 It is too late, we trust, to tell the reader, as comment¬ 
 ators of great name have said, that the east sea is the 
 Dead Sea, because it lies to the east of Jerusalem. 
 Were there any truth in this, the previous pages would 
 be the record of a dream, and “ the breadth of Imman¬ 
 uel’s land,” instead of a thousand, would be restricted, 
 at the utmost, to sixty miles; and skeptics might still 
 scoff at the diminutive inheritance. But in the record 
 concerning the borders of the land, as anciently pos¬ 
 sessed, the Dead Sea is unquestionably mentioned un¬ 
 der its proper scriptural name of the Salt Sea ^ and 
 though on its northern extremity it did lie to the east 
 of Jerusalem, it is nowhere in Scripture denominated 
 the east sea. Even at the time when it formed, on the 
 extreme south, the southern border of Judah, instead 
 
136 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 of beino- the east side, two tribes and a half of Israel had 
 
 O 7 
 
 their wide portions wholly to the eastward of it, and of 
 the Jordan which flowed into it, not from the west, 
 but from the north. And whatever was its relative po¬ 
 sition to Jerusalem, it never had a natne from hence; 
 and if it had, yet from the Hauran, and the land of Is¬ 
 rael by Jordan, which, even in ancient days, reached of 
 right to the Euphrates, the Dead Sea Jay to the west, 
 and not to the east. From the Hauran^ and Damascus^ 
 and from Gilead^ and the land of Israel by {beyond) Jordan, 
 all the land, according to the covenant, and to the do¬ 
 minion of David and Solomon, pertained to Israel on 
 that side the Euphrates. And, according to the pro¬ 
 phetic definition given by Ezekiel of the east side in all 
 its length, from the border (the north border, which he 
 had immediately before specified) to the east sea, the east 
 side and the south side thus terminated in the same sea, 
 the Persian Gulf, which is worthy of the name, for where 
 the Euphrates enters it, it is far wider than the Red Sea. 
 
 As the west side is marked/row the border till a man 
 come over against Hamath, or, as otherwise defined, to 
 the entrance into Hamath, and the extreme breadth of 
 the northern boundary from the River Euphrates to the 
 uttermost sea, and the whole breadth of the land where 
 widest in its southern region, from the River of Egypt 
 to the great River Euphrates, so, as alone wanting to 
 determine the length of all the borders, that on the east 
 is defined, in all its extent,/row the border to the east sea. 
 
 The east sea is here represented as the terminating 
 point, on the extreme south, of the east border, precise¬ 
 ly as the entrance into Hamath, or the mountains which 
 bound it, forms the termination of the western border 
 on the north. A corresponding definition is thus given 
 of both sides of the land : in the one case, from the 
 border on the south to the entrance into Hamath ; and, 
 on the other,/row. the border on the north to the east sea. 
 
 When “the tenants” of the rock in Kedar’s wilder¬ 
 ness afar shall sing the praises of Israel’s God, and go, 
 like men from all nations of the earth, with their offer¬ 
 ings to Jerusalem, to worship there ; and when fountains 
 shall spring up in the desert, and the thirsty land be 
 as a pool of water, the sons of Ishmael—though, like 
 that at which Hagar sat, they can now count every well 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 137 
 
 of the desert their own—will not then, as did Lot’s ser¬ 
 vants with Abraham’s, dispute with the restored and re¬ 
 deemed sons of Jacob about a well or a border. 
 
 The borders which the Lord hath set are such that 
 they cannot fail to be finally recognised by all the sons 
 of Adam, as well as by the descendants of Abraham. 
 If a question should arise respecting their limits, it 
 could only be with Assyria or Egypt—how far they 
 might extend on the Euphrates, or penetrate into the 
 land of the Pharaohs, if the term were questionable, on 
 the River of Egypt. But higher destinies than those 
 even of such renowned kingdoms, in all their ancient 
 power and pre-eminence among nations, are resolved 
 in the allotment of the territorial patrimony of the seed 
 of Jacob. And the Lord their God, who gave the land 
 unto them for an everlasting possession, has secured it 
 against the interference of another Sennacherib, or Neb¬ 
 uchadnezzar, or Pharaoh. The time is yet to come of 
 which it is said, “In that day shall there be a highway 
 out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come 
 into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria; and the 
 Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day 
 shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, 
 even a blessing in the midst of the land (or the earth); 
 whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be 
 Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, 
 and Israel mine inheritance.”* 
 
 In the beginning of their history the Israelites were 
 slaves in Egypt, as their fathers had been strangers in 
 the land of promise. In after ages, the kingdom of Is¬ 
 rael, as distinct from that of Judah, was destroyed by 
 the hosts of the King of Assyria, and ever since the ten 
 tribes have been the outcasts of Israel. In later times, 
 prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion 
 of the Jews, the Assyrians and Egyptians alternately 
 tyrannized over them generation after generation : and 
 in their past history the prediction has been reversed 
 rather than realized. But it looked forward to the time 
 when Israel shall be the inheritance of the Lord, and 
 their land shall be the undisputed inheritance of Israel; 
 when, no longer trampled on, or held in servile bond- 
 
 * Isaiah, xix., 23-25, 
 
 M 2 
 
133 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 age and slavish fear, those whom they served shall 
 serve them, and they shall be a blessing to those who 
 were a curse to them. That subject has not to be touch¬ 
 ed on here, but merely as connected with the allotted 
 territory to be held without controversy as their own. 
 But it may be seen that, while widely distant bounds 
 mark out the inheritance which the Lord has given 
 them, their authority shall pass these borders, and that 
 the inhabitants of the once mighty kingdoms which en¬ 
 vironed their land and made it alternately their prey, 
 shall honour them as a people greatly blessed of the 
 Lord; and Egypt and Assyria, united to it as to a cen¬ 
 tral body, shall spread out on each side, in blessedness 
 and beauty, as the wings of that land which was given 
 by the covenant of the Lord to the seed of Abraham, of 
 Isaac, and of Jacob. 
 
 The reader, if hitherto accustomed to the dark and 
 narrow antiquarian tract, may be startled at the sight of 
 so extensive regions opening at once to his view, as 
 pertaining to Israel, though stretching so far beyond 
 the bounds of the land ever possessed under the law. 
 But it is to be remembered that it is the lot of thq Lord’s 
 inheritance, to which He has appointed such borders; 
 and that it is as such that Egypt and Assyria, as its trib¬ 
 utary states, shall be blessed,, and Arabia be “ the happy” 
 (Arabia Felix), when its own people shall dwell within 
 it, in presence of all their brethren, the children of Is¬ 
 rael. 
 
 In respect to their own land, according to the cov¬ 
 enant with their fathers, it is not to be forgotten that 
 great, in the extent as well as duration of the blessings 
 that can be realized under them, is the difference be¬ 
 tween the law and the Gospel—between what even a 
 chosen people ever could secure on the ground of their 
 merit, or their own performance of the conditions of a 
 legal covenant, and that which God freely gives to his 
 believing, and, therefore, obedient children, who receive 
 the blessings as all of promise, according to the word of 
 the Lord at the beginning, “ To thee have I given this 
 land and to thy seed forever, from the River of Egypt 
 to the great River Euphrates.” 
 
 Wherever there is any faith in God’s promises or in 
 his word, it cannot but be conceded that it is not a lit- 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 139 
 
 th land which the Lord of the whole earth hath called 
 large^ and that there is a difference, and a great one too, 
 between the borders which bounded Palestine of old, 
 and the whole land which was the bequest of the Lord 
 to the seed of Jacob. For when the borders of the 
 former were set, where they ever after stood, the Lord 
 himself said. There yet remaineth very much land to be pos¬ 
 sessed. 
 
 How very much difference there really was between 
 Palestine, as occupied by the Israelites, and all the prom¬ 
 ised LAND, as worthy of the name, and how the land is 
 truly large, as the Lord hath spoken the word, the dif¬ 
 ference of latitude and longitude between the borders 
 on the various sides may enable the reader at once to 
 determine. 
 
 The latitude of Beersheba is 31° 15'; of Dan, 33° 15'' j 
 the difference, tvjp degrees. The south point of the 
 Dead Sea, the ancient border of Israel, is 31° 7', in the 
 same longitude with Dan, the intervening distance, in 
 a line from north to south, being 128 geographical, or 
 about 150 English miles. 
 
 The latitude of the north point of the Elanitic Gulf 
 of the Red Sea, on which Ezion-gaber, a port of Solo¬ 
 mon’s, stood, is 29° 31'. The mouth of the Orontes, or 
 the entrance into Hamath from the Mediterranean, is 
 36°, and that of Beer, or Berothah, on the Euphrates, 
 37°. But the range of Amanus lies beyond it, and the 
 medium longitude of the north boundary is more than 
 36° 3r N., or, in an ideal line from south to north, the 
 length of the land is upward of seven degrees, or five 
 hundred miles, instead of a hundred and fifty, as of old. 
 
 But “the breadth of Immanuel’s land,” instead of be¬ 
 ing contracted to a span, is still miore w'orthy of the 
 name, and it stops not short of a navigable frontier ev¬ 
 erywhere and on every side. The longitude of the Nile 
 is 30° 2'; that of the Euphrates, as it flows through the 
 Persian Gulf, 48° 26', or a difference of nearly eighteen 
 degrees and a half, or more than eleven hundred miles. 
 So large is the space comprehended, along the south¬ 
 ern frontier, from the River of Egypt to the River Eu¬ 
 phrates, from the east side to the west side, or in the 
 same latitude. 
 
 On the northern extremity of the land, the range of 
 
140 
 
 THE BOUNDARIES OF 
 
 Amanus, from the River Euphrates to the uttermost sea, 
 or extremity of the Mediterranean, scarcely exceeds 
 one hundred miles. In round numbers, the average 
 breadth of the promised land would thus be six hundred 
 miles, which, multiplied by its length, five hundred, 
 gives an area of 300,000 square miles, or more than that 
 of any kingdom or empire of Europe, Russia alone ex¬ 
 cepted. The jesting Frenchman is brought down from 
 his boasting when it is seen that a region half the ex¬ 
 tent of France would need to be added to its size, be¬ 
 fore the land of “ the great nation” would equal, in su¬ 
 perficial extent, that land which the Lord gave to the 
 seed of Israel. It exceeds, in the aggregate amount of 
 square miles, the territories of ten kingdoms of Europe, 
 Prussia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Bavaria, Saxony, 
 Hanover, Wirtemberg, Denmark, Sardinia, and Greece, 
 and its relative proportion to Great Jgitain and Ireland 
 is 300 to 118, or more than two and a half to one. 
 Were the average breadth to be reckoned at 500, in¬ 
 stead of the medium, 600 miles, which, from the ir>e- 
 quality of the sides, may be nearer the truth, the super¬ 
 ficial extent of the promised land alone would still ex¬ 
 ceed that of the largest kingdom of Europe. 
 
 But Israel, extensive as are its bounds, is not des¬ 
 tined to stand alone. Its mightiest adversaries of old 
 shall be its servants. No prince but of Israel shall rule 
 in Egypt or Assyria. The former country will add to 
 Israel’s dominion, or subservient domain, an area of 
 15U,000 square miles. The latter, including Mesopota¬ 
 mia, and “ stretching beyond the Tigris as far as the 
 mountains of Media,”* and from the mountains of Ar¬ 
 menia to the Persian Gulf, leaves no region that shall 
 not own immediate fealty to the kingdom of Israel, 
 from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the 
 borders of Persia and the vicinity of the Caspian. Such 
 is the power of the word of the living God ; such the 
 liberality of his gifts to the people whom He chose, 
 were they his own by another covenant than that which’ 
 they have broken ; and such, in topographical relations 
 alone, is the provision that is made, as thus revealed, 
 for the completion of the promise, that Israel shall final¬ 
 ly be a blessing in the midst of the earth. Thus saith 
 
 * Gibbon’s Hist., vol. iv., p. 166. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 141 
 
 the Lord, “ It shall be to me a name of joy, a praise 
 and an honour before all the nations of the earth, which 
 'shall hear all the good that I do unto them ; and they 
 shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all 
 the prosperity that I procure unto it.”* 
 
 There is a striking analogy between the word and the 
 
 o cr v 
 
 works of God, ever traceable by those who search the 
 Scriptures and regard the operation of his hands. But 
 the one and tlie other seem here strikingly to cohere. 
 The Lord hath given the earth to the sons of men, as 
 He hath set the bounds of their habitation. But He 
 formed Israel for his glory, and chose them as his pe¬ 
 culiar people 5 and peculiar, too, is the land which He 
 assigned them, even as respects its borders. The Med¬ 
 iterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, form on 
 the west, the south, and the east, borders of a land 
 which, but for th«se inland, seas, would be wholly en¬ 
 circled by Asia, Africa, and Europe, and shut out from 
 all direct communication with the Pacific and Atlantic, 
 and the lesser oceans of the globe. Tiie River of Egypt 
 to the Mediterranean, and that sea from the mouth of 
 the Nile to the estuary of the Orontes, and the Euphra-' 
 tes from the foot of Arnanus to the Persian Gulf, leave 
 not the smallest portion of the west side, or of the east 
 side, that is not actually or virtually a navigable coast 
 to the extent on both sides of two thousand miles j 
 while on the north, the intermediate barrier of Arnanus, 
 at the breadth of less than one hundred, renders the 
 land a garden enclosed. The hand of the Lord, who 
 hath laid the foundations of the earth, and made the sea, 
 and the dry land, is in all this; and here, though not 
 here alone. He has magnified his word above all his 
 name. The first glance at the borders of Israel, when 
 they are looked at in the latitude assigned them by a 
 divine and irrepealable decree, may show that they 
 were set in subserviency to the final end, as declared, 
 from the beginning, to be accomplished by the Lord, 
 for which Israel was set apart from the nations, and 
 not numbered among them, so that, as assuredly as 
 their covenanted land shall be their everlasting possession^ 
 all the families of the earth shall be blessed in the seed 
 of Jacob. Seoarated as Israel is from other lands, such 
 
 * Jer., xxxiii., 9. 
 
142 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF 
 
 are its borders, that it has unequalled freedom of access 
 to all. 
 
 But, without here entering on such a theme, it be-' 
 hooves us first to consider how the land \s goodly as well 
 as laro^e ; and how, notwithstandinor all the curses that 
 have come upon it, it is still fitted for becoming, as de¬ 
 scribed in Scripture, a pleasant, delightsome, goodly, 
 and glorious land, “the glory of all lands,” the heritage 
 of a people greatly blessed of the Lord. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY AND ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF THE 
 
 LAND OF ISRAEL. 
 
 Ere ever the Israelites had entered on the possession 
 of any portion of their inheritance, Moses declared unto 
 them, The Lord thy God hringeth thee into a good land; 
 (gjz land of brooks of water^ of fountains^ and depths that 
 spring out of valleys and hills / a land of wheats and bar¬ 
 ley^ and vines^ and fig-trees^ and pomegranates ; a land of 
 oil-olive and honey ; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread 
 without scarceness^ thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a 
 land whose stones are iron^ and out of whose hills thou may- 
 est dig brass * The land whither ye go to possess it, is a 
 land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of 
 heaven ; a land which the Lord thy God careth for: the 
 eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the begin¬ 
 ning of the year even unto the end of the year.\ And it is 
 otherwise described as a land of corn and wine, a land of 
 bread and vineyards, a land of oil-olive and of honey.% I 
 chose Israel ; / lifted up mine hand unto them, to bring 
 them forth of the land of Egypt into a land that I had espi¬ 
 ed for them, flowing with milk ofid honey, which is the glo¬ 
 ry of all lands.§ 
 
 When the Israelites first entered into their promised 
 possession, before passing the Jordan, numerous were 
 the cities and vast the spoil that fell at once into their 
 
 * Deut., viii., 7-9. 
 t 2 Kings, xviii., 32. 
 
 t Ibid., xi., 11, 12. 
 () Ezek., XX., 6. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 14^5 
 
 hands, in the day when the Lord began to put the dread 
 of them upon the nations that are under the whole heav¬ 
 en, who should hear the report of them, and tremble 
 and be in anguish because of them. When the iniquity 
 of the Amorites was full, and all in Israel above twenty 
 years old, who had come out of Egypt, and had tres¬ 
 passed in the wilderness, had been buried there, it was 
 given them to know that the Lord, though he would not 
 clear the guilty, remembered his covenant with their 
 fathers ; the promise that had seemed to linger was 
 about to be fulfilled; the word came from the Lord that 
 they had compassed Mount Seir long enough, and they 
 were commanded to turn northward and to begin to pos¬ 
 sess^ that they might inherit the land. They entered it 
 not like a colony taking possession of an uncultivated, 
 unpeopled, and defenceless region. But the Lord gave 
 them a land for which they did not labour, and cities • 
 which they built not they dwelt in; of the vineyards 
 and oliveyards which they planted not, did they eat.* 
 Sihon, king of the Amorites, and all his people, came 
 out against them to fight at Jahaz. But the Lord de¬ 
 livered him unto them ; and they took all his cities, and 
 dispeopled his kingdom of its former inhabitants, and 
 took the cattle and all the spoil of the cities for a prey 
 Og, king of Bashan, came out against them, he and all 
 his people, to battle at Edrei^ and shared the fate of the 
 other Amoritish king. They took all his cities at that 
 time: there was not a city which they took not from 
 them, threescore cities, all the region of Argob, the 
 kingdom of Og in Bashan. . All these cities were fen¬ 
 ced with high walls, gates, and bars; besides unwalled 
 towns a great many.f All the cities were taken at that 
 time from the River of Arnon unto Mount Hermon^ all 
 the cities of the plain, and all Gilead^ and all Bashan^ 
 unto Salach, and Edrei^ cities of the kingdom of Og in 
 Bashan. All the cattle, and all the spoil of the cities, 
 they took for a prey to themselves.J 
 
 The Midianites, too, fought against Israel; and the 
 Lord was avenged of Midian. All the cities wherein 
 they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, were burned 
 with fire. But the first settlement of Israel was not 
 
 * Deut., vi., 11. Josh., xxiv., 13. t Numb., xxi., 23-26. 
 
 t Numb., xxi., 33-35 Dout., iii., 3-10. 
 
t 
 
 ha ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OP 
 
 there ; and the sum of the prey was taken, and it was 
 apportioned in Israel—six hundred and seventy-five 
 thousand sheep, seventy-two thousand beeves, and six¬ 
 ty-one thousand asses.* It was not by their sword or 
 by their bow that the Israelites triumphed. One thou¬ 
 sand men only were chosen out of each tribe to fight 
 against the Midianites and to destroy them utterly. On 
 enumerating, after their return, the sum of the men of 
 war who had gone forth to battle, there lacked not one 
 man ; whereupon the captains of thousands and captains 
 of hundreds brought unto Moses an oblation .to the 
 Lord of wrought gold, taken of the spoil, sixteen thou¬ 
 sand seven hundred and fifty shekels.f 
 
 The numerous walled cities and towns of Bashan and 
 Gilead manifestly imply the high fertility of these re¬ 
 gions; and the claim that was speedily urged for the 
 possession of the conquered territory, shows that Is¬ 
 rael had already entered, as their own, on a rich pastoral 
 inheritance. The tribes of Reuben and Gad had a very 
 great multitude of cattle, and they besought Moses and 
 all the princes of the congregation to give them the land 
 of Jazer and the land of Gilead, for the place was a 
 place for cattle.J From Aroer, which is by the River 
 Arnon, and the border unto the brook Jabbock, which 
 is the border of the children of Ammon, the plain also, 
 and Jordan and the coast thereof, and half Mount Gil¬ 
 ead and the cities thereof, were given to the Reuben- 
 ites and Gadites; and all the region of Argob, and all 
 Bashan, with its threescore cities, were given to the 
 half tribe of Manasseh.§ The territories then possess¬ 
 ed by the Moabites and Ammonites, together with the 
 land of Edom, were at that time excluded from the 
 patrimony of Israel. But, exclusive of these, the two 
 tribes and a half had, as implied in Scripture, and as 
 will afterward be more fully shown, a “ goodly heritage.” 
 Like the tribes who possessed them, and like their kin¬ 
 dred “ outcasts of Israel,” Gilead and Bashan have long 
 been forgotten but in name. The time then was, when, 
 beyond the Jordan, the faithful testimony was wrung 
 from Balaam, “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and 
 thy tabernacles, O Israel;” but, scattered as the He- 
 
 * Numb., xxxi., 33-34. 
 t Ibid., xxxii., 1-4. 
 
 t Ibid., xxxi., 10, 32-34, 48-52. 
 
 ^ Ibid., xxxii., 33. Josh., xiii., 9-31. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 145 
 
 brews are throughout the world, that testimony is pro¬ 
 phetic still, which, on their return, Gilead and Bashan 
 have yet to confirm. 
 
 After the people had multiplied in the land, the sons 
 of Reuben spread their flocks from the entering in of 
 the wilderness from the River Euphrates, because their 
 cattle were multiplied in the land of Gilead. Confed¬ 
 erate with the Gadites and the Manassites, they made 
 war with the Hagarites, and sent forth against them 
 alone forty-four thousand valiant men, skilful in war. 
 Not trusting alone to their skill or their strength, they 
 cried to God in the battle, and prevailed. Fifty thou¬ 
 sand camels, two hundred and fifty thousand sheep, and 
 two thousand asses became the prey, while a hundred 
 thousand men were the prisoners of the victors j and, 
 enlarging their border still farther within the promised 
 bounds, they dwelt in their stead.* Neither a sterile 
 land, nor stinted limits, though only partially possessed 
 of old, were from the beginning thus assigned to the 
 Israelitish occupants of the regions beyond Jordan, 
 which have long been lost sight of, and for many ages 
 have been all but blotted out from the memory of man. 
 The time seems to be coming when these lands shall 
 rise anew into an estimation befitting no mean portion 
 of the inheritance of Israel, and becoming Christians to 
 cherish, who believe the scriptural record concerning 
 them of'times long past, and look for their returning, 
 because promised “ glory” in that day—it may be not 
 distant now—when the flock of the Lord’s heritage, 
 which he has long fed with the rod, shall feed in Bashan 
 and in Gilead as in the days of old. And the Lord will 
 show unto him marvellous things, according to his com¬ 
 ing out of the land of Egypt, and the nations shall see, 
 and be confounded at all their might.f 
 
 From a mountain east of Bethel Abraham looked east¬ 
 ward across the valley of Jordan, on the hills of Gilead 
 and Bashan, while on every side around him lay the 
 land of Canaan, within the boundaries of which he then 
 stood. He and his sons, and his sons’ sons, had wan¬ 
 dered as strangers, very few in number, without a dwell¬ 
 ing-place in the land. Jacob, well-stricken in years, 
 had, together with his eleven sons, left that land in a 
 
 * 1 Chron., v., 9, 18-22. t Micah, vii,, 14, 15. 
 
 N 
 
146 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF 
 
 time of famine to go to Egypt, to dwell and to die there, 
 but first to see again his other son Joseph, who at an 
 early age had been taken as a slave-boy to the land of 
 the Pharaohs, and sold to the keeper of a prison. But 
 when the four hundred years, spoken of by the Lord 
 Almighty to Abraham, had expired, and Israel had be¬ 
 come a great people according to His word, and was 
 brought back again to the land often promised to their 
 race, the descendants of houseless but believing patri¬ 
 archs experienced the truth of the covenant of their 
 God. In such large measure was their inheritance dealt 
 out to them, that when Joseph, who had been a slave 
 and a prisoner in Egypt, had become in his descend¬ 
 ants two tribes in Israel, and when he had received, ac¬ 
 cording to his father^s word, one portion above his 
 brethren, one half of one of these had for possession the 
 land of Bashan, with its fruitful hills, its rich plains, and 
 its sixty cities; and two tribes besides received also 
 their proportionate inheritance at their own entreaty, 
 on the east of the Jordan 5 and when that river was 
 passed, the land on the west of that river, with all its 
 cities, was divided by lot among other tribes of Israel. 
 
 The western side of the Jordan is a land better known. 
 Trodden as it peculiarly was by patriarchs, and proph¬ 
 ets, and apostles, and, infinitely more than all, by Jesus, 
 its claims on every believer’s remembrance are such as 
 cannot be questioned; and the testimony of historic 
 and prophetic truth concerning it has an unchallenge¬ 
 able claim to an unrivalled interest, or such as no other 
 land can urge, on the part of either Christian or Jew. 
 
 The sum of all the congregation was taken in the plains 
 of Moab, by command of the Lord, before they struck 
 their tents to take possession of their inheritance. The 
 land was to be divided among them according to the 
 number of the names. To many the more inheritance 
 was to be given, and to few the less. Exclusive of the 
 tribe of Levi, there were numbered of the children of 
 Israel above six hundred thousand,* from twenty years 
 old and upward, all that were able to go to war in Is¬ 
 rael. As none of them exceeded sixty years of age, 
 they could not have formed more at the utmost than a 
 third part of the total number, which could not have 
 
 * Num., xxvi., 51. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 147 
 
 fallen short of two millions, and is generally estimated 
 at three. The tribes of Reuben and of Gad, and the 
 half tribe of Manasseh, were not numerically a fifth part 
 of Israel, according to the census that was taken of them 
 all; and more than a million and a half must have pass¬ 
 ed the Jordan, to take their inheritance at once in the 
 land of Canaan. , 
 
 Neither a sterile region, however large, nor a waste, 
 unreclaimed country, however fertile naturally, could, on 
 its immediate occupancy, have given ample space and 
 abundant sustenance to so vast a number of simulta¬ 
 neous settlers. Unlike what it yet shall be on the des¬ 
 tined return of the Hebrew race, the land, on their first 
 entrance, was not too narrow by reason of the multitude 
 of men; but, numerous as were the thousands of Israel, 
 the land was then too large for the people. The nations 
 who possessed it were to be put out by little and little^ 
 and the Israelites were commanded not to consume them 
 at once, lest the beasts of the field should increase upon 
 them.f Four hundred years elapsed from their first set¬ 
 tlement east of the Jordan till the Hagarites were 
 smitten and dispossessed, and the flocks of the Reuben- 
 ites reached to the wilderness of the Euphrates. When 
 the Jordan was first passed, and the tribes of Israel en¬ 
 camped on the plains of Jericho, they did eat of the old 
 corn of the land j and the manna ceased, as needed no 
 more, whenever they had entered into Canaan. That 
 land was their own by the covenant of their God—the 
 God of heaven and of earth. Their enemies, who were 
 many and mighty, speedily fell before them. The Ca- 
 naanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, and Hivites com¬ 
 bined against them. Their kings went out, and all their 
 hosts with them \ much people, even as the sand that is 
 upon the seashore in multitude, with horses and chariots 
 very many, and pitched together at the waters of Merom 
 to fight against Israel.J Their warfa're was in vain, 
 for these were days in which the Lord of Hosts was 
 known to be the God of Jacob. The allied kings of Ca¬ 
 naan, who reigned from Mount Seir to the valley of 
 Lebanon, were slain and utterly destroyed, and all the 
 spoil of their cities and cattle were the prey of the peo¬ 
 ple into whose hands the Lord had given them. In the 
 
 * Deut., vii., 22. t Ibid. t Josh., xi., 5-7. 
 
148 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF 
 
 hills, and the valleys, and the plains, allotted to the in- 
 heritance of Judah, a hundred and four cities, with their 
 villages, are enumerated;* but, though the most numer¬ 
 ous of the tribes, the part of the children of Judah was 
 too much for them, and the tribe of Simeon had their 
 inheritance within that of Judah. A greater number of 
 other cities or towns, mentioned ^ name, were al¬ 
 lotted among the other tribes. Forty-eight cities, with 
 their suburbs, were separated from among the rest for 
 the Levites,! the least of all the tribes ; and these seem 
 not to have been a tenth part of the cities which were 
 divided among the commonwealth of Israel. 
 
 The land was subdued, and there stood not a man of 
 their enemies before them. But, vast as was the multi¬ 
 tude, so ample were their possessions, that when Joshua 
 was old and stricken in years, there remained much land 
 to be possessed, so that there were seven tribes which 
 had not then received their inheritance. Having assem¬ 
 bled the whole congregation of Israel at Shiloh, he 
 charged them with being slack to go in to possess the 
 land which the Lord God of their fathers had given 
 them ; and according to the commandment of the Lord, 
 he divided that which remained, from which their ene¬ 
 mies had not been driven out, as if it had already been 
 their own in possession. But he warned them not to 
 come unto these nations, or to cleave unto the remnant 
 of them, nor to make mention of the name of their gods, 
 else they might know for a certainty that the Lord 
 would not any more drive out these nations before them. 
 
 The Israelites, in the second generation after Joshua, 
 transgressed the covenant which was their tenure of the 
 land, and therefore the word came from the Lord that 
 He would not any more drive out from among them the 
 nations which Joshua left when he died. In estimating 
 the population, in ancient times, of the promised land, 
 they to whom alone it would have been given if they had 
 been faithful to their God are not alone to be reckoned. 
 The Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and other na¬ 
 tions, were left to prove Israel by them ; and the Israel¬ 
 ites dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amo- 
 rites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites. Be¬ 
 sides these, the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites 
 
 * Josh., XV., 20-63. t Ibid., xii 41 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 149 
 
 were neither few nor feeble. Their enemies that re¬ 
 mained within their own covenanted borders were so 
 numerous and strong, that, sometimes even singly, and 
 often partially combined, they brought Israel very low, 
 in the land promised to their fathers; and the first wars 
 in Canaan were unlike to many which, when faithless to 
 their God, they subsequently waged, and the Philistines, 
 Edomites, Ammonites, and Canaanites successively op¬ 
 pressed the children of Israel. 
 
 “From Dan to Beersheba” was a marked and even 
 proverbial expression, which denoted “all Israel,” from 
 one extremity to the other of the land which they held, 
 though not exclusively, in actual possession. But many 
 regions, now rich in ruins, and once covered with cities, 
 lay within the bounds of Israel’s promised inheritance, 
 which were left in the possession of other nations than 
 the seed of Jacob, who, together with the aliens who 
 dwelt in the midst of them, were, it may be presumed, 
 never less numerous than the Israelites. 
 
 Though the word had gone forth from the Lord that 
 he would no more drive out from before them any 
 of these nations, because they had transgressed His 
 covenant which He had commanded their fathers, and 
 though they were often oppressed by their enemies, and 
 the Lord “ vexed them with all adversity” when they 
 rebelled against Him, yet the children of Israel multi¬ 
 plied in the land, and became, more than before, a great 
 nation. When David numbered the people, including 
 the soldiery, or those who were called into the actual 
 service of the king in their due course, month by month 
 throughout the year, “ all they of Israel were eleven 
 hundred thousand that drew sword; and of Judah, 
 four hundred and seventy thousand,”* exclusive of Levi 
 and Benjamin. The whole congregation of Israel must 
 rather have exceeded than come short of six millions of 
 souls. At a later period of their history, after the long, 
 peaceful reign of Solomon, their progressive population 
 is sadly marked by the hostile armies of Judah and Is¬ 
 rael, headed by their kings Abijah and Jeroboam, and 
 numbering respectively 400,000 and 800,000 chosen 
 men.f The fertility of a country may be told by the 
 abundant population it sustains, if these be, as the Israel- 
 
 * 1 Chron., xxi., 5. t 2 Chron., xiii., 3. 
 
 N 2 
 
150 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF 
 
 ites were, an agricultural rather than a commercial peo¬ 
 ple. When such armies were mustered, conclusive ev¬ 
 idence is given of the vast population they represent, 
 and, consequently, of the fertility of the land from which 
 its subsistence was derived, though every man capable 
 of bearingf arms had been ranked in their number, with- 
 out the designation of their being “chosen men.” But 
 when such armies of Israelites were set in battle array 
 to defile with each other’s blood that land which the 
 Lord had given them for an inheritance, no argument 
 can be drawn from thence that such would have been 
 the full extent of Israel’s greatness, if they had kept the 
 covenant of the Lord their God, and had not thus de¬ 
 filed, as finally for many ages they forfeited the goodly 
 heritage which the Lord had given them. 
 
 But without entering more than is needful here on 
 their history as a nation, while yet they had a land that 
 they could call their own, a single glance at the last sad 
 scene may suffice to show, from the teeming population 
 which inherited the last remnant of that land, before they 
 were finally an expatriated race, without a country or a 
 home, that Palestine sustained a vast population. Prior 
 to the destruction of Jerusalem, the Idumeans had en¬ 
 croached far within the lot of Judah’s inheritance, and 
 Eleutheropolis, then their capital, was situated on the 
 plain of Judea, within fifty miles of Jerusalem. Sama¬ 
 ria was peopled by an alien race, but Galilee was throng¬ 
 ed with Jews, together with Perea, which, reaching to 
 Ammon on the opposite side of the Jordan, formed, in 
 addition to the remaining portion of their own proper 
 country of Judea, the whole territory then possessed by 
 the Jews. Though restricted to this comparatively 
 small portion of Israel’s inheritance, Judea, as then peo¬ 
 pled by the Jews, must, in the time of Titus, have con¬ 
 tained, as Volney admits, four millions of inhabitants. 
 After having been subject to the Roman sway, the Jews 
 cast off their authority, and resisted for more than three 
 years the mighty masters of the world, to whom the 
 siege of Jerusalem was one of the hardest enterprises 
 they had ever undertaken. 
 
 The brief description given by Josephus of Judea in 
 the commencement of the war is full of interest, cor¬ 
 roborated as it is by other testimony. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 151 
 
 The two Galilees (Upper and Lower) of so great 
 extent, and encompassed with so man}^ nations of for¬ 
 eigners, have been always able to make a strong resist¬ 
 ance on all occasions of war. For the Galileans are 
 inured to war from their infancy, and have been always 
 very numerous j nor has the country been ever destitute 
 of men of courage, or wanted a numerous population j 
 for their soil is universally rich and fruitful, and full of 
 plantations of trees of all sorts, insomuch that by its 
 fruitfulness it invites the most slothful to take pains in 
 its cultivation. Accordingly, it is all cultivated by its 
 inhabitants, and no part of it lies waste. Moreover, the 
 cities lie here very thick, and the very many villages 
 there are here are everywhere so full of people, from 
 the richness of their soil, that the very least of them 
 contained above 15,000 inhabitants. It is all capable of 
 cultivation, and is everywhere fruitful. 
 
 “Perea, though partly desert, and esteemed less fer¬ 
 tile than Galilee, yet has a moist soil, and produces all 
 kinds of fruits, and its plains are planted with all sorts 
 of trees, while yet the olive-tree, the vine, and the palm 
 are chiefly cultivated there. It is also sufficiently wa¬ 
 tered with torrents, which issue out of the mountains, 
 and with springs, that never fail to flow, even when the 
 torrents fail them, as they do in the heat of summer.” 
 
 Samaria is described by Josephus as of the same na¬ 
 ture with Judea, “ for both countries are made up of 
 hills and valleys, and are moist enough for agriculture, 
 and are very fruitful. They have abundance of trees, 
 and are full of autumnal fruit, both that which grows 
 wild, and that which is the effect of cultivation. They 
 are not naturally watered by many rivers, but derive 
 their chief moisture from rain water, of which they have 
 no want; and for the rivers which they have, all their 
 waters are exceedingly sweet; and, what is the greatest 
 sign of excellence and abundance, they each of them 
 are very full of people.”* 
 
 Such was the remnant of the goodly heritage of Ja¬ 
 cob immediately before it was wrested from the last 
 tribe that possessed it, and such was the land of the 
 Jews ere they ceased to be a united nation, with a coun¬ 
 try that they could call their own. They had ceased 
 
 * Joseph.., Hist., b. iii., c. 3. 
 
152 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF 
 
 to be blessed, as their fathers had been. Israel ere 
 then had been shorn of its g^lory, and had gone into 
 captivity. Judah had become tributary, and the seep 
 tre had departed from it. Jerusalem, once the metrop¬ 
 olis of Syria, with a recognised supremacy from the 
 River of Egypt to the Euphrates, had shrunk into the 
 denuded capital of a rebellious province, which, in the 
 attempt to regain its liberty, brought on itself swift and 
 complete destruction. Yet, on a retrospect of the past, 
 in order to know that Israel’s was a goodly heritage, it 
 is only needful to look to what Judea continued to be, 
 while it was full of iniquity, as the Jewish historian re¬ 
 lates, and ripe for judgment, as the event bore witness, 
 till those to whom it was given by the covenant of their 
 God were rooted out of it, according to his word, with 
 anger and wrath, and great indignation. Its state then 
 could not rightly be taken as any illustration of the ful¬ 
 ness of the promise, or the richness of the inheritance 
 pertaining to a people faithful to the covenant of their 
 God, nor can it be reckoned as the full measure of the 
 bounty and the blessing which awaits Israel in the lat¬ 
 ter days, when God shall establish with them an ever¬ 
 lasting covenant of peace. But from what Judea was 
 even then, a testimonial may be taken of what Israel 
 yet may be. 
 
 That the plain of Judah, as well as that of Galilee, 
 was then covered with an abundant population, is ob¬ 
 vious from the express statement of Strabo, as illustra¬ 
 ted by the fact that, from the village of Jamnia and 
 from the inhabitants around it, forty thousand armed 
 men could be sent forth into the field.'* 
 
 Hecateus, who flourished about three hundred years 
 before Josephus (when the Jews, though a tributary 
 people, had greatly recovered from the Babylonish cap¬ 
 tivity), described the country of Judea as containing 
 3,000,000 of Egyptian acres (about 2,250,000 English 
 acres), generally of a most excellent and most fruitful 
 soil; as containing many strong places and villages, the 
 chief city, Jerusalem, being inhabited by one hundred 
 and twenty thousand men. According to Tacitus, who, 
 like Josephus, wrote a history of the Jewish war, great 
 
 * Kai £vavSfir]ij£v ovtos h toVos wj’ £K Trjs Tr'Xrjaiov Kcoixt]; la/xyhas, Kai rwv KaTOLKiSi^ 
 T(p AcuKXtp TfTTufias ixvpidduf h-K^'C^taQai, —Strabo, tom. ii., 1079. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 153 
 
 part of Judea was overspread with villages, besides 
 towns, the chief of which was a strongly-fortified city. 
 By the lowest estimation given by him, the number of 
 Jews that perished in the siege and destruction of Jeru¬ 
 salem was 600,000, which, according to Josephus, form¬ 
 ed the number of dead bodies that were carried out at 
 a single gate. Of no siege, in all history, is there so 
 circumstantial a detail, even as it was one of unequalled 
 misery and slaughter. As the vast population of Israel 
 in former ages could best be told from the hundreds of 
 thousands in the armies mustered against each other, 
 when Ephraim fought with Judah, so, when the latter 
 alone was left, and the time had come when it too was 
 to be rooted out, the thousands of Judah were counted 
 by the myriads of the slain. In Jerusalem, and other 
 cities and towns, as specially enumerated by Josephus, 
 above thirteen hundred thousand perished. The multi¬ 
 tude of sacrifices could not save them. The number 
 of these, at the last passover, was 256,500, indicating 
 an assemblage within and around Jerusalem of two 
 millions and a half, which could not have exceeded a 
 moiety of the gross Jewish population before it was 
 thinned by the sword, and pestilence, and famine. 
 
 Again and again the Lord rooted them out of their land 
 in angery and in wrath^ and in great indignation^ and final¬ 
 ly scattered them among all nations under heaven. In the 
 curses of the covenant it was written that the Lord 
 would bring a nation against them from far^ from the end 
 of the earth ; that they would be besieged in all their gates 
 throughout all their land, and that their cities would be 
 laid waste.* And after the destruction of the city and 
 the sanctuary by the Romans, and the expulsion of the 
 Jews from Judea, they soon rallied again around the 
 cities of their fathers, and strove to throw off the Ro¬ 
 man yoke. All Judea, as a heathen historian relates, 
 was in a state of commotion; and, aided as the Jews 
 were by others, to assert their liberty, the whole em¬ 
 pire was convulsed. The Emperor Adrian sent all his 
 best commanders against the Jews, the chief of whom 
 was Julius Severus, who commanded in Britain, and 
 went from the end of the then known world to Pales¬ 
 tine. Awed by their numbers and despair, he dared 
 
 * Deut., xxviii., 49, 51, 52. 
 
154 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OP 
 
 |iot to meet them in the open field, but attacked them 
 separately with a great body of soldiers and tribunes, 
 cut off their provisions, and adopting the slow mode of 
 successive sieges, or shutting them up in detached bodies 
 within their towns and villages, or besieging them in all 
 their gates, the Roman armies so oppressed and broke 
 them down when shut up, that very few escaped j and five 
 hundred of their strongly-fortified citadels, and nine hun¬ 
 dred and eighty-five of their most celebrated and noble 
 villages, were overthrown to their foundations. In sal¬ 
 lies and battles five hundred and eighty thousand were 
 slain; by famine, disease, and by fire, an “ infinite mul¬ 
 titude” perished, so that almost all Judea was emptied 
 of its inhabitants, and left like a desert.* Such, too, 
 was the slaughter of the Romans, so fiercely did the 
 Jews contend for their fatherland ere they could be 
 rooted out of it, that Adrian, in addressing the Senate, 
 omitted in his despatch the usual exordium: “If you 
 and your children are in health, it is well; I and the 
 army are well.” But the Romans unconsciously exe¬ 
 cuted their commission, and completed the work of de¬ 
 struction. 
 
 In the very completion of the predicted judgments, 
 while the curses of a covenant which they had broken 
 pursued them from the land promised to their fathers, 
 or cut them off within it, it may be seen how goodly 
 was the heritage they lost, and how many were the 
 fortresses and noble villages of Judea, after the chief 
 cities had fallen, and Jerusalem had been laid even with 
 the ground. It passed into the hands of other posses¬ 
 sors: and the land of Israel, thus brought low, when it 
 ceased to be tenanted by any of the tribes or of the 
 race of Israel, had yet to bear, in after ages, the heavy 
 curses of a broken covenant, till, on the completion of 
 them, the time should come when Israel should be in 
 blindness and the land in bondage no more. 
 
 * Iladrianus optimos quosque duces adversum eos mittit, quorum primus fuit 
 Julius Severus, qui ex Britannia, cui praeerat, contra Judceos missus est. Hie nul¬ 
 la ex parte ausus est aperte cum hostibus congredi, multitudine, ipsorum, atque 
 desperatione cognita ; sed eos separatim magno militum ac tribunorum numero ador- 
 tus, commeatu prohibuit, atque interclusos serius quidem, sed minore cum periculo, 
 ita oppressit fugitque, ut pauci adinodum evaserint, et quinquaginta eorum arces 
 munitissimae vicique celeberrimi atque nobilissimi nongenti octoginta quinque fundi- 
 tus eversi sint. Caesa sunt in execursionibus preeliisque hominum quingenta octo¬ 
 ginta millia , eorum autem qui fame, morbo, et igni inlerierunt, infinita fu-it multi- 
 tudo ita ut omnes pcene Judsea deserta relicta fuerit — Dion Cass., Hist. Rom, lib. 
 Ixix., p. 798. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 155 
 
 So abundant was the population, and so fertile the 
 land of Judea, till the time had come when the iniquity 
 of the Jews was fullj when the threatened judgments 
 could no longer tarry, and the people to whom it had 
 been given were cast forth out of the land, and scatter¬ 
 ed as homeless wanderers throughout a persecuting 
 world. But, though the Jews have lost their pleasant 
 land, still the land of their desire; and though God has 
 seemed to forsake his inheritance, yet far more exten¬ 
 sive regions than they ever possessed, or any of the 
 other tribes of Israel ever fully inherited, have as strong 
 claims as Judea itself for ranking as portions of the 
 goodly heritage of Jacob, as they manifestly lie within 
 its divinely-appointed borders. 
 
 In Ptolemy’s geography, forty-three cities or towns* 
 are enumerated in Palestine or Judea, including Gal¬ 
 ilee, Samaria, and Philistia, while more than a hundred 
 and ninety! besides these have their localities within 
 
 * Cffisarea Stratonis, Apollonia, Joppe, Jaranetoruia portus, Azotus, Gazseorum 
 portus, Ascalon, Anthedoii. 
 
 Galilsa, Camphuris (Sapphura), Capernaum, Julias, Tiberias. 
 
 Samaria, Neapolis, Thena. 
 
 Judaea (on the west of the Jordan), Rhaphia, Gaza, Jamnia, Lydda, Antipatris, 
 Drusias, Sebaste, Baetogabra, Esbus, Emmaus, Guphna, Archelais, Phasaeiis, Jer- 
 icus, Hierosolyma (Jerusalem, then called (Elia Capitolina), Thamna, Engada, 
 Beddoro, Thamaro. 
 
 JuDAiA (on the east of the Jordan), Cosmos, Libias, Callirrhoe, Gazaros, Epicasros. 
 
 IduMjEa (on the west of the Jordan), Mezarmae (Berzamma, Bersabee), Caparorsa, 
 Gemmaruris, Elusa, Maps. 
 
 t Seleucia Pieria, Orontis flu. ostia (Tiphon), Fontes fluvii (Ophites), Posidium, 
 Heraclea-, Laodicia, Gabala (Gebal), Paltos (Platos), Balanae. 
 
 Phcenicia, Simyra, Orthosia, Tripolis, Dieu prosopou, vtl Dei Facies, Botrys, 
 Byblus, Berytus, Sinon, T)tus, Ecdippa, Ptolemais, Sycarainos, Dora, Area, Palsea- 
 biblus, vel vetus biblus, Gabala, Caesarea, Panias. 
 
 CoMAGENE (Azar), Areca, Antiochia penes Taurum, Singa, Germanicia, Cata- 
 mana, Doliche (Dolica), Deba, Chaonia, Chobmadara, Samosata. 
 
 Cyrristica, Ariseria, Regias, Ruba, Heracleum, Niara, Hierapolis, Cyrrus, 
 Bercea, Thena, Paphara, Vrema, Arudis, Zeuguma, Europus, Cecilia, Bethammaria, 
 Gerrhe, Arimara, Eragiza. 
 
 Seleucidis, (iephyra, Gindarus, Imma. 
 
 Cassiolidis, Antiochia, Daphne, Bactaialla, Audea (Lydia), Seleucus penes Be- 
 ium, Larissa, Epiphania, Raphaneie, Antaradus, Marathus, Mariamne, Mamuga. 
 
 Chai.ybonitidis, Thema, Acoraca (Acoraba), Derrhima, Chalybon, Spelunca 
 (Spelucca), Barbarissus, Athis. 
 
 Chalcidices, Chalcis, Asaphidama, Tolmidessa, Maronias, Coara. 
 
 Apamene, Nazama (Nazaba), Thelininissus, Apamia, Emissa (Hernesa). 
 
 Laodicene, Cabiosa Laodicia, Paradisus, Jabruda. 
 
 CuRVA Syria, Ccele-Syria, or Decapolis, Heliopolis, Abila cognomine Lysa- 
 nii, Gaana (Gasana), Ina, Damascus, Samulis, Abida, Hippus, Capitolias, Idara, 
 Adra, Scythopolis, Gerasa, Pella, Dium, Gadora, Philadelphia, Canatha. 
 
 Palmyrenes, Rhesapha, Cholle, Oriza, Putea, Adana, Palmyra, Adacha, Dana- 
 ba, Goaria, Auera, Casama, Odmana, Aleia, Alalis, Sura, Alamata. 
 
 Batanasa, Gerrha, Elere, Nelaxa, Adi^ma. 
 
 Arabia PetRjEA, Eboda, Maliattha, Calguia, Lysa, Guba, Gypsaria, Gerasa, 
 Petra, Characoma (Characomba), Auara, Zanaatha, Adrou, Zoara, Thoana, Necla, 
 Cletharro, Moca, Sebunta (Esebon), Ziza, Maguza, Medaua, Audia, Rhabmathmoma, 
 Anitha, Surratha, Bostra (Bosrah), Mesada, Adra, Corace 
 
ANCIENT POPULOUSN&39 OF 
 
 1 56 
 
 the geographical limits of the promised land. Of these, 
 seventeen cities were situated in the land of Phoenicia, 
 aloncr the coast, between the mouth of the river which 
 flows between Tyre and Sidon, opposite to Dan, to the 
 mouth of the Orontes. On the banks of that river stood 
 twelve noble cities or towns, among which, Seleucia, 
 Antioch, Apamea, Epiphania, Emesa, and Heliopolis 
 (Baalbec) were numbered, the last of which, though in 
 modern times greatly renowned among ruins, had an¬ 
 ciently but a subordinate place among the cities of 
 Syria. Other cities were situated between the Oron¬ 
 tes and the Mediterranean ; while the Syrian provinces 
 north of Damascus, as then distinguished, Seleucia, Cyr- 
 ristica, Cassiotis, Calchis, Chalybon, Apamea, and Lao- 
 dicea ad Libanum, numbered collectively upward of 
 fifty towns or cities. Besides the ten cities, whose 
 number gave that region its name, other eight are add¬ 
 ed by Ptolemy to the cities of the Decapolis. Syria, 
 as Volney justly remarks, contained a hundred flourish¬ 
 ing cities, and abounded with towns, and villages, and 
 hamlets. 
 
 Syria, according to heathen testimony, was thus over¬ 
 spread with cities at the commencement of the Chris¬ 
 tian era. It was the garden, and, together with Egypt, 
 the granary of Rome—the imperial city which reigned 
 over the greatest empire that ever existed in the world. 
 The fierce and protracted warfare of the Jews with the 
 Romans, and their desperate and all but despairing at¬ 
 tempt to repossess their inheritance, brought renewed 
 and redoubled desolation on Judea, and levelled its 
 cities with the ground. .But in after ages it greatly 
 recovered from the destructive overthrow. Christian¬ 
 ity flourished for a season in the country which gave it 
 birth. Though Jerusalem had fallen, the city where 
 men were first called Christians had for a long time a 
 high place among the chief cities of the world, and un- 
 
 AR\BiADESERTA,Thapsacus, Bithra (Bithra), Gadirtha, Auzara, Audattha, Edda- 
 ta (Dadara), Balataea (Balagsea), Pharga, Colorina (Calarina), Belgnsea (Belygn-dea), 
 Ammaea, Adiicara (Idicara), Jocara (Jucara), Barathema (Barathena), Saue, Coche 
 (Choce), Gauara, Aurana (Auran), Beganna (Rheganna), Alata, Erupa, Themma, 
 Luma, Thauba, Seuia, Dapha, Sora, Odogana, Tednim, Zagmais, Arrhade, Abtera 
 (Obaera), Artemita, Nachaba (Banacha), Dumaetba, Allata, Abere, Calatbusa, Salma. 
 
 The celebrated Itinerary of Antoninus ^gustus, a most precious relic of antiqui¬ 
 ty, worthy of a Roman emperor to bequeath to the world, marks the relative distance 
 of the chief of these cities. And the portion of it that refers to them is inserted in 
 the Appendix. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 157 
 
 questionably ranked next to Rome and Alexandria as 
 the third, if not the second city of the empire. Though 
 the people of the land had perished from off it, and 
 were scattered abroad^ and imperial decrees followed 
 hard on each other, prohibiting the Jews from entering 
 the land of their fathers, or daring even to draw near to 
 look upon the place where Jerusalem had stood, a once 
 alienated people, who embraced the everlasting cove¬ 
 nant and received the Spirit of adoption, arose within 
 it, and for a season prospered there, as if Israel’s in¬ 
 heritance had been given to the Gentiles. The progress 
 of desolation was stayed, and time was given as if to 
 try whether the better covenant, established upon bet¬ 
 ter promises, would be kept by those who, in the faith 
 of Jesus, professed to be the children, though not ac¬ 
 cording to the flesh, of faithful Abraham. But as the 
 great apostacy began to work in the days of the apos¬ 
 tles, so the simplicity of the faith as it is in Jesus soon 
 forsook the scene of its origin; and, leaving the plains 
 of Syria and other fertile regions, took refuge in an 
 Alpine wilderness, in the place which the Lord had pre¬ 
 pared* for his faithful witnesses, while idolatry resumed 
 its domination in the East and in the West. 
 
 The forbearance and long-suffering patience of God 
 are manifested by the suspension of unrepealed judg¬ 
 ments, even when the sinfulness of man might call them 
 justly down. The proof is too abundant that, in the 
 land where its Author was crucified, the everlasting 
 covenant was broken by those who bore the Christian 
 name. 
 
 The prophetic cause assigned for the ultimate deso¬ 
 lation of the land, while its own inhabitants shall be 
 scattered abroad, till nothing but a tithe of what it was 
 should remain, is thus declared in the Word that never 
 errs, and that speaks of things then future as if they 
 had been past: “Because the inhabitants thereof have 
 transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, and 
 broken the everlasting covenant, therefore hath the 
 curse devoured the land, and they that dwell therein are 
 desolate.”! It is needful to bear this testimony of the 
 Spirit of prophecy in remembrance while surveying 
 that land where Christian churches were established 
 
 * Rev., lii., fi. 
 
 t Isa., xxiv., 5, 6. 
 
 o 
 
158 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF 
 
 after Jerusalem and its temple had been laid even with 
 the ground. A Tar greater and longer desolation has 
 come over the land of Israel than that which was brought 
 on it by the Romans, and Christian churches, almost 
 without number, have been laid as low as were the 
 Temple of Jerusalem and the synagogues of Israel. In 
 a retrospect of the past, there are manifold proofs that 
 Palestine and the surrounding regions vied in fertility, 
 population, and wealth with any land during the earlier 
 ages of the lower empire. Judea, indeed, had fallen, 
 after one of the bloodiest wars that ever stained the 
 page of history, or reddened any land ; but beyond Ju¬ 
 dea there was little else than quiet submission to the 
 Roman yoke. That iron power kept the world in awe, 
 and comparative peace, to what it long had known, 
 reigned over Syria. As a Roman province, it was re¬ 
 nowned in the world, and witness was given again how 
 vast a population it could sustain. Long after their 
 domination began, not only were ancient cities restored, 
 but new cities arose j to the massive structures of an¬ 
 cient ages they added the beauties of Grecian art j and 
 though the withering blight of Heaven’s wrath had 
 fallen on the mountains and plains of Judea, Syria, un¬ 
 der the Romans, recovered for a time from many 
 desolating contests, gave some renewed token of what 
 it may be in the hands of its rightful possessors, 
 when Israel shall be redeemed — when peace shall uni¬ 
 versally prevail, and when there shall be desolations no 
 more. 
 
 In a description of the provinces of the East, as they 
 existed in the middle of the fourth century, when the 
 empire was called Christian—as if Jerusalem, not Rome, 
 had been the capital of the world—Ammianus Marcel- 
 linus, an eminent Roman historian, portrays, in a few 
 words, the different divisions of Syria, and gives a brief 
 notice of its cities as they existed then. 
 
 Syria {Cmle-Syria), spreading over a spacious plain, 
 is ennobled by Antioch, a city known throughout the 
 world, which in the number of its exports and imports 
 is unequalled by any other, and also by the very flour¬ 
 ishing cities of Laodicea, Apamea, and Seleucia. Phceni- 
 cia^ lying along the acclivities of Lebanon, is full of the 
 bounties and loveliness of nature, and is adorned with 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 159 
 
 many beautiful cities, among which, though Tyre, Si- 
 don, and Berytus excel for their pleasantness and the 
 celebrity of their names, they yet have their equals in 
 Emesa and Damascus. Palestine, abounding in culti¬ 
 vated and flourishing regions, has several great cities 
 which rival each other in their excellence, viz., Csesarea, 
 Eleutheropolis, Neapolis, Askelon, and Gaza. The re¬ 
 gion beyond the Jordan, denominated Arabia, is rich in 
 the variety of the merchandise of which it is full; it has, 
 besides other large towns, the cities of Bostra, Gerasa, 
 and Philadelphia, which the solidity of their walls ren¬ 
 ders most secure.* 
 
 The Roman colony of subjugated Palestine was divi¬ 
 ded into three provinces, each of which appropriated 
 alike that noblest of territorial names. Of these the 
 first, Palestina Prima^ included the land of Philistia, the 
 greater part of Judea, and Samaria. The second em¬ 
 braced within its bounds Galilee on the one side of the 
 Lake of Tiberias, and the region of Gaulonitis, or Gada- 
 ra, on the other, but was hemmed in by Phoenicia, on 
 the Mediterranean coast. The thirds Palestina Tertia, 
 vel Salutaris, included the southern part of Judea, 
 together with Edom and Moab. The far greater part 
 of the trans-Jordanic region, though strictly pertaining 
 to Syria, bore, from “ Roman vanity,” the name of Ara¬ 
 bia. From Dan to Beersheba, the whole of the three 
 Palestines, as of Israel’s ancient inheritance, was meas¬ 
 ured in their utmost limits from north to south. These, 
 therefore, unitedly formed but a small portion of the 
 land that was at first promised to their fathers, and 
 shall at last be divided among the Israelitish tribes. 
 Yet, trodden dowm by the Gentiles as Palestine was, 
 and meted out for the possession of Israel’s enemies, 
 and yielding up its remains to an Italian republic, the 
 cities of Palestine, having risen more than once from 
 their ruins, were yet to be reckoned by a number far 
 larger than some independent kingdoms can boast. 
 
 Different lists of the episcopal cities of the three Pal¬ 
 estines are given in Reland’s most valuable work. In 
 the first of these, which he deemed incomplete, the 
 number of those places, of which each was a bishop’s 
 see, exceeded seventy. Palestina Prima, containing 
 
 * Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xiv., cap, viii. 
 
160 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF 
 
 thirty-five bishoprics f Palestina Secunda, twenty-one ;t 
 and Palestina Tertia^ eighteen seventy-four in all. To 
 these are to be added, as’given by Reland in another 
 list, sixteen bishop’s sees in the Phoenician provinces of 
 Arabia, twelve in the province of Lebanon, and thirty- 
 four in that of Arabia, or the Haouran, of which Bostra 
 was the capital. 
 
 But Palestine, in its widest extent, when divided into 
 three Roman provinces, was far from comprehending 
 the destined heritage of Jacob; and a much more com¬ 
 plete list of the bishop’s sees in Syria is affixed by the 
 Archbishop of Tyre to his history of the Crusades. 
 
 As Antioch, in former ages, had been the seat of em¬ 
 perors and kings, whether the successors of Pharaoh, 
 or Nebuchadnezzar, or of Alexander, or bearing the 
 name of Caesars; so, when a proud hierarchy, supplant¬ 
 ing in its native region the simplicity of the faith of the 
 meek and lowly Jesus, outrivalled earthly principalities, 
 the same city, long accustomed to rule, became the 
 apostolic see of Syria, and held in subjection to its au¬ 
 thority, as their titles ran, many catholici, metropoli¬ 
 tans, archbishops, and bishops. In vain, according to 
 an ecclesiastical polity like theirs, did Jesus say to his 
 apostles themselves, “Ye know that they which are ac¬ 
 counted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over 
 them, and their great ones exercise authority upon 
 them ; but so shall it not be among you ; but whosoever 
 will be great among you, shall be your minister ; and 
 whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant 
 of all.Ӥ In vain did Jesus, when his disciples disputed 
 which of them should be greatest, take a little child and 
 place him in the midst of them, as a pattern worthy of 
 the imitation of apostles, declaring that no man could 
 enter in another manner into the kingdom of heaven ;|| 
 and in vain did he say, “ Be not ye called rabbi ; for 
 
 * ^lia or Jerusalem, Anthedon, Antipatris, Apathus, Aracla or ITeraclea, Arche- 
 lais, Ascalon, Azotus, Bitelion, Baschat, Ccesarea, Diocletianopolis, Diosopolis, Dora, 
 Eleutheropolis, Gadara, Gaza, Gerara, Jericho, Jamnia, Joppe, Livias, Lydda, Ma- 
 gisma, Minois, Neapolis, Nicopolis, Orus, Petra (Palestina), Raphia, Sebaste, Sozu- 
 sa, Sycamazon, Toxus, Tricornias. 
 
 t Abila, Capercotia, Capitolias, Diocjesarea, Gad®, Gadara, Gaulame Clima, Ilel- 
 enopolis, Hippus, Maximinianopolis, Mennith, Nais, Pella, Raphia, Scythopolis, Se¬ 
 baste, Sozusa, Sycamazon, Tetra Comias, Tiberias, Zabulon. 
 
 t Aila, Areopolis, Arindela, Augustopolis, Birosaba, Characmoba, Eluza, Mamap- 
 ^ra. Mapse, Mitrocomia, Pentacomia, Petra, Pharan, Phonon, Rabathmoba, Saltus 
 Hieraticus, Sodom a, Zoara.—Vide Relandi Palestina, p. 207-214. 
 
 § Mark, X., 42-44. || Matt., xviii., 2, 3. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 161 
 
 one is your nnaster, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.^'’^ 
 In apostolic times, as the infallible record of the Spirit 
 of all truth bears, bishops or presbyters, then inter¬ 
 changeable terms, were those whom the Holy Ghost 
 made overseers (or bishops) over the jlock^\ and of 
 whom there were several, if not many, in one town, as 
 at Ephesus and Philippi. But in after ages cities de¬ 
 rived their title to that name, which had from thence 
 its origin as the seats [sedes) or sees of bishops. And 
 the multiplicity of these — on the establishment of a 
 hierarchical order, that exercised dominion and lord- 
 ship in the Church, as did secular princes in the world 
 —may clearly indicate how Palestine was plenteously 
 repeopled by another race after the extermination of 
 the Jews, and how the other regions of Syria teemed 
 as before with an abounding population. In many of 
 these cities, if not in all, episcopal dignity was main¬ 
 tained in a manner befitting papal domination ; and the 
 ruins of cathedrals, and many other churches once 
 magnificent, amid the remains of many towns scattered 
 over Syria, show how numerous and splendid were its 
 cities in Christian times. 
 
 Jerusalem, indeed, had fallen, and a blighting curse 
 rested on the hills of Judah, ftom which they never 
 have recovered. The rightful capital of Christendom, 
 and the destined seat of a universal kingdom of truth, 
 and righteousness, and peace, raised not its head, even 
 in mockery of its true greatness, for many an age. 
 Though the Apostle James was the reputed Bishop of 
 Jerusalem, and though bishops were but the fifth in or¬ 
 der under the apostolic see of Antioch, whatever Rome 
 might boast of concerning one of the apostles, there is 
 something worse than a blank in the “apostolic succes¬ 
 sion” of the man who gave the sentence, in which all 
 concurred, in “the first council” of the Church, and in 
 the primitive seat of Christianity. For, as an arch¬ 
 bishop records, while Syria could count many metro¬ 
 politans and archbishops, with numerous bishoprics 
 under each, and others that maintained these titular 
 dignities, the Church of Jerusalem, according to tradi¬ 
 tion (on which the whole fabric of high-churchism 
 rests), and also on the testimony of Syrian and Grecian 
 
 * Matt., rxiii., 7. t Acts, xx., 17, 28. 
 
 O 2 
 
162 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF 
 
 writers of no mean authority, had a bishop who enjoyed 
 little dignity, or no prerogative whatever, down to the 
 days of Justinian in the sixth century.* 
 
 So unseemly a blank in an ordinary pedigree, even if 
 unassociated with others of a kindred sort, might, though 
 unable to startle a Puseyite or a monk, baffle a master 
 in any secular chancery. But though the rightful me¬ 
 tropolis of Christendom had no place for centuries 
 among archiepiscopal or metropolitan cities, and though 
 no train of unholy successors pretended, for six cen¬ 
 turies, to follow the brother of the Lord, Antioch had 
 its magnates in largely compensating numbers, and was 
 long, on the ecclesiastical arena, the rival of Alexan¬ 
 dria, Constantinople, and Rome. The city itself boast¬ 
 ed of its three hundred and sixty churches. Ben-Kiliseh^ 
 the hill already mentioned, which lies between it and 
 the sea, literally signifies the thousand churches^ from the 
 vast number with which it was adorned. And the see 
 of Antioch, bearing the name of apostolic, exercised au¬ 
 thority over two hundred and three bishops, besides 
 eight metropolitans, twelve archbishops, and twenty- 
 five principal suffragans, who resided in two hundred 
 and forty-eight cities, of which about forty lay beyond 
 the bounds of the promised land. Exclusive of these, 
 attached to Tyre were thirteen bishoprics jf to Apamea, 
 seven to Hierapolis, eight ;§ to Bostra, nineteen ;|| to 
 Seleucia, twenty-four jIF to Damascus, ten ;** to Ceesarea 
 (on the coast), nineteen ;ff to Scythopolis, nine to 
 
 * Juxta traditfones veterum, et etiatn quaedam scripta quse auctoritatem habent 
 non modicam apud Palestinos, et maxime Grajcos, Hierosolymitana ecclesia usque ad 
 tempora Justiniani sanctaj recordationis Augusti, episcopum habuit nulla, vel modica 
 dignitatis prierogativa gaudentum.—Will. Tyr., Hist., lib. xxiii., p. 1045, 104-9. 
 
 t Tyr us, 13, Porfirion, Archis, Ptolemais, Sydon, Sarepta, Biblium, Botrion, 
 Orthosia, Archados, Antarados, Paneas, Araclis, Tripolis. 
 
 X Apamea, 7, Epiphania, Seleucouila, Larissa, Valanea, Mariam, Raphania, 
 Arethusa. 
 
 ^ Hierapolis, 8, Zeuma, Surron, Varnalis, Neocaesarea, Perri, Orimon, Dolichi, 
 Europi. 
 
 II Bostrum, 19, Gerasson, Philadelphia, Adraon, Midanon, Austanidon, Delinun- 
 don, Zozoyraa, Herri, Iceni, Eucuni, Constantia, Paramboli, Dionysia, Conaachon, 
 Maxirnopolis, Philipolis, Chrystojmlis, Neilon, Lorea. 
 
 TT Seleucia, 24, Claudiopolis, Diocaesarea, Oropi, Dalisanidos, Seuila, Kelende- 
 ris, Anemori, Titopolis, Lamos, Antiochia parva, Hefelia, Ristria, Selenunta, Yocopi, 
 Philadelphia parva, Irinopolis, Germaaicopolis, Mobsea, Demetiopolis, Abidi, Zmo- 
 nopolis, Adrasson, Mynu, Neapolis. 
 
 ** Damascus, 10, Albi, Palmipou, Laodicia, Suria, Konokora, Yabruda, Danabi, 
 Karacena, Hurdani, Surraquini. 
 
 ft C.ESAREA Maritima, 19, Dora, Antipatrida, lampnias, Nicopolis, Onus, Sos- 
 curis, Raphias, Regium Apatos, Regium Hierico, Regiurn Liuas, Regium Gadaron, 
 Azotus Paralias, Asotusippum, Estomason, Estilion, Tricoinias, Toxtus, Saltum, 
 Constantiniaquis. 
 
 Scythopolis, 9, Capitoliados, Miru, Gadaru, Pelos, Vilisippus, Tettacomiaa, 
 Oluna, Galanis, Komanas. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 163 
 
 Rabba-Moab, twelve;* to Bitira of Arabia, thirty-five.f 
 Besides these, forty-three other cities were occupied by 
 independent metropolitans, archbishops, or suffragans. 
 
 Sadly has Syria fallen, when the recapitulation, in the 
 text, of its numerous bishoprics would deprive a page 
 of all interest, and leave it to be passed over unread, by 
 filling it with their long-forgotten and often unknown 
 names, that find their fitting place, like those of pagan 
 towns, in a note or an appendix, and that serve only, 
 like them, to point to ruins, and to trace a resemblance 
 in sound to naught but desolate localities now, where 
 the ruins of castellated or cathedral cities, covered with 
 wood or overgrown with thistles, have been long de¬ 
 serted by dignitaries and tenanted by wild beasts, the 
 literal successors to many a proud episcopal throne. 
 The record of the names and number of these cities 
 which history has transmitted, with the numberless to¬ 
 kens of their fallen greatness, shows how Syria could 
 sustain them all, while its own covenanted people, scat¬ 
 tered among the nations, as if their wanderings in the 
 desert had been resumed, had not a city to dwell in, 
 nor a place on earth whereon to rest their foot. But as 
 it is not without cause that the Lord hath done all that He 
 hath done to them^ as they and all the world shall know^ 
 so it is not without cause that Christian as well as Jew¬ 
 ish cities have fallen, and now lie in mingled ruins, 
 from end to end and from side to side of that land, on 
 which the eyes of the Lord have been set for judgment 
 during many ages, even as He espied it for the people 
 of Israel at first, and planted them within it in the sight 
 of the heathen. The ruins of these cities, wherever 
 they have been discovered, and yet retain memorials of 
 
 * Rabba Moabbitis, ]2, Augustopolis, Arindila, Kara, Serapolis, Mempsidos, 
 Eulitis, Zora, Virosum, Pentacomia, Mamapson, Mitroconeras, Saltum Hieraticum. 
 
 t Bitira Arabia, 35, Adrasson, Dias, Medauon, Hierasson, Nein, Filadelfia, 
 lerapolis, Esmoss, Neapolis, Themistus, Philipopulus, Dionysia, Constantinu, Pen- 
 tacomias, Triconiias, Canastados, Saltum Votanios, Exacomias, Enacomias, Como- 
 gonias, Comogeros, Comosthonis, Comis, Mahadaron, Comocoreatas, Comis Capron, 
 Comis Insuauos, Comis Pirroareton, Comis Pecius, Comis Ariathon, Comis Neotis, 
 Clima Anatolis Quevisinon, Comis Ariotas, Comis Trachonos, Comis Nesdamos. 
 
 Metropolitan!, 7, Deritus, Heliopolis, Laodicia, Samosata, Kyros, Pompeiopolis, 
 Mopsuestia. 
 
 Archiepiscopi, 12, Verea, Kalquis, Gabula, Seleucia, Piperia, Anasarphon, Pal- 
 tos, Germanicia, Salamias, Varcossos, Fossos, Anauagathon. 
 
 Suffraganearum Prima, 25, Lidda, Joppe, Ascalon, Gaza, Meimas, Diocletian 
 opolis, Beitt Gerbein, Neapolis, Sebastia, Jericyntus, Tyberiadis, Diociesarea, Le- 
 gionum, Capitolina, Mauronensis, Gedera, Nazareth, Thabor, Caracha vel Petra, 
 Adroga, Afra, ^lis, Faram, Elinopolis, Mons Sina.—Will. Tyr., Hist., lib. ixiii., 
 p. 1044-6. 
 
164 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF 
 
 
 what they were, bear witness, as will be seen, that the 
 judgments that have come upon them are just 5 that the 
 Gospel was not preached in them as Jesus preached it 
 in the cities of Judah and of Galilee ; and that the les¬ 
 son which He taught while sitting wearied, and ahun- 
 gered, and athirst on the well of Samaria, was forgotten 
 in the land, and fountains that could hold no water were 
 resorted to when the wellspring of life was forsaken. 
 Men forget that “God is a spirit, and that they that 
 worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”* 
 There, as in other lands, the apostacy arose. A pure 
 and simple faith assumed the form of paganism. Re¬ 
 ligion became an outward show instead of an inward 
 power. The pomp of ceremonies was evoked anevv 
 by the spirit of a revived paganism. Where the apos¬ 
 tles left their nets and their all and followed Jesus, 
 men claiming genealpgy from them divided the land 
 for gcLin^\ and, contrary to the command of the Au¬ 
 thor of the faith which they professed, exercised lordship 
 over God’s heritagfe. The church that was called 
 Christ’s, unlike to his, was transmuted into a kingdom 
 of this world, and pagan paraphernalia took the name 
 of Christian rites. The mystery of iniquity which began 
 to work in the days of the apostles —concerning which 
 many in our own day, forgetful what then began, are 
 proud in their blindness, and glory in their shame—was 
 developed more and more till transgression came to the 
 full, and judgment could no longer tarry. And the wild 
 sons of the desert, who claimed Abraham for their fa¬ 
 ther, came in armed myriads at the predicted word, as 
 by an appointed sign, to avenge the quarrel of the ever¬ 
 lasting covenant on a race that were not their brethren^ 
 nor in any sense the children of faithful Abraham. 
 
 As Jeshurun of old “ waxed fat and kicked,” and a 
 glorious beauty rested on the fat valley of Samaria, 
 while the statutes of Omri were kept till judgment 
 came, so, while space was given for churches called 
 Christian to repent, transgressions were multiplied in 
 the land, as in Israel of old, and luxury, together with 
 iniquity, had reached its height, when the long-slight¬ 
 ed curse suddenly and fearfully avenged the broken 
 covenant. More direct and precise testimony than that 
 
 * John, iv., 24. t Dan., xi., .39, 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 165 
 
 of an enumeration of the names of cities is still farther 
 in store, in demonstration of that excellence of Israel’s 
 own land, which gave it a first place among the king¬ 
 doms or provinces of the Roman Empire. Subjugated 
 by the mightiest nations of the earth, it has been per¬ 
 manently retained by none, however great their power 
 or high their pretensions, even though descendants of 
 those who had laid Jerusalem in the dust and subdued 
 the world, and the professors of a faith which, if real, 
 would have saved its numerous cities from destruction. 
 
 We now come to the time when woes^ denounced by 
 that very name in the Word of God, fell upon apostate 
 Christendom, or on those who had fallen away from the 
 faith once delivered to the saints ; for on such alone 
 those woes could fall, which were to touch only those 
 men who had not the seal of God upon their foreheads.* 
 
 When Goths, and Vandals, and Huns had long desola¬ 
 ted Italy, and a “barbaric king” reigned over it, Syria 
 continued to be one of the fairest provinces, or trib¬ 
 utary kingdoms of the lower empire j and some of its 
 regions ranked among the most populous, and some of 
 its cities among the most princely in the world. In 
 describing the siege of Bosrah on the east, and those of 
 Heliopolis and Homs on the north of Palestine—but, on 
 either side, far within the borders of Israel’s destined 
 heritage—Gibbon incidentally testifies the goodliness 
 of the land, as it existed down to the Saracenic inva¬ 
 sion, in the seventh century. 
 
 “ One of the fifteen provinces of Syria, the cultiva¬ 
 ted lands to the eastward of the Jordan, had been dec¬ 
 orated by Roman vanity with the name of Arabia, and 
 the first arms of the Saracens were justified by the re¬ 
 semblance of a national right. The country was en¬ 
 riched by the various benefits of trade ; by the vigilance 
 of the emperors it was covered by a line of forts; and 
 the populous cities of Gerasa^ Philadelphia^ and Bosra 
 were secure at least from a surprise, by the solid struc¬ 
 ture of their walls. Twelve thousand horse could sally 
 from the gates of Bosra.’’f “ Syria, one of the coun¬ 
 
 tries that had been improved by the most early culti¬ 
 vation, is not unworthy of the preference. The heat 
 of the climate is tempered by the vicinity of the sea 
 
 * Rev., ix., 4. t Gibbon, vol. ix., p. 383, 384. 
 
166 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OP 
 
 
 and mountains, by the plenty of wood and water; and 
 the produce of a fertile soil affords the subsistence, 
 and encourages the propagation of men and animals. 
 From the age of David to that of Heraclius, the coun¬ 
 try was overspread with ancient and flourishing cities; 
 the inhabitants were numerous and wealthy ; and, after 
 the slow ravages of despotism and superstition, after 
 the recent calamities of the Persian war, Syria could 
 still attract and reward the rapacious tribes of the 
 desert. Among the cities which are enumerated by 
 Greek and Oriental names in the geography and con¬ 
 quest of Syria, we may distinguish Emesa or Hems^ He¬ 
 liopolis or Baalbec^ the former as the metropolis of the 
 plain, the latter as the capital of the valley. Under the 
 last of the Ceesars, they were strong and populous; the 
 turrets glittered from afar; an ample space was covered 
 with public and private buildings ; and the citizens were 
 illustrious by their spirit, or at least by their pride, by 
 their riches, or at least by their luxury.”* “ Chalcis 
 alone was taxed at five thousand ounces of gold, five 
 thousand ounces of silver, two thousand robes of silk, 
 and as many figs and olives as would load five thou¬ 
 sand asses. The terms of capitulation were faithfully 
 observed.”! “The safety of Antioch was ransomed 
 with three hundred thousand pieces of gold ; but the 
 throne of the successors of Alexander, the seat of the 
 Roman government in the East, was degraded under the 
 yoke of the caliphs to the secondary rank of a provin¬ 
 cial town. Bosra, Damascus^ Heliopolis^ Emesa^ Jeru¬ 
 salem^ Aleppo, Antioch, fell successively into the hands 
 of the Saracens. From the north and south the troops 
 of Antioch and Jerusalem advanced along the seashore, 
 till their banners were joined under the walls of the Bhce- 
 nician cities: Tripoli and Tyre w^ere betrayed. Their 
 labours were terminated by the unexpected surrender 
 of CsBsarea. The remainder of the province, Ramlah, 
 Ptolemais or Acre, Sichem or JTeapolis, Gaza, Ascalon, 
 Berytus, Sidon, Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea, Hierapolis, no 
 longer presumed to dispute the will of the conqueror; 
 and Syria bowed under the sceptre of the caliphs,”{ &c. 
 
 The Saracens formed the first wo —not the last—that 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. ix., p. 403-405. 
 t Gibbon’s Hist., chap, li., passim. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 407. 
 
THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 167 
 
 came on idolatrous Christendom. On their invasion of 
 the Roman Empire, Jerusalem was rather to be given 
 unto the, Gentiles than rescued from them. Ages were 
 thereafter to intervene before the land should reach the 
 last degree of predicted desolation. The judgments of 
 the Lord were to be executed in it on those who had 
 anew profaned it by their idolatries. But while this 
 charge was given to the Saracens, which, as all students 
 of prophecy well know, they failed not to execute, a 
 prohibition was simultaneously written in the book of 
 the Lord, and as simultaneously issued in the appointed 
 time, against laying the land desolate; and stripped as 
 it would finally be, like an oak that had cast its leaves, 
 not a tree or green thing was then to be hurt. It was 
 commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the 
 earth,, neither any green thing,, neither a7iy tree, but only 
 those men that had not the seal of God on their foreheads* 
 The unconscious “commander of the faithful” thus is¬ 
 sued his instructions accordingly to the chiefs of the 
 Syrian army. “ When you fight the battles of the Lord, 
 acquit yourselves like men, without turning your backs ; 
 but let not your victory be stained with the blood of 
 women and children. Destroy no palm-trees, nor burn 
 any fields of corn. Cut down no fruit-trees, nor do any 
 mischief to cattle, only such as you kill to eat. When 
 you make any covenant or article, stand to it, and be as 
 good as your word. As you go on, you will find some 
 religious persons, who live retired in monasteries j let 
 them alone, and neither kill them, nor destroy their 
 monasteries; and you will find another sort of people 
 that belong to the synagogue of Satan, who have shorn 
 crowns j be sure you cleave their sculls, and give them 
 no quarter till they either turn Mohammedans or pay 
 tribute.”! 
 
 “The rapacious tribes of the desert” made Syria 
 their own, and richly was their conquest rewarded. 
 Notwithstanding “ the slow ravages of despotism and 
 superstition,” and its subjugation to the Persians, to 
 whom for fourteen years it had been given for a prey, 
 till reconquered by Heraclius, Syria could still boast of 
 its numerous cities, and its fertile soil sustained a vast 
 population. Five thousand ass-loads (proverbially great) 
 
 * Rev., ix.. 4. t Gibbon’s Hist., vol. ix., p. 381. 
 
168 
 
 ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS, ETC. 
 
 of figs and olives, necessarily the produce of a single year, 
 gave proof, as part of the tax imposed upon one city, that 
 the combined excellence of climate and soil were not then 
 lost upon man, and that the circumjacent region might lay 
 claim to be a portion of a land where every man might sit 
 under his own fig-tree, and the lords of which, in the ex¬ 
 pressive language of Scripture, might “ dip their feet in oil.” 
 
 Edifices of Saracenic structure, scattered over Syria, 
 show that these invaders, like the Romans, sought to per¬ 
 petuate their conquest, and made it their work to build rath¬ 
 er than destroy. But these were chiefly mosques or castles, 
 the former displacing churches, the latter for repressing the 
 inhabitants, as well as resisting foreign foes. “ The tribute, 
 the Koran, or the sword,” were not the heralds of prosperi¬ 
 ty and peace. Syria faded rather than flourished under the 
 dominion of those “ hordes of fanatics that issued from the 
 desert,” and whose office it was to torment rather than to 
 destroy. 
 
 The promised land was to be given only for a limited pe¬ 
 riod to any alien race, while its ancient inhabitants were 
 scattered abroad. The Arabs, like the Romans, claimed it 
 by right of conquest as their own. But though they appoint¬ 
 ed the land^ which the Lord called His, into their possession 
 with the joy of all their heart, and shall still strive to regain or 
 retain it, as they first won it by the sword ; and though they 
 said, while the stronghold of Zion was in their hands, and 
 Saracen fortresses towered throughout the land on the heights 
 of Israel, even the high places are ours in possession, yet they 
 were there only to execute judgments, as the temporary 
 tenants of a land that was not theirs. Their possession of 
 it was not unchallenged or undisturbed. After its subjuga¬ 
 tion to them, Judea “ ceased not to be the scene of grand 
 revolutions.”"^ The victors becoming successively the van¬ 
 quished, it was in after ages the contested territory of Sara¬ 
 cens, Persians, Turks, Egyptians, and Fatimites, till, in still 
 more bloody warfare between Christians and Mohamme¬ 
 dans, it became, as described by Gibbon, “ the theatre of na¬ 
 tions,” where the tragedy of the crusades was enacted—the 
 battle-field of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The land which 
 men called Christians sought to redeem, by a phrensy that 
 matched the fierce fanaticism of Moslems, was thereby 
 smitten with another curse. 
 
 * D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientate, p. 260. 
 
SKETCH OP THE HISTORY OF SYRIA, ETC. 
 
 169 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 “ I will give it unto the hands of the strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the 
 earth for a spoil; and they shall pollute it.”— Ezek., vii., 21. 
 
 “ Thou land devourest up men, and hast bejeaved thy nations.”—Ezefe., xxxvi., 13. 
 
 Syria, peopled by conflicting races, could scarcely be 
 said to repose under the dominion of the caliphs. It was 
 at best, as under the Romans, a subjugated country, a prey 
 and a spoil to strangers,^ The comparatively quiescent 
 state which succeeded to its conquest, was soon, from vari¬ 
 ous causes, disturbed anew ; and this prophecy, together 
 with many others, ever meets with renewed illustrations in 
 all its history, while it was given, age after age, to the wick¬ 
 ed for a prey, the sword of the Lord shall devour from the 
 one end of the land even to the other end of the land ; no fiesh 
 shall have peace.\ Even the subjugated Christians soon 
 persecuted each other. The general council of Constanti¬ 
 nople (A.D. 681) condemned the Maronites ; and, chased 
 from the greater part of the cities of Syria, they betook 
 themselves to the mountains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon.J 
 In a few years after, Syria was the scene of fierce contests 
 between Ali the cousin and son-in-law of Mohammed, and 
 Moaviah, the caliph of the Ommiades, whose cause the Syr¬ 
 ians espoused.§ Profiting by their divisions and mutual con¬ 
 flicts, the Maronites descended from their mountains, and 
 ravaged all the land from the extremity of Lebanon to the 
 vicinity of Jerusalem.|[ The termination of the dynasty of 
 the Ommiades, and the commencement of that of the Abas- 
 sides, was marked by great earthquakes, which overthrew 
 a great number of churches and monasteries beyond the 
 Jordan and throughout Syria, and the violent and frequent 
 shocks destroyed many cities.^! The death of Haroun-al- 
 Raschid (A.D. 808) plunged Syria into new calamities. 
 While his sons disputed for the empire, various usurpers 
 
 invaded and ravaged Syria. Eleutheropolis^ the capital of 
 
 / 
 
 * Ezek., vii., 21. t Jer., xii., 12. 
 
 t Herbelot, Biblioth6que Orientale, p. 557. ^ Ibid., p. 90-93, 588, 9. 
 
 il Guene, Lettres, M6m. de Litt6rature, tom. iii., p. 318. Ibid., p. 319. 
 
170 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 Idumea, was destroyed, and that flourishing city never re¬ 
 covered from its overthrow. Ascalon, Gaza, Sariphea, and 
 many other cities were pillaged, and the barbarians spread 
 everywhere desolation and terror. These troubles contin¬ 
 ued till towards the close of the ninth century ; the caliph¬ 
 ate of Bagdad itself began to be shaken by the insurrection¬ 
 ary Turks ; and when the Saracenic Empire was dismem¬ 
 bered, Syria was convulsed.* 
 
 The Arabs have never ceased, by predatory inroads or 
 forced possession, to devour the land over which they could 
 no longer solely domineer, and they did not suffer so fair a 
 region to be wrested from their grasp without repeated des¬ 
 olating wars. Rut the energy of their empire had departed, 
 and Syria could no longer be retained. The Thoulounid 
 Turks, first slaves, then masters, having obtained in Egypt 
 all of sovereignty but the name, Syria became the scene 
 . of their warfare with the caliphs. Ahmet, ruling uncon¬ 
 trolled in Egypt, like a modern despot, passed (A.D. 874) 
 from thence as a conqueror to the farthest bounds of Syria, 
 and subjected to his sway Damascus, Hamah, Aleppo, and 
 AntiockA His conquests were rapidly succeeded by re¬ 
 newed and incessant contests for the revenue and sover¬ 
 eignty of Syria.A meteor-domination, blazing, blasting, 
 and dying away, was then the form that despotism assumed, 
 while at intervals the smouldering ashes of the caliphate 
 sent forth their scorching gleams. Whenever the Turkish 
 supremacy began, the government of cities and territories 
 was bartered for gold. For that of Kinnesrin and Aouasem, 
 four hundred and fifty thousand pieces of gold annually were 
 offered by Haroun, and accepted, at a time when it could 
 be maintained only by the Turkish cimeter, and the posses¬ 
 sion of it was insecure for a single year. 
 
 In the first year of the tenth century anew cause of com¬ 
 motion arose in that troubled and distracted land; and for a 
 time it seemed as if Mohammed himself was about to be 
 superseded by Caramath, another warlike prophet, “ whose 
 creed overturned all the foundations of Mohammedanism.”^ 
 
 * Guene, Lettres, M6in. de Litt6rature, tom. iii., p. 320, 321. 
 
 t Histoire G6n6rale des Huns, des Turcs, <fec., par De Guignes, tom. ii., p. 131, 
 132. Ahmed amassed immense treasures, which he left to his children, viz., a mill¬ 
 ion of pieces of gold, seven thousand slaves, a vast number of horses, mules, camels, 
 &c. In his time the revenue of Egypt amounted to three hundred millions of pieces 
 of gold.—Ibid., p. 135. 
 
 t Histoire G^n^rale des Huns, des Turcs, &c., par De Guignes, tom. ii., p. 135- 
 141. <) D’Herbelot, B’blioth^que Orientale, p. 256 
 
ft 
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 171 
 
 The new faith which called its votaries to war, originating 
 in Chaldea, speedily overspread Syria and the neighbouring 
 provinces. The greatest efforts of the Carmathians were 
 directed against Syria. They defeated the forces of the 
 garrison of Damascus in several encounters, and besieged 
 that city. Haroun advanced to the rescue, and slew the 
 chief of the Carmathians in a battle in which about twenty 
 thousand fell. So rapid had been the growth of the new¬ 
 born faith, that it sustained the shock. The discomfited but 
 resolute fanatics having retired to Emesa, and recruited 
 their strength and redoubled their numbers, subjected Syria 
 to a second and more disastrous warfare, laid Damascus 
 under contribution, and ravaged the environs of Hamah, 
 Maarali, and Baalbec. The inhabitants of Salamia resisted 
 and repelled them; but on their returning with renewed 
 impetuosity to the charge, they capitulated and opened their 
 gates, when the savage conquerors put them all to an indis¬ 
 criminate slaughter, without distinction of age or sex ; and 
 after such a sacrifice, their chief, assuming the title of Ma- 
 hadi-Emir-el-Moumianin, ordered public prayers to be made 
 in his name.*' 
 
 The caliph, courageous to combat a fallen foe, seized the 
 opportunity which their feebleness afforded, of striving, by 
 a powerful effort, to destroy the Thoulounid Turks, and by 
 subverting their dominion, to restore that of the Abassides. 
 The ill-fated Damascus was again a prey. Palestine be¬ 
 came the scene of contest for deciding the sovereignty of 
 rival caliphs. But the first short-lived Turkish dynasty in 
 Egypt was speedily destroyed (A.D. 905), and Syria again 
 owned the Arab as its master.f 
 
 In extinguishing the power of his antagonist, the caliph 
 exhausted his own. “ The provinces of the Saracenic Em¬ 
 pire became the prey of numerous petty sovereigns.” Syria 
 was ravaged by the Carmathians. A new dynasty arose, 
 that of the Ikhschid Turks, of which Abou-Bekr-Moham- 
 med was the founder, who subdued Syria by his influence 
 and his arms. The feeble caliph (A.D. 935) abandoned 
 the country which he could no longer either reconquer or 
 rule.I The power that constitutes the second wo has been 
 more fortunate than that which formed the first. No Chris¬ 
 tian arm was raised to save Syria for the caliph. The 
 cause of the difference may, at no distant day, be obvious. 
 
 * De Guignes, tom. ii., p. 145, 146. t Ibid., p. 146, 147. t Ibid., p. 147, 148. 
 
172 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 The second wo arose beyond the bounds of Christendom, 
 while many of the elements of the third have to be gathered 
 from within it—and a preparatory work has to be done by 
 the kings of the earth —before the greatest and last of bat¬ 
 tles shall be fought on the plains of Palestine. 
 
 Syria was soon torn again by rival aspirants to unchal¬ 
 lenged sovereignty over it, and was divided for a time be¬ 
 tween the governor of Damascus and the ruler of Egypt; 
 and when the former was slain, the latter retook Damascus 
 and other cities, and the subjugated land of Israel, ransom¬ 
 ed from the fetters of Bagdad, was smitten with the rod of 
 Egypt, wielded by a Turk (A.D. 942).* 
 
 But the land had no rest from war. The Hamadanites, 
 an Arab dynasty, contented with that of the Ikhschidites for 
 its possession. They invaded Syria, took Aleppo^ gained a 
 battle between Sarmin and Maarah, and besieged Damas¬ 
 cus ; but, after various encounters and battles at Rostan, 
 Hamah, and Kinnesrin, the peace of Syria seemed to be 
 consolidated by the marriage of the son and daughter of the 
 riv'al princes, whose fierce combats led not to the entire 
 overthrow of either. The land and the cities suffered from 
 both, and the hope of peace was delusive, for the war was 
 soon renewed, and Aleppo retaken.f Ikhschid’s death, in¬ 
 stead of healing the troubles of an agitated county, introdu¬ 
 ced still greater, and made Syria again a prize for com¬ 
 batants. 
 
 So ephemeral is the greatness, and so vain the glory of 
 man, that Ikhschid’s name may now seem that of an un¬ 
 known man, unworthy of a place in history. Yet his was 
 a power greater than that of a modern lord of Egypt who 
 has filled the world with his fame. A Turkish dynasty 
 then, in the beginning of the days of their pride, was not to 
 be measured by that of the sultan now, in those of their de¬ 
 cline. The Caliph of Egypt mustered in his armies four 
 hundred thousand men ; and far mightier hosts contended 
 for the possession of Syria in the ninth, as for hundreds of 
 years thereafter, than heretofore in the nineteenth century. 
 He could then trample upon Christians, and provoke Eu¬ 
 rope to war. His persecutions and exactions, which brought 
 church goods to the hammer,J presenting an example which 
 successive conquerors were not slack to follow, prepared 
 
 * De Guignes, tom. ii., p. 149. t Ibid., p. 150, 151. % Ibid., p. 152. 
 
\ DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 173 
 
 the way for those unparalleled and continuous wars of which 
 Syria was for centuries the scene. 
 
 His demise roused the Carmathians, invigorated again 
 with the hopes of conquest. Ramlah was the field of an¬ 
 other battle ; Damascus was retaken by the victorious Turks. 
 New enemies arose. A large army of Greeks, under Ni- 
 cephorus, entered Syria. They who before were contending 
 for the prey, combined against the assailants who sought to 
 seize it from them all, and to restore the days of Roman 
 despotism (A.D. 965). 
 
 Nicephorus and John Zimisces, “ the two heroes of the 
 age, forced and secured the narrow passes of Mount Ama- 
 nus, and carried their arms into the heart of Syria.” An¬ 
 tioch was taken by surprise. “ The first tumult of slaugh¬ 
 ter and rapine subsided; and the efforts of a hundred 
 thousand Saracens, of the armies of Syria and the fleets of 
 Africa, were consumed without effect before the walls of 
 Antioch. The royal city of Aleppo was subject to Seifed- 
 donlat, of the dynasty of Hamadan, whose precipitate re¬ 
 treat abandoned his kingdom and capital to the Roman in¬ 
 vaders. In his stately palace, that stood without the wall 
 of Aleppo, they joyfully seized a well-furnished magazine of 
 arms, a stable of fourteen hundred mules, and three hundred 
 bags of silver and gold. But the walls of the city withstood 
 the strokes of their battering-rams, and the besiegers pitched 
 their tents on the neighbouring mountain of Jaushan. Their 
 retreat exasperated the quarrel of the townsmen and mercena¬ 
 ries ; the guard of the gates and ramparts was deserted ; and 
 while they furiously charged each other in the market-place, 
 they were surprised and destroyed by the sword of a com¬ 
 mon enemy. The male sex was exterminated by the sword ; 
 ten thousand youths were led into captivity; the weight 
 of the precious spoil exceeded the strength and number of 
 the beasts of burden; the superfluous remainder was burn¬ 
 ed ; and, after a licentious possession of ten days, the Ro¬ 
 mans marched away from the naked and bleeding city. In 
 their Syrian inroads, they commanded the husbandmen to 
 cultivate their lands, that they themselves, in the ensuing 
 season, might reap the benefit. More than a hundred cities 
 were reduced to obedience ; and eighteen pulpits of the 
 principal mosques were committed to the flames, to expiate 
 the sacrilege of the disciples of Mohammed. The classic 
 names of Hierapolis, Ajpamea, and Emesa revive for a mo- 
 
 P 2 
 
174 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRfA 
 
 ment in the list of conquests: the Emperor Zimisces en¬ 
 camped in the paradise of Damascus, and accepted the ran¬ 
 som of a buomissive people ; and the torrent was only stop¬ 
 ped by the impregnable fortress of Tripoli^ on the seacoast 
 of Phoenicia.”* 
 
 But the time had gone by in which Roman or Grecian 
 despotism could permanently resume the mastery of Syria. 
 “The powers of the East,” says Gibbon, “ had been bent, 
 not broken, by the transient hurricane.” The Roman con¬ 
 querors retired or were driven beyond the Taurus, and their 
 combined foes became mutual combatants again ; for when, 
 in the following year, a youth of eleven years of age occu- 
 pied the seat of the Egyptian caliphs, his troops overran 
 and obtained the mastery of Syria, they were speedily rout¬ 
 ed and chased from thence ; but, on returning with increas¬ 
 ed numbers to repel its rebellious inhabitants, they had no 
 sooner subjugated them anew than they were encountered 
 and overthrown by mightier foes. While in Egypt and 
 Syria dynasty after dynasty rose and fell, that of the Thou- 
 lounid Turks in thirty-seven years (from A.D. 868 to 905), 
 and that of the Ikhschidite Turks in a shorter period (A.D. 
 935 to 969), Mahadi Abdallah, a descendant of Phatime, the 
 daughter of Mohammed, laid in Africa the foundations of a 
 powerful empire ; the fate of Syria was decided in a suc¬ 
 cession of battles at Ramlah ; it was constrained to yield to 
 other spoliators ; the kingdom of the Ikhschidites was over¬ 
 thrown, and that of the Phatimites established.! 
 
 Their domination over Syria was subverted by that of 
 Malek Schah, the third sultan of the Seljoucid Turks, whose 
 kingdom extended to the frontier of China. But, mighty 
 conqueror as he was, like his father, Alp-Arslan, the con¬ 
 quest of Syria was no easy task. Bent on the destruction 
 of the Phatimites, he first sent into that land a powerful 
 army, under the command of his cousin Solyman, in order 
 to reduce it to his obedience. After a long siege, reduced 
 to famime, Damascus surrendered. Emesa, and a great 
 part of Syria, as far as Antioch, yielded to his power; but, 
 having penetrated into Egypt, his army was repelled from 
 thence, and, returning to Syria, ravaged it anew, and pillaged 
 Jerusalem.X Contending armies flocked to the land of Is¬ 
 rael, the scene of a renewed warfare, in which not its fate 
 
 * Gibbon’s Hist., x., p. 88-91. t De Gulgues, tom. ii., p. 152-154. Herbelot. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 216. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 175 
 
 alone, but that of powerful rival dynasties, was decided. 
 The war was carried on throughout all parts of Syria. The 
 King of Moussul besieged Aleppo* The brother having 
 followed the cousin of Malek Schah at the head of Turkish 
 armies, the severity of the contest demanded the presence 
 of that monarch himself to achieve the conquest of Syria. 
 The prey of the Phaiimites for a hundred years was torn 
 from their grasp. It might seem that when a mighty con¬ 
 queror won it, its possession would have been secure for 
 ages ; but no sooner had it fallen into the hands of the Sel- 
 joucian princes than they warred with one another, and 
 Syria resumed its wonted character of a kingdom divided 
 against itself. But its past wars were as petty enterprises, 
 when the time was come in which, more than ever on any 
 spot on earth, Syria was the arena of conflicts in which all 
 the world took part, and the prize for which it fought. 
 
 “ Destruction upon destruction is cried,” said the prophet 
 concerning the land of Israel, and its history is a continued 
 echo to the cry. The experiment has been tried, and need 
 not be repealed, whether nations called Christian can estab¬ 
 lish “ the kingdom of Jerusalem” while the Jews are not 
 there, and any other throne than that of the Son of David 
 set up. 
 
 From the days of Alexander the Great, the dynasties of 
 Seleucus and Ptolemy, in Assyria and Egypt, alternately 
 lorded over Palestine, though the tribe of Judah continued 
 unbroken. On the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, 
 their supremacy was undisputed, and Syria was a province 
 of the empire till the Arabs of the desert subdued the de¬ 
 generate sons of the conquerors of the world. In a brief 
 space, whenever the dismemberment of the Saracenic Em¬ 
 pire began, hordes of spoliators flocked successively, and 
 sometimes simultaneously, under chiefs aspiring to its sov¬ 
 ereignty, from all the surrounding countries. But a new' 
 era in its history, unique in that of the world, commenced 
 with the Crusades. 
 
 The siege of Antiocht (A.D. 1098) was the first grand 
 essay of the Crusaders within the bounds of the patrimonial 
 inheritance of Israel. A brief notice of the siege may con- 
 
 * De Guignes, tom. ii., p. 217. 
 
 t Willermi Tyrensis, Archiep. Hist., p. 686-727. De Guignes’ Hist., tom. iii., 
 p. 85, &c. 
 
176 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 vey some idea of the wars in Syria which then began. 
 Antioch, at the close of the tenth century, was a glorious 
 and noble city, the third, if not the second, in greatness and 
 rank, after Rome, being esteemed by many superior to Al¬ 
 exandria.* A few years previous to its siege, the greater 
 part of the walls had been thrown down by an earthquake ; 
 but the time was not come in which they were suffered to 
 lie for many days, as now for many ages, in ruins. For 
 seven months it defied all the power and art of hosts of cru¬ 
 saders, headed by many valiant knights of Europe ; and 
 though reduced to famine, it was taken by stratagem rather 
 than by force. The merciless conquerors disgraced the 
 Christian name alike by the gross immoralities practised 
 during the siege, befitting the votaries of Apollo, but mon¬ 
 strous in the reputed followers of the cross, and by the sav¬ 
 age atrocities committed in the day of their stolen triumph. 
 The city w^as given for a prey. The Archbishop of Tyre, 
 the chief historian of the Crusades, confesses that the pillage 
 was universal and the slaughter indiscriminate, while the 
 shrieks of the women were everywhere heard amid the pre¬ 
 vailing carnage, and that in one day ten thousand citizens 
 were slain, whose unburied bodies covered the highways. 
 The houses of the rich were first sought out, broken open, 
 and pillaged by bands of the Crusaders. Fathers, mothers, 
 children, and servants were put to the sword. Vases, gold, 
 silver, costly vestures, &:c., were seized and shared by the 
 rapacious and murderous conquerors.f Other historians 
 relate that in the sack of the city a hundred thousand per» 
 ished, and that the captured treasures were immense.;|: 
 The city taken became speedily again like a besieged city, 
 within which its victors were shut up. But their fanatical 
 courage, roused by the reputed discovery of the lance that 
 pierced the side of Christ, bore them victorious through a 
 fierce battle, fought with a vast army of Persians who had 
 come too tardily, and all in vain, to the rescue of Antioch. 
 The gold and silver taken in the spoil w'ere converted into 
 candlesticks, crosses, chalices, priestly vestments, and other 
 church utensils. The altars that the Moslems had thrown 
 dow^n were re erected ; the images were restored, and when 
 fractured, renewed ; the patriarchate of Antioch was re-es¬ 
 tablished, in all the plenitude of pontifical authority. After 
 
 t Ibid., p. 711. 
 
 Will. Tyr., p. 727. 
 
 * Will. Tyr., p. 686. 
 t I >0 Guignes, ibid., p. 93. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 177 
 
 the immolation of thousands of victims and the sack of one 
 of the richest cities in the world, the church began to reap 
 the secular fruits of the secular war it had provoked, to 
 which it were profanation to give the name of holy; and 
 as many a churchman bore lance in the tented field, bishop¬ 
 rics were speedily established throughout the neighbouring 
 cities which had been wont to hold a cathedral dignity. 
 Such was the nature, and such were some of the results of 
 the first conquest in Syria, so soon as the Crusaders were 
 established in that city, where men of the purest morals and 
 of the most peaceful habits, the children of a kingdom not 
 of this world, in whose hearts Jesus reigned, and who pro¬ 
 fessed the faith as it is in Him in all its simplicity, were 
 first called Christians. 
 
 A summary the most succinct may be given of the cru¬ 
 sading wars within the bounds of Syria, as they bore most 
 disastrously on its state; and as they illustrate what was 
 the strength of its cities, from the sieges they withstood, 
 how goodly was the prize for which Christendom and Mo¬ 
 hammedanism contended for ages—how the cause of the 
 desolation of so many cities may be patent to the world— 
 how strangers devoured the land —and how the land itself, 
 not unavenged, bereaved the nations of men, in a more re¬ 
 markable manner and degree than any other country ever 
 did. To mark the nature of these wars, as witnessed by 
 the first glance at Antioch, is to see their end. The king¬ 
 dom which it was their object to establish, though nominally 
 that of Jerusalem, could not stand. 
 
 The strong city of Alhara, two days’ journey south of 
 Antioch, was next besieged, and its citizens forced to an 
 unconditional surrender by the Count of Toulouse, who, on 
 the capture of the city and subjugation of the adjoining ter¬ 
 ritory, immediately set over it a bishop, on whom he con¬ 
 ferred the half of the city and of all the territory. A se¬ 
 verer fate awaited Maarah, also a strongly-fortified city, eight 
 miles distant. The besiegers and the besieged launched on 
 each other Greek fire, stones, and enormous rocks ; and 
 hives full of bees were also cast on the assailants. In spite 
 of the desperate resistance of the inhabitants, the city was 
 taken by force ; the Franks (a more befitting name than 
 that of Christians) entered it sword in hand, and the inhab¬ 
 itants were delivered to the fury of the soldiers.* The 
 
 * Will. Tyr., p. 733. 
 
178 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 Arab historians relate that an offered treaty caused division 
 in the city, profiting by which the enemy entered, and 
 slaughtered both parties. Some escaped the general mas¬ 
 sacre, who had fled to a palace, and were made prisoners, 
 whom manacles awaited. A city so fair, and a territory so 
 fertile, tempted the stay of some of the heroes of the Cru¬ 
 sades who had come from Europe to set Jerusalem free. 
 The wrath of their fanatic followers was thereby provoked, 
 whoj when vainly vociferating to be led on to the Holy City, 
 forced their departure by razing to the foundations the tow¬ 
 ers and walls of Maarali* 
 
 Intimidated, it may be, by such massacres, the cities of 
 Caesarea, Hamah, Emesa, Ramlah, and a great number of 
 other cities of Syria, suffering the Crusaders to pass, main¬ 
 tained with them a temporary peace. To escape pillage, 
 they brought food to the invaders ; those which dared to 
 resist were taken by assault; and thus passing through the 
 states of the princes of Syria, they reached Jerusalem.! 
 
 The sack of Jerusalem, after a siege of forty days, was 
 no less horrible than that of Antioch. So great was the 
 slaughter of the enemy, says the Archbishop of Tyre, and 
 so great the effusion of blood, that it could even strike the 
 victors with horror. Within the precincts of the Temple 
 ten thousand were slain, and not a lesser number in the 
 streets. The rest of the army, not engaged in such gen¬ 
 eral massacre, searched throughout the lanes and houses 
 for those who, in fear of death, sought concealment, and 
 dragged them forth openly to execution, to be slain like 
 beasts.J According to other historians, a hundred thousand 
 perished.^ The old and infirm were all slain ; the women 
 were seized; those who were spared were made prisoners. 
 The spoil in gold, silver, and gems, together with sixty-six 
 chandeliers of gold and silver, was incalculable, or, as ex¬ 
 pressed, of infinite abundance.|| 
 
 The loss of so many cities and so great wealth spread 
 consternation among all the Mussulmen. When the tidings 
 of the fall of Jerusalem reached Bagdad, and some fugitives 
 were introduced to the divan of the caliph, all wept at the 
 melancholy tale, and tore their beards in their bitter lam¬ 
 entations. But, says the historian, they could give nothing 
 
 * Will. Tyr., p. 734. De Guigiies, tom. iii., p. 98. 
 
 t De Guignes, tom. iii., p. 99. t Will. Tyr., p. 759. 
 
 § De Guignes’ Hist., tom. iii, p. 99. U WiU. Tjt., 759-761. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 179 
 
 but their tears ; they had none to send to chase the Franks 
 from Syria.* The Jirst wo had then passed. But by im¬ 
 penitent wickedness, and aggravated iniquities, and the res¬ 
 toration of idolatry throughout Syria, and in Jerusalem it¬ 
 self, the way was speedily preparing for the second. The 
 conquering Crusaders, then instruments in the execution of 
 judgments, had, in other days, to supply illustrations that, 
 though hand join in hand, iniquity shall not pass unpunished 
 —that vengeance belongs unto the Lord, and that He will 
 repay. 
 
 The short reign, for a single year, of Godfrey, duke of 
 Lorraine,! instead of being sufficient for the consolidation 
 of a new kingdom, or the restoration of peace to Palestine, 
 was not only imbittered with contests with the patriarch to 
 whom he conceded the fourth part of the city, but was 
 scarcely begun when the prince of Egypt, then the most 
 potent in the East, advanced with vast hosts in order to drive 
 out the “ barbarian” invaders. The spirit of fanaticism had 
 been roused anew by the capture of Jerusalem, and again 
 they overthrew their enemies near to Ascalon ; but that city, 
 which afterward threatened Jerusalem, they did not then 
 venture to assault, and they laid siege to Tyre in vain.J 
 
 Baldwin, the second king, had to fight his way from 
 Edessa to Jerusalem; and the history of his reign of eigh¬ 
 teen years is chiefly comprised in that of sieges and battles, 
 from one extremity of Syria to the other. Neither unity, 
 righteousness, nor peace prevailed in Jerusalem. The pa¬ 
 triarch, w'ho had sought to appropriate as his own the whole 
 city, fearing the approach of the king, betook himself to the 
 Church of Zion. Baldwin besieged Ascalon in vain. The 
 lawless inhabitants of the plains, freed from the dominion 
 of their former tyrants, and not courting the protection of a 
 Christian prince, fled before him, and sought refuge in caves, 
 from whence they were driven by fire and suffocating smoke, 
 and compelled thereby to an unconditional surrender. On 
 his passing to the land of Moab, and the more northern re¬ 
 gions east of the Jordan, the inhabitants deserted the plains 
 and fled to the mountains ; but, rushing suddenly on a large 
 band of them by night, while most of the men escaped, the 
 new possessors of Palestine seized the women and the chil¬ 
 dren, and all their substance for a prey, and carried with them 
 
 t WiU. Tyr., p. 763-775. t Ibid., p. 781, 782. 
 
 ♦ De Guignes, p. 99. 
 
SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 immense spoil (spolia infinita) and a vast number of cam¬ 
 els,* &c. Such was the mode of what was called Chris¬ 
 tian domination in Syria. 
 
 Presuming on Divine aid, the king, having collected all 
 his forces, went forth to extend his kingdom, and laid siege 
 to Arsur or Antipatris, which, after fierce assaults, and a 
 breach in the walls of the castle, was taken. The renown¬ 
 ed Ccesarea was next his prey. Besieged by sea and land 
 with projectile machines placed around, one of which, of 
 marvellous height, was far higher than the walls, the low¬ 
 ers and walls were shaken, the houses within were broken 
 down, and the incessant assaults gave no rest to the citi¬ 
 zens. The resistance became feebler from day to day, the 
 assaults more fierce and determined ; the walls were sud¬ 
 denly scaled and occupied; the king entered with his for¬ 
 ces into the city, thus taken at last by storm. Caesarea had 
 rivalled Antioch. Each was built in honour of a king ; 
 each was the seat of royalty, and the scene of gayety, where 
 princely games were celebrated, and the citizens rioted in 
 godless pleasures: and the one could now cope with the 
 other in the horrors of the siege and sack, those of Caesarea 
 equalling those of Antioch, of which they were a counter¬ 
 part. The cool description of the archbishop may indicate 
 how familiar were such scenes to the knights and priests 
 of the Crusades, and how the raising anew of one archiepis- 
 copal throne after another was preluded by the outpouring 
 of torrents of blood. 
 
 The armed soldiers, running everywhere throughout the 
 city, took possession of the courts and strongholds where 
 the citizens sought safety, broke open the houses, and, put¬ 
 ting many to death, seized all that was valuable. Of those 
 whom they found in the streets and lanes of the city it is 
 needless to speak {superjliium est disserere), since even 
 those who carefully betook themselves to passages and se¬ 
 cret places could not escape the carnage. On an elevated 
 part of the city, where formerly stood a temple of admirable 
 workmanship, erected by Herod in honour of Augustus, 
 there was a public oratory. Thither, in the hope of con¬ 
 certing means for their safety, most of the citizens had fled, 
 to the place where orations were wont to be made. But 
 there was then another war-than that of words. When it 
 was burst open by the foe, such was the carnage, that the 
 
 * WiU. Tyr., p. 781, 782. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 181 
 
 feet of the slayers were imbrued in the blood of the slain, 
 and the multitude of corpses was a horrible spectacle. In 
 the oratory was found a vase of the brightest green, like an 
 emerald, which the Genoese purchased at a great price, as 
 an ornament for their church! In various parts of the city 
 almost all the adult inhabitants were slain, and scarcely was 
 mercy shown to youths of either sex. “ Here, indeed, we 
 may behold to the letter,” says the archbishop, “ what was 
 written by the prophet, ‘ The Lord delivered their valiant 
 men into captivity, and their strong men into the hands of 
 the enemy.’ Therefore, when the sword was at rest, and 
 the slaughter of the people consummated, all the spoil and 
 the household effects were collected together, and, accord¬ 
 ing to agreement, the third part was allotted to the Genoese, 
 and the rest to the king’s household followers. Here, for 
 the first time, our people, who had entered the country poor 
 and needy, and had laboured under great want till that day, 
 now loaded with booty and enriched with money, began to 
 live sumptuously. The king, being recalled by urgent af¬ 
 fairs, having chosen as archbishop one named Baldwin who 
 had come to the expedition under Godfrey, and having left 
 a garrison in the city, ha.stened with the rest of the troops 
 to Ramlah.”* 
 
 Anything approaching to a full detail of the incessant 
 wars by which Syria was ravaged throughout all its borders 
 would fill a large volume. As there was no rest for the 
 Jews scattered throughout the world, the land itself had 
 none from the many nations which came up against it. 
 The alternation of victory and defeat, and of the capture and 
 renewed siege of cities, gave no pause to the work of 
 slaughter, spoliation, and destruction. The l^nd of Israel 
 became, as it were, an outspread altar, in which human 
 sacrifices were offered continually. Its numerous fortified 
 cities, in the hands of hostile princes, became its bane rath¬ 
 er than its defence. City was set against city, as army 
 against army. The envirosis of a fortified town w’ere no 
 sooner ravaged and laid waste, than, on the withdrawing of 
 the foe, its revengeful inhabitants sallied forth to retaliate 
 'the wrong, wherever a defenceless city could be found ; 
 and Jerusalem itself was thus repeatedly assailed. 
 
 Such was the insecurity of the throne of Jerusalem, that, 
 soon after the capture of Caesarea, the king was a solitary 
 
 * Will. Tyr., Hist., p. 784, 785. 
 
 Q 
 
182 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 fugitive. Advancing to repel the invading Egyptians, he 
 discomfited them in the first encounter on the plains of 
 Ramlah, with the slaughter of 5000 men. Returning with 
 a fourfold re-enforcement, they wreaked their vengeance 
 on the vanquished army of the Crusaders, the remnant of 
 which found refuge within the walls of Ramlah. Escaping 
 from thence to Antipatris, the king rallied his forces, and 
 reconquered his enemies. The cause of the Crusades re¬ 
 vived. Tortosa was taken by new emigrants from Europe. 
 The intrepid Tancred assembled all his forces in the north 
 of Syria, and besieged the noble city of Apamea, then the 
 capital of Coele-Syria, by the capture of which he greatly 
 extended the boundaries of his principality. Laodicea, peo¬ 
 pled by Greeks, submitted to his authority. Ptolemais, 
 which repelled a first siege, fell in the second. Tripoli was 
 taken by stratagem : Berytus, after a siege by sea and 
 land. Danes and Norwegians, descending on Syria, len‘ 
 their aid to the siege and capture of Sidon.* 
 
 These temporary triumphs of the Crusaders, having 
 roused the fear and vengeance of their enemies, brought on 
 them new hosts of foes.f While the Egyptians fought in 
 vain with Baldwin in the south of Syria, the King of Mous- 
 sul and other Moslem princes, with an army of 60,000 
 Turks, assailed the Franks in the north of Syria. The 
 King of Aleppo, at the head of half that number, threatened 
 Damascus, of which, while in previous amity with the Cru¬ 
 saders, he had been constituted the protector. The new 
 war, carried on with varied success and manifold desola¬ 
 tions, terminated in favour of the Crusaders, who became 
 masters of Ariesia. But new enemies speedily arose : 
 among others, the Assassins, who gave rise to the name 
 which appropriately designates them, and were dangerous 
 alike to Christians and Mussulmen. They seized Apamea, 
 which was besieged and retaken. Thoghteghin, king of 
 Damascus, again and again ravaged the territories of Tibe¬ 
 rias and Sidon, and blockaded #iese cities. He destroyed 
 the fortress of ArcJias, and the environs of Tyre, of which 
 he raised the siege ; while the Syrians revolting, besieged 
 Damascus. The previous armies that had passed the Eu¬ 
 phrates having sunk before European valour, the Sultan of 
 Persia summoned all the Mussulmen to a religious war, 
 and 200,000 Turkish troops were mustered in the armies 
 
 * Will, Tyr., p. 786-9, &c, t De Guignes’ Hiat., tom. iii., p, 103,108, 'passim. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 183 
 
 of Syria. The King of Damascus joined his forces with 
 those of Maudoud (Menduc), a powerful Persian prince, 
 who besieged Tiberias for three months, and ravaged all 
 its vicinity."^ “ There was no end,” says the archbishop, 
 “ of the infinite multitude that broke into the kingdom of 
 
 O 
 
 Jerusalem.” They laid waste the plains and harassed the 
 cities. The Crusaders in vain strove to withstand them, 
 and were defeated and pursued with so great and unspa¬ 
 ring slaughter, that the king himself, casting away the stand¬ 
 ard which he bore, and the patriarch, together with other 
 princes who accompanied them, were scarcely saved by 
 flying to the mountains. The army of the enemy, in separ¬ 
 ate divisions spread over the plains, converted the highways 
 into scenes of slaughter, ravaged the land by fire and sword, 
 devastated the suburban regions, assaulted walled cities, 
 and passed as freely throughout Syria as if it had been sub¬ 
 ject to their sole dominion (A.D. 1013). The Saracens of 
 the land united with the invaders : and such was the terror 
 that reigned throughout all the kingdom, that no one dared 
 to be seen beyond the walls. Enemies from the south, as 
 well as from the north and east, rushed on the miserable 
 kingdom of Jerusalem ; and that city itself was besieged 
 by the Ascalonites, as it had previously been threatened by 
 the Turks.”t 
 
 Some of the cities of Syria, though secure against their 
 foes, were visited at the same time by terrible and exten¬ 
 sive earthquakes. Several cities were reduced to heaps of 
 stone, and the inhabitants dispersed throughout the plains, 
 while many perished in the ruins. But the sword did not 
 rest, though the fortune of war was changed. Turks, when 
 victorious, strove, like the Christians, for the prey. The 
 King of Damascus united with the Franks ; and when 
 Maudoud had been assassinated, the Sultan of Persia sent 
 another army of 46,000 men across the Euphrates (A.D. 
 1115). They entered the territory of Antioch, and besieged 
 Ro/ia, where many Franks and Armenians were slain ; 
 they laid waste all the environs of Samosata and Saro(u,dge, 
 or Rugia, and many other neighbouring cities which belonged 
 to the Franks, and made prisoner William of Percy, who 
 commanded that country. Hamah, then a city of the King 
 of Damascus, was besieged and taken, and given up to pil¬ 
 lage. But their desolating career was stayed. Many ene- 
 
 * De Guignes’ Hist., tom. iii., p. Ill, 118. t Will. Tyr., p. 807, 808. 
 
184 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 mies combined against them ; and, being suddenly assailed 
 when separated in three divisions, one of these fell under 
 the arms of the Franks, another perished in the River Phar- 
 phar, and the third was attacked and defeated by Thoghte- 
 ghin, who slew of them 3000 men.* His peace with the 
 Crusaders was speedily at an end ; and when a band of 
 Turks sought to take possession of Raphania, they all fell 
 beneath his sword. The kingdom of Aleppo became a 
 province of the Otrokides, who thenceforth carried on a 
 vigorous war with the Franks, who had driven them from 
 Judea. 
 
 Such was the reign of Baldwin, the first of the name who 
 was King of Jerusalem. That of his son was not less 
 bloody, nor less checkered with triumph and disasters, or 
 less uniform in the multiplicity of the desolating raids of the 
 spoliators of Syria. The military events which were con¬ 
 centrated in his reign of twelve years are too numerous to 
 be defined, and the mere recital of the chief of them may 
 show how that country continued unceasingly to be a troub¬ 
 led and a bleeding land. On the south, in the first year 
 of his reign, it was invaded by an Egyptian army, desig¬ 
 nated an infinite multitude ; to repel which, the king with¬ 
 drew his forces from Tripoli and Antioch.f In the west, 
 Gazzi, general of the Turkomans, joined with other foes, 
 invaded the territories of Antioch and Aleppo ; and, obtain¬ 
 ing the mastery, carried on an exterminating war. Roger, 
 prince of Antioch, was slain, and his newly-recruited army 
 annihilated. The king, hastening to the combat, defeated 
 his enemies in a desperate battle, in which 4000 of them 
 fell.;]: A new invasion of the same region occupied his 
 collected forces ; while the King of Damascus, allied with 
 the Arabs, ravaged the territory of Tiberias. With a re¬ 
 venge that slumbered not, the king besieged Gerasa, took 
 and razed it.^ Called from thence to rescue his kingdom 
 from the frequent and fierce irruptions of Balac, a powerful 
 Turkish prince, the king himself was taken, and, bound 
 with chains, was carried beyond the Euphrates.1| The 
 kingless kingdom, again also the prey of Egypt, was, as in 
 the days of his father, threatened with extinction. But the 
 crusading phrensy was still strong in Europe, and myriads 
 rushed to the field of blood into which the whole land of 
 
 * De Guides, p. 114, 115. t Will. Try., p. 818. t Will. Tyr., p. 823. 
 
 ^ De Guignes, p. 117. I! WiU. Tyr., p. 825. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 185 
 
 Israel had been converted. The Duke of Venice timely 
 arrived with a numerous fleet, w^hich, as the record bears, 
 gloriously triumphed over that of Egypt. Baalbec was be¬ 
 sieged by Balac ; Jerusalem was again repeatedly assailed ; 
 and' Tyre, after a vigorous, bloody, and long-protracted 
 siege, reduced by famine rather than by force, surrendered 
 by capitulation. 
 
 The fall of Tyre roused anew all the forces of the East 
 against the countries possessed by the Franks.* Baldwin, 
 released after a captivity of eighteen months, again headed 
 his armies, and paid his ransom with the blood of his ene¬ 
 mies. The latter part of his reign was a repetition of the 
 first, in incessant contests, of varied issues, and in different 
 localities, wdth Egyptians, Turks, and Arabs, &c.; but, 
 whoever prevailed, the land was ever ravaged. The city 
 of Raphania, in the country of Apamea, was taken by the 
 king and the Count of Tripoli, after a siege of eighteen days. 
 Maarah w^as besieged, and all Coele-Syria, in the ordinary 
 phraseology of such histories, was entirely ravaged by the 
 Turks. Of two successive expeditions against Damascus, 
 the first had no other result than the abundance of the spoil; 
 in the second, undertaken on the promise that the city would 
 be delivered into their hands by the chief of the Assassins, 
 who possessed many castles in the vicinity of Paneas, the 
 Franks, apprized of the massacre within the walls of Da¬ 
 mascus of 6000 of their treacherous allies, abandoned the 
 enterprise, accounting it happiness, which many of them did 
 not enjoy, to escape with their lives. Such was the last 
 exploit of Baldwin the Second,! A.D. 1131. 
 
 Two intestine contests for supremacy in the north of 
 Syria were not, in its commencement, the presage of a 
 peaceful reign to Fulco, the successor of Baldwin the Sec¬ 
 ond. Invited by the princes of Antioch to settle their troub¬ 
 led state, at a time when princely cities of Syria were gift¬ 
 ed as dowries, the Prince of Tripoli refused him a passage 
 through his territory ; “ the soldiers of the Cross,” adding a 
 still deeper stain to the name, drawn up in battle array, 
 fought with each other in a long-doubtful battle, till the for¬ 
 ces of the count were vanquished by those of the king.! In 
 Coele-Syria a war was carried on between rival brothers, 
 Ismael and Mohammed, sons of the deceased King of Da¬ 
 mascus. The fortresses of Ras and Lebona were taken and 
 
 t Ibid., p. 122-123. t Will. Tyr., p. 854, 855. 
 
 Q2 
 
 » Do Guignes, p. 120. 
 
ISO 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 retaken, and Baalbec was besieged. The troublous times 
 gave no respite to war ; and while the King of Jerusalem 
 was occupied before Joppa, Paneas (Caesarea Philippi) was 
 l)esieged and taken by Ismael, king of Damascus. A tem¬ 
 porary peace between these monarchs served but to change 
 the seat of war. Ismael invaded the territories of the Count 
 of Tripoli, defeated him in battle under the citadel of Monte 
 Pellegrino, made him prisoner, and slew him.^ His son 
 and successor, Raimond, assailed in his devastated territory 
 by a ferocious but skilful chief, Zenghi, who proved his 
 title to the name of Sanguinus, given him by the Franks, 
 invoked the aid of the King of Jerusalem, who hastened 
 with a large army to his succour. Sanguinus, who had be¬ 
 sieged the city of Raphania, and grievously afflicted its in¬ 
 habitants, encountered with a large and powerful army the 
 forces of the king, and, having defeated them with great 
 slaughter, put the Crusaders to flight, and pressing hard on 
 the vanquished monarch, besieged him and his chieftains in 
 the castle of Mount Ferrard, into which they had fled as the 
 nearest asylum. 
 
 Open to devastation as the kingdom of Jerusalem then 
 was, its enemies on every side,f eager for the conquest or 
 renewed possession of Syria, were not slack in their efforts 
 to attain it. The inhabitants of Ascalon, which then per¬ 
 tained to Egypt, defeated the intrepid Rainald, who bore the 
 title of bishop, but who was a bold soldier in carnal warfare, 
 and previously distinguished for his military exploits.J 
 While the congregated forces of the Crusaders were hast¬ 
 ening to the rescue of their king, Ismael pillaged and burn¬ 
 ed the city of Napolous, and afterward turned his arms 
 against Hamah, which Zenghi had previously taken by sur¬ 
 prise. Having retaken it, together with the castle, he pil¬ 
 laged Schizor (Caesarea), and returned to Damascus. Arabs, 
 Turks, Greeks and Persians, Egyptians and Turkomans, 
 thus successively vied with Franks in their crusading ca¬ 
 reer. Ismael besieged and took the fortress of Schokaef; 
 and this conquest having displeased the Franks, they retal¬ 
 iated the wrong by reassembling their forces in the Haou- 
 ran, which Ismael again repaid by an irruption into the 
 country of Tiberias. Such was the tyranny of that lord of 
 Damascus, who had repeatedly laid waste large portions of 
 Syria, that, slain by his servants, his subjects exulted in his 
 
 * De Guignes, tom. iii., p. 124. t Will. Tyr., p. 866, 867. I Ibid., p. 868. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 187 
 
 death.*' The regent of his kingdom offered twenty thou¬ 
 sand pieces of gold monthly to the Franks to aid him 
 against Zenghi, the founder of the dynasty of Attabeks in 
 Syria (originally officers of the Seljoucides of Persia). 
 Their joint armies laid siege to Paneas, which city, when 
 taken, he offered to deliver to the Franks. 
 
 Before this seemingly unhallowed league was formed by 
 Crusaders and the enemies of the faith, Christians had con¬ 
 tended with Christians for the possession both of Antioch 
 and CcEsarea, and the extensive intervening regions ; and 
 both these cities had been besieged, while in possession of 
 the Franks, by the Emperor of Constantinople, and suffered 
 severely from his assaults.f Scarcely had the emperor with¬ 
 drawn from Syria, when the king, congregating his forces, 
 passed the Jordan to besiege a fortress in Gilead, which 
 grievously annoyed the terrsttories of the Franks, when a 
 band of Turks, seizing the opportunity of ravaging Palestine, 
 took possession of the town of Tekoa, the city of Amos and 
 Habakkuk, the inhabitants of which fled at their approach. 
 Robert of Burgundy, arriving in Jerusalem, having endeav¬ 
 oured to repulse them, was defeated with great slaughter, 
 and many nobles were slain. The Crusaders needed Mos¬ 
 lem aid to attempt the siege of Paneas. 
 
 The King of Damascus was called from the siege of 
 Paneas to the defence of his own capital; the Bathenians 
 or Assassins took the famous fortress of Masat, near to 
 Tripoli, where they long established themselves in the ad¬ 
 joining mountains, under their chiefs, who bore successive¬ 
 ly the long-dreaded name of the “ Old Man of the Mount¬ 
 ain.” As the power of the Seljoucides became more and 
 more feeble in Syria, that of the Attabeks arose. Led on b}'- 
 Zenghi, they added daily to their conquests in the territo¬ 
 ries of Damascus, and in those also of the Franks.J Fearful 
 for Antioch, and, consequently, for all Syria, the Crusaders 
 in Palestine invoked the aid of all the princes of Europe, 
 to save the Holy Land from the threatened domination of the 
 infidels. St. Bernard, the abbot of Clairvaux, was the Pe¬ 
 ter the Hermit of the second crusade. Encouraged by the 
 pope, he did not plead with kings in vain. The King of 
 France, Louis the Seventh, enlisting as a soldier in the 
 holy war, along with a great number of the princes of 
 
 * De Guignes, vol. iii., p. 124, 125. t Will. Tyr., p. 871-883. 
 
 t De Guignes, p. 129. 
 
188 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 France, took the cross (se croiserent) at Vezelay. The em¬ 
 peror, Conrad III., rivalling the king in holy zeal, and with 
 him a part of Germany coping with France, resolved to un¬ 
 dertake the deliverance of Palestine. There they first as- 
 
 a' 
 
 sembled at Ptolemais. This storm, says De Guignes, which 
 seemed to have been raised for the destruction of the Atta- 
 beks, at that time the most powerful enemies of the Franks, 
 burst impetuously on the kingdom of Damascus, the regent 
 of which, seeking deliverance from their common enemy, 
 courted the alliance of the Franks. But Damascus was the 
 richest remaining prize in Syria; and three kings, those of 
 Jerusalem, of Germany, and of France, heading their re¬ 
 spective hosts, sat down together in hostile array before it. 
 On the north and west, contiguous orchards formed, as it 
 were, a forest five miles broad, which itself was reckoned 
 among the fortifications of Damascus. To feed on its abun¬ 
 dant and delicious fruits, some of which were new to the 
 taste of many German Crusaders, as well as to bereave the 
 inhabitants of them, the Franks, after desperate and bloody 
 conflicts, held the princely forest as their own, and drove 
 those, whose enemies they were, within the walls of the 
 city. In a protracted siege, the citizens began to despair 
 of safety, and to meditate flight. But the hope of conquest 
 became the cause of contention. The second Crusaders, 
 more rash than the first, disputed for the prize before it was 
 won. The purposed possession, or division of the uncon¬ 
 quered city, broke up the unity of its besiegers. There was 
 thus jealousy, if not treachery, in the camp. The mode of 
 assault was changed ; the ground that had been gained was 
 lost; the King of Moussul drew near with an army for the 
 defence of the city ; it was time for the chief of the Atta- 
 beks to display the power which they had come to destroy ; 
 and the siege that could not be renewed was raised, and the 
 King of Jerusalem, as before, together with the Emperor 
 of Germany and the King of France, left a country which 
 they had laid waste, but a city which they could neither 
 take nor destroy, and which joyfully and proudly witnessed 
 the retreat of the baffled monarchs."^ 
 
 The numerous armies which, in the middle of the twelfth 
 century, arrived in Syria from Europe, might, in the estima¬ 
 tion of a historian, “ have been amply sufficient, by their 
 combined energies, to overthrow the rising empire of the 
 
 * De Guignes, p. 129-131. Will. Tyr., p. 910-913. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 189 
 
 Attabeks.” But so greatly was their power paralyzed by 
 their dissensions, that they could not preserve from the rav¬ 
 ages and rapacity of their enemies the territory and the 
 cities of the kingdom of Jerusalem, which they had come 
 to uphold and to extend. Though the Attabeks warred with 
 each other, and thus added to the devastation of the land, 
 the valiant and famous Noureddin was ever ready to en¬ 
 counter and repel the Crusaders, though headed by Chris¬ 
 tian knights and kings. He defeated them at Tagra. So 
 soon as they retreated from Damascus, he besieged the cas¬ 
 tle of Nessa, encountering which, Raimond, prince of An¬ 
 tioch, was defeated in battle and slain ; and his head, as a 
 trophy of victory, was sent to Bagdad. J'he triumph of 
 Noureddin spread consternation among all the Franks. 
 The terriiory of Antioch was next his prey; and he pene¬ 
 trated even to the monastery of St. Simeon and the mount- 
 
 •/ 
 
 airvs beyond it. He took the castle of Harem, about ten 
 miles from Antioch, and garrisoned it strongly. It repelled 
 the attacks of the King of Jerusalem; and he who so re¬ 
 cently had pressed the siege of Damascus, fled for safety 
 to Antioch. Noureddin wasted all its territories. He be¬ 
 sieged and took the castle of Apamea, one of the strongest 
 fortresses held by the Franks in that vicinity when they 
 pillaged the land of Hamah. Joscelin, count of Edessa, 
 was the reputed “ flail” of the Mussulmen. Noureddin 
 assembled the Turkomans against him and slew him. 
 Baldwin drew his forces to Antioch. The Emperor of 
 Constantinople purchased from the widowed countess, at a 
 large price, the country she was unable to defend ; and his 
 Greek soldiers took possession of city after city that then 
 remained in the hands of the Franks. But they were 
 speedily driven from them all by the victorious Noureddin, 
 and, together with the retreating king, made Antioch their 
 refuge. Noureddin filled the whole region with his legions. 
 Bitter were the lamentations when the Crusaders who had 
 settled in the fertile region which skirts the base of the 
 mountains of Amanus, abandoned it to infidels, and passed 
 as defeated and desolated pilgrims from the land of which 
 they had taken possession, in the vain expectation that it 
 was destined to be theirs and that of their seed forever. 
 The patriarchate of Antioch was shorn at once of three 
 archbishoprics, Edessa, Hierapolis, and Coricensis.* Nour 
 
 * Will. Tyr., p. 920,921. 
 
190 
 
 SKETCH OF THE IHSTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 reddin greatly and speedily extended his dominion ; and 
 that prince of the Attabeks, whose power the first monarchs 
 of Europe had come to destroy, was lord of Damascus in 
 six years after they had besieged it in vain* (A.D. 1154). 
 
 The taking of Damascus gave him the sovereignty of its 
 kingdom. He laid siege to the strong city of Faneas, and 
 surrounded it with a great number of engines. A vast mul¬ 
 titude of Arabs was dispersed in its vicinity and occupied 
 the forest. The Franks, faithless to treaties, showed them 
 no mercy, and raised up against themselves the armies of 
 all the Mussulmen princes.f 
 
 While incessant war thus raged in the north, and a large 
 portion of Syria was lost forever to the Crusaders, the rest 
 of the land was not in a less troublous state, and they were 
 doomed at the same time to encounter other enemies than 
 the sovereign of the Attabeks. So insecure was the king¬ 
 dom of Jerusalem, that a multitude of Turks surrounded that 
 city, and, occupying the Mount of Olives, threatened it with 
 destruction;}: (A.D. 1152). Jerusalem was assailed in the 
 absence of the king, and while the greater part of the sol¬ 
 diery were assembled at Neapolis. Defenceless as it was, 
 its inhabitants, prompted by fanaticism and despair, seized 
 their arms, and, rushing furiously by night on their unsus¬ 
 pecting foes, drove them from the precincts of the holy 
 city. Pursuing them on the road to Jericho by a mountain¬ 
 ous route, they slew those in the more open places with the 
 sword, and precipitated others from rocks, while the slaugh¬ 
 ter was so great that the multitude of slain impeded their 
 pursuit. Vengeance overmastered avarice ; and the Chris¬ 
 tian inhabitants of Jerusalem dealt so relentlessly with their 
 unresisting foes, that they slew like beasts the dismounted 
 horsemen, wearied with their flight, and loaded with their 
 arms. Despising the spoil, and declining their share of the 
 booty, they were so fiercely bent on carnage, that they ac¬ 
 counted it to be the greatest gain to be imbrued with the 
 blood of their enemies.§ Such, literally, is the archbishop^s 
 description. He adds, that the flying Turks were met by 
 the soldiers of the cross from Neapolis, who had secured 
 the ford of the Jordan, that their enemies might not escape 
 them, who, fleeing thither for safety, rushed on slaughter. 
 As an illustration that the hand of the Lord was upon them, 
 he quotes the Scripture, That which the locust has left has 
 * De Guignes, p. 178. t Ibid., p. 179. t Will. Tyr., p. 922. i) Ibid., p. 923. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 191 
 
 the caterpillar eaten. The prophecy does, indeed, relate to 
 the desolators and desolation of the land of Israel. But 
 these words do not terminate the predicted judgment; and, 
 as interpreted by the prelate, the Crusaders themselves soon 
 supplied another illustration : for such relentless victors, 
 who returned to profane the Temple with their presence, 
 and the name of God with their praise, could not always 
 pass unpunished, but were rather made to know that the 
 hand of the Lord was also upon them, and that they were 
 not the people to keep the city of Jerusalem. Yet, as the 
 wicked of the earth who made a prey of the land—accord¬ 
 ing to the symbolical interpretation of the prelate, they 
 illustrated the word of the Lord —That which the palmer- 
 worm hath left hath the locust eaten ; and that which the locust 
 hath left hath the canker-worm eaten : and it is farther added, 
 as may farther be seen, that which the camker-worrn hath left 
 hath the caterpillar eaten.* The cry of destruction on de¬ 
 struction did not cease with the Crusades. 
 
 Victorious in the south, though vanquished in the north 
 of Syria, the Crusaders soon after pressed impetuously the 
 siege of Ascolon. They went at first to ravage its environs, 
 without the hope of taking or even the purpose of besieging 
 it. Such was the strength of the city, that, after having 
 resisted and repelled every attempt to take it for more than 
 half a century when other cities and fortresses of Syria had 
 yielded to the power and owned the authority of the Crusa¬ 
 ders, the task was not only felt to be arduous, but was 
 deemed almost impossible. It was not only the last fortress 
 of the Egyptians, or of the Phatimate dynasty in Syria, but 
 it seemed to stand alone—the impregnable Ascalon. Its 
 w'alls sheltered the warriors who had often struck Jerusalem 
 with terror, and its siege was made a trial of the strength 
 of Christendom. The king, the patriarch, the archbishops 
 of Tyre, Caesarea, and Nazareth, and the other lords of the 
 kingdom, both princes and prelates, and the soldiers of the 
 cross from all their cities, laid siege to it by land, together 
 with a fleet by sea. After a continued ineffective siege for 
 two months, while the approach of the great festival brought 
 many Crusaders to Palestine, other work, then deemed 
 strictly analogous and alike meritorious, had to be done, 
 than the keeping of a holy festival, even beside the sup¬ 
 posed sepulchre of Jesus. A royal interdict prohibited the 
 
 * Joel, i., 4. 
 
192 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 return of any Christian to Europe, and all were ordered to 
 betake themselves k) the siege, and every ship’s station 
 was appointed there. Thither flocked all the soldiers of 
 the cross, and the army was augmented daily. The whole 
 power of the Crusaders brought to bear upon this single 
 point, is an index of the strength of Ascalon, and of the im¬ 
 portance it maintained. Notwithstanding all that art and 
 arms could do, and all the desperate daring of the boldest 
 steel-clad knights of Europe, at a time when chivalry had 
 reached its height; and notwithstanding the massy rocks 
 thrown by vast engines into the city, and the moles and 
 towers that were raised against it, for month after month, 
 during which there was scarcely a day which slaughter 
 could not count its own, defiance was still shouted from the 
 walls and bulwarks of Ascalon ; and they withstood every 
 assault, till an elemental war, not to be resisted, brought 
 them partly down. The besieged, intent at all hazards on 
 the overthrow of a tower of the enemy, from which the most 
 destructive projectiles were cast into the city, filled the in¬ 
 tervening space with ignitable wood mixed with pitch, on 
 which oil was poured and all the most combustible materi¬ 
 als were heaped. But vt^hen the fire was at its height, a 
 tempest, rising suddenly, drove the flames in their utmost 
 fury, during the whole night, right against the contiguous 
 part of the city wall, which finally fell with a thundering 
 crash, that instantaneously appalled the city and roused 
 the whole army.* The rule of Christian—but truly most 
 unchristian—warfare was, that “ in taking a city by storm, 
 whatever any one first seized was his and his heirs’ for¬ 
 ever.” Honour and glory, even at the greatest or brightest, 
 are often but shadowy forms and empty names, and have 
 nothing of the substance of the faith of a Christian. Stimu¬ 
 lated by avarice no less than by honour, the noble Knights 
 of the Temple, with their master at their head, rushed into 
 the breach ; and that the richest spoil might be theirs alone, 
 they suffered none to follow them. Slain to a man, they 
 merited their fate. Ascalon would not yield to an uncon¬ 
 ditional surrender. It could yet make its terms with the 
 foe ; and its brave defenders, with, their wives and children, 
 and much of their goods, marched in safety from the city 
 where the Templars found a grave.* 
 
 The fall of Ascalon did not bring peace to Palestine. 
 
 * Will. Tyr., p. 923, 930. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 i93 # 
 
 A city was taken, but a treaty was broken. Baldwin had 
 sworn solemnly to maintain peace with the Turks and 
 Arabs, who at that time peacefully tended their flocks and 
 herds in the vicinity of Paneas. Dwelling mutually in 
 peace ; undisturbed by their Moslem brethren, as unitedly 
 members of hoth the great Mohammedan families ; secured 
 in their possessions by the very enemies of their faith, to 
 whom they had yielded their city only on that solemn 
 pledge—if there were any people in the land that could find 
 peace, these were they. Their flocks multiplied, their 
 wealth increased. But the king had many and urgent 
 creditors. His debts could not but be discharged, in hon¬ 
 our, by whatever means ; and as one king of Jerusalem had 
 paid his ransom by revenges on his enemies, another plun¬ 
 dered the property he was sworn to protect, and slew those 
 whom it was his duty to defend. The soldiers of the 
 cross—if that term which they bore may be used without 
 profanation—were summoned. From Jerusalem they went 
 forth ; and, headed by their king, rushed suddenly on help¬ 
 less multitudes, fearing nothing; and all who, on the sud¬ 
 den surprise, escaped not by flight and concealment in the 
 thickets of the forest, were put to the sword, or delivered 
 over to cruel servitude. Such and so unheard of was the 
 abundance of the prey as to be unparalleled in European 
 countries.* 
 
 The surreptitious spoil and murderous slaughter quickly 
 brought avenging woes on the king and his kingdom. All 
 the Moslems, whether Turks or Arabs, were thereby united 
 against him. Paneas was besieged by Noureddin with an 
 ardour unremitted by night or day ; defeated in a desperate 
 sally, the retreating citizens re-entered the city mingled 
 with their enemies, who with fearful slaughter forced them 
 into the castle. The kingji^nd his army, coming to their 
 relief, and falling into a ‘Ware, were unconsciously sur¬ 
 rounded by the forces of Noureddin, who exacted of them, 
 without mercy, the innocent blood they had shed. The 
 army was destroyed and dispersed; the king escaped with 
 extreme hazard of his life to the castle of Safed, and many 
 noble knights were made prisoners of war. > Noureddin 
 again besieged Paneas and its castle, which defied his 
 power till relieved again by the king, accompanied by the 
 
 * Facta est igitur nianul)iarum et prctsdie taata et tarn inaudita multitudo, ut par 
 ei in nostris regionibus non dicatur fuisse.—W, Tyr., p. 939. 
 
0 194 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 Prince of Antioch and the Count of Tripoli. He left it 
 little else than in ruins, from which it was speedily raised 
 again, at a time when cities and fortresses of Israel were 
 prizes contended for by princes and kings. 
 
 Amalric, his brother, succeeded Baldwin III., and was 
 king of Jerusalem from A.D. 1162 to A.D. 1173. Though 
 much remains to be told, enough may have been said to 
 show, with the definitiveness of historical facts, that in the 
 Middle Ages, Syria had cities that could withstand many a 
 fierce and lengthened siege; and that, while conqueror 
 after conqueror strove to repair or to rebuild in order to keep 
 them, desolator came after desolator to lay waste the land, 
 and to take or destroy its cities. 
 
 Amalric, in the words of De Guignes, engaged in a war 
 disastrous to Noureddin, to the Franks, and the caliphs of 
 Egypt, The last were entirely destroyed; the Franks lost 
 Jerusalem, and the family of Noureddin great part of their 
 power; and the famous Saladin ascended the throne of 
 Egypt.* In these and other disastrous days to Syria, de¬ 
 feat was rapidly followed by victory, and victory by defeat. 
 Noureddin, while ravaging the territory of Tripoli, was 
 himself defeated in the next battle, and his army almost 
 annihilated, while he scarcely escaped with his life. Thirst¬ 
 ing for vengeance, he forced Damascus, Aleppo, and other 
 cities to replace the horses, the silver, the men, and all the 
 materials of war which he had lost.f The veteran hero, 
 with his own forces, and those which came to his aid from 
 his brother the King of Moussul and other neighbouring 
 princes, was soon at the head of a new and numerous army, 
 accompanied by Faccardine and his troops. He reinvested 
 Harem, and strove to beat down its walls. They resisted all 
 his efforts, till he was forced to raise the siege on the ap¬ 
 proach of a vast, or, as designated, innumerable army of 
 Crusaders, commanded by many princes and nobles, among 
 whom were the son of the captive Prince of Antioch, the 
 Count of Tripoli, the Goverffor of Cilicia, Hughes of Le- 
 signan, and Joscelin, esteemed by the Moslems the bravest 
 of them all, together with Toros, the king of Armenia, 
 whose forces were united with theirs. The now wary 
 Noureddin retired, not to fly, but to fight. Ten thousand 
 Franks lay dead on the field; a greater number were taken 
 
 * De Guignes, tom. iii., p. 185. t Ibid., p. 183. Will. Tyr., p. 960. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 195 
 
 prisoners, among whom were the princes who were carried 
 captiv^e to Aleppo; and Harem, again besieged, became the 
 prey of the victor.'*' Hopeless of assailing successfully the 
 fortifications of Antioch, his army ravaged resistlessly all 
 the country to Laodicea and Souaidea. 
 
 Noureddin, having rendered his name immortal by his 
 victories against the Christians, besieging Paneas, forced 
 the King of Jerusalem to raise the siege of Palusium. Pre¬ 
 viously rebuilt by the Franks, Paneas was taken and forti¬ 
 fied anew. He sent an army, under Schirkouh, a Kurd, 
 the uncle of Saladin, who accompanied him, throughout the 
 territories of the Franks, and took a fortress near Sidon, 
 surrendered by treason, and another beyond the Jordan, . 
 defended in vain by the Templars.f This success in Syria 
 tempted him to aspire to the conquest of Egypt, when the 
 Franks lent their aid to the sinking Phatimites, threatened 
 by their common foe. Saladin displayed his generalship 
 and prowess in the land of the Pharaohs, which finally be¬ 
 came his own by art no less than by arms. 
 
 While the rising hero, who was soon to eclipse them all, 
 was paving his way to empire, the land of Syria was open 
 to Noureddin, who attacked the towns of Saphia and Ari- 
 ma, and took the castle of Akapli and that of Dgiaher, near 
 the Euphrates.if But, more than the conquests of Noureddin, 
 the establishment of Saladin in ‘Egypt spread alarm among 
 all the Franks. A council was held at Jerusalem ; and, 
 for the protection or preservation of the Holy Land, the aid 
 was invoked of Louis, king of France, Henry of England, 
 William of Sicily, and of other princes of Europe. But 
 the danger was imminent, and, ere they and their forces 
 reached the shores of Syria, more than two hundred gal¬ 
 leys, loaded with men, and arms, and military engines, sail¬ 
 ed from Constantinople, and landed at Ascalon; and Eu¬ 
 rope was moved from side to side, to save Jerusalem and 
 its kingdom when threatened by a Kurd. It had to be de¬ 
 fended as it had been won—by the sword ; and the wars of 
 the Crusaders seemed again to begin.^ 
 
 But the hand of the Lord fell heavier on the chief cities 
 of Syria than did the human instruments of his wrath, wheth¬ 
 er they came from Asia, Africa, or Europe. At his voice 
 the earth shakes, and the strongest bulwarks fall in a mo- 
 
 * De Guignes, tom iii., p. 189, 190. 
 t Ibid., p. 200, 201. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 191. 
 I) Ibid., p. 207. 
 
196 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 ment; and, as if stricken by the Almighty, Syrian cities 
 and fortresses became the easier prey of mortal combatants. 
 In June, 1170, the greater part of the cities of Syria and 
 Palestine were destroyed by an earthquake, unexampled in 
 that age. Antioch, then the metropolis of many provinces, 
 as formerly of many kingdoms, was strewed with the ground; 
 the walls, andj^the strong towers along their circuit, the 
 churches and public edifices, were overthrown by so great 
 a shock, that, for years thereafter, immense expenditure in 
 money and indefatigable labours could scarcely restore them 
 to a stale of mediocrity. According to historians the most 
 guarded in their statements, the chief cities were overthrown, 
 and their inhabitants buried in their ruins; among these 
 were numbered Baalhec, Hemesa, Hamah, Schaizar or C?es- 
 area, and Aleppo. In Aleppo not a single dwelling was 
 left; and the inhabitants that survived encamped without 
 the ruined city. Tripoli, a noble and populous city, was 
 so shattered at midnight in a moment, that scarcely one of 
 all its houses was a place of safety. The whole city was 
 like a mound of stones, a heap covering the entombed citi¬ 
 zens, a public sepulchre. The strongest towers of Tyre 
 were thrown down. While the hand of the Lord was thus 
 upon the land, the fiercest warriors were appalled; there 
 was a truce between enemies, while their cities were fall¬ 
 ing without the hand of man. For three or four months, or 
 even more, earthquakes were felt three or four times, and 
 frequently oftener, either in the day or in the night. The 
 stoutest heart was shaken by the slightest motion. The 
 wrath of man was suspended, and the power of man ceased, 
 when the armour of steel became as a winding-sheet, and 
 the firmest bulwarks a grave. Towns half buried, their 
 walls fallen, lay open to the incursions of enemies, whether 
 Franks or Turks ; but for a time no one dared to enter. 
 When the earthquakes ceased, the work of reparation be¬ 
 gan, and among all the hostile foes in Syria, each being 
 busied with his own, labours for self-defence were carried 
 on by night and day.* 
 
 Before the close of the same year famine raged in the 
 land which earthquakes had shaken ; and war, another mes¬ 
 senger of the Lord, came again within the borders, but not 
 to rest till the idolatrous Christians, under whom, no less 
 than under the heathen, the land and the holy city were 
 
 * Will. Tyr., p. 985, 986. De Gnignes, p. 210. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 197 
 
 polluted, should be driven from Jerusalem, and renounce, 
 but in name, its sovereignty forever. 
 
 Saladin and Noureddin were alike intent in carrying on, 
 after a brief suspense, the war in Syria. The former laid 
 siege to the fortress of Dareun near Gaza, defeated Amal- 
 ric, and entered the city of Gaza; but the castle success¬ 
 fully resisted his power. He subsequently besieged the 
 towns of Karak and Shohec; but such was their strength, 
 that he spent many days before them in vain. He deso¬ 
 lated and depopulated the region beyond Jordan. Noured¬ 
 din laid waste the territories and the very environs of Anti¬ 
 och and Tripoli, and attacked the towns of Saphia and 
 Arima, and the castle of Area* But his death (A.D. 1174) 
 wrought a great change in Syria, introduced a revolution 
 in one of its kingdoms, and prepared the way for the sub¬ 
 version of another. 
 
 Saladin soon became Lord of Damascus as well as 
 Sultan of Egypt. He took the city, but not the castle of 
 Emesa; made himself master of Hamah, which pertained 
 to Faccardine, and, after a second siege of Aleppo, which 
 he disputed with the son of Noureddin, the cities of Baal- 
 hec, Maara, and Kafartab submitted to his authority. While 
 he was thus occupied in conquering for himself a kingdom 
 in the north of Syria, the Franks, alarmed at his conquests, 
 tried every means of arresting his course. According to 
 the common fate of ever-devastated Syria, when the terri¬ 
 tories he had won were disfurnished of troops in reducing 
 other lands and cities to his power, the Crusaders entered 
 on new raids, and passing the Jordan, and traversing the 
 forest of Paneas, they completely pillaged the territory of 
 Damascus, reaching to the vicinity of the city. The in¬ 
 habitants of the environs of Palmyra were made prisoners, 
 their goods pillaged, and their lands laid waste. The 
 brother of Saladin, the Governor of Damascus, was defeat¬ 
 ed ; and before the dominion of Saladin was firmly estab¬ 
 lished, many Mussulmen princes carried on war with each 
 other ; and the whole northern region was a scene of inces¬ 
 sant warfare, till Saladin was finally victorious over all his 
 other enemies, and all the power of his two kingdoms of 
 Egypt and Syria was brought to bear with exterminating 
 vengeance on the Franks.f 
 
 * De Guignes, p. 213, 214, 218. Will. Tyr., p. 986, 987, 993 
 
 t De Guignes, tom. iii., p. 1, 224-237. 
 
 R 2 
 
198 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 But the kirigdom of Jerusalem was not given up by the 
 soldiers of Europe without dreadful and deathlike struggles. 
 Ascalon and Ramlah, as in the first wars of the Crusades 
 on the shores of Syria, were the scenes of battles in which 
 the swords of the Franks were fleshed in the Moslems ; 
 but the blades of Damascus retaliated the slaughter, and the 
 arrows of the Turks and Arabs descended in showers upon 
 their enemies. Defeated at first with a terrible slaughter 
 of his troops, Saladin was finally victorious. A religious 
 war, more desperate than at first, was carried on through¬ 
 out Syria. Ascalon and the seashore were again a Jield of 
 blood. After the victory of the Christians they pursued 
 their routed foes, and for twelve miles, says the archbishop, 
 there did not cease to be a continued slaughter of the ene¬ 
 my.* The hostile armies alternately desolated each other’s 
 territories. The king, Baldwin IV., after his victory, broke 
 furiously into those of Saladin ; and the rich territory of 
 Paneas was specially the scene of renewed desolation. 
 
 But from north to south, throughout its whole extent, the 
 kingdom of Jerusalem was the prey of the renovated armies 
 of Saladin.f The battle of Tiberias, in which his forces 
 were estimated at more than two hundred thousand, and in 
 which twelve hundred knights of Europe fought till most of 
 them were slain and they could rally no more, was the 
 deathblow of the power of the Crusaders in Palestine, from 
 which neither Richard of England, though “ lion-hearted,” 
 nor Louis of France, its sainted king, were ever able to 
 recover them. The King of Jerusalem and the Grand¬ 
 master of the Temple, together with many nobles, were his 
 prisoners. Most of the cities and castles which the Chris¬ 
 tians possessed, both in the mountains and along the coast, 
 were speedily his own, viz., Tiberias, Akha, Ccesarea, 
 Kaipha, Sephouria, Shaoikaif Phiala, Jaffa, Talnin, Seid, 
 Beyrout, Dgiobail, Laodicea, Sahioun, Derbisac, Bagras, 
 Krak, Sephed, Gaza, Ramlah, as all enumerated by Herbe- 
 lot and De Guignes. Jerusalem fell, and the Franks who 
 survived the siege were driven from the holy city, which 
 for nearly a century they had profaned by their cruel deeds, 
 their fierce contentions, and their abominable idolatries. 
 The piece of old wood which they bore with that name, 
 and which was taken in the battle of Tiberias from the 
 hands of a Romish bishop, was all they saw or knew of the 
 cross of Christ. 
 
 * Will. Tyr., p. 1010. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 1015, 1017, 1025-1032, 1037-1040. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 199 
 
 The field of the Crusaders in Syria was narrowed to a 
 space along the seacoast, where the Lord still appointed the 
 sword. Though the statement by Gibbon that “ Noureddin 
 waged a long and successful war against the Christians of 
 Syria,” cannot convey any adequate idea of the destruction 
 and desolation caused in that country by his hand, yet a few 
 extracts from that historian’s description of the last and lin¬ 
 gering struggles of the Crusades on their narrowed field 
 may suffice to close up this summary notice of these deso¬ 
 lating wars. The small portion of the land that remained 
 in the hands of the Turks still continued to bereave the na¬ 
 tions of men. 
 
 “ The pathetic narratives, and even the pictures that 
 represented, in lively colours, the servitude and profanation 
 of Jerusalem, awakened the torpid sensibility of Europe ; 
 the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, and the kings of France 
 and England, assumed the cross. The Italians embarked 
 in the ships of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. They were next 
 speedily followed by the most eager pilgrims of France, 
 Normandy, and the Western Isles. The powerful succour 
 of France, Frise, and Denmark filled a hundred vessels. 
 The siege of Acre lasted near two years, and consumed, in 
 a narrow space, the forces of Europe and Asia. Never 
 did the flame of enthusiasm burn with fiercer and more 
 destructive rage. At the sound of the holy trumpet, the 
 Moslems of Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and the Oriental provin¬ 
 ces, assembled under the servant of the Prophet; his camp 
 was pitched wdthin a few miles of Acre ; and he laboured 
 night and day for the relief of his brethren and the annoy¬ 
 ance of the Franks. Nine battles, not unworthy of the 
 name, were fought in the neighbourhood of Mount Carmel, 
 with such vicissitude of fortune, that in one attack the sul¬ 
 tan forced his way into the city ; that in one sally the 
 Christians penetrated to the royal tent. The Latin camp 
 was thinned by famine, the sword, and the climate ; but the 
 tents of the dead were replenished with new pilgrims. 
 After every resource had been tried and every hope was 
 exhausted, the defenders of Acre submitted to their fate—a 
 capitulation was granted. By the conquest of Acre, the 
 Latin powers acquired a strong town and a convenient har¬ 
 bour ; but the advantage was most dearly purchased. The 
 minister and historian of Saladin computes that their num- 
 
 * Gibbon’s Hist., vol. xi., p. 119. 
 
200 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 li 
 
 bers, at different periods, amounted to five or six hundred 
 thousand ; that more than one hundred thousand Christians 
 were slain ; that a far greater number was lost by disease 
 or shipwreck; and that a small portion of this mighty host 
 would return in safety to their native countries.”* “ After 
 the surrender of Acre and the departure of Philip (king of 
 France), the King of England led the Crusaders to the re¬ 
 covery of the seacoast, and the cities of Ccesarea and Jaffa 
 were added to the fragments of the kingdom of Lusignan. 
 A march of one hundred miles, from Acre io Ascalon, was 
 a great and perpetual hatile of eleven daysJ\ 
 
 While the Franks lost all but a fragment of their king¬ 
 dom, partially enlarged by the excommunicated Frederic, 
 emperor of Germany, who entered Jerusalem in triumph, 
 St. Louis of France, at the head of the sixth Crusade, nev¬ 
 er reached the Holy Land; the rest of Syria did not long 
 repose in peace ; but the temporary calm, as the presage of 
 a storm, was terminated “ by the irruption of the strange 
 and savage hordes of Carizmians. Flying from the arms 
 of the Moguls, these shepherds of the Caspian rolled head¬ 
 long on Syria, and the union of the Franks with the sultans 
 of AleppOy HemSy and Damascus, was insufficient to stem 
 the violence of the torrent. Whatever stood against them 
 was cut off by the sword or dragged into captivity ; the mil¬ 
 itary orders were almost exterminated in a single battle ; 
 and in the pillage of the city, in the profanation of the holy 
 sepulchre, the Latins confess and regret the modesty and 
 discipline of the Turks and Saracens. 
 
 In the middle of the thirteenth century the reign of the 
 Mamelukes commenced. “ Antioch was finally occupied 
 and ruined by Bondocdar, or Bibars, sultan of Egypt and 
 Syria. The maritime towns of Laodicea, Galata, Tripoli, 
 Berytus, Sidon, Tyre, and Jaffa, and the stronger castles of 
 the Hospitallers and Templars, successively fell.^ Sultan 
 Khalil marched against Acre at the head of sixty thousand 
 horse and one hundred and forty thousand foot; his train of 
 artillery (if I may use the word) Was numerous and weighty ; 
 the separate limbers of a single engine were transported in 
 one hundred wagons ; and the royal historian Abulfeda, who 
 served with the troops of Hamah, was himself a spectator 
 of the holy war. After a siege of thirty-three days, the 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. xi., p. 138-141. 
 t Ibid., p. 158. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 143. 
 Ibid., p. 16&. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 201 
 
 double wall was forced by the Moslems ; the principal tower 
 yielded to their engines; the city was stormed ; and death 
 or slavery was the lot of sixty thousand Christians. Of 
 five hundred knights, only ten were left alive. By the com¬ 
 mand of the sultan, the churches and fortifications of the 
 Latin cities were demolished, and a mournful and solitary 
 silence prevailed along the coast which had so long re¬ 
 sounded with the world’s debate.”* 
 
 The coast of Syria, and, lastly, that alone, did “ long re¬ 
 sound with the world’s debate.” There, and there only, 
 did a king of England and of France, with the Emperor of 
 Germany and many other princes of Europe, contend side 
 by side on the same battle-field; there, and there only, did 
 princes and potentates from the farthest West meet in hos¬ 
 tile array with those of the farthest East, and Europe, and 
 Asia, and Africa contended, though unconsciously, for the 
 possession of that covenanted land, which, according to the 
 Word of the Lord, became the prey of strangers, the spoil 
 of the wicked of the earth, though destined to be the ever¬ 
 lasting possession of the house of Israel alone. Kings of 
 Europe, with the pilgrim’s staff in their hands, drew from 
 it their highest titles, and the noblest of European knights 
 took from it their origin and their order; and thither, in the 
 pride of their hearts, they went forth in thousands ; but their 
 lances were shivered in the plains of Palestine, where their 
 bodies were entombed, and where feudalism itself did fall. 
 
 Though the last battles of the Crusades were fought along 
 the seacoast where the Lord had appointed the sword,\ and 
 Europe rallied its strength in vain to penetrate into the in¬ 
 terior of the land, no pcmtion of it had rest; and the sum¬ 
 mary record, as above given, of the close of the crusading 
 wars, can convey but a very partial, as well as most in¬ 
 adequate, idea of the troubles that were then multiplied on 
 Syria. 
 
 “ A more unjust and absurd constitution,” says Gibbon, 
 “ cannot be devised, than that which condemns the natives 
 of a country to perpetual servitude, under the arbitrary do¬ 
 minion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the 
 state of Egypt above five hundred years. The most illus¬ 
 trious sultans of the Baharite and Borgite dynasties were 
 themselves promoted from the Tartar and Circassian bands ; 
 and the four-and-twenty beys, or military chiefs, have ever 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. xi., p. 167, 168. t Jer., xlvii., 6, 7. 
 
202 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants ; 
 they produce the great charter of their liberties, the treaty 
 of Selim the First, with the republic.”* Egypt, as proph¬ 
 esied, had become a hase kingdom^ the basest of the king- 
 doms,\ and yet, fallen as it was, it lorded over Syria. That 
 land on which the curses of the covenant had fallen, had 
 no charter of its liberties to produce ; and when the “ king¬ 
 dom of Jerusalem” had vanished, it became the subjugated 
 vassal state, and the prey of the “ basest of kingdoms.” 
 The word Mamelukes literally signifies slaves, and such 
 they were, as the name imports. Turkish and Circassian 
 slaves, raised into officers of their army by the successors 
 of Saladin, who, with such power in their hands, made them¬ 
 selves masters of Egypt, and establishing there a “ military 
 republic,” turned Syria into a land garrisoned by foreign 
 tyrants. But instead of resting under them, the land of Is¬ 
 rael, like its expatriated people, was spoiled evermore. Bat¬ 
 tles and sieges ceased not, though the combatants were 
 changed. Turkomans and Arabs fiercely withstood the 
 Mamelukes, and, when subdued, rebelled. Syria, like the 
 wicked, while still given into such hands, was as the troub¬ 
 led sea that cannot rest. The lesser waves beat incessant¬ 
 ly against each other, till, as at other seasons, a higher wave 
 for the time overwhelmed them all, and left them again 
 more agitated than before. Bibars, a sultan of the Baharite 
 dynasty, who occupied and ruined Antioch and many other 
 cities, and scourged the Franks from the Phoenician coast, 
 had also to encounter mightier foes. Holagou, emperor of 
 the Moguls, before the Franks were driven out of it, enter¬ 
 ed Syria with four hundred thousand men. The army of 
 the Moslems was defeated with great slaughter, and pursu¬ 
 ed to the gates of Aleppo. That city was besieged, and 
 when the machines of the enemy were brought to bear upon 
 the weakest part of the wall, it fell; and the city, when ta¬ 
 ken, was given up to pillage for six days. Partly through 
 treachery and force, Damascus was taken, and its castle, 
 together with that of Baalbec, was destroyed. Maarah, 
 Hama, Emesa, Harem, &c., were besieged and ravaged. 
 The fortifications of Aleppo and other cities were razed. 
 Adgeloun was besieged, taken, and ruined. The ravages 
 of the Moguls in Syria, on their first invasion under Hola¬ 
 gou (A.D. 1259, 1260), extended from the Euphrates to 
 
 * Gibbon, toI. xi., p. 164. t Ezek., xxix., 14, 15. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 203 
 
 Tiberias, where their army was entirely vanquished, and 
 their general slain. Driven from Syria, they speedily re¬ 
 turned, retook Alep'po, massacred the inhabitants of Carne- 
 bia, besieged Emesa and Apamea, and laid waste their ter¬ 
 ritories.* 
 
 Abaka-il-Khan, the son and successor of Holagou, sent 
 ambassadors, and entered into treaty with the pope and all 
 the Christian princes, and, striving to drive the Mamelukes 
 from tSyria, subjected it to redoubled desolation. Having 
 ravaged the country from Aleppo to Emesa, a great battle, 
 not without its parallel in Syria from the conjoined victory 
 and defeat of the respective united armies, was fought in the 
 great, and, as then it was, beautiful plain of Emesa. Mo¬ 
 guls, Georgians, Armenians, and Persians were ranged on 
 the one side ; Egyptians, Arabs, Turkomans, &c., on the 
 other. The Mussulmen fled before the Moguls, who believ¬ 
 ed that the victory was theirs, and pursued their vanquished 
 foes amid a terrible carnage. But their ally, the King of 
 Armenia, who led on the Christians, met with no less terri¬ 
 ble discomfiture, and, fleeing from the land whose invaders 
 were devoted to destruction, lost all his officers, and almost 
 all his army.f 
 
 But the time had come when neither aid from Europe, 
 nor the alliance of the Moguls, could sustain or restore the 
 fallen kingdom of Jerusalem. The successor of Abaka, 
 adopting the Mohammedan faith, took the name of Ahmed, 
 and became the persecutor of the Christians and the friend 
 of the Moslems. The greater part of the churches were de¬ 
 stroyed, and the Christians exiled (A.D. 1283).J 
 
 Before the close of the same century, “ the wars of Syria” 
 began anew between the Khan of the Moguls and the Sul¬ 
 tan of Egypt. The whole country was alternately the prey, 
 from end to end, of the one and of the other : the Moguls at 
 one time, when victorious, ravaging the environs of Gaza and 
 the borders of Egypt, and the Mamelukes, or Syrians, at 
 another, recovering their lost dominion in the farthest ex¬ 
 tremities of Syria. Each sought the destruction of the oth¬ 
 er. The Egyptians, when defeated, retired beyond the des¬ 
 ert, the Moguls beyond the Euphrates, on the north of Syr¬ 
 ia, alike to recruit their strength and to renew the war. The 
 fated Syria, from one extremity to the other, lay thus be- 
 
 • De Guignes, tom. iii., p. 250-257. t Ibid., p. 258-2^2, 
 
 % Ibid., p. 263. 
 
204 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA 
 
 tween them, and was the prize for w'hich, in their appointed 
 times, they fought. Though the Sultan of Egypt counted it 
 his own, and the Mussuhnen deemed it their own land, yot 
 when Gazan, the Tartar emperor, crossed the Euphrates, 
 and spread over the regions of Sarrain, Maarah, and Anti¬ 
 och, and threatened the entire destruction of the Mohamme¬ 
 dans, they shut up their cattle and grain in their fortresses, 
 and set lire to all that they could not save. The Mogul ar¬ 
 my was so numerous that it occupied the space of three days 
 journeying in length from Bacca to Beer; but such, then, 
 were the contests for Syria and within it, that the battles be¬ 
 tween such numerous hosts were so long contested and 
 fierce, that victory long hung in the balance ; and when, at 
 last, the Moguls, after immense slaughter, gave way, the 
 Mussulmen retired to Hamah. To its environs the Moguls 
 speedily returned, and advanced to Emesa, which in such 
 desperate warfare they took, after every Mussulman had 
 been put to the sword. Another battle, contested for two 
 days, terminated in the overthrow of the Moguls, who had 
 power to devour and to despoil, but not to retain possession 
 of Syria, which the Mamelukes enslaved.* 
 
 No less than in other ages, Syria, under the Mamelukes, 
 was given unto strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the 
 earth for a spoil. All the different corps of their army amount¬ 
 ed to nearly three hundred thousand men. Each emir or chief 
 had a portion of land assigned him j the peasantry furnish¬ 
 ed provisions, and bread was distributed among the soldiers.f 
 Insurrectionary movements repeatedly indicated the severi¬ 
 ty of the bondage ; hut the descendants of ancient conquer¬ 
 ors had in their turn to experience that peace was not the 
 portion of those who dwelt in a land on which the curses 
 of the covenant had fallen. Earthquakes, levelling the walls 
 of many cities, had paved the way for Mameluke domination 
 in Syria; and when their dominion was drawing to a close, 
 their power was broken by the renowned Tamerlane, and 
 the conquests of a Tartar prepared the way for the subjec¬ 
 tion of Syria to the Ottoman yoke. 
 
 “ The Syrian emirs were assembled at Aleppo to repel 
 the invasion ; they confided in the fame and discipline of the 
 Mamelukes, in the temper of their swords and lances of the 
 purest steel of Damascus, in the strength of their walled cit- 
 * Do Guigneo, tom. iii., p. 274. f Ibid., tom. iv., p. 251. 
 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 205 
 
 ies, and in the populousness of sixty thousand villages ; and, 
 instead of sustaining a siege, they threw open their gates, 
 and arrayed their forces in the plain. But these forces 
 were not cemented by virtue and union, and some powerful 
 emirs had been seduced'to desert or betray their more loyal 
 companions. Timour’s front was covered with a line of In¬ 
 dian elephants, whose turrets were filled with archers and 
 Greek fire. The rapid evolutions of his cavalry completed 
 the dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on 
 each other: many thousands were stifled or slaughtered in 
 the entrance of the great street; the Moguls entered with 
 the fugitives, and, after a short defence, the citadel—the 
 impregnable citadel of Aleppo—was surrendered by coward¬ 
 ice or treachery. The stress of Aleppo streamed with 
 blood, and re-echoed with the cries of mothers and children, 
 with the shrieks of violated virgins. The rich plunder that 
 was abandoned to his soldiers might stimulate their avarice, 
 but their cruelty was enforced by the peremptory command 
 of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according 
 to his custom, were curiously piled up in columns and pyr¬ 
 amids. The Moguls celebrated the feast of the victory, while 
 the surviving Moslems passed the night in tears and in 
 chains. I shall not dwell on the march of the destroyer 
 from Aleppo to Damascus, where he was rudely encounter¬ 
 ed, and almost overthrown, by the armies of Egypt. Aban¬ 
 doned by their prince, the inhabitants of Damascus still de¬ 
 fended their walls, and Timour eonsented to raise the siege 
 if they would adorn his retreat with a gift or ransom, each 
 article of nine pieces. But no sooner had he introduced 
 himself into the city, under colour of a truce, than he per¬ 
 fidiously violated the treaty, imposed a contribution of ten 
 millions of gold, and animated his troops to chastise the pos¬ 
 terity ot those Syrians who had executed, or approved the 
 murder of the grandson of Mohammed. A family which had 
 given honourable burial to the head of Hosein, and a colony 
 of artificers whom he sent to labour at Samarcand, were alone 
 lescued in the general massacre ; and, after a period of sev¬ 
 en centuries, Damascus was reduced to ashes, because a 
 Tartar was moved by religious zeal to avenge the blood of 
 an Arab. Timour, in his return to the Euphrates, delivered 
 Aleppo to the flames.* In the pillage of Syria, the Moguls 
 had acquired immense riches.”! 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. xii., p. 23, 24. 
 
 s 
 
 t Ibid., p. 25. 
 
206 
 
 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA. 
 
 When the power of the Mamelukes was thus broken, and 
 the Moguls had vanished with their prey, the time seemed 
 to be come when Syria could free itself from a foreign yoke ; 
 and many of its emirs, stimulated by ambition or revenge, 
 strove to cast off the sovereignty of the Sultan of Egypt. 
 One of these, Dgiakam, declaring for the rebels, made him¬ 
 self master of Tripoli, Hamah, and Aleppo. Another, Sheik 
 Mahmoud, sent an army to take Saphet by surprise ; but, 
 failing in the assault, he prepared many engines to throw 
 (burning) naphtha and stones into the city, and (A.D. 1405) 
 laid siege to it with a numerous army in vain.* Syria be¬ 
 came the scene of successive civil wars, and Egypt was 
 invaded by the “ rebels.” But the sultan, with an unexam¬ 
 pled intrepidity, pursued them, till, driven from city to city. 
 Sheik Mahmoud was besieged in the castle of Sarkud be¬ 
 yond Bosra. Thither machines were transported from So- 
 haiha, Saphet, and Damascus, which were raised against the 
 castle, and from which stones of sixty pounds’ weight were 
 thrown. When such means were ineffectual, another ma¬ 
 chine of still larger dimensions and power, from which pro¬ 
 jectiles of eighty-six pounds were cast, was carried from 
 Damascus in separate parts, the materials of which formed 
 the burden of two hundred camels. The castle was finally 
 delivered up, and the rebel chief resumed the government of 
 Tripoli (A.D. 1409).f New revolts succeeded, and new 
 sieges took place. The governors of Gaza and Damascus 
 raised the standard of rebellion, and were joined by those of 
 Hamah, Aleppo, Roum, Tripoli, and many others (A.D. 
 1415).j: When the Crusaders had long ceased to descend 
 in armed myriads on its shores, Syria was divided against it¬ 
 self, and by a twofold intestine war strove to cast off the tyr¬ 
 anny of Circassian slaves, the lords of Egypt. Again and 
 again the sultan brought his armies to quell the insurrection¬ 
 ary commotions and to perpetuate the bondage, and the rav¬ 
 ages of war were alternated in Egypt and Syria till the sec¬ 
 ond dynasty of the Mamelukes was brought to an end by a 
 foreign power; for, ere a third part of the fifteenth century 
 had elapsed, the Ottomans, more fell destroyers hy peace 
 than others by war, overthrew their empire, and took pos¬ 
 session of Syria, as if in order to accomplish what such 
 multitudinous hosts and incessant wars could not effect, and 
 
 * De Guignes’ Hist., tom. v., p. 294. t Ibid., p. 303, 304. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 311. 
 
STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES, 207 
 
 « 
 
 to reduce it, in the progress of ages of decay, to the last de¬ 
 gree of predicted desolation which the land was to reach, till 
 its expatriated, but still covenanted, children should return. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES, ETC. 
 
 The Middle Ages may be said to present to view the 
 middle stage in the progress of the general desolation and 
 depopulation of Syria. Of cities that anciently exulted in 
 their opulence and splendour, many had passed into oblivion. 
 Jerusalem, which fell an easy prey to 20,000 Crusaders, 
 was not like that Jerusalem which long withstood the 
 might of imperial Rome, and in whose fall a million of 
 human victims perished. When restored after many cen¬ 
 turies to be the metropolis of a kingdom^ it was not like the 
 city in which Solomon reigned: and scarcely a shadow 
 of his glory rested on the heaven-stricken hills of Judah, 
 when, after the close of many crusading wars, an Emperor 
 of Germany, who saw little more of the land, could make 
 a mockery of the kingdom of Jerusalem compared to that of 
 Naples. Antioch could not boast of nine hundred thousand 
 inhabitants, when it could yield up as prisoners but a ninth 
 part of the number, at a time when the Crusaders finally 
 lost the first city of Syria they had taken. Nor could Kin- 
 nesrin, at that time as down to the days of the Saracens, 
 pay, besides gold, a redeeming tribute of figs and other 
 fruits, in loads told by the thousand. The cities and towns 
 of Ephraim and Judah, with villages attached to each, were 
 "not then numbered by hundreds, as in the days of Joshua ; 
 and few of the sixty cities of the kingdom of Bashan re¬ 
 mained in their populousness and strength, to check the 
 ravages and impede the march of a crusading array. Marks 
 of decay were manifest throughout the land; and magnifi. 
 cent remains, now greatly shrunk in their dimensions, be¬ 
 spoke magnificent cities then no more. Ammon was a 
 heap, the ancient capital of Moab a village. Capernaum, 
 Chorazin, Bethsaida, were no longer exalted unto heaven, 
 
208 STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 but lay low at the word of the Lord, whose voice in the 
 days of their visitation they would not hear. The cities of 
 Galilee, through all of which Jesus had preached, were not 
 what they had been in the time of Josephus, nor could the 
 population cope with what in had been, or the greatest of 
 their villages, as the least had done, count 15,000 men. 
 Of the cities that fell in the. days of Vespasian, or were 
 given to the flames and devoted to utter destruction in those 
 of Adrian, few had risen. When invaded by the Crusaders, 
 many parts of Syria bore witness of judgments: and fai 
 less, it was not, in the midst of these desolating wars oi 
 after they had ceased, what it had been in the days of its 
 prosperity and excellence, when millions of Israelites, 
 blessed of the Lord, lacked not anything in the land, or 
 even when subjugated by a foreign foe it was ranked by 
 Pliny as “ formerly the greatest of countries.”* 
 
 But, fallen as it was, after a renewal of “ the slow rava¬ 
 ges of despotism,” and after spoiler had contended with 
 spoiler to seize and to secure it for a prey, and strangers had 
 again and again overthrown and devoured it, Syria could 
 still attract and reward new spoliators; and it strove, age 
 after age, in defiance of them all, to maintain its natural and 
 rightful designation of a goodly land; and, in fact, held out 
 many a prize for which nations contended, and which, when 
 seized, became anew a bone of contention between princes, 
 and prelates, and kings. Such was the attractiveness of 
 one of the first cities taken by the Crusaders, that the walls 
 had to be broken down that it might not keep them back 
 from the deliverance of Jerusalem : and however much the 
 lips of talkers in after ages could blaspheme the land, and 
 the pens of scoffers write down as contemptible villages 
 most of the cities that ever had existed there, yet neither 
 the cities nor the land were despised or defamed, when the 
 most powerful monarchs of Europe, with their hundreds of 
 knights and thousands of warriors, toiled in vain month after 
 month before them; and when, in their predatory raids, 
 they carried away from helpless peasantry such an abun¬ 
 dance of spoil, that the amount could not be told in their 
 own land, as capable of ever being realized in them by any 
 spoliators. 
 
 The fact, though hitherto little regarded, that there are 
 direct and conclusive records of the statistical or geograph- 
 
 * Syria quondam terrarum maxima. —Pliny, Nat. Hist., lib. v., 13. 
 
STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 209 
 
 ical state of Syria in the Middle Ages, more ample and de¬ 
 tailed than the most ancient geographers or historians sup¬ 
 ply, is well worthy of a passing illustration, as it may serve 
 to show how great are the blessings guarantied by covenant 
 to Israel, in respect to the same territorial possessions. 
 Long after the kingdom had been established with David 
 and Solomon, whose sovereignty was owned from the Med¬ 
 iterranean to the Euphrates, and from the Red Sea to the 
 entering in of Hamath, the Prophet Ezekiel, looking to the 
 time of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, records, 
 * among precious promises, this word of the Lord : “ I will 
 settle you after your old estates, and will do better unto you 
 than at your beginning.^’* And as such is the promise, so 
 assuredly much more, when the mountains of Israel shall 
 shoot forth their branches and yield their fruit to his people 
 Israel, shall the Lord do far better unto them than he did to 
 those fanatical unbelievers and apostate idolaters who defiled 
 the land by their iniquities, and rent it asunder by their mur¬ 
 derous wars ; to whom he gave his pleasant land for a prey 
 and for a spoil ; and as to whom, though his sentence against 
 their evil works was not executed speedily, yet his judg¬ 
 ments did not always tarryL 
 
 The state of Syria in the Middle Ages cannot, wherever 
 there is any faith in the promises of God, be taken as any 
 adequate measure of the high estate which, as the heritage 
 of Jacob, it is destined to reach. But so greatly has the 
 land of Israel become an infamy among the people, that 
 there is reason to fear that the estimate in the minds of 
 many, if ever formed at all, of the excellence of Israel’s ev¬ 
 erlasting inheritance, would be exceeded, on comparison, 
 by what the cities and the land actually were when they 
 formed the alternate prey and temporary possession of Sar¬ 
 acens, Turks, Carmathians, Phatimites, Franks, Assassins, 
 Kurds, and Tartars. Such false impressions, in the mind 
 of any reader, may be dissipated by a glance at the cities 
 of Syria as they existed then. To know something of its 
 goodliness, we may look on its aspect before the pleasant 
 land finally became like a desolate wilderness. And if it 
 retained any long-lingering glory in such troublous times 
 and in the hands of such iniquitous strangers, what may it 
 not become when the covenant with Abraham shall be re¬ 
 alized, and the land which the Lord espied for Israel, as the 
 
 * Ezek., ixxvi., 11. 
 
 S 2 
 
210 STATE OP SYRIA IN THE MIDDL^' AGES. 
 
 glory of all lands, shall in peaceful possession be their own 
 forever ? 
 
 The geography of El-Edrisi and that of Abulfeda contain 
 brief descriptions of the most important cities, towns, and 
 fortresses of Palestine, as they existed at the middle of the 
 twelfth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. In the 
 intervening period of a hundred and fifty years, immediate¬ 
 ly subsequent respectively to the former date and prior to 
 the latter, the travels of Benjamin of Tudela and of Broc- 
 card supply corresponding testimony. The writings of trav'- 
 ellers of later date are full of undoubted facts, which amply * 
 show how slowly Syria sank into that low state of general 
 desolation to which it has now been reduced. It might be 
 said of many places throughout the land, that were they 
 now, as speedily they might be, only what they were not 
 many ages past, then the wilderness would be a fruitful 
 field, and the desert would rejoice and blossom like the 
 rose; and were the cities to be what they Were even then, 
 they would speedily rank among the fairest and richest in 
 the world. 
 
 Damascus, before its destruction by Tamerlane, was one 
 of the noblest cities in the world. It was designated in the 
 word of God, pointing even to the latter times, the city of 
 praise, the city of my joy* As described by Edrisi and 
 Abulfeda, its situation is admirable, its climate healthy and 
 temperate, the soil rich, its waters abundant, the productions 
 varied, the riches immense, the troops numerous, the edifi¬ 
 ces superb. The villages in its environs were like towns. 
 Than the valley of El Gutha, in which it lay, a fairer was 
 nowhere to be found. It was reckoned the first of the four 
 Tempes, which surpassed in pleasantness all other places 
 on earth, and extended two days’ journey in length and one 
 in breadth. In the city stood a temple of unequalled splen¬ 
 dour, the marble of which occupied twelve thousand oper¬ 
 atives, and the expenditure of which was estimated at four 
 hundred chests (cistae) of gold, each of which contained 
 fourteen hundred gold solidi. Before the west gate of Da¬ 
 mascus lay the valley of violets, twelve miles long and four 
 broad, covered, as it were, with the tapestry of richly-varie¬ 
 gated fruits, at once beautiful to the eye and delicious to the 
 taste. Continuous gardens extended from Damascus to Zeb- 
 deni, distant eighteen miles. In the twelfth century Damas- 
 
 * .Ter., xlix., 25. 
 
STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 211 
 
 cus ranked only as one of the most noble of the cities of 
 Syria, even when it shone in its utmost magnificence ; but, 
 when other cities were brought down from their rivalry, it 
 became the noblest of them all.* 
 
 Antioch, long so famous in the history of Syria, and the 
 seat of many kings, was surrounded by walls of surprising 
 solidity, said to be twelve miles in circuit. Its markets 
 were most flourishing, its edifices magnificent, its commerce 
 prosperous, its resources and productions renowned. In 
 the thirteenth century it was excelled only by Damascus, 
 as one of the most delightful cities of Syria, with villas, and 
 villages, and the richest territories.! Souaidie was the 
 outer port of its commerce, in the vicinity of which was the 
 fortified and populous town of Herhade.\ 
 
 Latikia, or Laodicea, situated on the coast, on the oppo¬ 
 site side of the Orontes, was a populous and flourishing city, 
 with resources of every kind, and an elegant and spacious 
 harbour, of admirable constructiom A large and beautiful 
 monastery adorned the city. Its vicinity was remarkable 
 for the vast productiveness of its soil and the density of its 
 population. § 
 
 Hamath, of which, says Abulfeda, mention is made in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, was then one of the most pleasant cit¬ 
 ies of Syria. It strong and lofty citadel was beautifully 
 constructed.il Together with Schaizar, it was famous for 
 the great number of machines which raised the water from 
 the river into a canal, from whence it flowed through con¬ 
 duits into the houses and gardens. The chief temple was 
 converted into a mosque. Schaizar was also fortified by a 
 strong citadel, and abounded in gardens and fruit-trees, es¬ 
 pecially pomegranates.IF 
 
 Hems (Emesa), a strong city, situated in an extremely 
 fertile and populous plain, abounded with merchandise of 
 every kind. Its bazars were plentifully stored, and much 
 frequented from all quarters of the world. Its inhabitants, 
 leading a luxurious life, possessed abundance of all things.** 
 But its extensive vineyards, which Saracens had spared, 
 were repeatedly ravaged by Crusaders, and almost destroy- 
 
 * Recueil de la Soci6t6 de G6ograph., Paris, 1836, tom. v., p. 349-353. G6og. 
 d’Edrisi. Abulfeda, Tabula Syrise, p. 100-103. Ibid., Ibn 01 Wardi, p. 171-174. 
 t Edrisi, ibid., tom. vi., p. 131. Abulfeda, Tab. Syriae, p. 115, 116. 
 i Edrisi, ibid., tom. vi., p. 131, 132. 
 t) Abulfeda, p. 112, 113. Edrisi, ibid., tom. vi., p. 131. 
 
 II Abulfeda, p. 108, 109. IT Ibid., Tab. Syr., p. 110. 
 
 ** Edrisi, ibid,, tom. v., p. 357, 358. Abulfeda, Tab. Syr., p. 104. 
 
212 STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 ed. Till after the middle of the seventeenth century Hems 
 was surrounded by a wall, which was fortified by twenty-six 
 towers. Its chief mosque, once a Christian church, sup¬ 
 ported by thirty-four marble columns, chiefly variegated, 
 was seventy paces long and eighteen broad. Of the other 
 churches, one, possessed by the Saracens, was “ dedicated 
 to our Lady,” another, also supported by marble pillars, to 
 the Forty Martyrs. The castle, partly ruined (having, like 
 that of Hamath, withstood hard and long sieges), was, by 
 the command of the Grand Signior, neither to be repaired 
 nor inhabited. The ditch around the city wall was filled 
 with ruins, and, in the progress of desolation, not one half 
 of the rich valley between Hems and Hamath was culti¬ 
 vated.* 
 
 Baalhec was a beautiful city, solidly built, intersected by 
 a stream, from which the water passed by conduits into the 
 houses. It was enriched with the choicest luxuries ; the 
 soil was very fruitful; the corn extremely cheap. The 
 territory of Baalbec produced all the necessaries, and most 
 of the luxuries of life; and the vines and other fruit-trees 
 yielded a more abundant produce than the inhabitants could 
 consume.! 
 
 Aleppo, which had become the capital of Kinnesrin, was 
 a large and populous city down to a recent period. The 
 number of inhabitants at Aleppo has been computed, says 
 Dr. Russel, at three hundred thousand ; but it is now con¬ 
 jectured (towards the close of last century), with more 
 probability, that they do not exceed two hundred and thirty- 
 five thousand.! It was surrounded by very high walls, 
 constructed of hewn stone, in large, square masses, with 
 towers at intervals of sixty paces. A strong citadel in the 
 midst of the city had a high tower, which was* conspicuous 
 at the distance of ten miles. The suburbs were adorned 
 with magnificent buildings as well as the city, the most ele¬ 
 gant of which were hippodromes for equestrian sports. The 
 most spacious churches were converted into mosques, of 
 one of which the tower was not excelled in height by any 
 in Syria. To the wonder of many, the walls of the church 
 of St. John, carved with pictures of the saints, remained 
 untouched ; but they were shut up from view, as an abom- 
 
 * Thevenot’s Travels (A.D. 1655), p. 223, 224. 
 
 t Abulfeda, p. 103. Ibn 01 Wardi, p. 187. Edrisi, ibid., tom. v., p. 353, 354. 
 
 j Russel’s Aleppo, p. 97, 98. 
 
STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 213 
 
 ination to the Mohammedans. The city contained many 
 grand khans or caravanseras, which were stored with all 
 varieties of the richest merchandise, and frequented from 
 every quarter.* 
 
 Aintab was a beautiful and large city, with a citadel cut 
 out of the live rock, and very strongly fortified, abounding 
 in well-watered gardens, famous for its markets, and much 
 frequented by merchants and travellers.! 
 
 Sarmin was the capital of an extensive prefecture, which 
 contained many villages. It rejoiced in the abundance of 
 its olives and other trees, and in a fruitful soil, and was 
 adorned with a forum and large mosque. In its vicinity 
 were forests of pistachio-trees.j: 
 
 Maarah was a strongly-fortified city, and, like many 
 others, the see of a bishop. In the thirteenth century it 
 was a populous city, abounding in ail sorts of luxuries ; and 
 though it had sunk into a small village in the seventeenth 
 century, its khan was so spacious as to lodge with ease 
 eight hundred men and their horses.§ 
 
 Nearly midway between Antioch and Apamea stood the 
 fortresses of Asshoghar and Bacas, on the River Orontes, 
 which abounded in fruitful gardens. To these forts a large 
 mosque was attached, and a market-place in its vicinity 
 was crowded weekly by multitudes.|| 
 
 Tripoli was a large city, well fortified, and surrounded 
 by pleasant villages and fauxbourgs, the lands around plant¬ 
 ed with olives, vines, and other fruit-trees, and sugar-canes. 
 It was one of the entrephts of Syria, full of all manner 
 of merchandise, or articles of commerce. Several forts 
 were dependances of Tripoli, of which four are mentioned 
 by Edrisi. The most renowned of its villages were Chaki- 
 kie, Zenbourie, Raabie, Harth, and Amioun, which, as well 
 as the rest, possessed abundantly plantations of olives and 
 other fruits. Three forts, at short distances, lay between 
 Tripoli and Area, a populous city, with a lofty citadel and 
 a large faubourg. The river that flowed beside the city wa¬ 
 tered numerous vineyards and plantations of sugar-cane.^ 
 Sidon was a large and well-built city. Its markets were 
 furnished with all varieties of merchandise, its gardens co¬ 
 piously irrigated and full of fruits. It had large depend- 
 
 * Edrisi, ibid., tom. vi., p. 136. Tab. Syriae. Ibn 01 Wardi, p. 188-190. Coto- 
 nci Itiner., p. 107-109. Russel’s Aleppo. t Abulfeda, Tab. Syr., p. 121, 122. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 115. Rauwolff’s Travels, p. 59. (> Abulfeda, p. Ill, 112. Theveuot. 
 
 II Ibid., p. 124. Y Edrisi, ibid., tom. v., p 356, 357- 
 
214 STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 ances, which were divided into four districts, whicn ex¬ 
 tended to Lebanon ; that of Har, renowned for its fertility ; 
 of Cherbe, alike delicious ; of Kafr-Keilan and of El-Rami, 
 named from a stream that flowed down from the mountains 
 and rushed to the sea. These united districts comprised 
 nearly six hundred villages.* And thus, even in the twelfth 
 century, shrunk as Sidon the great then w^as, and circum¬ 
 scribed its territory, there was still a rich meaning in the 
 words of the covenant, devoting what they never yet have 
 inherited, all the Sidonians, and the territory they possess¬ 
 ed, to the inheritance of Israel. 
 
 Beirout was surrounded by a strong wall. From the iron 
 mines in the adjoining mountain, metal susceptible of ex¬ 
 cellent temper was extracted, and sold extensively through¬ 
 out all Syria. 
 
 Askelon was a fine city, surrounded by a double wall, 
 EdDOunding in gardens and fruits, and rich in olives, vines, 
 nuts, and pomegranates. All commodities were extremely 
 cheap, and the soil most fruitful.! Askelon, Arsouf, and 
 Jaffa, maritime cities of Palestine, greatly resembled each 
 other in extent, in charms, and the state of their inhabi¬ 
 tants—all beautiful cities, well fortified and populous, and 
 surrounded by quaptities of vines and olives. Jaffa, partic¬ 
 ularly, was the port of Jerusalem.J To the south of Jeru¬ 
 salem were two beautiful districts, viz., Hamal, of which 
 the capital was Darab, and Clierat, of which the capital was 
 Adrah. These regions were extremely fertile, producing 
 figs, almonds, and pomegranates in abundance.§ El-Arish 
 had two mosques of remarkable construction. Its sandy 
 territory produced dates and various other fruits. 1| 
 
 The town of Aaglun (Ajalon), east of the Jordan, was 
 strongly fortified by its famous castle, built or rebuilt in the 
 fourteenth century. It rejoiced in its streams, and gardens, 
 and fruits, and most fertile soil.^ 
 
 As-Salt was a strong town, fortified by a citadel, and wa¬ 
 tered by a large fountain : it rejoiced in its numerous gar¬ 
 dens. From the fame of their excellence, says the Prince 
 of Hamath, its pomegranates were exported to all quarters 
 of the world.** 
 
 Bozra, the capital of the Haouran, had a castle of the 
 
 * Edrisi, tom. v., p. 354, 355. f Tabula SyrijE. Ibn OlWardi, p. 179. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 348. .i) Edrisi, ibid., tom. v., p. 340, 341. 
 
 U Ibid., p. 340. IT Abulfeda, Tab. Syr., p. 13. ** Ibid., p. 92 
 
STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 215 
 
 firmest construction. Scharchod, a small town, was forti¬ 
 fied by an excellent citadel, and encompassed by numerous 
 vineyards.* A royal highway extended eastward from it 
 to Persia, the distance to Bagdad, according to the then ex¬ 
 isting itineraries, being ten days’ journey. Fortijied with 
 mounds^ it bore the name of Ar Raszif.] 
 
 Little has been told of the number and maonificence of 
 
 o 
 
 the cities of Syria, that have yet to arise from their ruins 
 in greater glory than ever. Abulfeda, however briefly, gives 
 in his geography a short separate description of more than 
 a hundred cities, towns, and citadels, as the most distin¬ 
 guished or celebrated in Syria. Though his work is chiefly 
 occupied in marking their positions, the latitude and longi¬ 
 tude of upward of sixty of them being given in a table, yet 
 most of them, as well as those above noted, are described 
 as rejoicing in fountains or streams, and in gardens or fruits. 
 Syria even then, in the fourteenth century, had not altogeth¬ 
 er lost the character which Pliny gave it, as a country 
 abounding exceedingly in gardens. Tiberias and Jericho, 
 together with the intervening region, the valley of the Jor¬ 
 dan, and El-Arish on the borders of the desert, could still 
 show that, though comparatively few, there still were palms 
 to vindicate the fame which they gave to Judea in the days 
 of that eminent naturalist: the palm and the balsam, which 
 an Italian climate could not rear, retained their station in 
 Judea : and trees which he noted as peculiar to Judea, and 
 which, transported from thence, were indigenous in Italy, 
 continued, though often degenerating into wildness, in their 
 native clime. Of these he specifies the pistachio nut, vari¬ 
 ous kinds of plants, the juniper, the cedar, and the terebinth 
 tree.J The vegetables, or pot-herbs of Syria, which, ac¬ 
 cording to his testimony, were varied and abundant, could 
 still astonish, by their variety, their richness, size, and num¬ 
 ber, the European traveller in ages far less remote from our 
 own. 
 
 Two or three centuries ago, many regions of Syria, un¬ 
 blasted by permanent desolation, though often ravaged by 
 successive desolators, continued long to bear witness, by 
 their vast profusion, to the prodigality of the gifts of Nature j 
 and from Amanus on the north of Syria, and Beerith on 
 the Euphrates, to the borders of Egypt, presented scenes 
 
 * Abulfeda, Tab Syr., p. 99, 105, 106.. t Ibid., p. 106. 
 
 t Kin., Nat. Hist., lib. xiii., c. 10, 11, 12. 
 
216 STATE OP SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 of luxurious loveliness without a parallel in less favoured 
 climes. 
 
 In ascending Beilan, the ancient Amanus, the traveller, 
 in the sixteenth century, passed through thick and shady 
 woods, in which planes, larches, firs, beech, oaks, cedars, 
 laurels, and myrtles were intermingled. From the summit 
 of the mountain, covered with cedars, junipers, and andrach- 
 nes, a magnificent and extensive view spread forth before 
 him on every side. Looking to the south—as Israel, when 
 her name shall be Beulah, married, and when she shall no 
 longer be termed Forsaken, shall yet look from the top of 
 Amanus—he beheld the widespread Lake of Antioch mir¬ 
 rored at his feet, a most extensive valley, the city of Anti¬ 
 och itself, with the hills, and all the mountains around it; 
 while to the west, the more lowly hills, and narrower, but 
 most fertile valleys, and thick woods, filled up all the inter¬ 
 vening space, till the view was bounded by the Mediterra¬ 
 nean Sea.* 
 
 “ At Aleppo,''’ says Dr. Rauwolff, “ there are abundance of 
 delicate orchards, that are filled with oranges, citrons, lem¬ 
 ons, Adam’s apples, Sebesten peaches, morellos, and pome¬ 
 granates, &c. The valley is** full of olive-trees, so that, 
 several thousand hundred-weight of oil are made yearly. 
 There is also a great quantity of tame and wild almond 
 trees, of figs, of quince and white mulberry trees, very high 
 and large. Pistachio-trees are very common in the fields, 
 bearing nuts, like grapes, in clusters together.”! “ Garden- 
 plants and kitchen-herbs, without as within the gardens, 
 were in vast variety and abundance, including watermelons, 
 very large and delicious, pumpions, citrals, &c., and many 
 other rich but strange plants, unknown to the European 
 traveller. Barley, wheat, and various kinds of pulse were 
 abundant, their harvest commonly commencing in April or 
 May.”J “ In the great plain near Tripoli,” says the same 
 observant traveller, “ you see abundance of vineyards, and 
 very fine gardens, enclosed in hedges, chiefly consisting of 
 rharnus, alicorus, oxyacantha, phillyria, lycium, bataustinum, 
 rubus, and little palm-trees, that are but low, and so sprout 
 and spread themselves, and containing all sorts of salads 
 and kitchen-herbs, besides fruits, as watermelons, melons, 
 gourds, citrals, melongena, sesamum, and the cola cassia, 
 
 * Itinerarium Cotovici, p. 501. 
 
 I Rauwollf’s Trav., A.D. 1573, p. 64, 102, &c. i Ibid., p. 65, 67. 
 
STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 217 
 
 which is very common. Without the gardens, also, are 
 many date and mulberry trees, pomegranate and siliqua, ol¬ 
 ive and almond trees, Adam’s apples, &c.; while citrons, 
 lemons, and oranges are in so great plenty, that they are as 
 little regarded as pears or oats in Holland. Between these 
 gardens run several roads and pleasant walks, which afford 
 many shady places in summer ; and if, passing through, you 
 have -a mind to some of the fruits, you may either gather 
 some that are fallen down, or else pull them from the near¬ 
 est trees without danger, and take them home with you.”* 
 In the adjacent grounds are great quantities of sugar-canes, 
 from which much sugar is made yearly. Sycamore-trees, 
 bearing fruit not unlike the fig, grow in all fields and grounds, 
 yielding fruit three or four times yearly, which is found upon 
 the trees all the year long. How abundant these anciently 
 were in the plains of Palestine may be inferred from the il¬ 
 lustration which they gave of plenteousness in the days of 
 Solomon, who made cedar-trees like the sycamores that are 
 in the plains for abundance. Producing fruits almost con¬ 
 tinually, the gathering of them formed a peculiar occupation, 
 associated, as in the case of Amos, with that of a herdsman. 
 Tripoli could also boast of abundance of corn-fields, as of 
 vineyards and of olive groves, that extended quite up to 
 Lebanon.! 
 
 Down to a still more recent period, many gardens in 
 Syria were worthy of the ancient fame, justly once bestow¬ 
 ed upon them all, and retained a richness and a beauty of 
 which Turkish barbarism, conjoined with Arab spoliation, 
 has since bereaved them. Of this fact a few illustrations 
 may be given. For half a day’s journey from Tripoli, the 
 most pleasant and fruitful plains abounded with'fruit-trees, 
 olives, and vines ; several gardens were full of excellent 
 orange-trees. So, also, were the gardens of Napolous. 
 Tiberias could still boast of the abundance of its palm-trees. 
 Hamath, amid its many gardens, had some full of orange- 
 trees by the river’s side. The hills in the neighbourhood 
 of Baalbec were mostly covered with vineyards, which pro¬ 
 duced celebrated grapes.j; Of Saide, where a great silk 
 trade was carried on, it was a saying, “ So soon as they 
 can get but a little piece of rock, if they can make two fin¬ 
 gers’ breadth of earth upon it, there they plant a mulberry- 
 
 * RauwollPs Trav., p. 21, 22. 
 
 I Van Effinont and Hevman’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 272. 
 
 T 
 
 t Ibid., p. 4&-51. 
 
218 STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 tree at Saide.” To'the south of Beyrout, a forest of pines 
 extended to Mount Lebanon, over a space of twelve miles 
 on every side. The orange garden of Faccardine, a prince 
 of the Druses, who had visited Italy, may be an illustration 
 of what Syria might be, with such paradises spread over it, 
 were truth to prevail, and war to cease, and art to be com¬ 
 bined with soil and climate to render it a glorious land. “ It 
 contained,” as described by Maundrell at the close of the 
 seventeenth century, “ a large quadrangular plat of ground, 
 divided into sixteen lesser squares, four in each row, with 
 walks between them. The walks are shaded with orange- 
 trees, of a large, spreading size, and all of so fine a growth, 
 both for stem and head, that one cannot imagine anything 
 more perfect in their kind. They were, at the time when 
 we were there, as it were, gilded with fruit, hanging thick¬ 
 er upon them than ever I saw apples in England. Every 
 one of these sixteen lesser squares in the garden was bor¬ 
 dered with stone ; and in the stonework were troughs very 
 artificially contrived, for conveying the water all over the 
 garden, there being little outlets cut at every tree for the 
 stream, as it passed by, to flow out and water it. Were 
 this place under the cultivation of an English gardener, it 
 is impossible anything could be made more delightful. But 
 these hesperides w'ere put to no better use, when we saw 
 them, than to serve as a fold for sheep and goats, insomuch 
 that in many places they were up to the knees in dirt, so 
 little sense have the Turks of such refined delights as these, 
 <fcc. On the east side of this garden were two terrace 
 walks, rising one above the other, each of them having an 
 ascent to it of twelve steps. They had both several fine, 
 spreading orange-trees upon them, to make shades in prop¬ 
 er places, and at the north end they led into booths, and 
 summer houses, and other apartments very delightful.”* 
 While, in the progress of desolation, the proofs that Syr¬ 
 ia had once been a glorious land, in which the inhabitants 
 lacked not anything., were ever diminishing generation after 
 generation, there were still some signs, down to the last cen¬ 
 tury, as there are some in the present, of what it once had 
 been, and how it might be turned into a garden again. But 
 the general description by which it was delineated five or 
 six centuries ago, or even within half that period, when sub¬ 
 jugated by the Ottoman Turks, would, except as to its un- 
 
 * Maundrell’s Travels, p. 59. 
 
STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 219 
 
 changed natural fertility, ill befit it in the present day. In 
 the eleventh century, an eyewitness could thus describe 
 what he saw. “ The soil [of the Holy Land] is itself most 
 fruitful in corn, so that it yields a large produce with the 
 slightest labour. It is naturally so rich that it needs no ma¬ 
 nure. Cotton is cultivated. Sugar-canes also grow, from 
 which sugar of the finest quality is made. I ingenuously 
 confess that apples and pears, and similar fruits, do not grow 
 in the Holy Land, but they are brought from Damascus, 
 though from the heat they cannot be long preserved. But in¬ 
 stead of them they have other fruits, which are preserved on 
 the trees throughout the year, for you often at the same time 
 see the same tree bearing both blossom and ripe fruit. From 
 these the inhabitants make various preserves, &;c., with 
 which they enrich their food, whether of bread, flesh, fish, or 
 other meats. They have also large citrons, from which they 
 make the finest confections. They have also other excellent 
 and wonderful apples, called the apples of Paradise, which 
 grow in clusters like grapes, so that frequently a hundred ap¬ 
 ples may be seen on a single bunch (simul conglobata). 
 There are many vines in the Holy Land, and there would be 
 more if the Saracens were not prohibited from the use of wine. 
 Holding the greater part of Palestine in subjection, they root 
 out the vines wherever they find them. The best vines are 
 grown in the valley of Bethlehem, and in Nehel-Eschol, and 
 also near Sidon, Antaradus, and under Mount Lei^anon; 
 and, as the inhabitants of Antaradus told me, they collect 
 wine from the same vine three times a year, that is, they 
 have in one year three gatherings of grapes ; for when the 
 vine has brought forth the accustomed clusters in March, 
 the wood which is without fruit is cut off, and then, from 
 the stem that is left, new shoots bearing fruit-buds sprout 
 forth, which being cut off, produce new branches in May 
 that bear late grapes. By this art, the ripe grapes in Au¬ 
 gust require three gatherings. The second, that blossomed 
 in April, are gleaned in September, and the third in October. 
 Hence it is that in the Holy Land grapes are sold from the 
 day of John the Baptist to the day of St. Martin (from the 
 24th of June to the 11th of November). In that land they 
 have also figs, pomegranates, honey, olive oil, cucumbers, 
 melons, citrons, and many other fruits. The corn is also 
 very fine, so that I never ate better bread than in Jerusalem! 
 Deer, hares, partridges, wild boars, quails, &c., abound in 
 
220 PROGRESSIVE DESOLATION OF SYRIA. 
 
 the Holy Land, and camels are most numerous”* (A.D. 
 1283). 
 
 In the fourteenth century Syria had not lost its title to be 
 reckoned, in fact, as a goodly land. It was in that age brief¬ 
 ly described by Ibn 01 Wardi, in the first words of the ge¬ 
 ographical extract affixed, in the Leipsic edition (A.D. 1756), 
 to Abulfeda’s Syria, as “ an extensive region abounding with 
 all good things, having gardens, paradises, woods, meadows, 
 delicious valleys, varieties of fruits, and abundance of cattle. 
 It then contained thirty fortresses.”! 
 
 The curses of a broken covenant had not then all fallen 
 with their utmost weight upon the land, nor had the time 
 then come when the fortress should finally cease from 
 Ephraim^ and the land be utterly desolate, and the cities 
 desolate without inhabitants, and the houses without man. 
 And reduced as it was from what it had been, yet in popu¬ 
 lation and in produce far more than a tenth was left; and 
 the time was not come when they who laid the land deso¬ 
 late should go forth out of it, and the wanderers among the 
 nations for many centuries should find at last a home as Ja¬ 
 cob’s children in Jacob’s heritage. The second wo had first 
 to do all its work, and the land of Israel had to be subjected 
 for centuries to Ottoman government and Arab spoliation. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PROGRESSIVE DESOLATION OF SYRIA. 
 
 Before proceeding to the melancholy review of the 
 ruins which now overspread Syria, even as it was for 
 ages overspread with ancient and flourishing cities, 
 towns, and villages, and unfolding the record which the 
 judgment-stricken land does bear, and thereby showing 
 their number and their names more fully than any scrip¬ 
 tural or other historical record has borne, it may be 
 worth a moment’s pause to glance at a few illustrations 
 of the last stage of a long course of desolation, and to 
 note the difference between what was, when Edrisi, Abul- 
 
 * TerriE SanctiB Descriptio. Brocardo. Orbis Novus, p. 281, 282. 
 t Tabula Syri®, p. 169. 
 
PROGRESSIVE DESOLATION OF SYRIA. 
 
 221 
 
 feda, and Ibn 01 Ward! wrote, and what is, as every 
 modern traveller, in altered terms from theirs, repeats 
 the tale concerning cities that now “rejoice” not, and 
 fortresses that boast no more. 
 
 “ From Zebdeni there were continuous gardens even 
 to Damascus.” “ The plain of Zebdeni,” which lies be¬ 
 tween it and Damascus, “ is about three quarters of an 
 hour in breadth, and three hours in length. It is watered 
 by the Barada, one of whose sources is in the midst of 
 it. We followed it from one end to the other. Its cul¬ 
 tivable ground is waste till near the village of Beroudj, 
 where I saw plantations of mulberry-trees, which seemed 
 to be well taken care of. Half an hour from Beroudj is 
 the village of Zebdeni, and between them the ruined 
 Khan Benduk.”* “ Zebdeni to Damascus. —The valley 
 of Zebdeni appeared quite uncultivated, though the soil 
 is good, and it is watered by the Barada and several 
 other streams.”! 
 
 “ Antioch,” five centuries ago, “ surrounded by huge 
 walls, was a great city, next to Damascus the most de¬ 
 lightful city in Syria.” “ The present town, which is 
 a miserable one, does not occupy more than one eighth 
 part of the space included in the old walls, which have a 
 fine, venerable appearance.”! 
 
 “ Majaf (which lies more than midway between Emesa 
 and the sea) is a famous city, with meandering streams, 
 flowing from fountains, from which the gardens are irri¬ 
 gated.”§ “ The town of Maszyad (or, as it is written in 
 
 the books of the Miri, Meszyadf), surrounded by a mod¬ 
 ern wall, is upward of half an hour (two miles) in cir 
 cumference, but the houses are in ruins, and there is not 
 a single well-built dwelling in the town, although stone 
 is the only material used. It is (A.D. 1810) inhabited 
 by 280 families. The castle, built upon a high and al¬ 
 most perpendicular rock, commands the wild moor in ev¬ 
 ery direction, presenting a gloomy romantic landscape.”|1 
 
 Baalbec was “ a beautiful city, solidly built, and rich in 
 the choicest luxuries,” &c. “The walls of the ancient 
 city may still be traced, and include a larger space than 
 the present town ever occupied, even in its most flour- 
 
 * Bur(?khardt’s Syria, p. 3. t Travels in Syria, by G. Robinson, Esq., 1830. 
 
 t Irby and Mangles, p. 229. ^ Abul., Tab. Syriae, p. 20. 
 
 II Burckhardt’s Travels, p. 150. 
 
 T 
 
222 PROGRESSIVE DESOLATION OF SYRIA. 
 
 ishing state.” The ruined town of Baalbec contained, 
 when visited by Burckhardt, about seventy Metaweli 
 families, and twenty-five of catholic Christians. The 
 earth is extremely fertile. “Even so late as twelve 
 years ago,” as he relates, “ the plain, and a part of the 
 mountain, to the distance of a league and a half round 
 the town, were covered with grape plantations; the op¬ 
 pressions of the governors and their satellites have now 
 entirely destroyed them ; and the inhabitants of Baal¬ 
 bec, instead of eating their own grapes, which were re¬ 
 nowned for their superior flavour, are obliged to import 
 them from Fursul and Zahle.”* The progress of des¬ 
 olation did not then cease over the ruins of the city of 
 Baal. In 1830, or twenty years thereafter, Mr. Robin¬ 
 son thus writes: On entering Baalbec, “a sad scene of 
 ruin and desolation presented itself on every side, a sol¬ 
 itary house or two on each street alone remaining, and 
 even these tenantless, or only temporarily occupied by 
 Arab shepherds and their flocks.”t 
 
 Kuat, Saramain^ and Maarat Mesrin, situated a day’s 
 journey south of Aleppo, were three cities worthy to be 
 ranked among the celebrated towns of Syria. Their 
 territory, which lay in the vicinity of that of the ancient 
 Colchis, could still boast, in the fourteenth century, a 
 multitude of olives, figs, and a variety of other trees. 
 Sarmin, situated in a fruitful soil, embraced in its pre¬ 
 fecture many villages.J “ We went,” says Pococke, “ to 
 see several fine ruins of ancient towns and villages, 
 south of Sarmin. In Rany, Magnesia, and Ashy, we 
 saw ruins of villages built of hewn stones.” Kuph (the 
 only name he mentions which at all resembles Kuat) is 
 a ruined village of such extent, that it looked like the 
 remains of a large town. Marrah, from being a popu¬ 
 lous city, was then reduced to a poor little town, and is 
 now a “ poor little village.” Remarkable as it is for 
 the great number of ancient cisterns and wells hewn in 
 the rock which it still exhibits, Sarmin^ no longer the 
 chief city of a rich district, has now sunk into a “ vil¬ 
 lage ;” and where the olive, the fig, and other trees 
 adorned the city and the surrounding region, “a few 
 clumps of olives,” in a “ country otherwise destitute of 
 
 * Burckhardt’s Travels, p. 10, 13, 15 t Robinson’s Travels, p. 93, 
 
 % Abulfeda, p, 21, 23, 111, 115. 
 
 I 
 
PROGRESSIVE DESOLATION OF SYRIA. 
 
 223 
 
 wood and naked,”*" have themselves become like the 
 two or three berries on the top of the uttermost bough, 
 or the four or five in the outmost fruitful branches that 
 are left when the olive has been shaken. 
 
 The ancient city of Basra had a citadel of the strong¬ 
 est structure, like that of Damascus.f To the west of 
 it lay the strong castle of Aaglun^ then recently built, 
 and to the east, Scharchod was also fortified by a strong 
 citadel. The castle of Jldjeloon^ like the rest, was wor¬ 
 thy of its high fame. Built upon a rock, and surmount¬ 
 ed by a moat cut out of the rock, faced with masonry 
 when needful, “ it must,” says Buckingham, “have been 
 originally considered one of the strongest positions in 
 the country,” though in the hands of its present posses¬ 
 sors “ the castle may be almost said to be in ruins, though 
 many parts of it are still habitable,&c. The castle of 
 Salghud occupied a fine elevation, is founded on a rock, 
 and surrounded by a broad and deep ditch hewn out of 
 the rock, the area on which it stands being eight hundred 
 paces in circuit. The castle is abandoned, and the city 
 or town is now entirely in ruins, and without a single in¬ 
 habitant.§ “ The large castle of Basra is one of the best 
 
 built citadels of Syria, and is surrounded by a deep ditch. 
 Its walls are very thick, and in the interior are alleys, 
 dark vaults, subterraneous passages, &c., of the most 
 solid construction.”11 “In centre of the castle is a fine 
 theatre, apparently of great extent and beauty, in its 
 orifyinal state, thouGrb now confounded with other ruins,” 
 &c. “ There were seven or eight ranges of benches, 
 
 gradually rising and receding as they rose, in the man¬ 
 ner of ail the theatres of antiquity. The upper range 
 was terminated by a fine Doric colonnade running all 
 round the semicircle, the pillars being about three feet 
 in diameter, supporting a plain entablature. The circle 
 of the upper range of seats was two hundred and thirty 
 paces.” The entrances for the visiters of this theatre 
 seemed to be “ through arched passages, corresponding 
 with the ancient vomitories, and about thirty in num- 
 ber.”*!! When Syria was invaded by the Saracens, Bozra 
 was a strongly-fortified city, and “ twelve thousand horse 
 
 * Irby and Mang-les’ Travels, p. 240. t Abulfeda, Tab. Syr., p. 99. 
 
 t Bucking-ham’s Trav. among the Arab Tribes, p. 151. ^ Ibid., p. 216. 
 
 y Burckhardt’s Syria, p. 233. I" Buckingham’s Travels, p. 204., 205. 
 
224 
 
 PROGRESSIVE DESOLATION OF SYRIA. 
 
 issued from its gates and five centuries afterward an 
 army of Crusaders turned back from its walls, and did 
 not venture to besiege it. But the contrast is striking. 
 The town is all but utterly deserted and when visited 
 by Burckhardt, the castle was garrisoned by six Mog- 
 grebbyns only.”* 
 
 Chesbmi was the metropolis of the fertile country of 
 Al Balkaa when Abulfeda wrote, and Rabba Moab had 
 perished and was turned into a village, and the large 
 area on which the ancient city of Ammon was built was 
 heaped with ruins. Heshbon was then surrounded with 
 trees, and gardens, and fields.f But now at Heshbon 
 are the ruins of a large ancient town; a few broken 
 shafts of columns are still standing, a number of deep 
 wells cut in the rock, and a large reservoir of water,{ &c. 
 
 Askelon was a fine city, surrounded by a double wall, 
 abounding in gardens and fruits, and was one of the 
 most celebrated towns of the seacoast. The inhabi¬ 
 tants drank out of fountains of sweet water. It was 
 rich in olives, vines, nuts, and pomegranates. Every¬ 
 thing was extremely cheap, and the soil very rich.§ 
 ‘‘The position of Askelon is strong; the walls are built 
 on the top of a ridge of rock, that winds round the 
 town in a semicircular direction, and terminates at each 
 end in the sea. The foundations remain all the way 
 round, the walls are of great thickness, and in some 
 places of considerable height, and flanked with towers 
 at difierent distances. Patches of the wall preserve 
 their original elevation, but in general it is ruined 
 throughout, and the materials lie scattered around the 
 foundation, or rolled down the hill on either side. In 
 the highest part of the town we found the remains of a 
 Christian convent, close upon the sea, with a well of ex¬ 
 cellent water beside it. Askelon was one of the proud¬ 
 est satrapies of the lords of the Philistines ; now there 
 is not an inhabitant within its walls ; and the prophecy 
 of Zechariah is fulfilled, ‘Askelon shall not be inhabit- 
 of about two miles in circuit, and, as the Pacha of Egpyt 
 ed.’”11 “The city occupies, within the walls, a space 
 has caused the sand to be cleared, with the intention ol 
 
 * Burckhardt’s Syria, p. 233. f Abulfeda, p. 11, 90, 92. 
 
 $ Burckhardt’s Syria, p. 365. ^ Tab. Syr., p. 179. 
 
 II Richardson’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 202-204. 
 
PROGRESSIVE DESOLATION OP SYRIA. 225 
 
 building a new town and hartiour from the ancient ma¬ 
 terials, many interesting remains have been exposed to 
 view. Near the centre of the field of ruins there has 
 stood a temple of large dimensions, the pillars of which, 
 though fallen, are still entire, each shaft being of one 
 piece of gray granite. The pillars and entablature are 
 of white marble, of the Corinthian order, and in the 
 purest taste. Near this, a very beautiful colossal female 
 figure, of white marble, forms part of the substructure 
 of a building, and might be easily removed from its 
 present situation. Friezes and entablatures, and frag¬ 
 ments of marble statues, lie scattered about in every di¬ 
 rection. One of the most interesting ruins is that of 
 an early Christian church, probably of the fourth or 
 fifth century ; the walls, pavement, and bases of the col¬ 
 umns showing the exact plan of the building, which cor¬ 
 responds with that of other early churches in the Holy 
 Land. The pavement, and the capitals and bases of 
 the columns, are of polished white marble. The capi¬ 
 tals are corrupt in taste, but beautifully carved, as is 
 frequently seen in similar instances, when the arts had 
 begun to decline. They bear an eight-pointed cross, 
 encircled with a wreath of laurel. Askelon was a bish¬ 
 opric in the early ages of Christianity. Sandys describes 
 it as ‘ a place of no note, except that the Turke doth 
 here keep a garrison.’ It is now a place of still less 
 note, except that the deserted ruins, and the poor vil¬ 
 lage of shepherds beside the walls, remain as an evi¬ 
 dence of the fulfilment of prophecy.”* 
 
 Askelon has indeed drunk of the wine-cup of the 
 fury of the Lord. Though its ruins, like many in Syria, 
 give proof that it has been rebuilt again and again, at 
 last it has been cut off with the remnant of the valley. 
 Annexed to these words is the question concerning it, 
 “ How long wilt thou cut thyself, O thou sword of the 
 Lord ; how long will it be ere thou be quiet 1 Put up 
 thyself into thy scabbard; rest, and be still. How can 
 it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge 
 ao-ainst Ashkelon, and against the seashore I there hath 
 He appointed it.”j 
 
 These words of the Eternal may well denote the lapse 
 of many ages. The sword of the Lord is not yet put 
 
 ♦ Kinneir’s Cairo, &c., p. 212, 213, t Jer,, xlvii., 5-7. 
 
226 PROGRESSIVE DESOLATION OF SYRIA. 
 
 up in its scabbard and 'still, along the seashore of 
 Philistia, a land now no less troubled than ever j but 
 the charge which the Lord gave against Askelon has 
 been fully executed. And though, when the first king 
 of Israel and his lovely son were slain, the sad tidings, 
 as the lamentation of David bears, were not to be told 
 in Gaza, nor published in the streets of Askelon, lest 
 the daughters of the Philistines should rejoice, and the 
 daughters of the uncircumcised triumph, yet it may now 
 be told in the streets of any city, and published through¬ 
 out the world, that, according to the word of the living 
 God, not only hath the Lord cut off the sceptre from 
 Askelon, but that city itself, in far later ages fenced 
 with double walls, has become a desolation^ without an in- 
 habitant. The seacoast also, as every succeeding travel¬ 
 ler now bears witness, and as the writer can personally 
 testify, has become dwellings and cottages for shepherds^ and 
 folds for flocks. It is not for the daughters of the uncir¬ 
 cumcised to triumph at the tidings, but for all to stand 
 in awe at judgments perfected at last—to stand in awe 
 and sin not. 
 
 It is not as the theme of such prophecies alone that 
 we would here linger at Askelon. The interrogatory, 
 how longl may demand a pause. The facts that that 
 city—situated on the border of the Mediterranean Sea, 
 and partly buried under sand, and far more desolate 
 and broken than many other cities of Syria, so as to 
 have become, in worlMy estimation, a place of no note 
 —was but recently about to be rebuilt, and that the 
 purpose was only seemingly frustrated by the outbreak 
 of a new war, and the expulsion of the intending re¬ 
 storer ; that the preparatory work was done, and the 
 sand cleared away, with the intention of building a new 
 town and harbour from the ancient materials, and that 
 many interesting remains were thereby disclosed to view, 
 might not only excite some interest in a place previously 
 reckoned of no note, but may suffice to show how the 
 city is accounted worthy of being rebuilt, and how the 
 ancient materials are well adapted for its reconstruc¬ 
 tion. It cannot be held unwarrantable to expect such 
 disclosures in other ruins j and even where these need 
 not to be made, but heaps of hewn stones lie ready for 
 the builder, the attempt to raise up fallen Askelon 
 
PROGRESSIVE DESOLATION OF SYRIA. 
 
 227 
 
 may serve to show how practicable it is to renew the 
 cities that need only to be repaired, or to raise up from 
 their ruins the cities with which Syria was overspread. 
 
 But, not resting on conjecture, or regarding mere po¬ 
 litical expediency, we chiefly look on Askelon, desolate 
 and uninhabijted, as showing how it has reached the full 
 measure of the Divine judgments pronounced against it; 
 and we look on the attempt to raise it up, however 
 premature or untimely it yet may have been, as a prog¬ 
 nostic of a happier destiny that yet awaits it, as assu¬ 
 redly as it has thus been brought low. For who can tell 
 that the necessarily preparatory work, which it lay to 
 the pacha’s hand to do, for the final rebuilding of that 
 city as it shall be rebuilt, may not have thus been accom¬ 
 plished % The “ field of ruins” may now be the more ea¬ 
 sily cultivated, and flourish “ a fine city” again. What¬ 
 ever may be problematical, this is not; for the mouth of 
 the Lord hath spoken it: In the houses of Askelon shall 
 they (the Jews) lie down in the evening: for the Lord their 
 God shall visit them, and turn away their captivity.* 
 
 That which is thus said of it is said also of all the 
 cities of the land. How nume'rous they were in ancient 
 times we have already seen j and still more ample testi¬ 
 mony the land itself does at last disclose. That they 
 have in general reached, like Askelon, the last degree 
 of predicted desolation, and that, like it, they supply 
 ample materials for rising again, phoenix-like, from their 
 ruins, even a cursory view may render luminously clear. 
 In their multitude and in their magnitude, fallen and 
 shrunk as many of them are, a palpable demonstration 
 is supplied of the goodliness of the land which sustain¬ 
 ed and enriched them all. And while scriptural history 
 is thus corroborated, and scriptural prophecy thus ocu¬ 
 larly set forth as perfect verity, the reader is entreated 
 to bear next with the dry continuous detail of ruin after 
 ruin, in the faith and assured hope, even as the cove¬ 
 nant of God is true, that as the light of Scripture proph¬ 
 ecy rests refulgent on them all, it shall yet be reflected 
 in brighter glory than ever from the cities of Israel 
 again, when Jacob shall have become the restorer of cities 
 to dwell in^ and when the face of the whole land shall be 
 filled with cities. 
 
 * Zeph., ii., 7. 
 
228 
 
 RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 Notwithstanding the interesting remains recently dis¬ 
 closed to view, so soon as the attempt was made to raise 
 Askelon from its grave, it is not from its ruins as they 
 lie that its ancient beauty and strength are to be seen, 
 any more than its once beauteous and fruitful environs 
 can be recognised in the desolation around it. The 
 circuit of ruined walls, if alone regarded, would in this, 
 as in other instances, be a faithful index to the popula 
 tion of the walled towns of Syria, if at all compared with 
 the extent of modern cities of Western Europe, with 
 their courts and squares spread over plains. They have 
 rather their existing pattern in the city of Genoa, with 
 streets narrow as the lanes of other towns. The streets 
 of Damascus, the first city in Syria, are only wide enough 
 for the passage of a loaded camel. And the walls of 
 Aleppo, long, as now, the second of its cities, are only 
 three miles or three miles and a half in circuit, though 
 its population (including the suburbs) in the beginning 
 of last century was “ generally computed at 300,000,”* 
 now reduced, in common token of progressive desola¬ 
 tion, to a fifth part of the number. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 In commencing a survey of the ruins that now over¬ 
 spread the land which was given by covenant to the seed 
 of Abraham for an everlasting possession, it may not be 
 amiss to follow, as previously, the route of the Israelites 
 when they originally entered their inheritance. So soon 
 as they reached it, they saw how goodly was their her¬ 
 itage ; and the cavils of those who have traduced it, and 
 denied its populousness in ancient times, may be con¬ 
 fronted at once with the ruins of hundreds of cities or 
 towns, as no equivocal proofs that they actually existed. 
 
 The seed of Jacob shall finally possess Mount Seir 
 and the remnant of Edom, which at first refused to give 
 Israel a passage through their border. But when the 
 whole earth rejoiceth, Edom shall be desolate. It is 
 
 * Van Egmont and Heyman’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 338. 
 
 / 
 
RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 2^29 
 
 written that, unlike the rest, its cities shall not return,^ 
 The scene of momentous judgments yet to come, to 
 witness which all nations are invoked, and the subject 
 of a peculiar doom, Mount Seir could not but question¬ 
 ably come within our province, while looking to the fu¬ 
 ture as well as to the past, and noting the ruins of cities 
 that shall be built again. 
 
 But in the latter days, the captivity of Moab and of 
 Ammon shall be brought back.f These regions mani¬ 
 festly lie within the borders of the promised heritage of 
 Jacob j and a brief inspection of their ruined cities, 
 which have all, as such, testified to the express reality 
 of the “ burden” which they were doomed by the Lord 
 to bear because of their transgressions, may prepare the 
 way of entering on the more extensive survey of those 
 ruined and deserted cities, built by aliens, that occupy 
 the length and the breadth of the covenanted inheritance 
 of Jacob. 
 
 From the borders of Edom to the River Zerka, an¬ 
 ciently the Jabbok, including Ammon and Moab, and 
 a small part of the original inheritance of Israel that 
 pertained not to either, an ample field of ruins, on which 
 we would first enter, is presented to our view, where 
 the Word of God, in respect to the desolation of the 
 cities, has done its perfect work. 
 
 In passing through the land of Moab towards its 
 southern extremity, and to the south of Kerek or Carac- 
 Moab, after recording the names of various ruined sites 
 which they saw from different points—five from one, 
 and six from another—^Captains Irby and Mangles give 
 their testimony, from ocular observation, that “ the 
 whole of the fine plains in this quarter are covered 
 with the sites of towns on every eminence or spot con¬ 
 venient for the construction of one 5 and as the land is 
 capable of rich cultivation, there can be little doubt that 
 the country, now so deserted, presented a continued 
 picture of plenty and fertility.”f In like manner, in 
 journeying to the north of Kerek, before reaching the an¬ 
 cient capital of Moab, they remark, “ The several cities 
 which we passed proved that the population of this coun¬ 
 try was formerly proportioned to its natural fertility.Ӥ 
 
 * Ezek., XXXV., 9, 14. 
 t Travels, p. 370, 371. 
 
 u 
 
 t Jer., xlviii., 47; xlixi, 6. 
 Ibid., p. 456. 
 
230 
 
 RUINS IN flIOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 
 But instead of startling the reader, if a stranger to 
 the ruins of Syria, by a general and seenaingly transient 
 renaark, he may be introduced to a knowledge of them 
 by following Burckhardt from the banks of the Zerka to 
 the borders of Edom, marking the slow mode of East¬ 
 ern travelling, where three miles form the measure of 
 “ an hour,” the usual and sole mode of computation now, 
 where Roman milestones once stood.* In the ground 
 on which he thus treads, looking at ruins alone, he will 
 not fail to recognise the names of some of those cities 
 of Ammon and Moab on which the word of the Lord 
 lighted, and on which it has fallen no less heavily than 
 on Askelon. Places of no note they too may now be 
 accounted ; but therefore is the word of the Lord veri¬ 
 fied, that judgment has come upon all the cities of Ammon 
 and Moab far and near. 
 
 The Zerka now divides the district of Moerad from the 
 country called El-Belka. On the summit of a mount¬ 
 ain, at the northern foot of which it flows, large heaps 
 of hewn stones, and several ruined walls, bear the name 
 of El-Meysera.^ In one hour fifteen minutes is the ruin¬ 
 ed place called El-Herath, about one hour to the south¬ 
 east of which are the ruined places Allan and Syphan. 
 At two hours is reached the foot of the mountain called 
 Djebel Djelaad and Djelaoud (Gilead), upon which are 
 the ruined towns of the same names. J The lofty mount¬ 
 ain Osha lies between Djelaad and Szalt^ which is distant 
 four hours thirty minutes from Meysera. Szalt is (was) 
 the only inhabited place in the province of Belka. In 
 descending the valley to the south of Szalt, the ruins of 
 a considerable town are met with, consisting of founda¬ 
 tions of buildings and heaps of stones, the remains, 
 seemingly, of the town (As Szalt) described by Abulfe- 
 da, through which the water flowed which issued from 
 a great fountain at the foot of the hill. In the southwest 
 direction from Szalt, distant about two hours and a half, 
 are four ruined places.^ East of Szalt about one hour are 
 the ruins called El-Deir. 
 
 From FeheiSj a ruined town at a short distance from 
 Szalt, Burckhardt diverged to the ruins of Ammon, and 
 returned to the same place by a different route, passing 
 
 * Mr. Buckingham computes an hour as four miles. 
 
 t Burckhardt’s Travels, p. 347. t Ibid., p. 348. ^ Abulfeda, Tab Syr., p. 92 
 
RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 231 
 
 ruins wherever he went.* “ Tie extensive plain of 
 El-Ahma, north of Ammon, is interspersed with low hills, 
 which are for the greater part crowned with ruins. 
 These ruins, as well as those in the Mountains of Belka, 
 consist of a few walls of dwelling-houses, heaps of stones, 
 the foundations of some public edifices, and a few cis¬ 
 terns now filled up; there is nothing entire, but it ap¬ 
 pears that the mode of building was very solid, all the 
 remains being formed of large stones. It is evident, 
 also, that the whole of the country must have been ex¬ 
 tremely well cultivated, in order to have afforded sub¬ 
 sistence to the inhabitants of so many towns.”f 
 
 Pursuing his journey southward from Feheis, we may 
 follow Burckhardt for a single day, noting only how 
 regularly ruins are bestrewed around the path, though 
 not so numerous as in the vicinity of Ammon. “We 
 passed Ardh-el-Hemar^ in the neighbourhood of which 
 are the ruined places El-Ryhha^ Shakour^ Meghanny^ and 
 Megahbely.^^ In 1 h. 45' we came to Kherbet Tabouk. At 
 2 h. 15' is a ruined birket, a reservoir of rain water, 
 called Om Aarnoud^ from some fragments of columns 
 which are found here. In 2 h. 30' we passed on our 
 right the Wady Szyr, which has its source near the 
 road. Above its source are the ruins of Szyr. At 3 h. 
 were the ruins of Szar. At 3 h. 30', and about half an 
 hour west of the road, are the ruins of Tokhara^ on the 
 side of the Wady Eshta, which empties itself into the 
 Jordan. To the left of the road is the great plain, with 
 many insulated hillocks. At 3 h. 45' to the right are 
 the ruins of Meraszas^ with a heap of stones called 
 Redyem-abd-Reshyd. To the left are the ruins called 
 Merdj Ekke. At 4 h. 30', and about three quarters of 
 an hour to our right, we saw the ruins of JVaowr, on the 
 side of a rivulet of that name. On both sides of the 
 road are many vestiges of ancient field enclosures. At 
 5 h. 45' are the ruins of El-Aal^ probably the Eleale of 
 Scripture. El-Aal was surrounded by a well-built wall, 
 of which some parts yet remain. Among the ruins are 
 a number of large cisterns, fragments of walls, and 
 foundations of houses, but nothing worth particular no¬ 
 tice. At 6 h. 15' is Hesban. Here are the remains of 
 a large ancient town, &c. About three quarters of an 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 355. t Ibid., p. 357. 
 
232 
 
 RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 hour southeast of Hesban are the ruins of Myoun^ the 
 ancient Baal Meon. Proceeding in a more easterly di¬ 
 rection, at 6 h. 45', about an hour distant from the road, 
 I saw the ruins of Djelouh^ at a short distance to the 
 east of which are the ruined places called El-Samek^ El~ 
 Mesouch^ and Om-el-Aamed^ situated close together upon 
 low elevations. At 7 h. 15' is El-Refeyrat^ a ruined town 
 of some extent. In seven hours and a half we came 
 to the remains of a well-paved ancient causeway, ap¬ 
 parently a Roman work. At the end of eight hours we 
 reached Madeba, the ancient Madeba, built upon a round 
 hill, and at least half an hour (or two miles) in circum¬ 
 ference. There are many remains of the walls of pri¬ 
 vate houses, constructed with blocks of silex, but not a 
 single edifice is standing. There is a large birket, 
 which, as there is no spring at Madeba, might still be of 
 use to the Bedouins, were the surrounding ground clear¬ 
 ed of the rubbish, to allow the water to flow into it; but 
 such an undertaking is far beyond the views of the wan¬ 
 dering Arab. On the west side of the town are the 
 foundations of a temple, built of large stones, and appa¬ 
 rently of great antiquity. It consisted of two equal di¬ 
 visions, of each of which, with an opening between, the 
 walls were forty paces on one side by thirty-four on the 
 other, or the whole length about eighty paces, and the 
 breadth forty. About half an hour west of Madeba are 
 the ruins of El-Teym^ perhaps the Kerjathaim of Scrip¬ 
 ture ; a very large reservoir is cut entirely in the rock, 
 and is still filled in the winter with rain water.”* 
 
 Such in this respect is an illustration of travelling 
 now in the lands of Moab and of Ammon, as generally 
 throughout Syria, not from town to town, but from ruin 
 to ruin. In continuing his journey, ere Moab was left 
 behind, Burckhardt passed other twenty ruined sites, be¬ 
 sides villages ; and exclusive of these, he enumerates oth¬ 
 er seventeen in the district of Kerek, which are not all, 
 but “ the principal,” of a great number of ruined places 
 in the district of Kerek in the land of Moab. 
 
 At El-Kerr, in the southern extremity of Moab, per¬ 
 haps the ancient Kara, a bishopric belonging to the di- 
 ocess of Rabba Moabitis, are the ruins of a city of con¬ 
 siderable extent, of which nothing remains but heaps of 
 
 * Burckhardt’s Travels, p. 363-367. 
 
RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 stones. The fertile plain on which they lie contains 
 the ruins of several villages. 
 
 At a short distance from Rabba are the ruins of an 
 ancient city, Beit Kerm. Their principal features, say 
 Captains Irby and Mangles, are a great building, evident¬ 
 ly Roman, resembling that which seemed to be a palace 
 at Petra, and which they supposed to be the temple of 
 Atargatis at Carnaim (Maccabees, v., 42). Eight col¬ 
 umns of the portico which adorned its front lie on the 
 ground. There are fragments of others within the tem¬ 
 ple, the walls of which are fallen j the stones used in 
 their construction are about five feet long and two broad. 
 The number of reservoirs or tanks prove that it once 
 was populous. Passing southward from thence, at the 
 termination of an ancient causeway, lie the ruins of Rab- 
 about half an hour in circuit. Two ruined temples, 
 of one of which a single wall, with several niches, re¬ 
 mains, showing that the God of Israel alone was not wor¬ 
 shipped there—an insulated altar, and two columns still 
 erect, are now the chief distinguishable objects on the 
 site of that city which was exceeding proud. Many frag¬ 
 ments lying about, many remains of private habitations, 
 but none entire, constitute the truly desolate heaps which 
 the Lord has made of the metropolis of Moab. The walls 
 of the ancient edifices, that were built like those of Beit 
 Kerm, may, with other ruins, supply ready materials for 
 the reconstruction of the city; and the two birkets or 
 reservoirs, the largest of which is entirely cut out of the 
 rock, together with several cisterns, may be turned to 
 usefulness again when the ruins of the capital of Moab 
 shall be transformed by another prediction into a city of 
 Israel.* 
 
 Mr. Buckingham passed from As Szalt through the 
 land of Ammon by a more easterly direction than that of 
 Burckhardt, and travelling from thence to Oom-el-RusaSy 
 and returning from it by another way, had thus doubly 
 the means of witnessing how ruins are everywhere 
 spread over the land. In whatever direction it is trav¬ 
 ersed, at the distance of six, four, or even two miles, 
 one ruined town is passed after another, with ruined vil¬ 
 lages interspersed. From one who had travelled much 
 in these regions, he was furnished at Assalt with the 
 
 * Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria. 
 
 U 2 
 
234 
 
 RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 names of several places which lay by two routes between 
 these localities, the existence of all of which, though 
 their names be given, would, from their vast number— 
 a hundred and twenty-one—exceed credibility, were not 
 their amazing frequency attested by every witness. Yet 
 on recounting these, as he recorded their names, his in¬ 
 formant, wearied with the tedious detail, exclaimed, with 
 the oath of a Mussulman, “ There are three hundred and 
 sixty-six ruined towns and villages about Assalt, and I 
 know the names of all; but who could have patience to 
 sit down and recite them to another while he writes them 
 in a book.” ^ His patience was exhausted, and he would 
 not resume his task. There were many places of infe¬ 
 rior note, which he thought too inconsiderable to name. 
 For greater accuracy, the list was read over to him a 
 second time after it was written, and confirmed by his 
 assent to the positions assigned.* 
 
 Startling as the number of the recorded names may 
 seem, its accuracy is strongly corroborated by the Ara¬ 
 bic list of ruined places in El-Belka, given by Mr. Eli 
 Smith, and obtained by him from the inhabitants of Dibbin. 
 Though it includes only the places between the Zurka 
 (Zerka) and the Mogib, or Arnon, and thus does not com- 
 . prehend many of the towns of Moab, the number of names 
 of places contained in it is one hundred and twenty-four.f 
 It may seem to convey a more definite idea of the ru¬ 
 ins to follow Mr. Buckingham a day’s journey in the land 
 of Ammon, as Burckhardt formerly through part of that 
 of Moab. In journeying from Assalt to Amman, a dis¬ 
 tance of six hours, he first reached Anab^ which, though 
 without an existing dwelling except grottoes cut out of 
 the rock, still retains its ancient name, and, together with 
 it, sloping moles of masonry and vestiges of ancient work. 
 An hour from hence he arrived at Fahaez (Feheis), a ru¬ 
 ined town, in which he observed the number of at least 
 a hundred dwellings, all built of stone, in the construc¬ 
 tion of which the Roman arch is very prevalent. An 
 hour thereafter, four ruined villages intervening. Deer- 
 el-JVassara, or the convent of the Christians, is reached, 
 a ruined town of greater extent than Fahaez. The large 
 size of the stones, and the deep hue of age spread over 
 
 * Buckingham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 44-46. 
 t Robinson and Smith’s Biblical Researches, vol. iii., Appendix, p. 167. 
 
RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 235 
 
 every part, denote a high antiquity. No one edifice re¬ 
 mains perfect; and in some the dilapidation is so complete, 
 that soil has collected over and above the fallen heap of 
 stones, in which large trees have taken root, and nearly 
 the whole of the site is now covered with wood. Yet, fall¬ 
 en and almost covered though it be, it abounds with mate¬ 
 rials for reconstruction. The stones which form the fallen 
 heaps were “ smoothly hewn, the masonry of the best kind, 
 the work having all the usual appearance of being Roman in 
 its construction.”* 
 
 Proceeding from thence .for a mile through a thick forest 
 of large trees, on clearing it he came on a fine plain cover¬ 
 ed with rich green turf, and passed by, without halting to ex¬ 
 amine it, a ruined town, Baboak, all that he could learn con¬ 
 cerning which was, that it had long since been abandoned, 
 and in ruins. Preserving the same unvaried phraseology, 
 as similar sights came successively in view, “ In our way,” 
 he says, “ we passed another ruined town, called Onm-el- 
 Simack, w^here there were foundations of a circular wall still 
 visible ; and around us, in every direction, were remains of 
 more than fifty towns and villages, which were once main¬ 
 tained by the productive soil on which they were so thickly 
 studded. As their names were mentioned to me, I recog¬ 
 nised many of those contained in the list drawn up by me 
 at Assalt.f 
 
 “ For the space of two miles before reaching Ammon, 
 pieces of broken pottery strewed over the ground indicate the 
 approach to the ruins of a great city. The remains of a large 
 isolated building of excellent masonry, with sculptured blocks 
 scattered near it on the ground, first meet the view of the 
 traveller, once, as is supposed, an outer gate of the city, or 
 a triumphal entrance. The castle of Amman, a large enclo¬ 
 sed ruin, occupying entirely the summit of a small steep hill, 
 has the appearance of a fortress. On the other side the wall 
 ascends like a sloping mole, the masonry of which is excel¬ 
 lent, the stones being squarely hewn and nicely adjusted, &c. 
 The steep ascent of this ruined mass is passed over large 
 heaps of fallen stones till the eastern gateway is reached, 
 which leads to an open square court, with arched recesses 
 on each side, originally open, which had arched doorways 
 facing each other. These were all either wholly closed or 
 
 * Buckingham’s Travels, ibid. 
 
 t Buckingham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p, 60-66, 
 
236 
 
 RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 partially filled up, with the single exception of a narrow pas¬ 
 sage just sufficient for the entrance of one man, and of the 
 goats which the Arab keepers drive in here occasionally for 
 shelter during the night.”* The castle of Amman having 
 stood siege after siege, is turned at last to its low predicted 
 use—a couching place forjlocks.j The empty niches in the 
 walls, adorned as they are by well-sculptured bunches of 
 grapes and vine-leaves, and other carvings of an arabesque 
 pattern, have none to bow' before them now, and none to gaze 
 on them but the senseless herds, who themselves are the un¬ 
 conscious witnesses to the truth of the Word of the living God. 
 
 But, looking to that word which abideth forever, and to a 
 covenant yet to be ratified, which holds within its bonds Am¬ 
 mon and all its land, we regard n(?! exclusively the prostra¬ 
 tion of a stronghold in fulfilment of a prophecy, nor the rem¬ 
 nants of a glory that has long departed; but it is rather our 
 proper business here to look around for materials that are fit¬ 
 ted for reconstruction, in the time yet to come, when the 
 children of Israel shall dwell safely, though in the land of 
 their ancient enemies, in their own cities, that shall not stand 
 in any need of castles to defend them, nor of walls or gates 
 to shut out a single foe. These lie plentifully around, enough 
 wherewith to build many mansions. 
 
 “ The castle walls,” says Burckhardt, “ are thick, and de¬ 
 note a remote antiquity ; large blocks of stone are piled up 
 without cement, and still hold together as well as if they had 
 been recently placed. The greater part of the wall is entire.” 
 Heaps of various ruins are enclosed within them, among 
 which are seen Corinthian pediments, cornices, capitals, 
 pilasters, &;c. Among other ill-defined remains are the ru¬ 
 ins of a magnificent edifice, whose broken fragments bear 
 evident marks of its former grandeur. The pedestals of the 
 colonnade which adorn its front retain their original position, 
 with many fine Corinthian capitals scattered around them. 
 Large blocks, that formed magnificent columns, are partly 
 buried in the earth, on one of which letters are distinctly 
 seen, the characters being deeply cut, and not at all worn by 
 exposure to the atmosphere or any other cause. Among 
 the ruins in the city, a grand theatre, with more than forty 
 ranges of seats, rising to an elevation of upward of 120 feet, 
 the upper range embracing a circuit of 200 paces, is an un¬ 
 usually perfect monument of Roman luxury; “ for,” says 
 
 Buckingham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 68. t Ezek., xxv., 5. 
 
RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 237 
 
 Mr. Buckingham, “ a very slight repair would make it avail¬ 
 able for its original purpose.” In the broad pathway that 
 encircles the whole at the top is a deep square recess, en¬ 
 tered by a fine Corinthian doorway, with an architrave and 
 pediment, having concave niches on each side, as'if for the 
 reception of statues. A “ very slight repair” may convert it 
 to a nobler use ; and when it shall be trodden, not by those 
 who are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, but by 
 those who shall know that the God of Israel is the Lord, the 
 niches for statues shall not be filled again, but the idols shall 
 be utterly abolished. Till then it may remain, as in ages 
 past, a stable for camels^ and a couching j^lace for flocks. 
 
 In the succeeding summary of Burckhardt, it may be seen 
 how temples are not free from the signs of past idolatry.* 
 “ The edifices which remain to show the former splendour 
 of Ammon are the following: a spacious church, built with 
 large stones, and having a steeple of the shape of those which 
 I saw in several ruined towns of the Haouran. There are 
 wide arches in the walls of the church. 2. A small build¬ 
 ing with niches, probably a temple. 3. A temple, of which 
 a part of the side walls and a niche in the back wall are re¬ 
 maining ; there are no ornaments either on the walls or about 
 the niche. 4. A curved wall along the water-side, with 
 many niches,” &;c. These, together witfl the theatre, are 
 among the chief edifices that yet remain amid the desolate 
 heap which Ammon has become, according to the word of 
 the only living and true God. They are not without their 
 significancy ; and such illustrations, often repeated, as the 
 reader may perceive in the sequel, may aid in solving the 
 problem as to the causes of the desolations which came over 
 Syria many ages after the Jews were expatriated and the 
 Ammonites cut off. 
 
 Amid the ruins of Ammon is a large edifice, presenting a 
 semicircular front towards the stream, built of rustic masonry, 
 with large, solid stones of an oblong form, closely joined with¬ 
 out cement.t A large and more perfect building, with Roman 
 arches and a square tower ; the remains of a colonnade, and 
 the front of some large edifice ; a grand building, once appa¬ 
 rently of an octagonal form, has still four of its sides perfect; 
 a colonnade of large Corinthian columns was once ranged 
 within it. Heaps of ruins lie in bewildering confusion around 
 it, and near to it are large houses divided into many apart- 
 
 * Ruickhardt, 358. t Buckiug-ham, p. 78. 
 
238 
 
 RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 merits, but all are alike deserted, though little labour would 
 restore some of these buildings to useful dwellings,* Slc. 
 
 Leaving Ammon by a great road or causeway similar to 
 that by which it was approached, the traveller, without di¬ 
 verging to visit other ruins, passes by it to Gherbit-el-Sookh, 
 ten miles distant, near to which are very extensive ruins yet 
 unexamined, many Roman arches remaining perfect, several 
 large columns still erect, pointing at a distance to the ruins 
 of a town which must have been an important station. The 
 public road which led from it to Ammon had many smaller 
 settlements around it in the midst of a fine fertile plain. 
 
 Continuing the route S.S.E., the remains of the large town 
 Yedoody are passed, where many tombs and sarcophagi are 
 excavated from the rock, near a quarry that has rested for 
 ages. In another hour, in a continued fertile tract, capable 
 of the highest cultivation, are the remains of a still larger 
 city, Mehanajish, with arches, columns, and sarcophagi, all 
 Roman work, though none of the buildings remain quite per¬ 
 fect. Passing it, and ascending an elevation, still more ex¬ 
 tensive plains open to view, throughout the whole extent of 
 which, says Mr. Buckingham, were seen ruined townsf in 
 every direction, both before, behind, and on each side of us, 
 generally seated on small eminences, all at a short distance 
 from each other,^nd all, as far as we had yet seen, bearing 
 marks of former opulence and consideration. 
 
 Journeying onward, he passed successively various ruin¬ 
 ed towns at similar or shorter distances. The ruins of Bu- 
 nazem, inhabited by several Arab families.J Menjah, the 
 site of some large town, among whose ruins are arches, 
 columns, large cisterns or reservoirs, and deep wells, with 
 an abundance of broken pottery scattered about in all direc¬ 
 tions.^ At Jelool are still more extensive ruins, consisting 
 of columns, heaps of large hewn stones, the remains of fall¬ 
 en edifices, numerous cisterns, grottoes, tombs, and sarcoph¬ 
 agi, all now entirely deserted, and exhibiting a melancholy 
 example of the works of former opulence and power.jj 
 
 At Oom-eURusas, the remains of ruined buildings, and 
 foundations with broken pottery, and other vestiges of for¬ 
 mer habitations, extend more than half a mile beyond two 
 walled enclosures, filled with ruined buildings, of which the 
 one is 200 yards square, and the other occupies a space of 
 
 * I.ord Claud Hamilton’s MS. Journal. t Buckingham, p. 83. 
 
 i Ibid., p. 86. § Ibid., p. 88. || Ibid., p. 96. 
 
RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 239 
 
 nearly half a mile, the wall quite perfect all around. The 
 streets throughout, at right angles from each other, were 
 very narrow, indicating an extremely crowded population. 
 Though the buildings seemed small and unimportant, and 
 unadorned with architectural ornament, the masonry was un¬ 
 usually solid, and the stones with which they were con¬ 
 structed very large.* 
 
 In penetrating from Assalt more directly into the interior 
 of the country, towards Gerash ruins were discovered in like 
 proximity and abundance. “ Seven ruined villages, a hewn 
 cistern, a reservoir for water, and other marks of former pop¬ 
 ulousness, were seen in the early part of this route. In half 
 an hour from the commencement of our journey we came to 
 Zey, a ruined town, in which were seen five pillars, many 
 private dwellings, originally constructed with large stones, 
 but now completely demolished, and grown over with trees, 
 with a very perfect sarcophagus. An hour’s ride from Zey 
 brought us to Ullan, a Christian town, very recently desert¬ 
 ed, as it was the town in which Aivobi, the merchant of 
 Assalt, was born and brought up to manhood ; it is now, 
 however, entirely in ruins. Near it are hewn quarries out 
 of which it had been built. The abundance of fine broken 
 pottery shows that it was an ancient site. In half an hour 
 from Ullan is the sister town of Sihhan, larger than the for¬ 
 mer. After passing ruined villages, Mr. Buckingham reach¬ 
 ed the Zerka, “ on the hill to the east of which were point¬ 
 ed out to him more than fifty ruined villages.” 
 
 At the commencement of the present century, these coun¬ 
 tries east of the Dead Sea and of the Jordan were utterly 
 unknown to Europe. The enterprising Seetzen, who first 
 penetrated them, contrasts what Ammon was with what it 
 is : “ All this country, formerly so populous and flourishing, 
 is now changed into a vast desert.” The language of Burck- 
 hardt, who was the next to follow him, is not less expres¬ 
 sive of both the depopulation and desolation : “ At every step 
 are to be found the vestiges of ancient cities, the remains of 
 many temples, public edifices, and Greek churches.” He, 
 Mr. Buckingham, and Captains Irby and Mangles, speak of 
 the same, and also of different regions, which they ail visit¬ 
 ed, in similar and almost in the same precise terms, in de¬ 
 scribing how the land is overspread with ruins. The very 
 recent testimony collected by Mr. E. Smith corroborates by 
 
 * Buckingham, p. 100. 
 
240 
 
 RUINS IN MOAB AND AMMON. 
 
 new and redoubled proof the same truth, which, long for¬ 
 gotten and unknown among Christians, or denied and deri¬ 
 ded by infidels, must now be held unquestionable. The 
 whole of this region, says Mr. Buckingham, was in a man¬ 
 ner studded with the ruins of ancient towns, and must have 
 been once highly fertile and thickly peopled. This inter¬ 
 esting region appears, both from ancient testimony and the 
 existence of innumerable ruins, up to the present time, to 
 have been one of the most fertile and thickly-peopled court- 
 tries on the face of the earth, though it still remains a blank 
 in our maps, and is considered by all who treat of these 
 countries a desert or a wilderness. 
 
 In closing our summary review of these ruins, over which 
 the destroying angel has passed, and whose commission, 
 according to the written word, has at last been fulfilled, it 
 may not be unsuitable or unreasonable, without treating a 
 sacred subject with levity, to listen to the testimony of an 
 Arab chief as to the completion of the work of desolation. 
 Nor does this testimony lose its interest or its force because 
 the fact of the completeness of that desolation was conjoin¬ 
 ed, even in the mind of such a man, with the expression, in 
 the same breath, of a vague notion of some ancient prophe¬ 
 cy concerning it. 
 
 “ I was asked,” says Mr. Buckingham, “ whether I had 
 seen Gerash? I replied, ‘Yes;’ and Ammon? continued 
 my host; I answered that they were both in our road. ‘ Ah,’ 
 said the sheik, ‘ these were both princely cities once, but 
 as the times are always growing worse, so these have come 
 to nothing at last,* as, indeed, was prophesied concerning 
 them of old.’ I asked him when and where the destruction 
 was foretold.”! 
 
 The alleged prophecy was attributed to Solomon when a 
 visitant to the king of Ammon ! But he whose first proverb 
 was, “ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” 
 was not commissioned to reveal what Jeremiah was inspired 
 
 * Buckingham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 94, 95. 
 
 t Mr. Buckingham’s Travels in Palestine and among the Arab Tribes abound with 
 important facts illustrative of sacred geography, of the capabilities of the land from 
 its great natural fertility, &c., and of the inspiration of the prophecies from its ex¬ 
 isting desolation, the illustrations of which are sometimes so incidentally given, that 
 he who thus asked the Arab sheik where the destruction of Ammon was foretold, 
 had complained but a short time before that his sleep had been broken during night 
 by the bloating of flocks beside the ruins of Ammon—their predicted abode. His 
 Travels are enriched with facts which illustrate both the prophetic and historical 
 truth of Scripture. The value of his works in these respects will doubtless be in¬ 
 creasingly appreciated. It is much to be desired that a cheap and partly abridged 
 edition of his Travels among the Arab Tribef were published. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 24i 
 
 to write concerning Arnmon. That that city, and many 
 others, have come io nothing at last, may lead all to look for 
 that which is written concerning the renovation of the cities 
 which, like Ammon itself, shall be raised from their ruins. 
 It is enough for the present to show that, when such a time 
 is come, the face of the land shall he covered with cities, and 
 that there is no need that there be, as there shall not be, a 
 blank in the land of Ammon 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 Before passing the Zerka, and entering a more ample 
 field of nobler ruins, we may here, if anywhere, pause for a 
 moment to drop a word of confident hope, like a seed which 
 shall grow up into a tree by a river side, that more than ru¬ 
 ins shall yet be raised, and that the children of Israel, though 
 long as low as they, shall yet have power with God, and 
 shall 'prevail, and Israel’s inheritance be Israel’s again. 
 
 When their patriarchal father, returning from Padanaram, 
 had sent his two wives, and his servants, and his eleven 
 sons, and all that he had, over the ford Jabbok, and was him¬ 
 self left alone, “ there wrestled with him a man till the 
 breaking of the day,” whom he would not let go till he should 
 bless him. Jacob prevailed—he was suffered to prevail— 
 though his thigh shrunk at the touch of him who wrestled 
 with him. The wrestling ceased when the blessing came - 
 from no human voice, “ Thy name shall no more be called 
 Jacob, but Israel—a prince with God—for as a prince hast 
 thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed^ 
 On passing over the Jabbok he rejoined his family under a 
 new name, and the sons of Jacob were now the children of 
 Israel, to bear in their posterity that everlasting name which 
 the Lord had given them, the full import of which the world 
 has yet practically to learn. Uttered as it was by the Lord, 
 as Jacob returned to the land from which he had formerly 
 fled, all its significancy shall not always be unacknowl¬ 
 edged and unknown. He who, as a prince, had power with 
 God, shall much more, as. a prince, prevail with men. “ In- 
 
 X 
 
242 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASIIAN, ETC. 
 
 Stead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou may- 
 est make princes in all the earth. I will make thy name to 
 be remembered in all generations,” Ps. xlv., 16, 17. An¬ 
 other task than that of the weary detail of ruin after ruin is 
 yet in reserve for those who shall speak in the isles of the 
 Gentiles, or in any part of the earth, of either side of the 
 Jabbok, or any portion of the land of Israel, when the for¬ 
 mer desolations shall cease to be reckoned by units, that may 
 now be counted by hundreds. 
 
 In leading the reader from one field of ruined cities to an¬ 
 other, and entering on a new stage in the dreary route, it 
 may be enough to say that the stream which we here pass 
 is the Jabbok, and, if endowed with the spirit of faith, he 
 may well be refreshed for encountering a desert by tasting 
 of that brook by the way. 
 
 In passing through the land of Philistia and the hill-coun¬ 
 try of Judea, the writer felt the oppressiveness of the sensa¬ 
 tion irresistibly caused by the desolate aspect, in general, 
 of all around, as if the cheerless scene had cast its own im¬ 
 age on his heart. And he could not but seek relief in an¬ 
 ticipating the time when the joy that has gone from the land 
 shall return, and the tree stripped of its leaves shall again 
 be “a noble vine.” The dust of Zion may well be loved, 
 but that love is none the less because that dust shall yet 
 bring forth fruit to Israel. And well may 'pleasure be taken 
 in her stones; but neither is it diminished by the fact that, 
 in his own gracious time, the Lord shall raise them up into 
 the palaces of Zion. Any sign that the time draweth nigh, 
 or any token that, in the order of Providence, means are 
 preparing, or that anything is ready — as all things finally 
 * must needs be—for the completion of his promises, when he 
 shall remember the land, is like a fountain of living water in 
 a desert, the deliciousness of which can only be tasted there. 
 
 On entering, therefore, on a more extensive field of ruins, 
 first disclosed to view in these latter days, every one who 
 can look around him with the eye of faith may now see such 
 signs rising conspicuously into view; and may taste, if he 
 will, that sweet fountain, which the very desolation or de¬ 
 sertion of these cities has opened up for refreshing the faith 
 of the Christian, and raising or reviving his hope that the 
 time of Israel’s redemption draweth nigh. 
 
 A light from heaven can alone enlighten the dark path on 
 which we are entering, as that on which we have already 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 243 
 
 trodden. But that light is clear. They shall huild the old 
 wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they 
 shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many genera¬ 
 tions* There are distinctions here between these things 
 thus severally marked, and there is a corresponding distinc¬ 
 tion in the works that have severally to be done. Hitherto 
 we have looked on ruined towns, that need, with scarcely 
 an exception, to be raised from the very dust. Some of 
 these, like many others yet to come into our view, have 
 to be cleared of the earth or rubbish that encumbers, and of 
 the trees that cover them. All that have already been 
 reviewed have to be huilt or raised up from their foundations ; 
 but there are many others to which these terms are not ap¬ 
 plied, which, notwithstanding, have to be repaired or re¬ 
 newed, and to be inhabited again, though all empty now. 
 Different terms, expressive of the desolation, seem to denote 
 its diversity. The same word which in the original de¬ 
 scribes the waste cities, is applied by the same prophet to 
 the desolation of the highways, identifying that with their 
 being deserted ox forsaken —the highways lie waste; the 
 wayfaring man ceaseth. The same distinction is otherwise 
 implied or expressed. They that shall be of thee shall huild 
 the old waste places : thou shalt raise up the foundations of 
 many generations; and thou shalt be called the repairer 
 OF THE BREACH, the restorer of cities to dwell m.f The 
 blindness of Israel was to continue “ until the cities be 
 
 WASTED WITHOUT AN INHABITANT, AND THE HOUSES WITH¬ 
 OUT MAN.” 
 
 Long as darkness has rested on the ancient cities of Is¬ 
 rael, this torch from the hand of him whose lips were touch¬ 
 ed with fire from off the altar of Israel’s God, may light our 
 way in joyful hope throughout them all, and shed its cheer¬ 
 ing light alike on the lowest of the ruins, and the largest of 
 the deserted towns that have withstood unshaken the rava¬ 
 ges of time. But it is needful only, without any such aid, to 
 look on them as they are, in order to see, as plainly as the 
 prophet has foretold, how many cities can be built again only 
 by being raised up from their very foundations; how others 
 have to be repaired or renewed rather than to be rebuilt; how 
 habitations have been forsaken and left like a wilderness;% 
 how the palaces have been forsaken, and the city has been 
 left;^ how the cities have been forsaken, so that men do not 
 
 * Isa., Iviii., 12. + Ibid. t Ibid., xxvii., 10. Ibid-, xxxii., 14. 
 
244 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 dwell therein f and how, whatever may be signified by the 
 fact, it is itself visible and indisputable, the cities are wasted 
 without inhabitant, and the houses without man.^ 
 
 Ruins are as abundant on the north as on the south of the 
 Zerka. They are still met with “ at every step.” The 
 next district on which we enter also boasts of its 366 ru¬ 
 ined towns and villages, a hyperbolical mode of expression, 
 denoting a vast number. But though, strictly speaking, they 
 be not so numerous as days in the year, the allegation, as com¬ 
 paratively near to the truth, may be more justifiable there 
 than in other,lands, limited to a similarly defined territory; 
 and these regions, that vie with each other now in the mul¬ 
 titude of their ruins, as anciently in the magnificence of 
 their cities, have less reason than any country in Europe, 
 were its towns and villages estimated so highly, to blush at 
 such a boast, for the number of ruins is greater there than 
 that of cities or towns in any equal space, China itself scarce¬ 
 ly excepted. 
 
 Having seen, specially, how numerous are the ruins that 
 are spread over the now houseless lands of Moab and Am¬ 
 mon, pages need not be filled with the names of those which 
 bestrew the kingdom of Bashan in numbers amply sufficient 
 to vindicate the scriptural record, concerning its sixty cities, 
 besides unwalled towns and villages a great many, which per¬ 
 tained to its ancient kingdom, the loss of which gave to Og, 
 king of Bashan, an immortal name. But as this record, like 
 others, has been seized on and assailed, it may not be amiss 
 to show specially here, exclusive of their multiplicity, what 
 noble cities that land did sustain, and how these very ruins, 
 from the beauty of their edifices and solidity of their struc¬ 
 ture, may mock in return the proudest of the cities in which 
 these scoffers dwell. 
 
 The cities of the Decopolis might, in ancient times, like 
 those of Judea, have maintained a mutual rivalry ; but scarce¬ 
 ly anywhere are ruins to be found which outvie those of Je- 
 rash, supposed, from the similarity of the name, to be the 
 ancient Gerasa, situated on a small stream which flows into 
 the Zerkah. They not only prove the magnificence and im¬ 
 portance of the ancient city, but, though unknown, like those 
 of Petra, till the present century, they show that even Pal¬ 
 myra and Baalbec were not unrivalled in the splendour of 
 their edifices by other cities that, like them, once stood in 
 
 * Jeremiah, iv,, 29. f Isa.,vi., 11. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 245 
 
 their glory within the allotted inheritance of Israel. Fallen as 
 they are, enough is left to prove that the banks of a streamlet 
 of that oft-derided land were so enriched and adorned, even 
 by a people given up to idolatry, as to challenge in their mag¬ 
 nificence, though in ruins, any spot in Europe, the most 
 richly garnished with princely edifices. Lofty columns 
 generally pertain only to palaces or temples, or other public 
 buildings, which are thus, as well as by their greatness, dis¬ 
 tinguished from the common habitations even of royal cities. 
 But the streets of Jerash were lined with colonnades from 
 end to end, and opened a way to public edifices, which yet 
 lost not their distinction, while statelier or finer columns were 
 doubled or multiplied around them. 
 
 Extending on both the ascending sides of the small stream 
 which nearly intersected the city, the walls, where not almost 
 entire, form a distinct lineal mound of heimi fitvneSj of a con¬ 
 siderable height, and, in a circuit of an hour and a half, they 
 enclose an immense space almost entirely covered with ru¬ 
 ins. The principal street, extending nearly from one ex¬ 
 tremity of the ruins to the other, was lined on both sides 
 with columns, many of which are fallen, many fractured and 
 shortened, and not a few still erect and unbroken; some 
 thirty feet high, others twenty-five, and the lowest about 
 twenty : “ where a high column stands near a shorter one, 
 the architecture over the other reposes upon a projecting 
 bracket worked into the shaft of the higher one.” On one 
 side of the street, in less than a third part of its length, thirty- 
 four columns are yet standing. Behind the colonnade there 
 are in some places vaulted apartments, which appear to have 
 been shops. Cross streets, diverging at various distances 
 from the long central street, had also their colonnades, and 
 were adorned with public edifices or bridges, while the more 
 distant spaces on each side are covered with indiscriminate 
 ruins of the habitations of the more humble citizens. The 
 remains of pavement in several streets may put to shame the 
 capital of France. One, at least, of the bridges has been rais¬ 
 ed to a great height, to render the acclivity less dangerous ; 
 and, as observed by Lord Claud Hamilton, transverse lines, to 
 prevent horses from slipping, have been cut on the pavement, 
 as may be seen on some ol the hills in the city of London. 
 Near a copious fountain of the clearest water, not far from 
 the centre of the ruins, is a large building, with massive 
 walls, consisting of arched chambers, similar to Roman baths, 
 
 X 2 
 
246 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 which was doubtless a public bath; another yet remains in 
 the same quarter, which was surrounded by a colonnade, some 
 of the pillars of which are still erect. Opposite to the large 
 bath, in a straight line across the centre of the city, passing 
 an elevated bridge anciently environed by ornamental struc¬ 
 tures, and from thence through a street lined on both sides 
 by columns, an arched gateway, facing the chief street, 
 leads to the splendid remains of a magnificent temple, such 
 as few countries could have ever shown. The base of the 
 edifice is now covered with its fallen roof. Three of the 
 walls still stand, showing the niches for images. The front 
 of the temple was adorned with a noble portico, with three 
 rows of grand Corinthian columns thirty-five or forty feet in 
 height, the capitals of which are beautifully ornamented with 
 acanthus leaves. The spacious area within which it stood 
 was surrounded in like manner by a double row of columns, 
 the total number of which, that originally adorned the tem¬ 
 ple and its area, was not less, in the estimation of Burck- 
 hardt, than two hundred or two hundred and fifty.* Near 
 to this temple stands a theatre which has sixteen rows of 
 benches, with a tier of six boxes, between every two of which 
 is a niche, “ forming a very elegant ornament,” and as be¬ 
 fitting a station for idols as the walls of a church. Such 
 is the transformation it has undergone, that in 1839 a fine 
 crop of tobacco occupied the arena, which is about fifty pa¬ 
 ces in diameter. The theatre was adorned with a quad¬ 
 rangle of fine large Corinthian columns, the entablature of 
 which is perfect. 
 
 In the construction of the city and the position of its prin¬ 
 cipal edifices, now the monument of its glory, nature has 
 been seconded or followed by art. An eminence on one 
 end of the city, opposite to the termination of the grand 
 street which led to the other, was the site both of a temple 
 and of a theatre’, which were placed in pagan juxtaposition 
 like the former. The low hill on which they stood was 
 connected with the princely street by a magnificent semi¬ 
 circle of Ionic columns, embracing an open space at its base, 
 fifty-seven of which are still standing, their height having 
 been varied with the rising ground to give a uniform level 
 to the whole entablature. The immense theatre, larger 
 than that of Bacchus at Athens, and estimated as having 
 been capable of containing eight thousand spectators, was 
 
 * Burckhardt’s Travels, p. 254. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 247 
 
 partly cut out of the rock and partly built; the front wall, 
 or proscenium, is A^ery perfect, and embellished within by 
 five richly-decorated niches, which are connected together 
 by a line of columns, of which there is another parallel 
 range within. Beside it are the remains of a beautiful tem¬ 
 ple, ornamented with pilasters surrounded by Corinthian 
 capitals ; without, it was surrounded by a peristyle of grand 
 columns of the same order, supporting an entablature ; and, 
 facing the city, there was a noble portico of two rows of 
 columns, to which a grand flight of steps led from below. 
 Now, in the words of Lord Claud Hamilton, “the columns, 
 capitals, and cornice all lie confusedly in a common ruin. 
 The view from this spot is still most wonderful, but in the 
 days of Gerasa’s glory it must have been a spectacle of un¬ 
 equalled magnificence. The whole town, including a vast 
 area, and surrounded by an immense wall, is at your feet. 
 Immediately below is the noble Ionic crescent, from the 
 centre of which the main street extends. Of the continued 
 line of columns on each side, now eighty-three only are 
 standing with their entablatures, but portions and pedes¬ 
 tals of the remainder are clearly visible. Around them, on 
 every side, are confused heaps of well-cut stone, and piles 
 
 of ruins which have onlv fallen from the violence of ruth- 
 
 _ ^ 
 
 less barbarism. These columns, raising their slender forms 
 among the general wreck, and stretching in so long a line 
 amid the remains of former magnificence, produce an effect 
 which nothing in Italy, Greece, or Egypt has yet presented 
 to me. To the right, the noble temple first mentioned 
 stands against the sight, displaying the beautiful proportions 
 of its matchless portico, and in every direction, columns, 
 colonnades, and massive walls attest the wealth, the pow¬ 
 er, and the taste that once dwelt in this desolate spot, and 
 read a lesson to human vanity that cannot readily be for¬ 
 gotten.” Looking on the splendid ruins from a higher and 
 more distant elevation, Mr. Buckingham thus describes the 
 magnificent scene: “The circular colonnade, the avenues 
 of Corinthian pillars forming the grand street, the southern 
 gate of entrance, the naumachia, and the triumphal arch be¬ 
 yond it, the theatres, the temples, the aqueducts, the baths, 
 and all the assemblage of noble buildings which presented 
 their vestiges to the view, seemed to indicate a city built 
 only for luxury, for splendour, and for pleasure, although 
 it was a mere colonial town in a foreign province, distant 
 
248 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 from the capital of the great empire to which it belonged, 
 and scarcely known either in sacred or profane history. It 
 would be vain to attempt a picture of the impressions which 
 followed such a sight.”^ 
 
 Bozrah, though anciently more famous, is not entitled to 
 so distinguished a place among ruins as the comparatively 
 obscure Gerasa. Still, however, while the remains of the 
 castle and of its walls are tokens of. the strength that has 
 departed from it, it is not destitute of memorials of the ele¬ 
 gance with which it was adorned, of the idolatry of which, 
 even when nominally Christian, it was guilty, while it eve¬ 
 rywhere bears witness of judgment, and, broken as it is, is 
 full of ample materials wherewith to reconstruct a noble city. 
 
 Its wide walls, in some places almost entirely perfect, 
 are about three miles in circumference, but the immediate 
 environs are also covered with ruins. The western gate 
 of the town is a fine arch, with niches on each side, in per¬ 
 fect preservation. A broad paved causeway, of which tra¬ 
 ces remain, and vestiges of ancient pavement, are seen in 
 many of the streets, with a paved footway on each side. 
 All the streets were very narrow, just permitting a loaded 
 camel to pass ; and, crowded as they are, indicate a most 
 condensed population. The south and southeast quarters 
 are covered with ruins of private dwellings, the walls of 
 many of which are still standing, but most of the roofs have 
 fallen. 
 
 The first remarkable building described by Mr. Bucking¬ 
 ham gives evidence at once of the nicety and solidity of 
 its structure, and of the prevalence of a form of worship ill 
 accordant with the simplicity of the Gospel. It is an evi¬ 
 dence thus of what has been done, and might, were it need¬ 
 ful, be renewed in the form of structure, and it bears wit¬ 
 ness, too, like thousands of proofs besides, that the faith 
 which was there established, and has perished, was not 
 pure. 
 
 The masonry of the exterior was smooth, well executed, 
 and apparently old, the stones having been let in, or dove¬ 
 tailed into each other, like those of other buildings in the 
 Haouran, and thus united without cement. The interior 
 presents a miserable work of the Greek Christians, by whom 
 it was no doubt used as a place of worship up to its period 
 
 * Buckingham’s Palestine. Burckhardt’s Syria, p. 252-264. Lord Claud Ham¬ 
 ilton’s MS. Journal. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 249 
 
 of destruction. The walls were stuccoed on the inside, 
 and portions of this remain, showing that it had once been 
 ornamented with portraits and figures of the principal Greek 
 saints ; the pillars have also been marked with the cross, 
 but seemingly subsequent to its original construction.* 
 
 The same, or a similar building, is the first described 
 also by Burckhardt. The roof is fallen in, but the walls 
 are entire, having many arches and niches. There are two 
 large niches on each side of the door, and opposite to it, on 
 the east side of the circle of the sanctuary. 
 
 Near it is an oblong square building, of which also the 
 roof is fallen in, and the walls remain, having a high vault¬ 
 ed niche. Between these is another edifice, the only re¬ 
 mains of which is a large semicircular vault, with neat dec¬ 
 orations and four niches in the interior ; before it lie a heap 
 of stones and broken columns.f 
 
 The great mosque of Bozrah, built^ and dedicated as it 
 was to Moslem worship, must now be also numbered among 
 the ruins. Part of its roof has fallen in. Ruined itself, it 
 still bears witness of the triumph of Moslemism over the 
 degenerate faith of the lower empire. From end to end, 
 both \^4alls are lined with a double row of columns, trans¬ 
 ported here from the ruins of some Christian temple in the 
 town. Sixteen of these are fine variegated marble columns, 
 distinguished both for the beauty of the materials and of the 
 execution. They are each about sixteen or eighteen feet, 
 of a single block, and well polished.^ Changed as their 
 office hitherto has been, to take alternately their place 
 among painted saints, or to be surmounted by a crescent, 
 and unbroken as they have been for twelve hundred years, 
 the time may not be distant when they shall undergo an¬ 
 other transmutation, and become the ornament of an edifice 
 neither desecrated by idolatry, as was that in which they 
 first stood, nor destined to fall like the roof of the great 
 mosque, the materials of which are now strewed around 
 their base. 
 
 But the principal ruin of Bozrah is not that of a mosque, 
 but of a temple, which, like the other, though little remains, 
 has still something to tell. “ Of this temple nothing remains 
 but the back.wall, with two pilasters, and a column joined 
 by its entablature to the main wall; they are all of the Co- 
 
 ♦ Buckingham’s Travels among tha Arab Tribes, p. 167. 
 
 t BurclUiardt, p. 196,197. t Ibid., p 228. 
 
250 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 rinlhian order, and both capitals and architraves are richly 
 adorned with sculpture. In the wall of the temple are three 
 rows of niches, one over the other. Fronting it are four 
 large Corinthian columns, equalling in beauty of execution 
 the finest of those at Baalbec and Palmyra (those in the 
 Temple of the Sun at the latter place excepted) 5 they are 
 quite perfect, six spans in diameter, and somewhat more than 
 forty feet in height.* These splendid columns, the monu¬ 
 ments of a temple which triple lines of saints could not pre¬ 
 serve, may yet adorn an edifice when the Holy One of Israel 
 shall be worshipped there, significantly worthy of the name 
 which the ruin now unintelligibly bears, “ Serait-el-Bint-el- 
 Yahoodi, or the Palace of the Jeld's daughter 
 
 Near to this ruin is a triumphal arch almost entire. The 
 approach to it is choked up with private houses, as is the 
 case with all the public buildings in Bozrah, except the 
 church first mentioned. It consists of a high central arch, 
 with two lower side'arches, between which are Corinthian 
 pilasters with 'projecting bases for statues. On the inside of 
 the arch were several large niches, now choked up with 
 heaps of broken stones.;}: Another triumphal arch of small¬ 
 er dimensions is remarkable for the thickness of its walls. 
 
 A building called El-Human, or the Bath, has in the in¬ 
 terior four pointed arches, with concave recesses, formed by 
 alternate layers or rays of black and white stone. The up¬ 
 per dome of the bath was a brickwork of a bright red colour, 
 neatly and strongly cemented together. Opposite to it was 
 a large building entirely constructed out of the ruins of more 
 ancient edifices. Its last use seems to have been that of a 
 place of Christian worship. Some of the stucco-work on 
 the wall was extremely rich. In some places were seen 
 columns of white marble in one solid shaft; in others, pillars 
 of black basalt. Beside it is a square tower, the door of 
 which is one solid slab of stone, hung by pivots traversing 
 in sockets above and below. It is ascended by sixteen 
 stages of steps, four in each, or sixty-four steps in all. On 
 the top is an open space, enclosed by a high wall, on each 
 side of which is a double arched window divided by a col¬ 
 umn, the roof and ceiling being of solid stone. Every part 
 of the tower is strong and perfect.^ Such was the solidity 
 of some of the structures of Bozrah. 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 229, 230. 
 t Burckhardt, p. 231. 
 
 t Buckingham, p. 200. 
 
 () Buckingham, p. 198, 199. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 251 
 
 Numberless as are the symptoms of the decline and the 
 decay of Mohammedanism, the mosque of El-Melrak, with¬ 
 out the walls of Bozrah, may deserve a passing notice. “ Ibn 
 Affan, who first collected the scattered leaves of the Koran 
 into a book, relates that when Othman, in coming from the 
 Hedjaz, approached the neighbourhood of Bozrah with his 
 army, he ordered his people to build a mosque on the spot 
 where the camel that bore the Koran should lie down.” 
 Such was the origin of the mosque of El-Melrak, or, a halt¬ 
 ing-place. Mohammedanism had scarcely a halting-place 
 in its rise, and, when the time is come, it shall have none in 
 its fall. A few specimens yet remain of the Cufic inscrip¬ 
 tions with which the interior of the mosque was embellish¬ 
 ed. The dome which covered it was destroyed by the Wa- 
 habees.* 
 
 On the west side Burckhardt counted five springs of fresh 
 water beyond the precincts of the town, and six within the 
 walls, all which unite with a rivulet, w4iose course also rises 
 among the ruins. In the eastern quarter of the town is a 
 large reservoir almost perfect, 190 paces in length and 153 
 in breadth, enclosed by a wall seven feet thick, built of large 
 square stones, its depth about twenty feet.f 
 
 Of the vineyards for which Bozrah was celebrated, eA'^en 
 in the days of Moses, and which are commemorated by the 
 medals of the Roman colony, KOAf2NIA BOCTPHC, not a 
 vestige remains. There is scarcely a tree in the neighbour¬ 
 hood of the town, and the twelve or fifteen families who now 
 inhabit it cultivate nothing but wheat, barley, horse-beans, 
 and a little dhoura. A number of fine rose-trees grow wild 
 among the ruins of the town, and were just beginning to 
 open their buds,J to blossom there, where the power of man 
 has fallen, and all his glory has faded. 
 
 A few striking facts demonstrate the extreme populous¬ 
 ness in ancient times of that extensive region, which took 
 its name from the number of the illustrious cities it contain¬ 
 ed. Ruins testify more than any records that these were 
 but the chief of many more. Brought newly to light as they 
 are, only an inadequate representation of the stores of ruins 
 with which it is full could be conveyed by following the 
 track of those few travellers who have visited it, and by de¬ 
 scribing even minutely what they saw. They seldom rest¬ 
 ed, or could rest, to make a searching and satisfactory ex- 
 
 * Euckinffham, p. 235. t Burckhardt, p. 232. t Ibid., p. 236. 
 
252 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 amination. A transient inspection was often all that they 
 could give. A written description on the spot was general- 
 ly impracticable, or only effected by stealth. Frequently 
 they could not turn aside to visit ruins in the vicinity of their 
 path. Sometimes they travelled without intermission, with 
 more than ordinary speed. Their united journeyings left 
 much unexplored ; and they heard of ruins, and partly saw 
 them at a distance, extending over regions w^hich they could 
 not penetrate. But, incomplete as their testimony is, there, 
 is no lack of proof that the cities and the towns were as nu¬ 
 merous as any land could sustain ; and their peculiar fea¬ 
 tures are sufficiently distinguished to trace in them a perfect 
 consistency with what Scripture history has recorded, a pre¬ 
 cise resemblance to what Scripture prophecy revealed, and 
 an exact adaptation to all that it declares concerning the 
 renovation that yet awaits them. 
 
 In journeying through the Haouran, and passing along a 
 low range of hills, Mr. Buckingham, timely profiting by a 
 casual delay, took by compass, on the summit of a rocky 
 eminence, the bearing of 25 towns, 3 of which were com¬ 
 puted to be distant half an hour, or two miles ; 2, one hour; 
 1, an hour and a half; 4, two hours ; 6, three hours ; 4, four 
 hours ; 5, six hours ; or twenty-five towns within a like num¬ 
 ber of miles from the spot from which he saw them^spread 
 around almost equally in every direction. The castle of 
 Salghud was seen at the supposed distance of twelve hours, 
 or nearly fifty miles. 
 
 . He adds, “ I have set down only the principal towns and 
 places in view from the eminence on which we stood, omit¬ 
 ting many smaller ones, but the enumeration is sufficient to 
 show how populous a country must have been wherein so 
 many towns and villages could be seen from a slight eleva¬ 
 tion above its surface. Excepting in the immediate envi¬ 
 rons of large cities, or on the borders of rivers, I should 
 doubt whether any country on earth, not even excepting 
 China, was ever more thickly peopled than these plains of 
 the Haouran must have been when in their most flourishincr 
 
 o 
 
 state, with all their numerous towns fully inhabited.”* 
 
 Such is the testimony of one, than whom very few have 
 travelled more extensively ; and his enumeration of the towns 
 of the Haouran is exceeded, as will be seen, by that of others. 
 
 The precise locality from which these bearings were ^ta- 
 
 * Buckingham, p. 186, 187. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 253 
 
 ken is definitely marked, namely, a rocky eminence about a 
 quarter of a mile to the north of Sheik Hussein, and distant 
 about eight hours, or twenty-four miles, N.W. i N. from 
 Bozrah. . 
 
 From another spot, the ruined town Walter, seated on the 
 top of a hill, and distant about twenty miles from the former, 
 the same observant traveller took the bearings by compass 
 of other towns, and computed the distances in miles by the 
 eye. They were seen, as previously, in varying distances 
 and in every direction, north, south, east, and w^est, spread 
 over the face of the country. Twenty were there noted and 
 named, the most distant of which were computed at twelve 
 miles from the spot. 
 
 The castle of Salghud terminated the journeyings on the 
 southeast of the Haouran both of Burckhardt and Bucking¬ 
 ham, but it does not terminate the region where ruined cit¬ 
 ies abound. No European traveller has as yet penetrated 
 beyond it. From its castle walls “ a public road” is seen 
 extending southeast, doubtless the very same king’s highway 
 of which Abulfeda speaks, and which bore the name Ar 
 Raszif, i, e., fortified by strongholds, and leading to Irak, or 
 Persia. According to the itineraries, as he states', the jour¬ 
 ney to Bagdad was about ten days.* The road remains, 
 -though the wayfaring man has ceased; and on each side are 
 ruined or deserted cities, in which no man dwells. 
 
 “ In the best maps which we possess of this country,” 
 says Mr. Buckingham, “ the region beyond Jordan to the 
 east is very imperfectly delineated and described; but Boz¬ 
 rah and Salghud form the extreme border of all that is known, 
 and beyond this the country has hitherto been supposed to 
 be entirely a desert. Flow was I surprised, therefore, to see, 
 as far as my sight could extend to the eastward, ruined towns 
 without number, and a country which promised a still rich¬ 
 er field to the scholar, the antiquarian, and the traveller, than 
 even the interesting region behind us to the west.”! 
 
 Besides five carefully noted from the west side, he took, 
 from the eastern face of the castle, the bearings of those few 
 places of which his guides could furnish the names. These, 
 though few, the names of the rest being unknown, were ten 
 in number, two of which are marked as large towns, within 
 the space of eight miles on the eastern side alone. Mr. 
 Eli Smith, w'hose testimony is enhanced by his long resi- 
 
 * Abulfeia, p. 108. 
 
 t Bucking-ham’s Travels, p. 217, 218. 
 
 Y 
 
254 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 deuce in Syria, his diversified travels throughout it, and fa¬ 
 miliarity with the Arabic, obtained the names of twenty-two 
 places east of Salghud, twenty-one of which are in ruins or 
 deserted. But neither would his list appear to be complete, 
 five names only being the same as those given by Mr. Buck¬ 
 ingham, other five, or half the number of those he saw and 
 noted, being omitted.* 
 
 On as superficial and cursory a view as could at all convey 
 any precise and adequate idea of a land once universally 
 overspread with towns, it thus appears that the bearings 
 were actually taken by compass, from three different points, 
 of sixty-four towns in the ancient land of Bashan, in hastily 
 traversing that country, not from end to end, but partly from 
 one side to another, and that these were but the chief or 
 best known of many towns or cities spread everywhere 
 throughout the land. 
 
 From “the rocky eminence,” the first of these points of 
 observation, bot];i Iddaragli, the farthest town to the west¬ 
 ward (W. by S.), lying at the distance of six hours, or above 
 twenty miles, and the castle of Salghud, twice as far to the 
 southeast, were at once in view. The most distant of these 
 towns to the eastward (Talliloze, a large town) is reckoned 
 eight miles E.S.E. of Salghud, the distance between the two 
 extreme towns being about seventy or eighty miles, thus 
 thickly studded with towns that the bearings of upward of 
 sixty were taken from only three intermediate positions. 
 Here, on scriptural ground and in the midst of scriptural 
 names, which beyond a doubt identify the precise localities, 
 the Christian reader will recognise, with hallowed interest, 
 in Iddaragh or Draa, and Salghud, the once famous cities of 
 Og, king of Bashan—Edrei and Salchah. At the former, 
 that idolatrous monarch of many cities contended vainly in 
 battle with Israel; and there, though his power was gigan¬ 
 tic like himself, he lost all his sixty walled cities and many 
 unwalled towns, and his kingdom and his land in a day. 
 He went out, and all his people, to the battle of Edrei; but Is¬ 
 rael smote him, and his sons, and his people, for the Lord 
 delivered them into their hand.f They took all the cities 
 of the plain, and all Bashan unto Salchah and Edrei, cities 
 of the kingdom of Og, in Bashan.;{; 
 
 It is doubly interesting, in looking now, as if by a single 
 
 * Bucking-ham’s Travels, p. 218. Robinson and Smith’s Researches, vol. iii., Ap¬ 
 pendix, p. 160. t Numb., xxi., 33, 35. t Dent., iii.. 10. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 255 
 
 or second glance, from the one to the other of these very 
 towns, and marking how numerous are the forsaken cities 
 of the plain, to remember how they were thus, in a far-dis¬ 
 tant age, introduced to the notice of all future ages, and had 
 a name in history which shall never perish ; and now, when 
 they are disclosed at last, as if a second time, to view, after 
 impenetrable darkness had enveloped their actual state for 
 ages, to take a narrow inspection of those cities, whose 
 strong walls of old could not keep out the covenanted chil¬ 
 dren of Israel, to whom, as such, their land pertained, in or¬ 
 der to see whether there be any cities without inhabitant, or 
 houses without man, open at last for the return and reception 
 of those within whose everlasting 'possession the land of Ba- 
 shan lies. 
 
 The territory south of Jabbok—we drop the heathen, and 
 take up anew the scriptural name—includes but the half of 
 Gilead; and that at which we have immediately glanced 
 does not embrace the half of the Haouran. From south to 
 north, as well as from west to east, bearings of as many 
 towns might again be taken from every similar eminence. 
 Mr. Buckingham, without even leaving the house in which 
 he took up his temporary abode at Mahadjee, north of Ezra, 
 went up with his host to the terrace of his dwelling, and ob» 
 tained from him the names of such places as were visible 
 from his housetop, and took the bearings and the estimated 
 distance of fourteen towns, chiefly to the north and to the 
 south, within the estimated distance of twelve miles, ten of 
 which are “ deserted,” ox forsaken * 
 
 A description of the ruins of the Haouran alone, so far 
 even as these have been discovered and examined, would fill 
 a volume ; but the works of Burckhardt and Buckingham 
 may be specially referred to as conveying very ample in¬ 
 formation concerning that interesting region, which, after 
 Seetzen, they were the first to explore. 
 
 The town of Salghud, or Szalkhat [Salchah), as seen by 
 Mr. Buckingham, appeared to have been quite as large as 
 Bozrah, and had, among other buildings, a square tower not 
 unlike the one described in the ruins of that city, contains 
 upward of eight hundred houses ivithout a single inhabitant. 
 It has a large mosque with a handsome minaret, the latter 
 of which is only two hundred years old. The mosque seems 
 to have been a repaired temple or church, as there are sev- 
 
 * Bucking-ham’s Travels, p. 286, 287. 
 
256 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 eral well-wrought niches on its outer walls. In the court¬ 
 yards of the houses of the town are a great number of fig 
 and pomegranate trees in full bearing. Every house has a 
 deep cistern lined with stone. There is also a large reser¬ 
 voir. Only fifteen years since a few Druse and Christian 
 families were established here as well as at German.* 
 
 Fourteen hundred and fifty years before the Christian era, 
 Salchah ceased to be a city of the King of Bashan, and was 
 numbered among the cities of Israel. In the fourteenth cen¬ 
 tury it long withstood a hard-pressed siege by the Sultan of 
 Egypt. Only two centuries have elapsed since its chief 
 minaret was built, the handsome ornamerf? of a spacious 
 mosque. In the outer walls of that mosque, the well-wrought 
 niches show that it had formerly been “ a temple or a church,” 
 as bearing, like many a wall in Syria, the common mark of 
 paganism and popery. The judgments of a long-suffering 
 God have come upon it at last. Now, for the first time in 
 the present century, it is tenantless. The last inhabitants 
 that lingered there have abandoned it, but bore the name of 
 its citizens, and, when seen by Burckhardt at Edialeb, were 
 still called Szalkhalie. The fortress, a stronghold by na¬ 
 ture and art, which, like Askelon and many others, long with¬ 
 stood an arm of flesh, still remains, with its ruined castle and 
 empty houses, to show the power of the word of the Lord 
 over it; and, though tenanted in recent years, and still bear¬ 
 ing the same name which it bore three thousand three hun¬ 
 dred years ago, is now, at last, a city without inhabitants, 
 and its hundreds of houses are each and all without man. 
 
 The castle (see Plate), which has a general resemblance 
 to those of Szalt, Adjeloon, and Bozrah, is nearly circular 
 in form, and is surrounded by a broad and deep ditch, hewn 
 out of the rock, and cased with masonry where necessary, 
 the area on which it stands being eight hundred paces in cir¬ 
 cuit.f Burckhardt estimated the height of the paved upper 
 hill to be sixty yards. The wall of the castle is flanked all 
 round by towers and turrets. Most of the interior apartments 
 are in complete ruins. Many of the large paved stones, as 
 well as parts of the wall, have fallen down, and in many 
 places have filled up the ditch to half its depth. The town 
 occupies the south and west foot of the castle hill: and, nu¬ 
 merous as are the houses in the empty city, whenever it 
 
 * Burckhardt’s Syria, p. 100, 101. Buckingham’s Trav., p. 212-220. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 214. 
 

 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 257 
 
 shall be filled again with men of Israel, ample materials are 
 prepared and at hand for enlarging it; for castles may be 
 transformed into peaceful dwellings when the Lord himself 
 shall be the strong tower of his people. 
 
 The country that lies between Salchah and Oerman, the 
 intermediate distance being four or five miles, is full of ruin¬ 
 ed walls. In German, which is an ancient city, are three 
 towers or steeples, like those at Kuffer. Between two Greek 
 inscriptions, on tablets fixed in a wall, is a niche about four 
 feet high. The town has a spring and several reservoirs. 
 It is somewhat larger than Ayoun. 
 
 Ruined walls again extend between this town and Ger¬ 
 man, distant one hour and a half. “ At Ayoun are about ybwr 
 hundred houses without any inhahitants.”'^ On its west side 
 are two walled-in springs, from whence the name is derived. 
 Burckhardt saw in the town four public edifices, with arch¬ 
 es in their interior; one of them is distinguished by the 
 height and fine curve of the arches, as well as by the com¬ 
 plete state of the whole building. Its stone roof has lost 
 its original colour, and now presents a variety of hues, which 
 on his entering surprised him much, as he had first supposed 
 them to be painted. Beyond Ayoun, the ground for the space 
 of three miles is covered with walls, which probably once 
 enclosed orchards and well-cultivated fields. Abundant rains 
 had covered the plain with rich verdure towards the close 
 of November.! 
 
 At the distance of two hours from Ayoun, passing inter¬ 
 mediately the ruined castle of Keres, is the ruined city Za- 
 houet-el-Khudder, equally distant from which is the ruined 
 city Za!eZe,^which stands near a copious spring, and is half 
 an hour in circuit. Burckhardt records the names of nine 
 ruined towns eastward of Zaele, and gives the following 
 striking testimony analogous to that of Buckingham, concern¬ 
 ing the region farther to the south and eastward of Szalkhat, 
 showing, in either case, how numerous were the cities which 
 overspread a land which the ravages of the Arabs have con¬ 
 verted into a nominal desert.J 
 
 “The great desert extends to the N.E., E., and S.E. of 
 Zaele ; to the distance of three days' journey eastward there 
 is still a good arable soil, intersected by numerous tels, and 
 covered with the ruins of so many towns and villages, that, 
 as I am informed, in whatever direction it is crossed, the 
 
 * Burckhardt’s Travels, p. 97. t Ibid., p. 96, 97. .+ ’bid., p. 93-95. 
 
 Y 2 
 
258 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 traveller is sure to pass, in every day.^i^e or six of these ru¬ 
 ined 'places. They are all built of the same black rock of 
 which the Djebel consists.”'^ 
 
 Such from Zaele southward was the route bv which Mr. 
 Burckhardt approached to Szalkhat; that by which he left 
 it is not less copious in illustrations how cities are desolate 
 without inhabitants, how houses are still standing without 
 men to tenant them, and how other desolate cities have yet 
 to be raised up from their foundations. 
 
 Southward of Szalkhat one hour and a half stands the high 
 Telabd Maaz, with a ruined city of the same name ; there 
 still remain large plantations of vines and figs. Near it is 
 another ruin south one hour, Tel Mashkouk, towards which 
 are the ruins Tehhoule, Kfer, and Khererribe.\ 
 
 Kereye, which he next passed, is a city containing hun¬ 
 dred houses^ of which only/bwr were then inkahited. “It 
 has several ancient towers and public buildings; of the lat¬ 
 ter, the principal has a portico consisting of a triple row of 
 six columns in each, supporting a flat roof; seven steps, ex¬ 
 tending the whole breadth of the portico, lead from the first 
 row up to the third. Behind the colonnade is a birket sur¬ 
 rounded by a strong wall.”J Kereye is situated about three 
 hours’ journey from Salghud, and nearly the same distance 
 from Bozrah. “ It appears,” says Mr. Buckingham, “ to have 
 been, in its flourishing state, quite as large as Bozrah, judg¬ 
 ing from the extent of space now covered with its ruins. 
 There were many of the large, massy doors of stone, which 
 must be considered as a peculiarity of the aboriginal or earli¬ 
 est style of architecture known in this country. 
 
 Conjoining Burckhardt’s account with those of Mr. Buck¬ 
 ingham, who travelled in 1816, and of Mr. Robinson, who 
 journeyed through the Haouran in 18.30, and was accom¬ 
 panied by Captain (now Colonel) Chesney, a succinct state¬ 
 ment may be given of the chief ruins or remains of the nu¬ 
 merous towns of the Haouran. 
 
 Soueida, situated on the west side of Djebel Haouran, 
 nearly opposite to Zaele on the east, was formerly one of 
 the largest cities of the Haouran. The circuit of its ruins 
 is at least four miles. In a street through which Burck¬ 
 hardt passed, the houses are standing on both sides ;|1 he 
 was twelve minutes in walking from the one end to the oth- 
 
 * Burckhardt’s Travels, p. 94. t Ibid., p. 102, 10.3. t Ibid., p. 103. 
 
 ^ Buckingham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 213. II Burckhardt, p. 81. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASIIAN, ETC. 259 
 
 er. Like the streets of modern cities in the East, it is very 
 narrow, but on both sides there is a narrow pavement, and 
 arched, open rooms, supposed to have been shops. The 
 street commences at a large arched gate in the upper part 
 of the town, descending from which, opposite to a fountain, 
 is an elegant building of the shape of a crescent, the whole 
 front of which forms a kind of niche, within which are 
 three smaller niches. In the same street is an edifice with 
 four rows of arches, on an inverted stone in one of the in¬ 
 terior walls of which, a Greek inscription would seem to 
 indicate that Soueida had been the station of the fourteenth 
 legion. The edifice, now a mosque, is a hundred and fifty 
 feet in length. A tower eighty feet high, two sides of 
 which are fallen, forms the termination of the street. The 
 town was apparently intersected with streets passing at 
 right angles through each other, which were paved with 
 stones so firmly imbedded in the soil that most of them still 
 remain. The houses are all of stone, and only in such as 
 have been recently repaired is there any wood to be seen. 
 Eight beautiful Corinthian columns, the remains of a colon¬ 
 nade which surrounded a large building, now in ruins, are 
 still standing on the top of the hill, four of which support a 
 perfect entablature. A large building in ruins, to which a 
 monastery was adjoined, still bears the name of El Kenis- 
 set (the church), 130 feet long by 89 broad. At the east¬ 
 ern end is a large niche, thirty-one feet across, with two 
 smaller ones on each side. Apparently, there were for¬ 
 merly columns with the lotus leaf, forming a gallery all 
 around. It is now a roofless ruin. Soueida is (or was) 
 the capital of the Druses, and the residence of their emir or 
 prince ; but, though once a great city, as it might well be 
 made again, it bears its proper designation, “ a Druse vil¬ 
 lage,” containing, in 1816, about 200 families. “It is well 
 supplied,” says Mr. Buckingham, “ with water, not only 
 from many streams in its neighbourhood, but also from a 
 fine spring gushing from the solid rock. On the west end 
 of the town is a lake or receiver, lined with stone, about 
 600 paces in circumference, and in the centre of the town 
 is a circular reservoir, entirely lined with masonry, more 
 than three hundred paces in circuit, with a staircase to the 
 bottom, and, as variously stated, at least thirty or fifty feet 
 deep. Among the remains are those of a Roman theatre.”* 
 
 * Backinf^ham, p. 233-5J39. Burckhardt, p. 80-82. Mr. G. Robinson’s Trav., vol. 
 ii,, p. 157-159. 
 
260 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 About six miles northward of Soueida is the large ruined 
 town of Aatyl, now a small village in the midst of a wood. 
 There are the remains of two ancient temples. One of 
 these is in complete ruins; on each side of the gate were 
 two niches, and in front a portico of columns, the number 
 of which it is impossible to determine, the ground being 
 covered with a heap of fragments of columns, architraves, 
 and large square stones. The other temple is of elegant 
 construction. The sculptural ornaments are richly design¬ 
 ed, and there are concave niches in several parts. It has a 
 portico of two columns and two pilasters, each of which 
 has a projecting base for a statue, elevated from the ground 
 above one third of the height of the columns, like the pil¬ 
 lars of the grand colonnade at Palmyra. Many of the an¬ 
 cient buildings, with stone roofs, are still standing. In the 
 centre of the town is a square tower. There was a large 
 reservoir for water, and there are many houses unoccupied, 
 there being only (in 1816) a few Druse families residing 
 among the ruins.* 
 
 Kanouat, or Gunnawat, retains ample memorials of a 
 splendid city. Its site is overgrown with shrubs and oaks, 
 which greatly conceal its ruins, of which the pillars, that 
 rise from among them, give the first indication to the ap¬ 
 proaching traveller. The first building described by Buck- 
 inghamf is one in which the emblem of the cross is visible 
 in every part, and the whole appearance of which proved it 
 to have been a Greek church. Another fine Corinthian 
 temple, 75 paces long and 35 paces broad, had a beautiful 
 portico in front. On the east of it is an extensive building 
 with colonnades, arches, doors, passages, and galleries so 
 numerous, it is said, that it would take a whole day, at 
 least, to give an outline plan of them. Another building, 
 like a Roman temple, and a theatre, are also numbered 
 among the ruins, lint the principal building of Kanouat is 
 a large edifice on a height, supposed to have been a palace, 
 the masonry of which is peculiarly good. Large apart¬ 
 ments, with columns highly ornamented, still remain, one 
 of which is above 70 feet long and nearly 50 wide. Some 
 of the columns of Kanouat, three feet and a half in diame¬ 
 ter, and thirty-five feet high, are worthy of being ranked 
 with the finest of those of Gerasa or Palmyra. Towers 
 with two stories, raised upon arches, stand isolated in dif- 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 222-224. Robinson, p. 156. t Buckingham, p. 242-243. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 261 
 
 ferent parts of the town, in one of which Burckhardt ob¬ 
 served a peculiarity of structure met with in other places, 
 the stones being cut so 
 as to dovetail and fit very 
 closely. The streets were 
 all originally paved. The 
 magnificent vestibules of the palace, with its spacious halls, 
 and the noble porticoes of the temples, and the splendid 
 columns, were lost upon the two poor Druse families at 
 one time, and five or six at another, its only inhabitants, 
 who were occupied in the cultivation of a few tobacco 
 fields.* 
 
 Many hewn and sculptured blocks of stone, evidently the 
 fragments of former edifices, are scattered along the road 
 leading from the S.W. to the ruins of Shobba. The walls, 
 about four miles in circumference, are in many places per¬ 
 fect, and, together with the loftiness of its public edifices, 
 attest the (ormer importance of the city. Eight gates, of 
 three arches each, lead through streets of ruined habita¬ 
 tions, the pavement of which is perfect. Near the centre 
 of the city, four massy cubical structures, built with square 
 stones, and quite solid, formed a sort of square, supposed 
 seats for statues. A large crescent-shaped edifice, with 
 several niches in the front, bears the name of the palace, 
 and is, or was, the residence of the sheik. Near it stands 
 another large edifice, built with massy stones, with a spa¬ 
 cious gate : its interior consists of a double range of arch¬ 
 ed chambers, one above the other, but is so encumbered 
 with ruins that the lower range is choked up as high as the 
 capitals of the columns which support the arches. The 
 walls of other large buildings yet remain. A semicircular 
 wall ten feet thick, with nine arched entrances, encloses a 
 theatre in good preservation, built of hewn stone, and encir¬ 
 cled by a double row of vaulted chambers. Five or six 
 arches, forty feet high, are the most conspicuous remains 
 of an aqueduct, which extended for two miles, and termi¬ 
 nated at a public building, once a magnificent bath. It con¬ 
 tains vaulted entrances and spacious rooms, one of which 
 is seventy feet by thirty, another sixty by twenty-four, 
 height twenty-seven feet eight inches, both arched with 
 lava mortar and other light materials, which have fallen in. 
 Attached to it were three circular buildings, twenty-nine 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 83-80. Robinson’s Trav., vol. ii,, p. 153-158. 
 
262 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 feet in diameter, covered with a dome. All the walls, 
 some of which are 12 feet, thick, are built of large square 
 stones, and so easily does it admit of renovation, that the 
 roofs of some of the chambers were recently entire. One of 
 the rooms in the bath would have contained all the inhabi¬ 
 tants of Shobba. From the terrace of one of its houses Mr. 
 Buckingham took the bearings of four “ uninhabited towns, 
 all lying within the estimated distance of six miles.* 
 
 The ruins of Draa, or Edi'ei, famous in the Israelitish an¬ 
 nals, cover a space of two miles and a half in circumference. 
 At the entrance of the town is a well-built bridge of live 
 arches, in perfect preservation. A reservoir, lined with 
 stone, in the hollow of the mountain, 160 yards by 65 wide, 
 and 20 deep, and, besides other ruins of minor importance, 
 including a large building with a cupola, an immense rec¬ 
 tangular edifice, 133 feet long by 96 broad, with a double- 
 curved colonnade all round, betoken no mean ancient city. 
 “It is now (1816) entirely deserted, and the inhabitants 
 have taken refuge in Ghirbee.”f 
 
 While many ruined or deserted towns, whose names never 
 had a place in extant records, show how imperfect was ev¬ 
 ery ancient testimony concerning them, cities, on the other 
 hand, which came into the view of the historian, and which 
 ancient geographers could not overlook, have not only been 
 given over to oblivion for ages, but have sunk into such ob¬ 
 scurity, that, in searching for ruins the most worthy of no¬ 
 tice, they would be passed over in silence, were it not for 
 the redeeming virtue of their ancient fame. 
 
 Mezareib, supposed to occupy the site of Ashteroth, the 
 royal city of Og, king of Bashan, is the first station of the 
 Hadj route from Damascus, and can now boast only a sin¬ 
 gle castle, with nothing but its naked walls, in which pro¬ 
 visions are deposited for the pilgrims. Near it stands a cas¬ 
 tle, around which are many ruins of ancient buildings.J 
 The ruined town of Om Keis is supposed by Seetzen to 
 be the representative of Gadara, and by Buckingham and 
 Burckhardt, of Gamala: towns too famous, from the great 
 slaughters there in the last Jewish war. Heaps of wrought 
 stones now cover the summit of the hill on which it stood. 
 The remains of two large theatres show that in later ages 
 
 * Buckingham, p. 257-261. Burckhardt, p. 70-73. Mr. Robinson, p. 146-150. 
 t Buckingham, p. 16ti. Robinson, p. 167, 168. 
 t Burckhardt, p. 211. Robinson, p. 214, 215. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 263 
 
 it was a city given to pleasure. A vast quantity of shafts 
 and columns lie along a once colonnaded street like that of 
 Gerasa. Nothing is at present standing, but there are m- 
 mense heaps of cut stones, columns, &c., dispersed over the 
 plain. The walls of the ancient city are still easily discern¬ 
 ible ; within them the pavement of the city is very perfect, 
 the traces of chariot wheels are still marked in the stones. 
 The testimony of one traveller is followed by that of anoth¬ 
 er. “We found not a single inhabitant,” says Burckhardt. 
 “ There are no inhabitants,” says Buckingham.* 
 
 The ruins of Ahil, Abila, another of the cities of the De- 
 capolis, seems to have nothing now worthy of diverting the 
 traveller from his course in pursuing his way to more re¬ 
 markable and attractive ruins. It is said that neither build¬ 
 ings nor columns remain standing, but there are fragments 
 of columns of a very large size. 
 
 Ruins abound on the north as well as on the south of the 
 Jarmock, which is doubtless the Hierornax of the Greeks, 
 and now bears the name of Sheirat-el-Mandhour. Abila is 
 near its northern bank; and the district of Jaulan, anciently 
 Gaulonitis, lies to the north of that stream, immediately on 
 the east of the Lake Tiberias. 
 
 The only inhabited village on the east side of the lake is 
 Kherhet Szammera, with some ancient buildings. Its site 
 seems to correspond with that of the ancient Hippos, one of 
 the chief cities of the Decapolis.f 
 
 Between the Cape of Tiberias and the village of Feik is 
 an insulated hill, having extensive ruins of buildings, walls, - 
 and columns on the top. They are, perhaps, says Burck¬ 
 hardt, the remains of the ancient town of Regaba, or Argob.;]: 
 
 Half an hour from Feik is a heap of ruins called Radjam- 
 el-Abhar. At three quarters of an hour distant is the ruin¬ 
 ed village El-Aal, on the side of the Wady Semak, which 
 empties itself into the lake near the ruined city of Medjeife- 
 ra, on the other side of the wady. About half an hour dis¬ 
 tant from it is the ruined city Kaszr Berdoweil (a castle of 
 Baldwin) ; about two hours and a quarter from Feik are the- 
 ruins of an extensive city, Khastein.^ 
 
 The ruins of towns thus overspread the country, whether 
 on the east of the Lake of Tiberias, or of the Jordan, or far- 
 
 * Buckingham’s Travels in Palestine, p. 418, &o. Burckhardt, p. 270-273. Roly 
 inson, p. 211, 212. Irby and Mangles, p. 297. 
 
 + Burckhardt, p. 278, 279. Tbid. ^ Ibid., p 281. 
 
264 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 ther east in the Haouran, from south to north, or throughout 
 the intermediate' wide territory once covered with the cities 
 of the plain. 
 
 Towards the north of the Haouran, and in the Ledja, ru¬ 
 ined or deserted towns are not less frequent. To say, as 
 previously, that from the top of a house several ruined or 
 deserted towns may be seen within the compass of a few 
 miles, may forcibly convey some idea of their number, but 
 cannot impart any adequate conception of their past, their 
 present, and prospective state. 
 
 That land of many cities has now become a land of mere 
 villages or tents. Of its villages Ezra is one of the most 
 considerable, containing, or that twelve years ago contained, 
 about two hundred families, Turks, Druses, and Greek 
 Christians, “Ezra was once a flourishing city. Its ruins 
 are between three and four miles in circumference. The 
 present inhabitants continue to live in the ancient buildings, 
 which, in consequence of the strength and solidity of their 
 walls, are for the greater part in complete preservation. They 
 are built of stone, as are all the houses of the villages of the 
 Haouran and Djebel Haouran, as well as of those in the des¬ 
 ert beyond Bozrah. In many places are two or three arched 
 chambers, one above the other, forming so many stories. 
 This substantial mode of building prevails also in most of 
 the public edifices remaining in the Haouran. To complete 
 the durability of these structures, most of the doors were an¬ 
 ciently of stone, and of these many are still remaining ; they 
 turn upon hinges worked out of the stone, and are about 
 four inches thick, and seldom higher than four feet, though I 
 met with some nine feet in height.”* 
 
 Mr. Buckingham describes one of these houses at Ezra, 
 which he entered and examined, and which was “ unoccu¬ 
 pied,” or without man, though no part of it was destroyed, or 
 even materially injured. The front exhibited the singular 
 kind of masonry before described, the stones being inter¬ 
 locked within each other by a kind of dovetailing, and thus 
 very strongly united without cement, with small windows 
 both of the square and circular form, both in the same range. 
 The central room of this house was large and lofty, and on 
 each side of it was a wing, separated from the central room 
 by open arcades at equal distances from the sides and from 
 each other. The east wing appeared to have been the 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 57, 58. 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASIIAN, ETC. 
 
 265 
 
 kitchen, as in it were seen two large fireplaces in the stone 
 wall, with hearths, as in the farmhouses in England, and a 
 large earthen vase, half buried in the centre of the floor, and 
 capable of containing at least a hogshead of water, with 
 small recesses, like cupboards, around the walls. This 
 room was low, being not more than a foot above a tall man’s 
 height; but the stone ceiling was as smooth as planks of 
 wood, as well as the ends of the stones on which the massy 
 beams that formed this roof and ceiling rested. In the cen¬ 
 tre of it was sculptured a wreath, the ends fastened with rib¬ 
 ands, and a fanciful design within it, all executed in a style 
 that proved it to be beyond all question Roman. In the op¬ 
 posite, or western wing, were other low rooms ; and before 
 the house was a flight of stone steps, projecting from the 
 wall, and unsupported except by the end, imbedded in origi¬ 
 nal masonry, leading up to the terrace of the dwelling. In 
 front of the whole was an open paved court, and beyond 
 this, stables with stalls and troughs, all hewn out of stone, 
 for camels, oxen, mules,”* &c. 
 
 Of the most considerable ruins which, in general, have 
 best resisted the destructive hand of time, the walls of most 
 are yet erect; and there are the remains of a range of hous¬ 
 es which, to judge from their size and solidity, seem to have 
 been palaces. In the midst of the present inhabited part of 
 the town are the remains of a large quadrangular edifice, the 
 roof of which consisted of thirteen rows of arches, five in 
 each, parallel to each other, of which three now remain. 
 The centre has fallen, roof, columns, and all. It was evi¬ 
 dently used as a place for Christian worship, subsequently 
 converted into a mosque, and recently abandoned. Adjoin¬ 
 ing it is a square tower about fifty feet high : similar struc¬ 
 tures are frequently seen in the Druse villages. On the 
 south side of the village stands a square edifice, dedicated 
 to St. George, measuring ninety feet each way, with a sem¬ 
 icircular projection of the eastern side, which contained the 
 altar. The vaulted roof, of modern construction, is support¬ 
 ed by eight square columns in the centre of the quadrangle.f 
 
 From the terrace of a house in Ezra, Mr. Buckingham 
 took the bearings of eight towns within the distance of eight 
 miles, five of which were deserted.^ At nearly the same 
 distance to the northeast, a hill is covered with the ruins of 
 
 t Mr. Robinsiun’s Trav., vol, ii., p. 138. 
 
 * Backinf^harn, p. 277, 278 
 j Buckingham, p. 279. 
 
 z 
 
T« 
 
 266 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 the ancient city of Keratha, of which the foundations alone 
 remain entire. 
 
 Different routes from Ezra to Damascus give redoubled 
 evidence that the land on every side continues to be over¬ 
 spread with ruined or deserted cities. 
 
 At Mahadjee, about two hours north of Ezra, where Mr. 
 Buckingham took from a house-top the bearing of ten desert¬ 
 ed towns within twelve miles, the previous accounts which 
 he had heard of the district of Ledjah being full of ruined 
 towns and cities containing the remains of large edifices and 
 innumerable inscriptions like those at Bozrah, Soueida, and 
 Gunnawat, were confirmed by many persons, who all united 
 in the same testimony, and to whom that district was famil¬ 
 iarly known. Leaving Mahadjee, he saw in half an hour 
 the large town of Ikieehy, about four miles on the left; in 
 half an hour more he came in a line with Geryh, a town 
 with two castles, which lay about half a mile on the left; 
 and at the same time the town of Gherbet-e-Wali lay on 
 the right three miles off, and Buseer and El Glioffy about one 
 mile distant, all within the stony district of Ledjah, all large, 
 and all deserted and without inhabitants.”* 
 
 Burckhardt, leaving the same place by a more easterly 
 route, reached in two hours the village of Khabet, and in one 
 hour from thence he passed the two ruined cities Zehair and 
 Zebir, close to each other. Little more than another hour 
 brought him to the ruined village Djedel; and in a like in¬ 
 terval he reached Dhami, containing about three hundred 
 houses, most of which are still in good preservation. There 
 is a large building, whose gate is ornamented with sculp¬ 
 tured vine-leaves and grapes like those at Kanouat. Each 
 house appears to have had its cistern, and there are many 
 also in the immediate vicinity of the town, formed by exca¬ 
 vations in the rock. At half an hour’s distance is another 
 ruined place, Deir Dhami.f 
 
 In passing and repassing the same places at the short in¬ 
 terval of two years, Burckhardt marked the rapid progress 
 of desolation and desertion. 
 
 In 1810, Shaara was a well-peopled village, inhabited by 
 a hundred Druse and Christian families, many of whom were 
 engaged in the manufacture of saltpetre and gunpowder. Of 
 the former article, the sheik of the village sent yearly to Da¬ 
 mascus one hundred cantars.J In 1812 it was deserted 
 
 * Buckingham, p. 292. t Burckhardt, p. 110, 111. t Ibid., p. 114. 
 
 
RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 267 
 
 without an inhabitant. Shaara was once a considerable 
 city, built on both sides of a valley; it has several large 
 structures solidly built, now deserted. In the upper town 
 is an ancient edifice, thirty-six feet by forty, with arches 
 resting upon columns, now converted into a mosque. Near 
 it is a tower forty feet high. Most of the houses of the 
 town are in good preservation. The walls, the rafters of 
 the roofs, and the doors, are all of hewn stone. The tracks 
 of ancient wheels in the pavement, as in many cities of the 
 Haouran, are everywhere apparent. We did not meet, says 
 Mr. Robinson in 1830, with a single inhabitant.* 
 
 In like manner, the ruined village of Beirit, which was 
 inhabited in 1810, was in 1812 abandoned. The Haouran 
 peasants wander from one village to another ; in all of them 
 they find commodious habitations in the ancient houses ; a 
 camel transports their family and baggage ; and, as they are 
 not tied to any particular spot by private landed property or 
 plantations, and find everywhere large tracts to cultivate, they 
 feel no repugnance at quitting the place of their birth. In 
 one hour we passed Seleim, which in 1810 was inhabited 
 by a few poor Druses, but is now abandoned. Here are the 
 ruins of a temple, built with much smaller stones than any 
 I had observed in the construction of buildings of a similar 
 size in the Haouran.f 
 
 Distant an hour and a half from Shaara is Missema, a ru¬ 
 ined town of three miles in circuit. The principal ruin in 
 the town is a small elegant temple in tolerable preservation. 
 The approach to it is over a broad paved area fifty-two feet 
 deep. Four Corinthian columns stand in the centre and 
 supported the roof, which, formed with light materials, has 
 fallen since it was visited by Burckhardt. On each side of 
 the entrance was a niche. Projecting from the bottom of 
 each of the side walls are four pedestals for busts or statues. 
 The centre niche at the northern end is beautifully turned 
 in the shape of a shell. The signs of idolatry remain ; but, 
 beautiful as the temple is, the idolaters are gone. Missema 
 has no inhabitant; we met, says Burckhardt, with only a few 
 workmen digging the saline earth. We wandered over the 
 ruins, says Mr. Robinson, in search of an inhabitant, but we 
 found the place completely abandoned. East of Missema are 
 no inhabited villages, but the Lochf contains several in ruins.^ 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 221, 222. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 114, 212. Mr. Robinson’s Trav., vol. ii., p. 134-139. 
 
 i BurCkhardq p. 115-118. Robinson, p, 130-131. 
 
268 
 
 RUINS IN GILEAD AND BASHAN, ETC. 
 
 According to the testimony of a recent traveller, depopula¬ 
 tion and desolation seem to have progressively increased 
 since Burckhardt and Buckingham explored the Haouran 
 and adjoining regions. Mr. Elliot, who passed along its 
 northwestern boundary, states that Nowa, the ancient Neve, 
 like Sanamein, and several other towns and villages in the 
 road, is a heap of ruins. Es-szanamein (the two idols) was 
 a considerable village, with several ancient buildings and 
 towns, when Burckhardt passed by it.* The surviving ru¬ 
 ins indicate the former existence of a large town. “ Popu¬ 
 lation seem to have decreased from thousands to hundreds, 
 and from hundreds to decades : what were once cities of 
 considerable magnitude are now wretched villages, and large 
 towns have not a single tenant to perpetuate the memory of 
 their name.”! “From Nowa to Feik the road crosses a 
 vast plain destitute of cultivation and inhabitants. Nothing 
 is seen but the ruins of tenantless villages and towns scat¬ 
 tered in every direction, with multitudes of hawks and herons 
 occupying the spots deserted by man.”| 
 
 In the region over which we have already passed, some 
 proof has been adduced, and some illustration given, that 
 many cities of the land of Israel are desolate without inhab¬ 
 itant, and the houses without man. 
 
 In the lists of Arabic names of places in Palestine and the 
 adjoining regions by Mr. Eli Smith, appended to the third 
 volume of his and Dr. Robinson’s Researches, there are the 
 names of one hundred and fifty-six places in ruins or desert¬ 
 ed in the Haouran and El-Lidjah; eighty-one in Batania or 
 Bashan; eighty-six in Ajlun; and one hundred and twenty- 
 three in the Belkah; or in all, as arranged and named, four 
 hundred and forty-six in the countries east of the Jordan. 
 
 Haouran is a land—far more than all others that are, or, 
 perhaps, ever were on earth—of cities that are forsaken or 
 deserted, though not ruined, and of houses still standing by 
 hundreds, but without men. A picture of this is undesignedly 
 given in Mr. Buckingham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes. 
 It is entitled only. Caravan in the Plains of the Haouran, 
 It consists of camels as if passing through the desert; but 
 in the back-ground the thick-set cities may be seen, as three 
 or four times the number may sometimes be counted from a 
 single spot. (See Plate.) 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 55. f Elliot’s Trav., p. 320, 325. t Ibid., p. 327. 
 
cahav.to on the plains of the aADILAN 
 
 ■■ 
 
NATURAL FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRIES, ETC. 269 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRIES EAST OF THE DEAD 
 
 SEA AND OF THE JORDAN. 
 
 To break in a little upon the sad and monotonous descrip¬ 
 tion of desolate or deserted cities, it may be well, before pass¬ 
 ing that river, which was consecrated more by the baptism of 
 Jesus than by the miraculous passage of the Israelites, even 
 though it dared not then to wet the soles of their feet, to look 
 on the country beyond Jordan, in order to see if there be any 
 lingering beauty there, even a faint trace of what the land of 
 Gilead and of Bashan was, or if there be yet any substance 
 in it sufficient, as of old, to sustain many of the thousands 
 of Israel. 
 
 In vain, in the highest sense, would we look for balm in 
 Gilead or fruit in Bashan, while yet there is no physician 
 there, and while the covenanted and only rightful inheritors 
 of the land are yet wanderers throughout the world, as the 
 inhabitants of their own land are wanderers in their patrimo¬ 
 nial territories ; but, anticipating the time when the Holy 
 One of Israel shall fulfil his word, and bring his people to 
 the land of Gilead and Bashan, and feed them there, and 
 their soul shall there be satisfied, we may interrogate the 
 land by another category than that of Volney, and ask wheth¬ 
 er, while many cities might be raised from their ruins and 
 others be repaired to dwell in^ it could repay cultivation now, 
 and yield such fruit to Israel as to merit at last the choice 
 whiclf at first was made of it. 
 
 In the sneering language of Voltaire, it might be account¬ 
 ed “ a goodly land” by those who had wandered forty years 
 in the wilderness! And were the question now put to kin¬ 
 dred scoffers, they might say that any land, however poorly 
 enriched with nature’s bounties, might be the welcome asy¬ 
 lum of a hapless race, who for many ages have had no land 
 to dwell in as their own, and who have wandered genera¬ 
 tion after generation without finding a place whereon to rest 
 the sole of their feet. 
 
 But it is not thus that our interrogatory is put. Our ene¬ 
 mies being judges, we would raise the question whether, 
 
 Z 2 
 
270 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRIES 
 
 when looked at again, that portion of Israel’s inheritance over 
 which we have glanced is not capable of being what the 
 prophetic Scriptures have declared that it shall be—no mean 
 or despicable portion of a “ goodly heritage,” and “ everlast¬ 
 ing possession” worthy of being esteemed “ the glory of all 
 lands.” 
 
 In the beginning of the present century, appeals could not 
 be made to existing facts; and Christians held the problem 
 unresolved, if not unresolvable, how a land long reckoned 
 as a desert, and a blank in every modern map, could have 
 sustained the multitudinous cities and towns which, accord¬ 
 ing to the historical Scriptures, were once planted there. 
 The increase of knowledge* has caused the mystery to cease, 
 and to the lack of that alone can it owe its unduly protract¬ 
 ed existence. Rather than that the land should have been 
 plenteously tenanted in ancient times, where the most an¬ 
 cient towns assuredly on the face of all the earth are still 
 standing, and have in many instances the seeming freshness 
 of novelty in the tinge which age has given them, the wonder 
 might reasonably arise, how many cities should thus be 
 desolate without man, and how hundreds of houses, that 
 give good promise of lasting for ages, should, in town 
 neighbouring with town, be left without man, without pos¬ 
 sessors, without claimants, without tenants, or any to dwell 
 therein, while wandering herdsmen around them have no 
 better shelter than a tent, while many walls, and gates, and 
 bars in Bashan are as strong as ever, and the palaces, and 
 temples, and castles of Ammon are a stable for camels, and 
 a couching place for flocks. 
 
 These facts are not without an assignable reason; for 
 the manner in which God has wrought out his judgments 
 may be seen. The mode in which his promised bfessing 
 to Israel shall be accomplished is yet, save as revealed, a 
 mystery to man. But the fact that these lands did sustain 
 such numerous cities is not less clear than that it could still 
 sustain them again, were the tenantless dwellings crowded 
 with inhabitants, and all the cities raised from their founda¬ 
 tions, and peopled anew, without walls because of the multi¬ 
 tude of men, even as the Israelites shall dwell in them on 
 their return. 
 
 On the extremity of the Dead Sea, Captains Irby and 
 Mangles, passing by a route previously untrodden by any 
 
 * Dan., xii,, 4. 
 
EAST OF THE DEAD SEA AND OF THE JORDAN. 271 
 
 modern traveller, except perhaps Seetzen, entered into a 
 very prettily wooded country, with high rushes and marsh¬ 
 es ; on their advancing farther, the variety of bushes and 
 wild plants became very great, some of the latter being 
 rare and of remarkable appearance, presenting a fine field 
 for the botanist. Among the trees and plants were various 
 species of the acacia, the dwarf mimosa, the doom, the tam¬ 
 arisk, a plant they had seen in Nubia called the oscar, the 
 wild cotton plant, among an infinity of others that they nei¬ 
 ther knew how to name or describe.* The banks of the 
 River El-Dara, which waters a beautiful shady ravine, were 
 » covered in profusion with the palm, acacia, aspen, and 
 oleander in full flower and beauty. As they advanced to¬ 
 wards Kerek they found themselves in corn-fields, with cat¬ 
 tle grazing in the valley through which the River Souf Saf- 
 fa runs towards the Dead Sea; the ancient mill-courses are 
 still to be seen, but the river itself was hid by the richness 
 of the vegetation on its banks, especially the purple olean¬ 
 der in full blossom.t In the narrow valley at the foot of 
 the castle hill of Kerek there runs a stream, with a narrow 
 line of gardens on its banks, in which they observed olives, 
 pomegranates, and figs, with some vegetables.| South¬ 
 ward of Kerek they ascended into a country of downs, with 
 verdure so close as to appear almost turf, and with corn¬ 
 fields at intervals. In short, the whole of the plains in this 
 quarter, now so deserted, are capable of rich cultivation.*^ 
 Ghoeyr, immediately south of the Dead Sea, is famous 
 for the excellent pasturage produced by its numerous 
 springs, and it has, in consequence, become a favourite 
 place of encampment for all the Bedouins of Djebal and 
 Shera. The borders of the rivulets are overgrown with 
 defle and the shrub rethem. The extensive plain near 
 Kara consists of a fertile soil. The broad A^alley called El- 
 Bekka is extremely fertile, and is (was) in part cultivated 
 by the people of Szalt and the Arabs of the Belkah. The 
 Bedouins, from the superiority of its pasturage, have this 
 saying, “ Thou canst not find a country like the Belkah.” 
 The beef and mutton of this district are preferable to those 
 of all others. The herds of cows, sheep, and goats of the 
 Arabs of the Belkah are large, and, wherever they have the 
 prospect of being able to secure the harvest against the in- 
 
 * Irby and Mangles’ Travels, p. 334, 335. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 362. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 361. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 370. 
 
272 NATURAL FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRIES 
 
 cursions of enemies, they cultivate patches of the best soil 
 in their territory. The rivulet of Mayn flows through a 
 wood of defle-trees, which form a canopy over the rivulet 
 impenetrable to the meridian sun.* The red flowers of 
 these trees, reflected in the water, gave it the appearance of 
 a bed of roses,t &c. 
 
 “From Jerash to Ammon,” says Lord Lindsay, “the 
 whole country is one whole pasturage, overspread with the 
 flocks and herds of the Bedouins. 
 
 The hills that enclose the valley of Azalt are laid out in 
 vine-beds on the eastern side of the town. Farther to the 
 south the valley becomes more fertile, is well wooded, and 
 watered throughout its extent, and capable of sustaining five 
 times the population that (in 1816) inhabited the town and 
 neighbourhood. “ On the summit of a hill near Fahaes the 
 wood scenery-is beautiful; and the fresh and full foliage of 
 evergreen trees, contrasted with the snowy beds (February) 
 out of which their trunks sprung, was at once new and 
 striking. The ground, covered with a fine red soil, exhib¬ 
 ited everywhere traces of former cultivation and great fer¬ 
 tility. From Deer-el-Nassara we soon entered a thick for¬ 
 est of large trees, the greatest number of which were ever¬ 
 greens ; one of these, the most numerous of the whole, was 
 as tall as English elm, of equal girth to full-grown trees of 
 that kind. A variety of trees and shrubs in great abun¬ 
 dance, present every shade of colour and hue, from the 
 palest yellow to the deepest green.” On advancing far¬ 
 ther, “ The country, though bare of wood, presented a great 
 extent of fertile soil lying entirely waste, though it was 
 equal to any of the very best portions of Galilee and Sama- 
 ria, and capable of producing sustenance for a large popu¬ 
 lation.” The plain (of Ammon) was covered with fine 
 green turf, daisies, and a large scarlet flower in great abun¬ 
 dance, and the soil was extremely rich. Beyond Ammon 
 lies “ a continued tract of fertile soil capable of the highest 
 cultivation.”^ 
 
 The following testimony of Mr. Buckingham concerning 
 that country in general, being highly valuable, is extracted 
 at length. “We had now arrived at a very elevated part 
 of the plain, which had continued fertile throughout the 
 whole of the distance that we had yet come from Ammon 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 362. t Ibid., p. 369. 
 
 T Lord Lindsay’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 110. Buckin^bam. 
 
 ^ Buckingham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 60-63. 
 
EAST OF THE DEAD SEA AND OF THE JORDAN. 273 
 
 to this place, and were still gradually rising as we proceed¬ 
 ed on, when we came to an elevation from which a near 
 view opened before us to the southeast, in th%direction in 
 which we were travelling. This view presented to us, on 
 a little lower level, a still more extensive tract of contin¬ 
 ued plain than that over which we had already passed. 
 Throughout its whole extent were seen ruined towns in ev¬ 
 ery direction, both before, behind, and on every side of us, 
 generally seated on small eminences, all at a short distance 
 from each other, and all, as far as we had yet seen, bearing 
 evident marks of former opulence and consideration. There 
 was not a tree in sight as far as the eye could reach; but 
 my guide, who had been over every part of it, assured me 
 that the whole of the plain was covered with the finest soil, 
 and capable of being made the most productive corn-land in 
 the world. It is true that, for a space of more than thirty 
 miles, there did not appear to me a single interruption of 
 hill, rock, or wood to impede immediate tillage ; and it is 
 certain that the great plain of Esdraelon, so justly celebra¬ 
 ted for its extent and fertility, is inferior in both to this 
 plain of Belkah, for so the Whole country is called, from the 
 mountain of that name, the Pisgah of the Scriptures. Like 
 Esdraelon, it appears also to have been once the seat of an 
 active and numerous population.”* 
 
 The mountainous ranges on both sides of the Jabbok, 
 which divides Gilead, seem still to vie with each other in 
 beauty. 
 
 Before reaching Azalt from the south. Captains Irby and 
 Mangles passed through a richly-wooded and picturesque 
 country. Near to Jerash they entered a very picturesque 
 country, most beautifully varied with hanging woods, most¬ 
 ly of the vallonia oak, laurustinus, cedar, common arbutus, 
 arbutus andrachne, &c. ; the latter, in some instances, was 
 nearly six feet in circumference. At times the grounds had 
 all the appearance of a noble park: in short, nothing could 
 exceed the beauty of this day’s ride ; there were some spots 
 cultivated with corn. As we advanced, the wood became 
 more thick, and at dark we stopped at a small open space 
 covered with high grass and weeds. We went out with 
 our suide to a small distance to endeavour to shoot some 
 
 o 
 
 wild boars, which were said to be very numerous there.f 
 
 On first passing the Jordan, opposite to BisanJ they soon 
 
 * Buckingham, p. 85, 86. t Irby and Mangles, p. 474, 476, 477. 
 
274 NATURAL FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRIES 
 
 entered on a small plain very thickly set with herbage, and 
 particularly the mustard plant, reaching as high as the hor¬ 
 ses’ heads.^ Ascending from hence, they passed through 
 occasional hill and vale well wooded, the country gradually 
 increasing in beauty. Next day they continued their route 
 through the most beautiful woodland scenery, with the gall 
 oak, wild olive, arbutus, &c., &c., in great luxuriance, and 
 a variety of wild flowers, such as the cyclamen, crimson 
 anemone, &c., on a rich soil. 
 
 The road from Adjeloun towards Souf led through a nar¬ 
 row and picturesque valley, which opens at the farther end 
 into a plain, where the road passes through a woody, un¬ 
 even country, extremely beautiful. They observed the ar¬ 
 butus of unusual dimensions and great beauty; one tree was 
 about six feet in circumference, and in some instances the 
 vallonia oak and arbutus andrachne were grow'ing grafted to¬ 
 gether, probably from the acorn or berry of either having ac¬ 
 cidentally dropped into some crack in the stem of the other, 
 and taken root! A valley northeast of Souf is very beauti¬ 
 fully wooded, having a picturesque stream, its banks cover¬ 
 ed with the oleander.* 
 
 There is such a diversity in the elevation of the plains of 
 Syria, that, while that of the Jordan is remarkably low, oth¬ 
 ers may be appropriately designated a taMe land. 
 
 After passing the Jordan, Mr. Buckingham ascended to 
 one plain after another ; and on ascending Jebel Azalt, he 
 describes it as “ a fine fertile plain, with undulations here 
 and there, a rich green turf, abundance of wood, and pines 
 nodding on the surrounding eminences. From hence he en¬ 
 joyed a magnificent view, as beautiful in many of its features 
 as it was grand in the whole, and extending in every direc¬ 
 tion almost as far as the range of vision.”! 
 
 In describing his journey through the mountains of Gile¬ 
 ad, he thus writes: “ We had no sooner passed the summit 
 of the second range, going down a short distance on its east¬ 
 ern side by a very gentle descent, than we found ourselves 
 on plains of nearly as high a level as the mountains or the 
 hills themselves, and certainly eight hundred feet, at least, 
 above the stream of the Jordan. The character of the coun¬ 
 try, too, was quite different from anything that I had seen in 
 Palestine, from my first landing at Soor to the present mo¬ 
 ment. We were now in a land of extraordinary richness, 
 
 * Irby and Mangles, p. 307, 308. t Buckingham’s Travels in Palestine, p. 19. 
 
EAST OF THE DEAD SEA AND OF THE JORDAN. 275 
 
 abounding with the most beautiful prospects, clothed with 
 thick forests, varied with verdant slopes, and possessing ex¬ 
 tensive plains of a fine red soil, now covered with thistles 
 as the best proof of its fertility, and yielding in nothing to 
 the celebrated plains of Zabulon and Esdraelon, in Galilee 
 and Samaria. 
 
 “We continued our way to the northeast through a coun¬ 
 try, the beauty of which so surprised us that we often ask¬ 
 ed each other what were our sensations, as if to ascertain 
 the reality of what we saw, and persuade each other, by 
 mutual confessions of our delight, that the picture before us 
 was not an optical illusion. The landscape alone, which 
 varied at every turn, and gave us new beauties from every 
 different point of view, was of itself worth all the pains of 
 an excursion to the eastward of Jordan to obtain a sight of; 
 and the park-like scenes that sometimes softened the roman¬ 
 tic wildness of the general character as a whole, reminded 
 us of similar spots in less neglected lands.”* 
 
 The first part of our route (from Souf to Oom-Keis), says 
 Mr. Robinson, “ for nearly an hour and a half, lay through 
 a thick forest of very fine oak-trees. Under any other cir¬ 
 cumstances, nothing could be more agreeable than our ride 
 through it; but it was notorious for giving shelter to ill-dis¬ 
 posed persons. The country we passed through this day 
 was of the most beautiful description, being slightly undu¬ 
 lated, the crests and sides of the hills clothed with the mag¬ 
 nificent oaks, for which this district, the ancient Bashan, is 
 still, as of old, justly celebrated. But for my turbaned com¬ 
 panions, and the absence of detached villas, I could frequent¬ 
 ly have thought myself in Europe. At sunset we arrived at 
 Favur, where we supped in the sheik’s house, the inhabitants 
 being all Mussulnien. They seemed ill disposed towards us, 
 were suspicious and disobliging. The place where we pass¬ 
 ed the night was a large excavated cavern, dark and dirty, 
 and more like a den of thieves than the dwellings of civil¬ 
 ized people.”! 
 
 “ The whole of the country,” says Lord Linsday, “ that 
 we had yet traversed on the east of the Jordan, from the 
 Lake of Tiberias to the Red Sea, and from Oom-Keis to 
 Heshbon, is fertile in the extreme, and the woody scenery 
 of the mountain districts of Belkah and Adjeloun scarcely 
 
 * Buckingham’s Travels in Palestine, p. 322. 
 
 t Robinson’s Travels in Palestine, vol. ii., p. 209, 211. 
 
276 NATURAL FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRIES 
 
 to be surpassed in beauty. The soil is so generally fertile as 
 to be capable of producing almost everything that is required. 
 
 “ The wood-scenery spoken of in such high terms by 
 Buckingham, Irby and Mangles, &c., began to appear about 
 a quarter Of an hour after leaving Naimi; trees, thinly scat¬ 
 tered at first, but which soon became numerous ; and the road 
 henceforward was extremely pretty, winding over hills, and 
 through vales, and narrow rocky ravines overhung with the 
 valonidi oak, and other beautiful trees of which I knew not 
 the names. Approaching .Jerash (Souf lying considerably 
 to the west), the woods had suffered much from fire; the 
 whole mountain side had been burned; the herbage was quite 
 consumed; many trees had perished in the conflagration ; 
 some were standing half alive, half dead, while others had 
 quite escaped. Jerash lay before us ; after a steep and rocky 
 descent, we reached the bank of a beautiful little stream, 
 thickly shaded by tall oleanders, and, passing through hun¬ 
 dreds of sheep and goats watering at it, ascended to the sum¬ 
 mit of a hill in the midst of the ruins,”* &c. 
 
 “ Between Aszalt and El-Hussan the scenery is most love¬ 
 ly. From the western extremity of Mount Gilead, in an al¬ 
 most continuous descent to the foot of Gebel Adjeloun, ev¬ 
 ery minute introduces you to some new scene of loveliness. 
 The path wound through thickets of the most luxuriant 
 growth, and of every shade of verdure, frequently overshad¬ 
 owing the road and diffusing a delicious coolness,! Im¬ 
 mediately after crossing the Zerka we rested at a large cave 
 formed by overhanging rocks ;^the river in front of us, and 
 a wild almond-tree near its mouth, which supplied us with 
 a welcome addition to some raisins, the best we ever tasted, 
 that we had procured at Aszalt. It was oppressively hot in 
 this ravine, but delightfully cool again as we ascended Ge¬ 
 bel Adjeloun, through scenery of more grandeur than that of 
 Mount Gilead, and to the full as beautiful. After three quar¬ 
 ters of an hour of steep ascent, the valonidis reappeared on 
 both sides of a very beautiful ravine, running up into the mount¬ 
 ains—not valonidis only, but it was clothed to the very sum¬ 
 mit with prickly oaks and olive-trees, tufted among the crags 
 —superb oleanders blossoming in the dry bed of a torrent, 
 alongside of the road. Views more and more magnificent, 
 towards Mount Gilead, opened upon us the higher we as- 
 
 * Lord Linsday’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 102 
 
 t Ibid., p. 122, 123. 
 
EAST OF THE DEAD SEA AND OF THE JORDAN. 277 
 
 cended ; corn-fields ready for the sickle revealed the vicin¬ 
 ity of a town—Bounna, to wit—which we reached after an 
 hour and twenty minutes’ ascent; the olives ceased a little 
 beyond it, but arbutuses, firs, ash, prickly oaks, and a spe¬ 
 cies of the valonidi with a larger leaf than the usual sort (per¬ 
 haps the oak of Bashan), succeeded. After two hours and a 
 half we reached a beautiful broad terrace of about twenty 
 minutes in length, and partly covered with corn, just below 
 the highest point of Gebel Adjeloun, towering up most ma¬ 
 jestically on the left, its noble crags almost hidden-among 
 beautiful trees. From the termination of this plain or terrace, 
 we descended, in half an hour, to Zebeen, through noble fir- 
 trees, far finer than those of Mount Gilead. The beauty of 
 the descent surpassed, if possible, that of the ascent, and the 
 northward view was most splendid. But a painter only 
 could give an idea of these scenes of beauty and grandeur.* 
 “ Our next day’s route was through very lovely, but quiet¬ 
 er scenery, valleys full of olives, corn-fields reclaimed from 
 the forest, and villages. At the bottom of the hill below 
 Zebeen we crossed the brook Napalin, shaded by beautiful 
 oleanders. A beautiful narrow glen afterward ushered us 
 into a broad valley, richly wooded to the summits of the hills 
 with noble prickly oaks, a few pine-trees towering over them. 
 I saw an occasional degub-\xee or arbutus, but the prevailing 
 trees were oaks, prickly and broad leaved : it was forest 
 scenery of the noblest character—next to that of old Eng¬ 
 land, with which none that I ever saw can stand compari¬ 
 son. On our journey to Jerash by a different route from that 
 of Irby and Mangles, Banks, and Buckingham, we wondered 
 at the encomiums lavished by those gentlemen on the wood¬ 
 land scenery of these regions ; we now thought that enough 
 had scarcely been said in their praise.”! 
 
 Jebel Adjeloun, extending from the Zerka to the Yarmuk, 
 is described by Mr. Eli Smith as presenting “ the most 
 charming rural scenery that he had seen in Syria. A con¬ 
 tinued forest of noble trees, chiefly of the evergreen oak, 
 covers a large part of it; while the ground beneath is cloth¬ 
 ed with luxuriant grass, which we found a foot or more in 
 height, and decked with a rich variety of wild flowers.”! 
 
 These direct, explicit, and uniformly accordant testimo¬ 
 nies give proof that, notwithstanding all the desolation that 
 
 * Lord Lindsay, p. 125-127. t Ibid., p. 128, 129. 
 
 t Smith and Robinson, Appendix, vol. hi.; p 162. 
 
 A A 
 
278 NATURAL FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRIES 
 
 has come on an almost dispeopled land, the natural fertility 
 of the Belkah is yet unimpaired. Its peculiar excellence 
 as a pastoral country is yet as distinguished as ever. It re¬ 
 tains every capability of being what it was when the Israel¬ 
 ites first entered it; and though the ignorant and idle Arabs 
 leave cisterns, anciently excavated with great labour from 
 the rock, useless and dry, rather than expend a light and 
 momentary effort in clearing away the rubbish merely to let 
 the water flow into them, so richly has Nature endowed the 
 land, that even the Bedouins, making its excellence their 
 boast, can appreciate the land they do nothing to improve ; 
 and every traveller now sees it to be, what the children of 
 Reuben and Gad pronounced it at first, “ the land is a land 
 for cattle.” 
 
 Beauty still lingers in Gilead, as if in its own dwelling- 
 place, from which it will not depart. Like many other por¬ 
 tions of the land of Israel, the wild boar out of the forest 
 doth devour it. Like as in other mountains of Israel, the 
 prowling robber has caused the wayfaring man to cease, so 
 that for preceding ages»7zone have 'passed through them ; and 
 the fear of the wild tenants of the forest, whether men or 
 beasts, is an alloy to the pleasure which the native loveli¬ 
 ness of the land imparts to the passing visitant. Where 
 ruined cities retain many a sign of ancient luxury, which 
 made art the handmaid of pleasure and of ease, the weary 
 traveller rests not now beneath a vaulted canopy in a pillar¬ 
 ed mansion, but, from necessity, betakes himself for a 
 night’s repose to an excavated cave, more like to “ a den of 
 thieves than to a dwelling of civilized men.” 
 
 The plain of the Haouran, as described by Mr. Eli Smith, 
 has a gentle undulating surface, is arable throughout, and, 
 in general, very fertile. With the rest of the Haouran, it is 
 the granary of Damascus. The soil belongs to government, 
 and nothing but grain is cultivated. Hardly a tree appears 
 anywhere.* 
 
 In many parts of the Haouran, says Burckhardt, I saw 
 the most luxuriant wild herbage, through which my horse 
 with difficulty made his way. Artificial meadows can 
 hardly be finer than these desert fields ; and it is this which 
 renders the Llaouran so favourite an abode of the Bedouins. 
 The peasants of Syria are ignorant of the advantages of 
 
 * Smith and Robinson’s Palestine, Appendix, vol. iii., p. 150. 
 
EAST OF THE DEAD SEA AND OF THE JORDAN. 279 
 
 feeding their cattle with hay : they suffer their superfluous 
 grass to wither away.* 
 
 “ The peasants of the Haouran are extremely shy,” says 
 the same inquisitive and intelligent traveller, “ in speaking 
 of the produce of their land, from an apprehension that the 
 stranger’s inquiries may lead to new extortions. I have 
 reason to believe, however, that in middling years wheat 
 yields twenty-five fold; in some parts of the Haouran, this 
 year, the barley has yielded fifty-fold, and even in some 
 instances eighty. A sheik, who formerly inhabited the 
 small village of Boreika, on the southern borders of the 
 Ledja, assured me, that from twenty mouds of wheat-seed 
 he once obtained thirty gaharas, or one hundred and twen¬ 
 ty fold. Fields watered by rain yield more in proportion 
 to the seed sown than those that are artificially watered; 
 this is owing to the seed being sown thinner in the former. 
 The Haouran crops are sometimes destroyed by mice, 
 though not so frequently as in the neighbourhood of Homs 
 and Hamath. Where abundance of water may be conduct¬ 
 ed into the field from neighbouring springs, the soil is again 
 sown, after the grain harvest, with vegetables, lentiles, 
 pease, sesamums,”f &c. 
 
 The last remark may be kept in the reader’s view as 
 giving some indication how, in peaceful times, of which 
 knowledge shall be the stability, the ploughman shall over¬ 
 take the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth 
 seed,^ &c.; but in the present unsettled, oppressive, and 
 marauding times, the change accomplished in a single spot 
 in a year or two may supply some token of the universal 
 and simultaneous transformation which the now desolate 
 scene is destined to undergo. 
 
 “ When I passed this place (El Merdjan) in 1810,” says 
 Burckhardt, “ I found a single Christian family in it; I now 
 found eight or ten families, &;c. They had brought the 
 fertile soil round El Merdjan into cultivation, and had this 
 year sown eight gaharas of wheat and barley, or about a 
 hundred and twenty-eight cwt. English. The taxes paid 
 by the village amounted to a thousand piasters, or 
 sterling, besides the tribute extorted by the Bedouins.”^ 
 
 This short extract at once shows how speedily the land 
 may be cultivated anew, and how speedily also a grinding 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 246. 
 t Amos, ix., 13. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 294, 297. 
 
 4 Burckhardt, p. 213. 
 
280 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OP THE COUNTRIES 
 
 oppression may renew its desolation. Merdjan had indeed, 
 when inhabited by a single family, “ escaped the rapacious 
 hands of the Arabs,” and “ was picturesquely situated on a 
 gentle declivity near the foot of a mountain, and was sur¬ 
 rounded by orchards and poplar-trees.* But as soon as 
 ever any portion of the land was cultivated, it escaped no 
 longer the extortions of the Arabs, and was subjected, be¬ 
 sides, to a tax of at least £5 for each family ; and the boun¬ 
 ties of Nature could not long survive the rapacity of man. 
 
 The immediate causes of the desolation of so fertile a 
 country as the Haouran, and of the depopulation or deser¬ 
 tion of its indestructible cities, are too apparent to escape 
 the notice of the observant traveller. The following re¬ 
 marks of Mr. Burckhardt, forced on his notice, expound the 
 seeming mystery : “ The oppressions of the government on 
 one side, and those of the Bedouins on the other, have re¬ 
 duced the Fellah of the Haouran to a state little better than 
 that of the wandering Arab. Few individuals, either 
 among the Druses or Christians, die in the same village in 
 which they were born. Families are continually removing 
 from one place to another: in the first year of their new 
 settlement the sheik acts with moderation towards them ; 
 but his vexations becoming in a few years insupportable, 
 they fly to some other place where they have heard that 
 their brethren are better treated, but they soon find that the 
 same system prevails over the whole country. Sometimes 
 it is not merely the pecuniary extortion, but the personal 
 enmity of the sheik, or of some of the head men of the vil¬ 
 lage, which drives a family from their home, for they are 
 always permitted to depart. This continued wandering is 
 one of the principal reasons why no village in the Haouran 
 has either orchards, or fruit-trees, or gardens for the growth 
 of vegetables. ‘ Shall we sow for strangers'?’ was the an¬ 
 swer of a Fellah, to whom I once spoke on the subject, 
 and who, by the word strangers, meant both the succeeding 
 inhabitants and the Arabs who visit the Haouran in the 
 spring and summer.”! 
 
 It is thus, according to the prophetic word, that Bashan, 
 like Carmel, has shaken off, and still shakes off, its fruits.J 
 It is thus also, as the Lord hath said, that the inhabitants 
 of the land of Israel, as in manifold similar illustrations be¬ 
 sides, eat their bread with carefulness ; and the land is 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 110. t Ibid., p. 299. t Isaiah, xx.'ciii., 9. Ezek , xii., 19 
 
■1 
 
EAST OF THE DEAD SEA AI^D OF THE JORDAN. 281 
 
 desolate from all that was therein, because of the violence 
 of all them that dwelt therein. 
 
 According to the late testimony of Mr. Eli Smith, the 
 same causes continue in direful operation. “ Respecting 
 the whole of the Haouran, it is nessessary to observe, that 
 the inhabitants so often move from village to village, that the 
 fact of a village having been inhabited when we were there 
 is no evidence that it is so at the present'time.”* 
 
 While there are thus obvious causes of the existing des¬ 
 olation, such as would reduce into similar waste any region 
 however fertile naturally, the traveller cannot but contem¬ 
 plate what the Haouran has been. While he looks at the 
 richness of the soil, as well as the remains of the cities, so 
 these give manifest proof what the Haouran yet may be un¬ 
 der another government than that of Rome. 
 
 “ The soil of the great plain of the Haouran consists of a 
 fine black earth, of great depth, but apparently, at the pres¬ 
 ent day, very little cultivated. It must have been an agree¬ 
 able and imposing prospect indeed, to those who looked 
 down upon its rich productions, at the time the whole was 
 brought under culture by the numerous and industrious Ro¬ 
 man colonies that once inhabited these territories—its gold¬ 
 en crops bending submissively under the breezes that cross¬ 
 ed its surface, like the smooth undulations of the wide ocean, 
 and, like it, having no other boundary than the horizon itself.” 
 
 Beyond the wide-extended plains of the Haouran lies an¬ 
 other Gilead, and again beyond it another Haouran, if not 
 also a third, divided from each other by a mountainous range. 
 Numerous^ wadys descend from both sides of Djebel Ha¬ 
 ouran into the adjacent plains. The mountain is in many 
 places covered with oaks. In all their villages there, as 
 well as in the deep valley of Essoueida, the Druses grow a 
 great deal of cotton, and the cultivation of tobacco is general 
 over all the mountain. The soil of the uncultivated district 
 which skirts its eastern side is of a red colour, and appears 
 to be very fertile ; it is said to excel even that of the darker 
 soil of the Haouran. The very name of “ the great desert” 
 east of Zaele, Telloul, from its tels or hillocks, bespeaks its 
 ancient populousness.f The ruins of the many cities and 
 villages with which it is covered in every direction; the 
 good arable soil which it still retains for the distance of three 
 
 * Robinson and Smith’s Palestine, Appendix, vol. iii., p. 150. 
 t Burckhardt, p. 77, 94, 105. 
 
 A A 2 
 
282 NATURAL FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRIES 
 
 days’ journey eastward ; and the fact, stated by Burckhardt, 
 that water is easily found on digging to the depth of three 
 or four feet, all tend to show that, desolate as it has become, 
 according to His word, the Lord of the whole earth, as the 
 God of Israel shall be called, hath formed it, as if in design¬ 
 ed preparation for the final illustration, which it is yet des¬ 
 tined to supply, of the fulness of his bounty and the faithful¬ 
 ness of his Word, when, even as literally as judgments have 
 fallen on its desolate plains and ruined and deserted cities, 
 the desert, renouncing at last that name forever, shall blos¬ 
 som as the rose, and the little hills of Telloul shall rejoice 
 on every side. 
 
 It is full time to adduce the promises of the Lord when 
 speculation is begun as to what that land shall be, and as to 
 whom it shall belong as possessors. 
 
 At Gheryeh (Kereye), itself a deserted town of five hun¬ 
 dred houses, without an inhabitant, situated on the eastern 
 border of the Haouran, Mr. Buckingham, looking from west 
 to east, has the following striking reflections on the land all 
 around. Indebted as the author has already been to his in¬ 
 teresting works, he cannot here forbear from largely renew¬ 
 ing the obligation. 
 
 “ The hills seen by us from hence on our right, forming 
 this eastern border, were now covered with snow; and be¬ 
 yond these, again, was another great plain, on a higher lev¬ 
 el to the eastward, said to be in all respects equal to that of 
 the Haouran in the fertility of its soil, and the abundant re¬ 
 mains of a numerous population. It is really humiliating to 
 see so fine a country in the possession of so barbarous a 
 government as that of the Turks, and abandoned, as it were, 
 to sterility and desolation. On the mountains and plains of 
 these districts of Belkah, Adjeloun, and Haouran, extend¬ 
 ing from the Dead Sea to the sources of the Jordan north, 
 and from the banks of that river to the extreme limits of that 
 cultivable land on the east, there w’ould be room for a mill¬ 
 ion of human beings to form a new colony j and so far from 
 doing injury to their surrounding neighbours, they would en¬ 
 rich every country that was on their borders, and form a 
 centre from which industry, art, science, and morals might 
 extend their influence, and irradiate regions now the prey of 
 ignorance, rapine, and devastation. If the ruler of Turkey 
 knew his interest well, he would imitate the conduct of Shah 
 Abbas the Great of Persia, who brought a colony of Arme- 
 
EAST OF THE DEAD SEA AND OF THE JORDAN. 283 
 
 nians from Julfa, and planted them near Ispahan, where they 
 enriched themselves, and did incalculable benefit to the Per¬ 
 sians also, until they were persecuted by a succeeding gov¬ 
 ernment who pursued a different policy. No part of the 
 Turkish dominions could probably be selected, with less 
 risk of interfering with the property and rights of others, or 
 with more certainty of success, than these districts which I 
 have enumerated, where the colonists would find a fertile 
 soil, and springs of water capable of being led in any direc¬ 
 tion for irrigation ; towns and houses built ready for their oc¬ 
 cupation ; a delicious climate, and a wide extent of country 
 on all sides, for the consumption of their cattle, grain, and 
 even manufactures. These impressions were forcibly ob¬ 
 truded on my mind at different periods of my journey, but 
 never more strongly than here, upon the borders of the great 
 eastern and western plains ; but, however ardently I might 
 indulge the desire to see a step so favourable to progressive 
 improvement suggested, I had seen too much of Turkish ap¬ 
 athy and ignorance to hope for the period in which such a 
 dream of happiness would ever be realized, in my day at 
 least.”*' 
 
 Of the period in which better things than those here sur¬ 
 mised shall come to pass, this is not specially the place to 
 speak : of that, more hereafter. The degree of desolation, 
 it may at least be said, proves not that the time of renovation 
 is distant, but rather that it is near. 
 
 That man were not a lover of his race who could look on 
 cities without inhabitants, and houses without man, and on 
 fertile plains so wide as seeming to be bounded only by the 
 horizon, and so rich that a wretched agriculture could count 
 on a twenty-five fold produce and a double harvest, without 
 an ardent wish that the cities should be peopled, and the 
 land be cultivated, and be filled with virtuous, peaceful, and 
 happy men. Such hopes might be blasted by the sight not 
 only of the apathy and ignorance of the Turks, but of all that 
 is now seen in the land, where the moral debasement is akin 
 to the physical; so that the resuscitation of the Haouran and 
 its kindred territories, judging from sight, might well seem 
 to be a dream. 
 
 The ruler of Turkey—the wo-bearing mission of whose 
 race was not the renovation of any land, but the destruction 
 of many—has neither the wisdom nor the powder to give 
 
 * Buckingham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 227-229. 
 
284 NATURAL FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRIES 
 
 new life to any portion of his expiring empire ; but were | 
 he to transplant, if he could, another alien race to these | 
 once teeming regions, what fate could await them but that i 
 of all the uncircumcised ^ uncovenanted races, whether in 1 
 ancient or in more modern times, who have heretofore oc¬ 
 cupied the land. The Grand Turk has shrunk into a little 
 man, and seems for the completion of his destiny to have 
 little more to do than to pass through a last and dying strug¬ 
 gle. Alone in all the earth there are towns in his domin¬ 
 ions, chiefly in this region, without men to fill them. The 
 prophetic symbol of his empire bears its legible interpreta¬ 
 tion now. The Euphrates is drying up, that the way of the 
 kings of the East may be prepared ; and the very inability 
 of the sultan to preserve or retain his dominions, is an argu¬ 
 ment, deducing its conclusiveness, as its origin, from Scrip¬ 
 ture, that that time draweth nigh. 
 
 The believer, looking with the eye of faith, can survey 
 “ the great desert,” which lies within the patrimony of Abra¬ 
 ham’s seed, as the covenanted gift of Abraham’s God, and, 
 anticipating in sure hope the glorious day of Israel’s redemp¬ 
 tion and final restoration, can see nothing but beauty with¬ 
 out a trace of desolation there, where, looked on as it is, 
 nothing else can be seen. The happiness shall then be 
 such that it shall indeed seem like a dream. “ When the 
 Lord turneth again the captivity of Zion, we were like them 
 that dream ; then was our mouth filled with laughter, and 
 our tongue with singing : then said they among the heathen, 
 the Lord hath done great things for them. The Lord hath 
 done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Turn again 
 our captivity, 0 Lord, as the streams\of the south.”* That 
 word which has turned defenced cities into ruinous heaps, 
 has power, when varied from a curse to a blessing, to re¬ 
 store the cities to dwell in, and to transform the wilderness 
 into a fruitful field. 
 
 The cities and the lands of Gilead and Bashan, as well 
 as those of Moab and Ammon, were long hid from the 
 world, till in these latter days they rise into view, not 
 only showing that every word of God that had gone forth 
 against them is at last perfect work, but witnessing too, 
 as their testimony may now be heard, that they are all 
 nearly, if not altogether, ready for the accomplishment of 
 other predictions. Had they been known in past centu- 
 
 * Psalm cxxvi., 1-5. 
 
EAST OF THE DEAH SEA AND OF THE JORDAN. 285 
 
 ries as in the present day, before the judgments had come 
 upon them to the uttermost, men might have sought to qual¬ 
 ify a prophecy if not wholly accomplished ; or even, as was 
 the practice in earlier ages, they might have renounced the 
 literal interpretation, and wrested the Scriptures into some 
 imaginary significancy, while the time was not come for the 
 word itself to speak, or for the very things to be seen which 
 the prophets had declared. And even if these cities and 
 regions had been opened to European research long after 
 the days of Abulfeda, much testimony would have been 
 wanting then which is most abundant now, and men would 
 either not have known the sign which the Lord had set up 
 to mark the time when Israel’s blindness should speedily 
 cease, or else they might have looked on the prospective 
 abandonment and desertion of so many cities of the land as 
 a dream never to be realized, or only to be thought of as a 
 reality when a new age of wonders should arise. 
 
 When they shall see these things, they shall know that I am 
 the Lord. When the time was come that the predicted des¬ 
 olations were complete, or in the course of rapid completion, 
 these things were seen ; the whole scene was disclosed to 
 view ; and many ran to and fro, where none before had trav¬ 
 elled. In this, as in numberless instances besides, knowl¬ 
 edge was iiicreased. Facts were brought to light by which 
 the verity of God’s word was seen. Cities and plains, 
 mountains and valleys, vied with each other in declaring it. 
 Babylon, whose site was scarcely known, vied with Petra, 
 which had been sought for in vain ; and Chaldea with Edom, 
 and Ammon with Moab. Palestine showed itself full of 
 judgments as it once was of mercies; the land of Israel’s 
 ancient possession was studded with testimonies ; and the 
 completion of manifold judgments showed that the cup of 
 the Lord’s wrath had gone round among all the nations to 
 whom by name He sent it. 
 
 But the completion of on^ series of prophetic judgments, 
 true to the very letter, prepares the way for the completion . 
 of another series of a ditferent order. There is not only a 
 growing evidence, or, as Bacon calls it, a germinating ful¬ 
 filment of prophecy, but that germinating process may be 
 even seen. While some have borne their ripened fruit, 
 others may be looked on in the bud. As in the land of Is¬ 
 rael, the gathering of the harvest maybe the preparation for 
 the sower ; so the judgments that have come upon the land, 
 
286 NATURAL FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRIES 
 
 though Others yet intervene, prepare the way for the bless- 
 injis that are to follow after. Cities there are without in- 
 habitants and without claimants ; houses there are, number¬ 
 ed by hundreds in single localities, without man, open to any 
 casual visitants' that may choose to enter them. Over a 
 large portion of Israel’s inheritance, the rights of property 
 in houses or in lands are altogether unknown ; the right of 
 possession is never challenged, and need not be contested 
 where there are empty dwellings ready for occupation, and 
 fertile plains that cry in vain for cultivators. The wander¬ 
 ing Arabs cause the inhahitants to wander. The government, 
 to whom alone all property in the land belongs, has no power 
 to protect it; and the cities and the land, with none that can 
 keep the one or cultivate the other, are without possessors, as 
 if they pertained to a people that are no longer there. All 
 other bonds are broken, all other claims disannulled, but that 
 of Israel’s everlasting covenant. The time is come when 
 there is room for a million of human beings to form a new 
 colony in the country beyond Jordan which was formerly 
 partitioned among two tribes and a half of Israel; and while 
 the wandering tribes that traverse the land, and move inces¬ 
 santly from place to place, as if sojourners in a land that is 
 not theirs, and dwelling in tents amid cities in which no 
 man dwells, the wanderers throughout the world who can 
 call no other region theirs, are numbered by millions, and 
 one of the fondest schemes of the Jewish mind, not without 
 recent attempts to realize it, is that of colonizing th^ land of 
 their fathers. 
 
 This extensive region beyond Jordan, newly restored to 
 the notice of the w'orld, begins to be appreciated, and signs 
 there are that the time may not be distant that it shall also 
 be appropriated by the people to whom the Lord had given 
 it. Who that can relish the beauties of nature, or value its 
 bounties, could look on the lovely mountains of Gilead, and 
 the rich plains of the Haourai^ even though they did not 
 ‘bear a single consecrated name, without a wish that the 
 blessedness of such lands bore some similitude to their fer¬ 
 tility and beauty ? And who that has the faith of Abraham, 
 and mourns over the miseries of his expatriated race, does 
 not wistfully look for the time when the captivity of Israel 
 shall be brought back ; when Dan, ere his own allotment 
 be fixed in another portion of the land as rich and lovely, 
 shall leap from Bashan, and Benjamin shall possess Gilead ? 
 
EAST OF THE DEAD SEA AND OF THE JORDAN. 287 
 
 These lands retain such inherent richness and such natural 
 beauty still undefaced by man. that they are worthy of being 
 claimed by the Lord of the whole earth as his own. And 
 God hath spoken in his holiness, “ Gilead is mine, and Ma- 
 nasseh is mine.”* He has reserved them still for his peo¬ 
 ple Israel, notwithstanding their past unfaithfulness in his 
 covenant; and although He has turned human instrument¬ 
 ality to the execution of his judgments, he has so wrought 
 out his purposes, and still kept his covenant in view, that of 
 all lands these are the most inviting for a colony, and the 
 most free for immediate occupancy ; so that, as is stated, a 
 million of men might take possession of them at once, not 
 to the detriment, but to the gain of all the regions around. 
 Where or when, with even the semblance of truth, could 
 this be said of any other country 1 or what land besides, 
 throughout all the earth, holds forth to myriads of immediate 
 settlers such temptations of unappropriated lands, of unoc¬ 
 cupied cities, of empty but habitable houses, of numberless 
 fountains, of rich and beauteous mountains, and of fertile 
 plains covered with luxuriant pasturage ready for immedi¬ 
 ate tillage ? The hand of the Lord God of Israel is assu¬ 
 redly in all this. It is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvel¬ 
 lous in our eyes ; and, showing forth his faithfulness, it is 
 a token, could any be needed, that He loves Israel still, and 
 has his people in remembrance, and will not suffer his prom¬ 
 ises to fail. Who is the Lord but our God ? Hath He 
 said, and shall He not do it ? Has He not, according to his 
 Word, made this whole land what it is, whether as respects 
 the cities and houses that have cast out their inhabitants, 
 and the men to whom He has not given them in possession, 
 or the uncultivated plains which have passed under his sen¬ 
 tence of desolation, and yet retain their substance ? And as 
 surely as Gilead is the Lord’s and Manasseh is His, has He 
 not reserved them, and made them ready, whenever the peo¬ 
 ple of his covenant shall be turned to him again, for the ac¬ 
 complishment of his Word which we delight to repeat, “ I 
 will bring Israel again to his habitation, and he shall feed 
 on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon 
 Mount Ephraim and Gilead.”! “ Let them feed in Bashan 
 and Gilead as in the days of old. According to the days 
 of thy coming out of the land of Egypt will I show unto him 
 marvellous things. He will turn again, He will have com- 
 * Patelm Ixt, t Jer., 1., 10, 
 
288 
 
 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 passion upon us. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and 
 the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our 
 fathers from the days of old.”* It has been said that these 
 lands may suffice for the occupancy of a million of men. 
 Israel is still numbered by millions, but the tribes of Israel 
 shall not always bear the name of outcast, and many shall 
 yet be added to those that are now known. Gilead alone, 
 even with all its surrounding regions, is not a land too rich 
 or large for the thousands of Israel that shall yet be assem¬ 
 bled there; for saith the Lord, “ I will bring them into the 
 land of Gilead and Lebanon, and place shall not be found 
 for them.”! 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 There is a contrast strikingly reversed, as drawn by Jo¬ 
 sephus and every modern traveller, between the region on 
 the west and the east of the Jordan. Prior to the Jewish 
 war, which terminated in the destruction of Jerusalem, the 
 region beyond the Jordan was partly desert, and was es¬ 
 teemed less fertile than Judea ; while the latter country was 
 universally cultivated and full of cities, and while Samaria 
 and Judea were not only everywhere clothed with fruitful 
 trees, but were also so exceedingly populous, that two pro¬ 
 vincial towns in the plain of Judah could send forth thirty 
 thousand armed men. But, while some portion of the an¬ 
 cient glory of Gilead still lingers there, that of Judea has 
 departed, its mountains are desolate, and its cities have 
 fallen, though not, like those of Edom, forever. 
 
 The prophetic Scriptures could in two words characterize 
 for many ages the separate fate of all the tribes in distin¬ 
 guishing the dispersed of Judah from the outcasts of Israel. 
 In like manner, while the cities of Israel beyond the Jordan 
 have been either ruined or deserted, many of them being 
 dispeopled though not destroyed, the word of the prophet 
 now teaches us, in passing the Jordan, to look for the de¬ 
 cayed places of Judah. This one word thus sets them be¬ 
 fore the reader as they are. Among them we are not to 
 
 * Micali, vii., 14, 15, 19, 20. t Zech., x., 10, 
 
RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC.- 289 
 
 look for “ indestructible towns nor do they, in this respect, 
 show us anew cities still existing, though without inhabi¬ 
 tant, or houses still standing, though without man. Judea 
 has been the scene of sieges and of contests which have 
 laid most of its cities even with the ground ; and it has not, 
 therefore, such conspicuous ruins, and such forsaken, though 
 not fallen cities, as those with w^hich the Haouran is cov¬ 
 ered, unlike to any other land on earth. But deserted vil¬ 
 lages and ancient towns utterly abandoned, the region on 
 the west of Jordan can also show ; and built up again as its 
 cities shall be, we may warrantably look there also, as 
 throughout all the land, for the ready materials of a speedy 
 reconstruction, and see if over that land too there be, as in 
 the ruined towns beyond the Jordan, hewn stones in abun¬ 
 dance where cities stood, waiting for the time when the 
 hands of strangers shall luild up the walls that there have 
 fallen, and when it shall be said to the cities of Judah, Be¬ 
 hold your King. 
 
 A more summary view may here suffice, as decayed cities 
 have less to tell. 
 
 Jesus preached the Gospel from city to city throughout 
 the lands of Galilee and Judea. He sent forth his apostles 
 and seventy disciples to declare throughout them all that 
 the kingdom of God was come nigh unto them. They 
 preached in vain. But not in vain did they shake off the 
 dust of their feet as a testimony against them. Not Chora- 
 zin and Bethsaida alone, but many others besides, sharing 
 in the sin of not believing in Jesus, have shared the same 
 fate. Though they were exalted unto heaven, and rivalled 
 each other in their greatness, and the boast could be made 
 of them that they were excelled by none, yet their pride, 
 their impenitence, and unbelief, have brought them down to 
 hell, to death, or to the grave ; and they exist not now even 
 as uninhabited cities, but lie as low in their ruin as they 
 were exalted in their pride. 
 
 Immediately before judgment came upon them after the 
 crucifixion of Jesus, the country beyond Jordan was marked 
 by its inferiority to that on its western side. Now the con¬ 
 trast is reversed ; and marking this apparently strange diver¬ 
 sity or reversal of the relative richness now, it may not be 
 meet, while in the midst of a land that everywhere bears 
 marks of moral retribution, to overlook the fact, that when 
 Jesus, shortly before his crucifixion, went beyond Jordan, 
 
 H B 
 
290 
 
 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 when in Jewry they sought to kill him, many believed on 
 him there, while the cities of Judah rejected him, and he was 
 crucified beyond the walls of Jerusalem. Gilead, though 
 blighted, is still glorious in its beauty, while the mountains, 
 and plains, and cities of Judah, like the places around Je¬ 
 rusalem, are utterly waste, and the very land that would not 
 hear the messenger of the Lord, but slew the Lord of glory, 
 has been smitten with a heavy curse. 
 
 The ruined cities of the Haouran cannot be passed un¬ 
 seen ; and even when, like Kanouat, they are hid by trees 
 or fallen minarets, columns or towers tell where they lie. 
 But razed yrom their foundations (funditus eversi) as the for¬ 
 tresses, towns, and villages of the Jews were, on their final 
 extirpation from Judea by the Emperor Adrian, the triers, 
 and thorns, and thistles, and rank weeds that have come upon 
 the land, suffice to obliterate the vestiges of cities which lack 
 the memorial of a solitary wall. Ruinous heaps overgrown 
 with herbage are often undistinguishable from the ground; 
 and while the traveller from a far land looks in vain all around 
 for the fragment of a ruin as the vestige of a city, where they 
 once were as numerous as on the other side of the Jordan, 
 some broken ground, far rougher than the rest, may fix his 
 wandering eye on a place of safety for his horse’s hoofs, 
 and the sight may teach him that he looked not low enough, 
 and that cities of Judah are still trodden down of the Gen¬ 
 tiles, and seldom meet the view, except where the ruins of 
 churches indicate a later judgment. 
 
 About thirty miles directly south of Gaza, as discovered 
 and described by Dr. Robinson and Mr. Smith, the ruins of 
 Abdeh are doubtless the remains of Ehoda, simply mention¬ 
 ed by Ptolemy. The ruins of some walls, once enclosures 
 of fields and gardens, and of others built across the water¬ 
 course, to regulate the once fertilizing stream; the ruins of 
 a square tower of hewn stone ; the foundations of houses ; 
 and many hewn stones and fragments of pottery strewn 
 around, at the distance of half a mile from the chief ruins 
 and near to an excavated quarry, forming a deep cavern sup¬ 
 ported by pillars, the resort of multitudes of pigeons, are 
 now the approaches to the ruined Ehoda. The southern 
 base and slope of the hill on which the city stood were cov¬ 
 ered with the ruins of buildings of hewn stone. The prin¬ 
 cipal ruins on the top of the hill are those of a Greek church 
 and fortress, the latter having proved unable to save an 
 
RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 291 
 
 idolatrous temple or itself from destruction. The church is 
 about one hundred and twenty feet in length, and of propor¬ 
 tional breadth. The walls are still in great part standing, 
 built of hewn stone, apparently from the neighbouring quar¬ 
 ry, and of good workmanship. The arched recess, or place 
 of the altar, was yet visible, with a similar recess on each 
 side, quite entire. In the western part was a side chapel, 
 with two or three smaller rooms. The space within the 
 walls was strewn with broken columns and entablatures. 
 The castle or fortress, built of hewn stone, was more than 
 four hundred feet in length, had a fine arched portal, a very 
 deep cistern and well about one hundred feet deep, sixty of 
 which were sunk in the solid rock, while the top, for about 
 forty feet, is walled up with hewn stones in an uncommonly 
 good style of masonry. On the opposite side of the town 
 are also ruins of buildings and walls of fields.* “ The race,” 
 says Dr. Robinson, “ that dwelt here have perished, and their 
 works now look abroad in loneliness and silence over the 
 mighty waste.” But they shall not so look forever. 
 
 The ruins of Ruhaibeh, of which the anciefit name is un¬ 
 known, and of Elusa, mentioned by Ptolemy, lie in a line 
 between Eboda and Beersheba. The former, which the 
 same travellers “ stumbled on by accident,”! consists of con¬ 
 fused heaps of stones, which entirely and thickly cover a 
 level track of ten or twelve acres in extent, one large mass 
 of stones appears to be the remains of a church, from the 
 broken columns and fragments strewed around. Once, as 
 they judged upon the spot, this must have been a city of not 
 less than 12,000 or 15,000 inhabitants; now it is a perfect 
 field of ruins, a scene of unutterable desolation. The ruins 
 of Elusa, which was once an episcopal city, cover a some¬ 
 what larger space, with room enough for a population of 
 15,000 or 20,000 souls.! The city is more decayed than 
 that of Ruliaibeh. At Beersheba, the low hills north of the 
 wells are covered with ruins of former habitations spread 
 over a space half a mile in length.§ 
 
 At the village of Dhoheriyeh, itself being in ruins, and an 
 assemblage of stone hovels, the remains of a square tower 
 denote the site of a castle or fortress, “ that would seem to 
 have been one of the small fortresses which once apparent, 
 ly existed all along the southern border of Palestine.”|I 
 
 * Smith and Robinson, vol. i., p. 285-287. t Ibid., p. 290, 
 
 i Ibid., p. 297. 0 Ibid., p. 301. II Ibid., p. 311. 
 
292 
 
 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 The ruins of Kiirmul, Carmel of Judah, lie around the 
 head and along the two sides of a valley of some width and 
 depth. The main ruins consist chiefly of the foundations 
 and broken walls of dwellings and other edifices scattered 
 in every direction, and thrown together in mournful confu¬ 
 sion and desolation. The castle is still a remarkable ruin, 
 its walls nearly ten feet thick, the stones bevelled, and, though 
 the upper arch is gone, the remaining height is about thirty 
 feet. Near it are the foundations of a round tower and of a 
 small church. The remains of a large church stand apart 
 from other ruins ; the whole length of the foundations is 156 
 feet, the building having consisted apparently of two parts. 
 At about the distance of half a mile are the ruins of another 
 large church.* 
 
 The ruins of Tekoa, on the top of a hill, consist chiefly of 
 the foundations of houses built of squared stones, some of 
 which are bevelled, the ruins of a Greek church, and of a 
 large castle. On another summit near them, as seen by 
 Pococke, were the ruins of a large church, dedicated, as he 
 states, to St.C^antalione.f They cover a considerable ex¬ 
 tent.J 
 
 The ruins of Beit-Jibrin, also first discovered and descri¬ 
 bed by Dr. Robinson and Mr. Smith, and identified by them 
 with the ancient Eleutheropolis, consist of the remains of a 
 fortress of immense strength, in the midst of an irregular 
 rounded enclosure, encompassed by a very ancient and 
 strong wall, formed of large squared stones uncemented, 
 along which is a row of ancient massive vaults, with five 
 rounded arches. These are now covered by the accumu¬ 
 lated rubbish, yet some of them still serve as dwellings for 
 the inhabitants. The northern wall of this exterior enclo¬ 
 sure, representing the diameter from east to west, measured 
 600 feet, and the other diameter cannot be much less. It 
 is doubtless of Roman origin. In the midst of this area 
 stands an irregular castle. The gate was shut up, and the 
 court within, where not covered with stone and rubbish, 
 was planted with tobacco. The interior of the castle was 
 full of arches and vaults ; and the people told us of a church 
 with pictures in the southern part, now shut up, and, indeed, 
 buried beneath the ruins. The area of the enclosure out¬ 
 side of the castle is partly occupied by the materials of an- 
 
 * Robinson and Smith, vol. ii., p. 196-198. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 182. Pococke, p. 4i. . t Irby and Mangles, p. 341. 
 
RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 293 
 
 cient walls and structures. The ancient town appears to 
 have extended for some distance along the open valley to¬ 
 wards the northeast. About a mile from the village are the 
 ruins of an ancient church, bearing the name of St. Ann. 
 Of the church only the eastern end is standing, including 
 the niches of the great altar and that of a side chapel, built 
 of large stones of strong and beautiful masonry.* “ The 
 ruins,” says Dr. Robinson, “ are sufficiently important to 
 warrant the conclusion that they are those of Eleutheropolis 
 —ruins worthy of the Roman name and of a powerful city.”t 
 
 Ramlah in better days must have been three or four miles 
 in circumference. “ Great ruins of houses,” which a cen¬ 
 tury ago were conspicuous remnants of a considerable town, 
 are less noticeable now ; and a Greek church, then used as 
 a mosque, is now a “ beautiful ruin.” A tower standing in 
 the midst of a large quadrangular enclosure is ascended by 
 a flight of one hundred and twenty-five stone steps,J but has 
 failed to defend the monastery to which it was attached. 
 
 The celebrated church of St. George at Ludd is still a 
 noble ruin. The edifice was of hewn stone both within and 
 without, and of excellent masonry. The stones in the mod¬ 
 ern buildings of the poor villages show that it had been a 
 place of some consequence.§ 
 
 The region eastward of Gaza is called the country of 
 Hasy, and is filled with deserted sites and ruined villages, 
 not one of them being inhabited.|1 West of Hebron, many 
 of the hills are marked by ruins, showing that this tract of 
 country was once thickly inhabited.^! In the hill-country 
 of Judea, on the way from Jerusalem to Gaza, most of the 
 villages are deserted or in ruins. The country is full of the 
 sites of ruins and villages, some inhabited and some de¬ 
 serted, at least for portions of the year.** 
 
 Ram, the ancient Ramah of Benjamin, is a miserable vil¬ 
 lage with few houses, and these now in summer mostly de¬ 
 serted. There are here large squared stones, and also col¬ 
 umns scattered about the fields, indicating an ancient place 
 of some importance.ff 
 
 The houses of the village of El Jib seemed to be chiefly 
 rooms in old massive ruins, which have fallen down in ev¬ 
 ery direction. One large massive building still remains, 
 
 * Robinson and Smith, vol. ii., p. 355-357. 
 t Pococke, p. 4. Mr. Robinson, vol. i., p. 29. 
 II Robinson and Smith, vol. ii., p. 385. 
 
 ** Ibid., vol. ii., p. 338, 339. 
 
 B B 2 
 
 t Ibid., p. 359. 
 
 § Pococke, p. 4. 
 
 IF Ibid., vol. iii., p. 6. 
 tt Ibid., vol. ii., p. 315. 
 
294 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 perhaps a former castle or tower of strength. The lower 
 rooms are vaulted with round arches of hewn stone, fitted to¬ 
 gether with great exactness. The stones outside are large, 
 and the whole appearance is that of antiquity.* A fine 
 fountain of water, in a cave excavated from the base of a 
 high rock, forms a large subterranean reservoir; and not 
 far below it are the remains of another, about 100 feet in , 
 length by 100 in breadth, both awaiting their time to quench 
 the thirst of Israelites again, when they shall turn from the 
 broken cistern of their own righteousness, that can hold no 
 water, to the fountain of living waters—the righteousness, 
 like their father Abraham’s, that is of faith. 
 
 When the Lord discomfited the five kings of the Ammon¬ 
 ites before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at 
 Gibeon, the Israelites chased them along the way that goeth 
 to Bethhoron.\ In a later age, both the cities of that name 
 were numbered with Tadmor and Baalath, among those 
 which Solomon built. He built Bethhoron the upper and 
 Bethhoron the nether, fenced cities, with walls, gates, and 
 bars.J At Beit-Urel-Tahta (the lower), the foundations of 
 large stones indicate an ancient site ; and at Beit-Urel-Foka 
 (the upper), situated on an eminence on the very brow of 
 the mountain, the small village exhibited traces of ancient 
 walls and foundations. “ There can be no question,” says 
 Dr. Robinson, “ that they indicate the upper and nether 
 Bethhoron ;Ӥ and though once fenced cities, with their 
 walls, gates, and bars, they rank now with those which shall 
 be raised up from their foundations. 
 
 Samaria lay between Judea and Galilee, and was the 
 chief seat of the tribes of Israel. Prophecy, as the writer 
 has elsewhere shown, detailed its history as now it may be 
 read, and marked all its features as they are still to be seen, 
 and disposed of all its stones, whether they be cast down 
 into the bottom of the valley, or gathered into heaps on the 
 summit of the hill. Its foundations have been discovered, 
 but they shall not be forever bare. The Lord shall bring 
 again the captivity of Samaria, and she and her daughters 
 shall return to their former estate.^ Jesus came to the lost 
 sheep of the house of Israel ; and his disciples entered not 
 into the cities of the Samaritans, who, though dwelling in 
 them, were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. But 
 
 * Robinson and Smith, vol. 136. t Josh., x., 10. t 2 Chron., viii., 5. 
 k Robinson and Smith, vol. ii., p. 69, 60. || Ezek., xvi., 53, 55 
 
RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 295 
 
 the voice of the Lord shall be heard and obeyed. Turn 
 again^ O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities* 
 Though hid from view and searched for in vain, this word 
 has power to evoke them all from their ruins. Napolous, 
 the ancient Sichar, whose inhabitants came out to see and 
 to hear Jesus, and many of whom believed on him, and near 
 to which, anciently Shechem, Abraham first pitched his tent 
 in the land of Canaan, is the only surviving city standing 
 between Ebal and Gerizzim—the mountains from which the 
 curses and the blessings were respectively pronounced— 
 as if it still waited, having seen, as it heard, the former, to 
 see finally, also, the full realization of the latter, and the 
 completion of the covenant which God made with Abraham. 
 
 The ruins of Scythopolis (Bysan, Bethsan) “ are of con¬ 
 siderable extent; and the town, built along the banks of a 
 rivulet, and in the villages formed by its several branches, 
 must have been nearly three miles in circuit.”! But some 
 trace has been left of the luxury of which that archiepisco- 
 pal city was the scene. The theatre is still distinct; and 
 in it alone, throughout their extensive travels. Captains Irby 
 and Mangles saw those oval recesses for brass sounding 
 tubes, mentioned by Vitruvius, which even in his day very 
 few theatres contained. The scene is now changed, and 
 the sounds are different. In one of the dormitories they 
 found twenty-four sculls and other bones ; and in one of the 
 sculls a viper was basking, with his body twisted between 
 the eyes, presenting a good subject for the moralizer.j: In 
 regard to the human occupants of “ the principal city of the 
 Decapolis,” “ Bysan,” says Dr. Richardson, “ is just what 
 a nest of ruffians might be expected to be, a collection of 
 the most miserable hovels, containing about 200 inhabitants 
 —the veriest miscreants of that miscreant quarter of the 
 world. I never in my life saw the human countenance so 
 bedevilled as in the fiend-like looks of the inhabitants of 
 Bysan.Such now are its inhabitants, and such the end 
 of Scythopolis. The land is yet given to the wicked of the 
 earth for a prey, and mourns because of the iniquity of those 
 that dwell therein. “ One generation of vipers,” in human 
 form, has succeeded to another, till, in the chief scenes of 
 godless pleasures, whei:e the perfection of art ministered 
 to the gratification of the senses, vipers literally nestle in 
 
 * Jer., xxxi., 21. 
 t Irby and Mangles, p. 302. 
 
 t Burckhardt, p. 343. 
 
 () Dr. Richardson, ii., p. 421, 422. 
 
296 
 
 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 sculls. ButBysan shall be Bethsan again. Its site is cov¬ 
 ered with large heaps of hewn stones ; and when a king 
 shall reign in righteousness, they shall be built up again, 
 and other walls shall be raised in the place of those which 
 have fallen, and on which the victorious Philistines fastened 
 the dead body of the first king of Israel,* who was faithless 
 in the covenant, and obeyed not the command of the Lord. 
 The prostrate columns of Corinthian architecture may then 
 be raised in memorial of the evil days that shall have passed 
 away, never to return. 
 
 Tiberias, previous to the earthquake of 1837, was fortified 
 by a thick and well-built wall, twenty feet in height, with a 
 high parapet, and flanked by twenty round towers in excel¬ 
 lent condition, and was considered as a place almost impreg¬ 
 nable to Syrian soldiers.f To the south, the margin of the 
 lake is covered with the ruins of the former city. Heaps 
 of stones, and some ruined walls and foundations of houses, 
 a few columns, the ruins of a large, thick wall or mole, with 
 a few columns of gray granite lying in the sea, and midway 
 between the town and the hot baths, where the springs flow as 
 copiously and as warm as ever, one prostrate column of gray 
 granite, and the fragments of a column of red Egyptian gran¬ 
 ite, are the only remains of antiquity exposed to the view of 
 the passing traveller in traversing the ruins of the ancient 
 city 5 other columns, as conjectured by Burckhardt, proba¬ 
 bly lie on the surface, hid among the high grass with which 
 the plain is covered.| Besides these ruins, which stretch 
 half an hour along the seashore, and extend about three hun¬ 
 dred yards inland, there are other remains of ancient habi¬ 
 tations on the north side of the hill, and some thick walls, 
 the remnant of ancient fortifications. The ruins of the mod¬ 
 ern city may now be added to those of the old. “ The pros¬ 
 trate walls of the town now present little more than heaps 
 of ruins; and not a finger,” says Dr. Robinson, “ has yet 
 been raised to build them up. In some places they are still 
 standing, though with breaches ; but from every quarter foot¬ 
 steps led over the ruins into the city. The castle also has 
 suffered greatly. Very many of the houses were destroyed 
 by the same earthquake which prostrated Saphet and Tyre; 
 few remained without injury. Several of the minarets were 
 thrown down, but a slender one of wood had escaped. We 
 entered the town directly from our tent, and made our way 
 
 * I Samuel, xxxi., 10. t Burckhardt, p. 320, 321. t Ibid., p. 328, 323 
 

 
 
 
 . .. ' . 
 
 .. 
 
 
 ■l.tl 
 
 I 
 
 , . . iJT.Iili, I. "JP '* 
 
 f'SSvCi^-*, 
 
 
297 
 
 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 through the streets in the midst of the sad desolation.”* 
 (See Plate.) 
 
 The castle and city of Saphed were long a stronghold of 
 the Crusaders ; and the possession of it by the Sultan of 
 Egypt, when, pressed by famine, it was surrendered by the 
 Templars, gave him the command of all Galilee. At the 
 instigation of Benedict, bishop of Marseilles, who bequeath¬ 
 ed to it his whole fortune, the castle was rebuilt by the Tem¬ 
 plars. In the beginning of last century, though its condi¬ 
 tion was then so ruinous that its ancient figure could scarce¬ 
 ly be determined, the multitude of ruins and the extent of its 
 circuit, nearly a, mile and a half, gave manifest proof that it 
 had been formerly a very strong fortification. “ In order to 
 form some idea of this fortification in its present state,” says 
 Van Egmont, “ imagine a lofty mountain, and on its summit 
 a round castle with walls of an incredible thickness, with a 
 corridor, or covered passage, extending round the walls and 
 ascended by a winding staircase. The thickness of the 
 wall and of the corridor together was twenty of my paces. 
 The whole was of hewn stone, and some of them eight or 
 nine spans in length. The castle was anciently surrounded 
 by stupendous works, moats, bulwarks, towers, &c. The 
 stones of a large structure in the form of a dome are of as¬ 
 tonishing magnitude. The inside is full of niches, near 
 each of which is a small shell. An open colonnade sur¬ 
 rounds the building, and, like the rest of the structure, is 
 very massive and compact. From the top of the dome we 
 had the finest prospect that can be imagined, extending over 
 the city of Saphet, and the numerous circumjacent villages 
 and hamlets, and the adjoining country, which is everywhere 
 well cultivated.”! When visited by Burckhardt, Saphed 
 was a neatly-built town. The castle appeared to have un¬ 
 dergone a thorough repair in the course of the last century ; 
 it had a good wall, and was surrounded by a broad ditch. 
 The town was surrounded by large olive plantations and vine¬ 
 yards. The garrison cultivated a part of the neighbouring 
 lands.! But here, as elsewhere, the fortress has ceased 
 from Ephraim. The same earthquake which overthrew Ti¬ 
 berias, levelled Saphed with the ground. Syria has for 
 many ages been the scene of desolations wrought by the 
 hands of man. But war is the messenger of the Lord, and 
 
 * Robinson and Smith, iii,, p. 253, 254. t Burckhardt, p. 317. 
 
 t Van Egrnont and Heynian, vol. ii., p. 43-46. 
 
298 
 
 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 warriors the executioners of his will. Before them, as hu¬ 
 man instruments, bulwarks may stand long unshaken by all 
 their power. But when the Lord speaks the earth trembles, 
 and at his word the strongest cities and castles, deemed im¬ 
 pregnable, fall like the grass before the scythe of the mower. 
 Often has the word of the Lord passed over many cities in 
 Syria, and sometimes scarcely one has escaped. How terri¬ 
 ble these judgments were which brought the cities to the dust, 
 and made the defenced city a ruin, some idea may be formed 
 from the description of the Rev. Mr. Thomson, of Beyrout, 
 who was accompanied by Mr. Caiman, and who, in Chris¬ 
 tian mercy, visited the surviving inhabitants soon after the 
 fearful catastrophe. “ All anticipations were utterly confound¬ 
 ed when the reality burst upqn our sight. Up to this mo¬ 
 ment I had refused to credit the accounts ; but one frightful 
 glance convinced me that it was not in the power of language 
 to overstate such a ruin. Suffice it to say, that this great 
 town, which seemed to me like a beehive four years ago, is 
 now no more. Saphed was, but is not. The Jewish por¬ 
 tion, containing a population of five or six thousand, was 
 built round, and upon a very steep mountain ; so steep, in¬ 
 deed, is the hill, and so compactly built was the town, that 
 the roofs of the lower houses formed the streets of the ones 
 above, thus rising like a stairway one above another; and 
 thus, when the tremendous shock dashed every house to the 
 ground, the first fell upon the second, the second upon the 
 third, that upon the next, and so on to the end; and this is 
 the true cause of the almost unprecedented destruction of 
 life. Some of the lower houses are covered to a great depth 
 with the ruins of many others which were above them.^ 
 Most of the houses were prostrated in a few moments ; thou¬ 
 sands of the inhabitants of Saphed (chiefly Jews) were bu¬ 
 ried beneath the ruins ; the castle was utterly thrown down, 
 and the lower houses were covered with the accumulated 
 masses of ruins.f Fallen as the cities of Israel are, and 
 raised up again as they shall be according to the same Di¬ 
 vine word, and numerous as were those which earthquakes 
 prostrated when existing in their prime, Saphed may supply 
 an illustration how accumulated ruins are storehouses of 
 hewn stones, all ready for reconstruction. 
 
 The castle of Baneas, so famous in the history of the Crn- 
 
 * Robinson and Smith, Appendix, vol. iii., p. 471-475. 
 
 t Narrative, p. 366. 
 
RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 299 
 
 saders, is now “ in complete ruins,” but was once a very 
 strong fortress. Its whole circumference is twenty-five min¬ 
 utes (or upward of a mile). It is surrounded by a wall ten 
 feet thick, flanked with numerous round towers, built with 
 great blocks of stone, each about two feet square. Within 
 the precincts of the castle are ruins of many private habita¬ 
 tions. There are four wells in the castle, one more than 
 twenty feet square, walled in with a vaulted roof at least 
 twenty-five feet high, and full of water in a dry season at 
 the end of summer. Over the source of the River Panias is 
 a perpendicular rock, in which are several niches ; in one, 
 the base of the statue is still visible. Round the source are 
 a number of hewn stones. There is a well-built bridge near 
 the ruins of an ancient town, which extend from it about a 
 mile. No walls remain, huX great quantities of stone and ar¬ 
 chitectural fragments are scattered about. Near it are the 
 ruins of another s'trong castle, of which several of the tow¬ 
 ers are standing. It bears the date of 600 and-years 
 
 (of the Hedjira)^ or of the thirteenth century so long after 
 the destruction of them all was foretold, were fortresses built 
 in the land of Israel. 
 
 The ruins of Bostra (not Bozrah), near Baneas, consist 
 of the foundations of private habitations, built of moderately- 
 sized squared stones. In the upper city are the remnants of 
 several buildings. A heap of hewn stones of larger dimen¬ 
 sions than the rest indicates the site of some public build¬ 
 ings. The circuit of one division of the town is rather less, 
 and the other rather more, than a quarter of an hour.f 
 
 At the end of an hour and a half from Baneas, Burckhardt 
 reached Ain Hazouri, about an hour to the north of which 
 are “ the ruins of a city called HazourH'X —the ancient Ha- • 
 zor, once “ the head of the kingdoms'^ of Canaan.§ But the 
 word of the Lord, in after ages, went forth against it,|| and 
 it has been desolate for many generations. Though its name 
 is retained in its ruins, they have not hitherto been visited or 
 described. Brochard, who marked their position, eight 
 leagues from Tyre on the east, corresponding to that assigned 
 them by the renowned modern traveller of the same name, 
 states that to “ his day its ruins attested the ancient magnifi¬ 
 cence of the city.”^ 
 
 In the naturally rich region which surrounds the streams 
 
 ♦ Burckhardt, p. S6-41. t Ibid., p. 41. t Ibid., p. 44. ^ Josh., li., Ifll 
 
 II Jer., xlix-, 33. If Brocard, Orbis Novus, p. 262. 
 
300 
 
 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 which flow into Lake Houle, the waters of Merom, towns 
 were numerous in ancient times, as are ruins now. The 
 towns of Caesarea Philippi* into which Jesus went, were, 
 but are not. Some of the friends of the Sheik of Baneas 
 enumerated to Burckhardt the names of seventeen ruinsf in 
 the neighbourhood north of Baneas. 
 
 Returning to the seacoast, having previously noticed the 
 ruins of Askelon, we may look for the ruins of other cities 
 along the shores of Syria. 
 
 We have seen how% at the close of the eleventh century, 
 Caesarea for a time withstood the crusading armies, and on 
 its capture enriched them all. It was built by Herod the 
 Great, in honour of the emperor of the world, and was a 
 magnificent city, worthy of the imperial name it bore. It 
 was adorned with most splendid palaces and stately edi¬ 
 fices, built, of excellent materials, and admirably construct¬ 
 ed. “ The city,” says Josephus, “ was built of white stone, 
 and was adorned both with the most splendid palaces and 
 private dwellings. But its greatest and most laborious struc¬ 
 ture w'as a harbour perfectly safe, in extent equal to the Pi- 
 raeum (at Athens), and having within it two stations for ships. 
 This work was the more wonderful, from there being no ma¬ 
 terials at hand for its construction, which had to be brought 
 from a distance, and at great expense.”:j; It formed one of 
 the most wonderful works of antiquity, built as it was of 
 stones fifty feet long, eighteen broad, and nine in depth, 
 which were placed twenty fathoms deep. The mole built 
 by the seaside was two hundred feet wide, with towers of 
 sufficient strength to break the force of the severest tempest. 
 A quay encircled the whole haven, and around it was a 
 street of polished stone. Of similar, but still nobler struc¬ 
 ture, was a temple, so lofty as to be visible at a distance 
 from the sea, in which was a statue to Csesar, and another 
 to Rome. Among other works were a theatre and amphi¬ 
 theatre of great dimensions ; and no less labour was bestow¬ 
 ed on subterranean vaults. The city, in its grandeur, was 
 given up to pleasure; and its games or festivals, famous 
 throughout the empire, were renewed every fifth year. 
 Erected at incredible expense and labour, in the short space 
 
 * Mark, viii., 45. 
 
 t The ruins of Dara, Bokatha, Bassisa, Alouba, Afkerdouya, Ilauratha (this was 
 described as being of great extent, with many walls and arches still remaining), En- 
 zouby, Hauarit, Kleile, Emteile, Misherefe, Zar, Katloube, Kseire, Kasoua, Beit-el- 
 ’Bfirak.-^BurckhardVs Trav., p. 4.5. t .Tosephus, tom. i., p. 694. Ant., xv., 9. 
 
RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 301 
 
 of twelve years, its glory, like its games, soon ranked with 
 that of the first cities of the empire, till its king, arrayed in 
 royal apparel, and seated on his throne—it may be in the 
 noble oratory which, as we have seen, flowed in an after 
 age with the blood of the citizens—addressed the people in 
 such lofty strains, that they shouted. It is the voice of a god, 
 and not of a man. The worms of which he was eaten, ere 
 by the law of nature they would have had their prey, gave 
 the lie to such blasphemous adulation. The fall of the proud 
 monarch was an emblem of that of the proud city; and its 
 fall is emblematical of that of all Caesarean, as well as all 
 papal pride and power. The magnificent city of Caesarea, 
 the noblest monument of Herod’s greatness, the capital of a 
 kingdom, and afterward of a province, the metropolitan see 
 of nineteen bishoprics, is so buried in its ruins, that its pal¬ 
 aces, temples, churches, forum, theatre, amphitheatre, walls, 
 moles, all its polished houses, and many of its mighty tow¬ 
 ers, now lie in undistinguishable masses of undefinable form, 
 as the accompanying plate, more than words, may testify— 
 over all of which indiscriminately, covered with thistles or 
 thorns and rank weeds, wild boars, lynxes, hyenas, and 
 wolves have their abode ; while, wholly untenanted as it is 
 by man, vipers—of which, as of “ snakes and scorpions, 
 there are many”*—may there bask in sculls, as in the sis¬ 
 ter archiepiscopal city of Scythopolis. 
 
 In the capital of Palestine, as in many cities of Syria, 
 heaps rising above the ordinary level of the ground, all 
 raised by ruins, distinguish the sites of public buildings 
 from those of private dwellings. “ There are three rising 
 grounds,” says Pococke, “ at the bottom of the port; that in 
 the middle might be the site of the temple ; that to the north 
 might be the forum; and the hill to the south, the theatre ; 
 behind which, where stood the amphitheatre, the rising 
 ground, I suppose, was made by the ruins of it.”t “ The 
 mounds,” says Mr. Buckingham, “ in which Pococke thought 
 he could recognise the sites of the tower of Drusus, Caesar’s 
 temple, &c., are mere masses of undefinable form, and with¬ 
 out a feature that could assist to distinguish the one from 
 the other.”J A century ago the separate heaps may have 
 been somewhat more distinguishable than now. But Po¬ 
 cocke states “ that it was impossible then to go to any part 
 
 * Mr. Robinson’s Travels, vol. i., p. 190. t Pococke, p. 59. 
 
 t Bucking-ham’s Palestine, p. 137. 
 
 C c 
 
302 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 where there was not a beaten path—beaten as a track by 
 beasts, perha|5ls—the ground being much overgrown with 
 briers and thistles: the place was a remarkable resort for 
 wild boars, which abound also in the neighbouring plain; 
 and when the Mohammedans kill them, they leave their car¬ 
 casses on the spot,”* “ The plain at present,” says Dr. 
 Clarke, “ is inhabited only by jackals and beasts of prey. 
 As we were becalmed during the night, we heard the cries 
 of these animals until daybreak.”! Such now is Caesarea, 
 though “ perhaps there has not been, in the history of the 
 world, an example of any city that in so short a space of 
 time rose to such an extraordinary height of splendour.”J 
 It was in vain that Herod built it as an enduring monument 
 of his glory; but it was not in vain that an apostle of Jesus, 
 imprisoned there for two years, shook off the dust of his feet 
 as he passed, not to return, through the gates of Caesarea. 
 
 In the sixteenth century, Rauwolff, who passed by it, spoke 
 of the large and broad streets, in which scarcely any one 
 was to be seen, and of the important and stately antiquities 
 that still remained there.^ Two aqueducts, one carried on 
 a wall thirteen feet thick, another built on arches, which 
 was a rusticated work; the remains of walls of small hewn 
 stones, said to have been built by the Crusaders; the ruins 
 of a very strong castle, full of fragments of fine marble pil¬ 
 lars ; great ruins of arched houses ; and the “ ruins of a large 
 church, which probably was the cathedral of the archbish¬ 
 op,” are all mentioned by Pococke as the most distinguish¬ 
 able remains.il Still along the shore are the remains of a 
 building, with fine Roman arches yet perfect, and of anoth¬ 
 er pile, with five or six columns fallen into the sea. Mr. 
 Buckingham saw fragments of white marble highly polish¬ 
 ed, some of the white stone {XevKr}^ ixerpa^) mentioned by 
 Josephus,IT of which the edifices were built; but the princi¬ 
 pal remains are the ruins of a large and well-built fort of ex¬ 
 cellent workmanship, with many pyramidal bastions, the 
 whole terminating in an edifice on a rocky base surrounded 
 by enormous blocks of rocks, probably, as Mr. Buckingham 
 remarks, the tower of Drusus, which was built on the mole 
 itself, where this ruin stands, having braved the raging fury 
 of two thousand winters, and still defying the storms of 
 
 * Pococke, p. 59, t Clarke’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 645. t Ibid. 
 
 ^ Ray’s Collection of Travels, p. 266. II P. 69. 
 
 IT Josephus, tom. i., p. 694. Ant., iv., 9. 
 
RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 303 
 
 ocean to effect its total demolition. The port appears rath¬ 
 er to have been destroyed by a besieging force than to have 
 fallen gradually to decay.* 
 
 The ruins of Caesarea lie in heaps, over which briers and 
 thistles are spread, and, as it were, wild -beasts and nox¬ 
 ious reptiles watch. And if the ruins of Askelon were no 
 sooner touched, and the sand partially cleared away, with 
 the intention of building a new town and harbour from the 
 ancient materials, than many interesting remains were ex- 
 ■ posed to view, what may not Caesarea, with its streets of 
 I polished stones and marble buildings, display ? The case is 
 not problematical; for, according to the testimony of Dr. 
 Clarke, and the confession of the man who had done the 
 work, “ in the garden of Djezzar’s palace (then Pasha of 
 Acre), leading to his summer apartments, we saw some pil¬ 
 lars of yellow variegated marble of extraordinary beauty; 
 but these, he informed us, he had procured from the ruins 
 of Caesarea, together with almost all the marble used in the 
 decoration of his very sumptuous mosque. A beautiful 
 fountain of white marble, close to the entrance of his palace, 
 has also been constructed with materials from these ruins.”! 
 “ They have been resorted to as a quarry wherever building 
 materials have been required. At Acre, Djezzar Pasha 
 brousfht from hence the columns of rare and beautiful mar- 
 ble, as well as the other ornaments of his palace, bath, fount¬ 
 ain, and mosque.”! 
 
 It may thus begin to be seen that the labour expended on 
 one of the most princely of cities, the fine materials of which 
 it was constructed, the polished stones of which elegant 
 buildings forming streets were built, the masses of hevvn 
 stone which were once the palaces, the cathedral, the 
 churches, the oratory, the courts, the walls, &dc., shall 
 not be forever lost. Even because buried they are best 
 preserved; and while the tombs of Petra look as if fresh 
 from the chisel, the work of that instrument having in ages 
 past been perfected on the covered stones of CiBsarea, the 
 hands of strangers, to whom the labour pertains, shall have 
 nothing else to do than to build up its walls into habitations 
 for many more, it may well be, of the children of Israel than 
 the ten thousand Jews whom the other citizens slew in the 
 day of the downfall of Judah. But when the cities of Ju- 
 
 * Buckingham’s Travels, p, 135-137. t Clarke’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 382. 
 
 t p. 645. 
 
304 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 dah and of Israel shall be built again, and the Gospel be be¬ 
 lieved in all its simplicity, as Paul and Peter preached it 
 in the city of Caesarea, no statue shall be raised, as of old, 
 to Rome or to Caesar, to heathen gods or to popish saints ; 
 and when the Lord will make the judges of his people just, 
 there shall not be a Festus to tremble at the preaching of 
 righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, nor an 
 Agrippa on earth, who shall not be more than almost a 
 Christian, nor a Herod, to whom shall be given the glory 
 which pertains to the Lord alone ; but all the houses of 
 Caesarea, or those formed from its stones, shall be like unto 
 that of Cornelius the centurion, the first Gentile to whom 
 the Gospel was sent, and who believed in God with all his 
 house j and where the repose of the traveller is now broken 
 by the cry of wild beasts, songs of praise shall be heard in 
 the dwellings of the righteous. 
 
 On the coast between Caesarea and Carmel are the exten¬ 
 sive ruins of the ancient Dora, so fallen that these possess 
 nothing of interest, and the village of Athlite, constructed 
 from the ruins of a more ancient city. The old walls which 
 surround it are those of Castrum peregrinoriim. Another 
 wall encloses a considerable space of ground now uninhab¬ 
 ited. The walls and windows of a fine Gothic hall, and 
 many similar ruins, bespeak the former character and con¬ 
 sequence of the place. “ From the commodiousness of the 
 bay, the extent of the quarries in the neighbourhood, the 
 fine plains near it, though now but partly cultivated, it would 
 seem that the place was formerly of much importance, and 
 that the neighbourhood, though now very thinly inhabited, 
 was once populous.”* 
 
 Kkka, the ancient Aeon, Acre, or Ptolemais, fell to the lot 
 of the tribe of Asher,f though the Israelites, faithless in 
 the covenant, could not drive out its inhabitants. It was, 
 in the Middle Ages, one of the most renowned of cities, 
 from the multitude of slain that fell before its walls. For 
 two years it was the contested prize of Christendom. It 
 was fortified in the strongest manner with double walls, and 
 towers, and fortresses, and adorned with a great hospital 
 and castellated fortifications.^ Its fame was renewed in 
 modern times, and not a capital in Europe could boast like 
 it that the baffled Napoleon retreated from its walls after a 
 
 * Irby and Mangles, p. 190-192. Monro’s Travels in Syria, vol. i., 
 t Judges, i,, 31. t Bochard, p, 2G0 
 
 (2. 
 
RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 305 
 
 desperate and bloody siege of three months. Besieged for 
 twice that period in 1834 by Ibrahim Pasha, the shores and 
 the higli grounds being occupied with batteries to the far¬ 
 thest range, it fell not till “ the devastation committed upon 
 the domes and minarets of the mosques by the shells and 
 round shot were visible from without; and within, walls 
 and houses overthrown gave the place the appearance of a 
 heap of ruins.”* An illustration was given how a city of 
 Syria could be speedily raised from its ruins, and become, 
 if needful, a stronghold again. It arose once more from its 
 ruins, and with it Mehemet Ali held Syria as his own. The 
 last siege, still fresh in the memory of the existing genera¬ 
 tion, is an indication, among many others, that the time at 
 length is come when, compared with the lingering events of 
 earlier days, a s/iorl work will the Lord do upon the earth. 
 In three hours it fell, not from the ordinary effects of any 
 bombardment, however terrible. As if commissioned by 
 the Lord of Hosts, who is the Lord of Israel, like the arrow 
 from a bow drawn at a venture, which brought Ahab down, 
 a bomb penetrated a magazine of powder stored up for de¬ 
 fence, and raised the arsenal in the air, as if to show that 
 the time was come that the \di%i fortress in Palestine should 
 cease, and strewed it stone by stone upon the ground, as if 
 the times too were not distant when the hands of strangers 
 should find other work, and build up the ruined walls in an¬ 
 other form. Taken but as yes^^rday by the British, it was 
 given to the Turks ! whose character must be changed ere 
 the work of reparation be done by them. What next ? it 
 may be asked. Let the answer in effect be seen. And it 
 may be that the time will no longer tarry till the world be 
 a witness that it was not in vain that Acre fell to the lot of 
 a tribe of Israel. 
 
 In passing from Acre to Tyre, Captains Irby and Man¬ 
 gles, about three hours before reaching the latter, observed 
 some ruins on a small eminence, which, on a narrower in¬ 
 spection, presented to their view the remains of a large city, 
 and the ruins of a temple in a most dilapidated state. Only 
 two columns, much defaced, are standing, the ruined mon¬ 
 uments of a decayed city. From thence the remains of the 
 great ancient paved way to Tyre are distinctly traceable, 
 and between it and Sidon they “ passed through the ruins of 
 five or six large cities, now mere rubbish” or utterly desolate. 
 
 * Monro, vol. i., p. 53. 
 
 C c 2 
 
306 RUINS OF CITIES IN JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 Of the hundreds of cities or towns that anciently flourish¬ 
 ed in Palestine, whether under the Israelites or the Romans, 
 not one has been left to give now an example or illustration 
 of what they were. Time after time they have been laid 
 waste, and many of them are desolate without an inhab¬ 
 itant. Where miserable villages take the place and the 
 name of large towns, and where towms still exist where 
 cities stood,.nothing more can be said than the prophet fore¬ 
 told in declaring the work of the Lord concerning them. 
 Thus saith the Lord God, The city that went out hy a thou¬ 
 sand shall leave a hundred^ and that which went out hy a hun¬ 
 dred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel* 
 
 The Jews, as a nation, rejected the Messiah ; and while 
 the Gospel has been preached for many ages among the 
 Gentiles, that a people might be brought from among them 
 to the Lord, Jerusalem has been trodden down of the Gen¬ 
 tiles, and the cities of Judah have been laid waste. In de¬ 
 nouncing judgments against the cities of Judah, the prophet 
 charged them with the sin of idolatry: According to the 
 number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah.\ That they 
 might not fall for the want of a message of salvation, if they 
 would have heard it, Jesus not only went throughout them, 
 but sent his twelve apostles, and afterward seventy disci¬ 
 ples, to preach the Gospel in them all. But there were not 
 believers enough to save th^cities, and they fell, though the 
 kingdom of God had come nigh unto them all. An apostate 
 church, in after ages, could not reverse, but brought down 
 from heaven the renewal of the judgments. Again and again 
 has the fury of the Lord been kindled against the cities of 
 Judah, and he has laid them desolate without man and with¬ 
 out beast. But when the curses of the covenant shall pass 
 away, and wars forever cease in the land, because the Lord 
 shall make a new and everlasting covenant of peace with 
 the house of Judah as with the house of Israel, then shall 
 his oft-repeated word of promise be fulfilled, God will save 
 Zion, and will build the cities of Judah, that they might dwell 
 there, and have it in possession. The seed also of his ser¬ 
 vants shall inherit it, and they that love his name shall dwell 
 therein.\ All the goodliness of man—all the goodliness, as 
 we have seen, of the goodliest of cities—is as the flower of 
 the field ; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the 
 Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. And in Palestine the 
 
 * Amos, V., 3. t Jer., ii., 28. t Psalm Ixix., 35, 36. 
 
I 
 
 1 
 
 t- 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, ETC. 307 | 
 
 I 
 
 sight is common of withered grass and faded flowers cov- 1 1 
 
 ering ruined cities, ruined because the Spirit of the Lord 
 has blown also upon them. The grass withereth, the flower 
 fadeih, as Scripture repeats the saying; hut, as it adds, the 
 word of our God shall stand forever. And in the next words j 
 
 and same breath, the voice heard by the prophet cried, “ O 
 Zion, that hringest good tidings, get thee up into the high ■ 
 
 mountain; O Jerusalem, that hringest good tidings, lift up 
 thy voice with strength ; lift it up, he not afraid; say unto the i 
 
 cities of Judah, hehold your God.^’* “ I have blotted out, as j 
 
 a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins; re~ i 
 
 turn unto me, for I have redeemed thee. Sing, O ye heavens, I 
 
 for the Lord hath done it. Thus saith the Lord, that con- \ 
 
 firmeth the word of his servants, that saith to Jerusalem, thou ■ 
 
 shall he inhabited, and to the cities of Judah, ye shall ^ 
 
 BE BUILT, and I will raise up the decayed places (or wastes) ; 
 
 thereof.’’j Israel shall be saved of the Lord with an ever- ! 
 
 lasting salvation. J In the cities of the mountains, in the cit- ;[ 
 
 ies of the vale, in the cities of the south, and in the land of 
 Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cit¬ 
 ies of Judah, shall the flocks pass under the hands of him 
 that telleth them, saith the Lord. Behold, the days come, > 
 
 saith the Lord, that I will perform that good thing which I 
 have promised unto the house of Israel and to the house of 
 Judah. In those days and at that time, I will cause the 
 branch of righteousness to grow up unto David ; and he 
 shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In 
 those days Judah shall be saved.§ 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, BEYOND THE ANCIENT 
 
 BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 
 
 The iniquity of the Israelites in departing from the living 
 God, hemmed them within narrow limits while they dwelt in 
 the land, and finally expelled them from it all; but there 
 was no limit to the curses of the covenant which were to 
 
 * Isa., iL, 8, 9. t Ibid., irlir., 23, 26. 
 
 X Ibid., xlr., 17. ^ Jer., xxxiii., 13-15 
 
 t 
 
308 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OP SYRIA 
 
 fall upon the land, while there was no city to be found with¬ 
 in it in which the everlasting covenant was not broken, 
 when thousands of churches overspread all the land. On 
 
 final return of the seed of Jacob to the inheritance given ! 
 them by an everlasting covenant, when they shall no more 
 be plucked out of it, their heritage, in all its amplitude, shall I 
 be theirs, and the face of the land shall be filled with cities. 
 They shall enlarge the place of their tent, and shall break 
 forth on the right hand and on the left; and their seed shall \ 
 inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhab- | 
 ited.^ Throughout the extent of the land we may thus look 
 for ruined cities, in the faith that as assuredly as they have 
 fallen they shall be raised again within all the borders of the 
 ancient kingdom of Israel, when the blessings of the new 
 covenant shall supplant the curses of the old, and the Lord 
 shall be glorified in Israel. 
 
 The diminutive territory within which the seed of Israel 
 dwelt of old, and possessed as their own, even when redu¬ 
 ced to the land of Judea, sufficed for all the temporary pur¬ 
 poses of the first covenant with Israel under the law; but 
 the new covenant yet to be made with the house of Israel 
 and the house of Judah, that the Abrahamic covenant may 
 have its full completion, demands ampler scope, as it forbids 
 that very much or any land should again remain to be pos~ 
 sessed, when all the earth shall see that the Lord will not 
 suffer his faithfulness to fail. Most imperfect, therefore, 
 would be our view, were we not to cast a glance from Sidon 
 to Seleucia, and from the sources of the Jordan to the mouth 
 of the Orontes, and from thence to the banks of the Euphra¬ 
 tes, and see whether, in the intermediate widespread terri¬ 
 tories, cities be not ready to rise from their ruins whenever 
 the people to whom it pertains shall be brought within the 
 bonds of the covenant, and shall be no longer slack to go in 
 and possess the land to its farthest borders on every side. 
 
 When Israel shall be the restorer of cities to dwell in, he 
 will not seek in vain where cities of the Canaanites stood. 
 Each tribe, on the north as well as on the south of the land, 
 may well have its towns from the Mediterranean Sea to the 
 River of Assyria; and if the Lord do better to them than at 
 the beginning. He will not do worse to Israel when the peo¬ 
 ple shall be all righteous, than He did to the idolatrous Ca¬ 
 naanites or apostate Romans, nor worse to the believing 
 
 * Isa., liv., 2. 
 
 f 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 309 
 
 sons of Isaac when they shall be a blessing to all nations, 
 than He did to the misbelieving sons of Ishmael when they 
 came as a wo for the infliction of his judgments. 
 
 The cities of Phoenicia, which were long renowned 
 throughout the world, and which armies of Crusaders at 
 first passed unassailed and only reduced after many years, 
 have for ages lost their fame, and some of them have only 
 recently been recognised, while others have yet to be sought 
 for. But when the heritage of Jacob shall be filled with 
 cities along the seacoast, against which the sword of the 
 Lord has been unsheathed from end to end for many gener¬ 
 ations, peaceful dwellings shall arise, and the sound of war 
 be heard no more, but the Gospel of peace shall be the creed 
 of Israel where fierce Crusaders fought in vain. 
 
 Byblus, Esbele, or Jebail, once famous for the temple and 
 worship of Adonis, is still “ enclosed by a wall of moderate 
 height, about a mile and a half in circumference, with square 
 towers at intervals. Large vacant spaces appear on every 
 side, formerly occupied by houses, and the shops in the ba¬ 
 zar are nearly all shut up.”* “ Many fragments of fine 
 
 granite columns are lying about in the neighbourhood. Few 
 inhabitants remain.”! The many heaps of ruins, and the 
 fine pillars that are scattered up and down in the gardens 
 near the town, show, says Mr. Maundrell, that it was an¬ 
 ciently a place of no mean extent as well as beauty.| 
 
 Botrus (Batrone), before its destruction by the Templars, 
 was a very opulent city, and renowned for its celebrated 
 wines.§ At Pairone, its humble representative, are some 
 remains of an old church and monastery of the Middle Ages, 
 \ the only memorials of the episcopal city.jl 
 
 In the territory of Tripoli, some remains are to be seen of 
 inland as w'ell as of maritime cities. Near the village of 
 Beshiza are the ruins of a small temple, with projecting ba¬ 
 ses for statues. On the ruined walls, the door and its soffit 
 are ornamented with beautiful sculptures, not inferior to those 
 of Baalbec. The entablature of the portico is perfect. Of 
 the four Ionic columns which formed it, three are stand- 
 ing, eighteen feet high, and of a single stone. In the midst 
 of the building stands a large oak, whose overshadowing 
 branches render the ruin highly picturesque.*[[ 
 
 * Mr. Robinson’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 51. 
 t Maundrell, p. 45. 
 
 11 Maundrell, p. 44. Robinson, p. 63. 
 
 t Burckhardt, p. 180. 
 ^ Brucard, p. 201. 
 
 *11 Burckhardt, p. 176. 
 
310 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 Ruins bearing the name of Naous form the remains of an 
 ancient town. Of two ruined temples, it is said that they 
 are worthy the traveller’s attention. The labour and art ex¬ 
 pended upon them were not spent that they might be hid so 
 long and finally be passed by, all but disregarded. But they 
 are worthy of attention ; for, of the smaller one, there still 
 stands a ruined wall with two niches, and fragments of col¬ 
 umns three feet in diameter. It is an oblong building com¬ 
 posed of large square stones. The other, which stood in 
 an area of sixty paces in length by fifty in breadth, is sur¬ 
 rounded by a wall, of which the foundations and some frag¬ 
 ments remain. The beautiful gate that led to this area is 
 still entire ; the two posts, elegantly sculptured, fourteen feet 
 high and ten wide, are each, together with the soffit, formed 
 of a single stone. The temple within presents nothing but 
 a heap of ruins. The ground is covered with Corinthian 
 columns, capitals, and friezes. The wall of the area is built 
 with large blocks of well-cut stone, some of which are up¬ 
 ward of twelve feet long.* 
 
 Archis, or Arka, the capital of the Arkites, and the birth¬ 
 place of Alexander Severus, was, as described by the Arch¬ 
 bishop of Tyre, one of the cities of the province of Phoeni¬ 
 cia, near the foot of Lebanon, situated on a strongly-fortified 
 hill.f A very fertile plain, five miles broad, lay between it 
 and the sea. Of this ancient metropolis of one of the fam¬ 
 ilies of the Canaanites, nothing but ruins remain, though the 
 natural beauty of the scene and richness of the fertile plain, 
 five miles broad, that intervenes between it and the sea, are as 
 great as ever. As described by Dr. Shaw, “ It is built over 
 against the northern extremity of Lebanon, in a most de¬ 
 lightful situation, having the prospect to the northward of an 
 extensive plain, diversified with an infinite variety of castles 
 and villages, ponds and ruins. To the westward it sees the 
 sun set in the sea, and to the eastward, rise over a long and 
 distant chain of mountains. Here, likewise, are not want¬ 
 ing Thebaic columns and rich entablatures to attest the splen¬ 
 dour and politeness it was some time possessed of. The 
 citadel was erected on the summit of an adjacent mount, 
 which by its situation must have been impregnable in for¬ 
 mer times ; for the mount is in the figure of a cone, in au as¬ 
 cent of fifty or sixty degrees, appearing to have been, not 
 the work of nature, but of art. In the deep valley below 
 
 * Burckhauit, p. 173, 174. Mr. Robinson, vol. i., p. 48. t Will. Tyr., p. 737. 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 * 
 
 i 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 313 
 
 the city we have a brisk stream more than sufficient for the 
 necessities of the plain ; yet it hath been judged more con¬ 
 venient to supply it with water from Mount Lebanon, for 
 which purpose they have united the mountain to the city 
 by an aqueduct, whose principal arch could not be less than 
 a hundred feet in diameter.”* The castles, whose variety 
 served to diversify the plain, may now, like most of the 
 Phoenician cities, be sought for in their ruins. When all 
 the land of the Canaanites shall be possessed by the Israel¬ 
 ites, and the cities be rebuilt, the labour anciently expend¬ 
 ed on the construction of Area may facilitate its re-erection. 
 On the top of the conical artificial hill on which the citadel 
 stood, there are, as Burckhardt was told, some ruins of hab¬ 
 itations and walls. “ Upon an elevation on its east and south 
 sides, which commands a beautiful view over the plain, the 
 sea, and the Anzeyry Mountains, are large and extensive 
 heaps of rubbish, traces of ancient buildings. Mocks of hewn 
 Slone, remains of walls, and fragments of granite columns.”! 
 
 The city which covered the small islands of Aradus [Ar- 
 vad) was the capital of the Arvadites. According to Stra¬ 
 bo, they had, in early ages, kings of their own, like other 
 cities of Phoenicia; and he states that in his day it was so 
 crowded with inhabitants that they lived in houses of many 
 stories.J As seen from the shore by Maundrell, it was 
 wholly filled up with tall buildings like castles, and Po- 
 cocke states that there were great remains of the outer wall, 
 which on one side is very high and about fifteen feet thick, 
 being built of large stones, some of which are fifteen feet 
 long.^ 
 
 Near it on the coast is the modern Tarlous, supposed by 
 some to be Orthosia. The ancient walls are of large hewn 
 stones. The ancient castle or fort is surrounded by a double 
 wall of coarse marble nearly half a mile in circuit, and es¬ 
 timated by Pococke as at least fifty feet high; within it is a 
 roofless church, with several holy emblems carved upon its 
 walls. Within the fortress are still to be seen the traces of 
 the more extensive walls and ditch which encompassed the 
 ancient city, and fragments of buildings and granite pillars 
 mark the place of former grandeur. Amid all these scat¬ 
 tered remains, the only edifice left is a large Christian church, 
 divided into three aisles by two rows of clustered pillars. 
 
 * Shaw’s Travels, Oxon., 1738, p. 327, 328. 
 t Strabo, p. 1071. 
 
 t Burckhardt, p. 162. 
 ^ Pococke, p. 202. 
 
312 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OP SYRIA, 
 
 like those of cathedrals in England. It is built of hewn 
 stone inside and out. “ It is one hundred and thirty feet in 
 length, in breadth ninety-three, and in height sixty-one. 
 Its walls, and arches, and pillars are of a bastard marble, 
 and all still so entire that a small expense would suffice to 
 recover it into the state of a beautiful church again. But,” 
 says Maundrell, “ to the grief of any Christian beholder, it 
 is now made a stall for cattle.” It is still appropriated to 
 no other use than a shelter for herds.* 
 
 In travelling between Tortosa and Jebilee, Maundrell, af¬ 
 ter noting heaps of ruins on both sides of the Naher-el-Me- 
 lech, with several pillars of granite, and other marks of con¬ 
 siderable buildings, adds, “ likewise, all along this day’s 
 journey, we observed many ruins of castles and houses, 
 which testify that this country, however it be neglected at 
 present, was once in the hands of a people that knew how 
 to value it, and thought it worth the defending. Strabo calls 
 this whole region, from Jebilee as far as Aradus, the coun¬ 
 try of the Aradi, and gives us the names of several places 
 situated anciently along this coast, as Paltus, Balanea, Ca- 
 ranus, Enydra, Marathus, Xirnyra.”! 
 
 The castle Merkah is about half a mile in circumference. 
 The inner walls are fifteen feet thick. The ancient fortifi¬ 
 cations now enclose a village.^ From Tortosa to Jebilee 
 the tract exhibits ruins of castles and ancient sites, and the 
 whole tract from hence to Latakia, to judge from the ruins 
 and ancient sites which are met with, was formerly thickly in¬ 
 habited, though now nearly deserted.^ 
 
 ' Banias, though entirely deserted, is doubtless the ancient 
 Balanea. “ Its situation proves it to have been anciently 
 pleasant, its ruins are well built, and its bay an advantageous 
 situation.”11 
 
 Granite pillars, hewn blocks, excavated sepulchres, the 
 remains of a mole, constructed of huge square stones, pro¬ 
 jecting into the sea, testify in some measure the ancient 
 splendour of the city of Gabala or Jebilee ; but the greatest 
 existing monument of its former eminence is the remains of 
 a noble theatre, said to have been of immense height, though, 
 “ as for what remains of this mighty Babel,” says Maundrell, 
 “ it is no more than twenty feet high. The flat side of it 
 has been blown up with gunpowder by the Turks ; and from 
 
 * Maundrell, p. 1524-25. Pococke, p. 201. Buckingham, 520-522. 
 
 t Maundrell, p. 21, 22. t Pococke, p. 201. Irby and Mangles, p. 222. 
 
 Mr. Robinson, p. 71. 11 Maundrell, p. 23. 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 313 
 
 ihence (as they related) was taken a great quantity of mar¬ 
 ble which we saw used in adorning the bagnio and mosque.” 
 The semicircle, which alone is standing, extends a hundred 
 yards from corner to corner. The massiveness of the build¬ 
 ing, still convertible to other uses than the structure of a 
 mosque, may be judged of by the thickness of the walls of 
 hewn stone. “ The outer wall is three yards three quarters 
 thick, and built of very large and firm stones, whose great 
 strength has preserved it thus.”'*' 
 
 Latakia, the ancient Laodicea, built by Seleucus in honour 
 of his mother, and in Christian times the see of a bishop, 
 may supply a significant, but imperfect, because untimely, 
 illustration of the facility with which long-buried cities may 
 be disentombed, and the hewn stones be applied to their yet 
 destined use. It was a very inconsiderable place till, to¬ 
 wards the close of the seventeenth century, on the establish¬ 
 ment of the tobacco trade to Damietta, the town was enlar¬ 
 ged, and several good houses were built of the hewn stones 
 which, in the time and according to the testimony of Po- 
 cocke, they were continually digging out of the ruins, for the 
 ground of the city is risen very much, having been often de¬ 
 stroyed by earthquakes.! Such was the testimony of Po- 
 cocke nearly a century ago ; and Mr. Robinson, who visited 
 it in 1830, states that the ruins of the ancient city offer ready 
 building materials to the modern inhabitants.^ 
 
 For the reconstruction of Laodicea not a stone was blast¬ 
 ed in the quarry, nor hewn anew, nor transported to the spot. 
 The ancient city, like Caesarea, was itself the quarry, and 
 the hewn stones, all ready, were raised up where they lay: 
 and when the desolation which earthquakes wrought in lev¬ 
 elling the city, and thereby raising the ground on which it 
 stood, shall be counter-wrought by the sons of strangers 
 building up the walls, the ground shall be reduced again to 
 its proper level, the heaps disappear, and Laodicea be again 
 what it was in the days of Strabo, a splendidly-built city.^ 
 Some remains of piers built into the sea, foundations of walls 
 of large hewn stones, and some signs of a stronghold at the 
 end of a pier, a supposed tower that defended the-port, seem 
 to indicate the site of Heracleum, a city which, like many in 
 Syria, can only be raised again from its foundations.! As 
 low as it lies the neighbouring town of Fossidium, more 
 
 * Maumirell, p. 21. Fococke, p. 199. Burckhardt, p. 520, 530. 
 t Pococko, p. 197. t Robiusou’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 339. 
 
 i Strabo, lib. xvi., p. 1068, ed. Falcon. II Pococke,p. 194, 195 
 
 D D 
 
314 . RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 easily recognised by the name of Bosseda than by the signs 
 of a town-wall and of a fosse, the remains of a round tower, 
 and of a few houses of hewn stone, as if to tell where others 
 lie, which now bear that name.* 
 
 If the reader think, from such examples as these, that he 
 has been led in vain through many a useless ruin, in which no¬ 
 thing wo^hy of notice, as travellers sometimes say, can be 
 seen, and which only dishonour the ancient names they bear, 
 let him look, as in the first plate, on the spot where the sea rip¬ 
 ples on a few bare stones stretching into it from a sandy 
 beach, and let him listen, not to the tale of an ordinary trav¬ 
 eller, who might pass them by all but unheeded, but to the 
 testimony of one who deservedly stands high among the mil¬ 
 itary engineers of Britain, and now commands its artillery on 
 the coast of China, to open up a way, perhaps, for the Gos¬ 
 pel of peace into that land long sealed in darkness ; and he 
 may learn that richer treasures lie concealed amid the deso¬ 
 lations of many generations than the wild Arab believes to be 
 hid among ruins. 
 
 In that plate he has already seen how, from the sea, the very 
 high mountain may be pointed out, from which Mount Amanus 
 stretches along, as it forms, the northern border of the prom¬ 
 ised land. And if the time be come when Hor-ha-hor may 
 at last be recognised as the scriptural landmark from which 
 Israel’s true border may be pointed out, the very spot from 
 which the view is taken, and from which the Apostle Paul 
 first embarked from Syria, may be a witness of the triumph 
 which, in the land of its birth, as throughout the world, the 
 Gospel shall yet achieve. Knowledge shall be the sta¬ 
 bility of the times of the Messiah, when there shall be no 
 more desolation : and though no “ gallant ships” shall pass 
 by Jerusalem, they may be safely moored in the harbours of 
 Israel, when its cities shall be rebuilt, and the merchandise 
 of Tyre shall be holiness to the Lord. The time has come 
 when, strange as it may seern, it is neither a problem nor a 
 phantasy to say that the long-forgotten labours of Seleucus, 
 as of Herod, may be turned to account at no distant day, and 
 how these mighty kings, like many beside them, were as 
 hewers of stone for the cities of Israel. 
 
 Along the seacoast —which was destined for a time to be 
 destroyed —we have seen how, on one extremity, materials 
 for the reconstruction of a city and of a harbour have recent- 
 
 * Pococke, p. 195. 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL, 
 
 315 
 
 iy been laid open to view at Askelon^ and how the ornaments 
 of a palace, &c,, have been already taken from the heaps of 
 Caesarea ; and, having reached the entrance into Hamath, 
 we may pause for a moment at the ruins of Seleucia, and 
 think of things that yet shall be. 
 
 The article from the pen of Colonel Chesney, on the Bay 
 of Antioch and the ruins of Seleucia Pieria, here again sup¬ 
 plies us with facts alike interesting and important, which 
 might at once silence every cavil as to the restoration of a 
 port, or the re-erection of a city in Syria. The needful re¬ 
 fairs of a Phoenician harbour may be as “trifling” as those 
 of a city of Bashan, when the cities that need no more shall, 
 according to the Word of the Lord, be repaired, and the 
 desolations of many generations shall be raised up to perpet¬ 
 uate the glory of the God of Israel. Modern, like ancient, 
 governors and kings have all their projects of a day, but the 
 covenant of the Lord shall stand forever. 
 
 “ Ali Pasha, the present governor of Bagdad (once gov¬ 
 ernor of Aleppo), had, however, a different project (than that 
 of rendering the Orontes navigable) when he turned his 
 thoughts to the means of increasing the commercial pros¬ 
 perity of this part of Turkey. The foundation of his plan 
 was to be the restoration of the once magnificent port of Se¬ 
 leucia, the masonry of which is still in so good a state that 
 it merely requires trifling repairs in sorne places, and to be 
 cleared out, which might have been done for jG 31,000, and 
 partially for jG 10,000.* On the south side of the entrance 
 there is a very substantial jetty, formed of large blocks of 
 stone secured by iron cramps. It runs northwest for sev¬ 
 enty yards to the sea, and it may still be traced running 
 more to the north under water, and overlapping the northern 
 jetty, which is in a more ruinous state, but appears to have 
 taken the direction of W.S.W., forming a kind of basin, 
 with a narrow entrance, tolerably well protected, and alto¬ 
 gether suited for the Roman galleys. The ancient flood¬ 
 gates are about fifty yards east of the south pier. The pas¬ 
 sage for the galleys, &c., is cut through the solid rock, on 
 which are the remains of a defensive tower on each side ; 
 apartments below, with the remains of staircases to the top 
 of each, are sufficiently distinct, as well as the places where 
 the gates had been suspended between the towers. 
 
 “Immediately on passing the gateway the passage widens 
 
 * According to tho estimate of Mr. Vincent Germain, 
 
316 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 to about 100 yards : it takes the direction of S.E. by E. 
 between two solid walls of masonry for 350 yards to the 
 entrance of the great basin, which is now closed by a gar¬ 
 den wall. The port or basin is an irregular wall of about 
 450 yards long by 350 in width in the southern extremity, 
 and rather more than 200 at the northern. The surround¬ 
 ing wall is formed of large cut stones solidly put together, 
 and now rising only about seven feet above the mud, which, 
 during the lapse of ages, has gradually accumulated so as to 
 cover probably about eight feet above the original level. 
 The exterior side of the basin is about one third of a mile 
 from the sea ; the interior is close to the foot of the hill. 
 The walls of the suburb touch the southwestern extremity 
 of the basin, and entered S. by E., from thence parallel to 
 the sea for three quarters of a mile, when they turn east¬ 
 ward for the same distance, flanked at short intervals by 
 square towers. These walls form a triangle, touching the 
 basin at one end, and the walls of the principal city at the 
 other, so as to enclose what is described by Polybius, and 
 subsequently by Pococke, as the market-place and suburbs. 
 The walls of the interior part of the city appear to have had, 
 as usual in Roman fortresses, a double line of defence, 
 sweeping round to the north, where they rest against the 
 hill, which seems to have a castellated citadel on its sum¬ 
 mit. On the S.E. side of the walls is the gate of Antioch, 
 adorned with pilasters and defended by towers ; this en¬ 
 trance must have been very handsome ; near it, and paral¬ 
 lel to the walls, are the remains of a double row of marble 
 columns. The space within the walls of the town and sub¬ 
 urbs, which have a circumference altogether of about four 
 miles, is filled with the ruins of houses. A short distance 
 from the town, on the east side, are the remains oka large 
 amphitheatre tolerably distinct. About fourteen rows of 
 seats may be traced in a semicircular form, filling up the 
 whole of the valley in which the amphitheatre is placed, 
 with its opening to the west, commanding a fine view of the 
 bay. To the S.E., and behind the hill (on which is the 
 amphitheatre), are the remains of two temples ; the frag¬ 
 ments of pilasters, shafts, &c., are numerous ; one seems to 
 have been of the Corinthian order, in good taste, but I could 
 not make out the plan of either of the buildings. The range 
 of hills behind the ruins extends almost two miles, and con¬ 
 tains along its sides, as well as in the valleys, numerous 
 
TT 
 
 BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 317 
 
 excavations, which are almost continuous throughout this 
 distance. Generally speaking, they form only a single row 
 and of small size, but occasionally there is a second line of 
 them, above or below the others. For part of the distance 
 these grottoes (evidently sepulchral) are generally of two 
 kinds; the larger about twelve feet long by seven wide, 
 having the front supported by pilasters left in excavating the 
 solid rock, and within are three niches for bodies, viz., one 
 on each side, and one at the back of the same dimensions, 
 viz., two feet and a half high, and the same width, with a 
 raised place left in the niche, of solid stone about four inches 
 high, like a pillow for the head to rest upon ; these niches 
 are sometimes arched, but generally flat above. The small¬ 
 er grottoes have a niche at each side, with a narrow space 
 betweeii them. One set of grottoes is called the Tomb of 
 Kings; it consists of a facade entrance and several apart¬ 
 ments, one within the other, with columns, and a staircase 
 leading to another range of rooms above. In addition to 
 these, which are the most striking, there is another single 
 grotto of large dimensions in one of the valleys along the 
 side of the hill: this excavation is 100 paces by 60 wide, 
 and 25 high in the centre, the rock being excavated so as 
 to form an arch springing from the ground on each side, that 
 is, without side-walls. In addition to these sepulchral grot¬ 
 toes, of which some hundreds cover the face of the hills and 
 all their valleys, there are many sarcophagi scattered about 
 in every direction, always of good workmanship, and toler¬ 
 ably perfect, although they have been opened in almost ev¬ 
 ery instance, probably in search of money. 
 
 “ But the most striking part of the interesting remains at 
 Seleucia is a very extensive excavation, cut through the 
 solid rock from the northeastern extremity of the town al¬ 
 most to the sea, part of which is a deep hollow way, and 
 the remainder regular tunnels, excavated with great skill 
 and considerable labour.”* It extends 1088 yards. 
 
 The markets and the suburbs, which, according to Polyb¬ 
 ius, lay between the city and the sea, were fortified with 
 strong walls ; and those which surrounded the city itself 
 were remarkable for their beauty as well as their strength. 
 Temples and other magnificent edifices adorned Seleucia.f 
 According to Strabo, it was strongly fortified ; and Seleiicis, 
 
 * Journal of the Geographical Society, vol. viii., p. 230-232. 
 
 t Polyb., Hist., lib. v., c. 5. 
 
 D D 2 
 
318 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 in which it lay, was also called Tetrapolis, or the four cities, 
 from Antioch, vSeleucia, Apamea, and Laodicea, the four 
 most illustrious cities of that region, in which there were 
 also others."^ An indiscriminate heap of ruins, enclosed 
 within the remains of walls four miles in circuit, looks not 
 now as if, in another form, it ever had been destined to dig¬ 
 nify the name of Seleucus Nicator, the most renowned and 
 triumphant of the successors of Alexander the Great. How 
 little the greatness of an ancient city, or the utility to which 
 its ruins are easily convertible, may be recognised in the 
 notice which a passing traveller deigns to take, may appear 
 from the fact that Captains Irby and Mangles, intelligent 
 travellers as they were, and in search of ruins, rested during 
 night two miles from the ruins of Seleucia, and passed with¬ 
 out visiting them, not merely because they were pressed for 
 time, but because they understood that the “ ruins possessed 
 no particular interest.” Now many a city of Syria may, to 
 all visible appearance, be thus justly described; but while 
 they are thus shown to be utterly desolate, a closer exam¬ 
 ination vindicates the word which, long before their fall— 
 nay, before the erection of many of them—foretold their yet 
 future rise. 
 
 But an estimate for the reconstruction of any ancient port 
 or city is a novelty: and unworthy of an hour’s detention as 
 ruins may really be, from the little interest which their sight 
 awakens, let the engineer or the architect set about the work 
 of the rebuilding of a once magnificent city, and heaps else 
 unworthy of notice become, on disclosing their stores, as 
 treasures in their eyes, and “ masonry” that has unprolitably 
 braved the billows for ages may be restored, at comparative¬ 
 ly a trifling cost and easy process, to its primitive use. 
 
 Having passed from the south along the Syrian and Phoe¬ 
 nician coast to Seleucia, the last city of Syria, it may be worth 
 while, without turning aside from our subject, to offer a brief 
 remark or two suitable to the spot, and deducible from the 
 facts immediately or previously before us. 
 
 The present pasha of Egypt on the one end of the coast, 
 and, on the other extremity, the present pasha of Bagdad, 
 while he held another office, purposed, at least, to set their 
 hands, in either case, to a work, the practicability, nay, the 
 facility of which, under more propitious circumstances, it 
 were now unreasonable to doubt. The preparatory work 
 
 * Strabo, c. xvi., p. 1064. 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 319 
 
 was accomplished in the one case, and an estimate furnish¬ 
 ed in the other; but so wild a project would never have 
 crossed the imagination of either pasha as that of erecting 
 a city or constructing a port, if Askelon and Seleucia, fallen 
 as they are, had not existed as they lie, ready to be raised 
 or to be restored. Faccardine, a prince of the Druses, fill¬ 
 ed up the ports of Syria that he might shut out from them 
 the ships of the sultan. * He was the unconscious instru¬ 
 ment, at last, in fully accomplishing the word of the Lord; 
 / will destroy the remnant of the seacoast* But, according 
 to the same infallible word, the coast shall he for the remnant 
 of the house of Judah.] And no exception is made of its 
 cities when the work of restoration shall be begun. For 
 that of the once magnificent port of Seleucia, “ trifling re¬ 
 pairs in.some places,” and the “ clearing out” of the harbour, 
 now an easy task, alone suffice. If the time were come, 
 let but a word be spoken, and the work would be done. 
 So slight would be the expenditure, that many thousands of 
 individuals now would scarcely boast of the restoration, at 
 such a price, of the once magnificent port of Seleucia: and 
 there are not a few of the tribe of Judah who would not be 
 impoverished by the restoration, if effected thus, of many 
 harbours in Syria. May it not be that Faccardine’s mode 
 of rendering useless for a season the Syrian harbours, has 
 proved a mean of preserving them ? And how easily might 
 it be done away, as it was easily effected, and at how tri¬ 
 lling a cost, were other estimates given, compared to the 
 heavy tax which Herod the Great laid on a kingdom, to con¬ 
 struct, in so marvellous a manner, the port and city of Cae¬ 
 sarea, or Seleucus that of Seleucia. 
 
 But till the Lord willeth—in whose hands are the times 
 and the seasons, as Jesus said when the time of the resto¬ 
 ration of the kingdom to Israel was the question put to him 
 who alone could answer it—till the Lord willeth, even the 
 attempted restoration will be in vain. It is not by might, 
 nor by strength, far less by money, the love of which has 
 been the stumbling-block of their iniquity, that the covenant of 
 promise shall meet with its accomplishment. But we have 
 seen an instance, like many others which may be marked in 
 passing, that national works, as they might seem, may be 
 the device of a moment, and, like Israel’s own restoration, 
 the work of a day. The city of Seleucia was worthy of a 
 
 * Ezek., XXV., 16. t Zeph., ii., 7. 
 
320 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 great king, of whom it was written in the Scripture of Truth, 
 “he shall have dominion, his kingdom shall be a great do¬ 
 minion.”^ He was the first of the Seleucidae, a stranger, 
 but the conqueror of Syria, renowned, like Herod, for the 
 noble cities that he built. The work respectively assigned 
 them by Israel’s God, which strangers began, though long 
 retarded and seemingly reversed for centuries past, the sons 
 of strangers,] who of late have prematurely tried it, shall 
 yet timely finish. 
 
 Antioch, the seat of many kings, the chief patriarchate of 
 the East, whose walls and bulwarks were ranked among the 
 strongest, and its numerous churches were the finest in the 
 world, often shattered and destroyed by earthquakes, more 
 than by all the fiercest ravages of war, has still some tokens 
 to show with what facility, were the days of its restoration 
 come, it would be a great city again, but not a proud city as 
 before, the seat of despotic and priestly domination. The 
 capital of a province or tribedom in Israel shall not be like 
 the capital of a Roman province or a patriarchal see, where 
 sin reigned and ruin followed. 
 
 A single sentence, and the view of a single gate (see 
 Plate), as drawn by Las Casas, towards the close of last 
 century, may show that a city without walls, as those of Is¬ 
 rael shall be, might be built from those which anciently 
 were raised for its defence. The ancient walls (as now to 
 be seen), which appear to have enclosed a space of nearly 
 four miles in circuit, are “ generally from thirty to fifty feet 
 in height in their extremes, and fifteen feet thick throughout, 
 having also square towers from fifty to eighty feet high, at 
 intervals of from fifty to eighty yards apart. The stones of 
 which these walls are constructed are not large, but the ma¬ 
 sonry is solid and good. In the S.W. quarter, tbe walls and 
 towers (of hewn stone) are in one portion perfect, and in 
 another close by much destroyed, until they disappear al¬ 
 together, leaving a wide space between their last fragment 
 here, and the portion that continues along the banks of the 
 river.”1 Pliny states that it was divided by the Orontes; 
 but now tbe present town, which is a miserable one, does 
 not occupy more than one eighth part of the space included 
 by the old walls, which are all on its southern side. The 
 northern portion within the ancient walls is now filled with 
 
 * U;in., li.. f). t Isa., lx., 10. 
 
 } ii..''i.'tii’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 560, 561. 
 

 i! 
 
 ■I 
 
 fi 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 321 
 
 one extensive wood of gardens, chiefly olive, mulberry, and 
 flg trees.* Of the many elegant churches of Antioch, the 
 remains of only three or four, a century ago, were to be 
 seen. Pococke saw some pieces of marble of a Mosaic 
 pavement, which he supposed might indicate the site of the 
 patriarchal church ; and he conjectured that the patriarch¬ 
 al palace stood on the top of a hill in its vicinity. Such 
 is the end of the apostolic see ! A vague conjecture is the 
 only homage that can now be paid to the departed glory of 
 the throne which exercised supremacy over two hundred 
 and forty bishoprics. It is but a glory of this world that 
 can thus pass away, and such is the inheritance which the 
 highest of hierarchies can bequeath. 
 
 Vainglory stimulated Syrian kings and Roman governors 
 to erect splendid cities, and superstition in later ages prompt¬ 
 ed Roman devotees to raise stately edifices that could cope 
 with magnificent heathen temples ; each sharing a like fate 
 in their ruins, may be turned to a like use in their end. If 
 the multitude of churches could have saved a city or a coun¬ 
 try, Antioch with its hundreds would yet have stood; and 
 the hill between it and the sea (Benkiliseh), with its repu¬ 
 ted thousand churches, as the name imports, would yet have 
 been covered with the dwellings of men. At the top of it 
 are the remains of a very noble convent, called St. Simon 
 Stylltes; the whole of which was compassed by a wall built 
 of hewn stone, about ninety paces in front, and two hundred 
 and thirty in length. 
 
 A similar edifice of the same name, with numerous build¬ 
 ings anciently surrounding it, enough to have formed a mag¬ 
 nificent city, is described both by Pococke and Mr. Drum¬ 
 mond, who was British consul at Aleppo in the middle of 
 last century. It is situated about twenty miles to the north¬ 
 west of Aleppo. It was famous in the sixth and seventh 
 centuries, not only for the devotion paid to the saint? but 
 also for the spaciousness and magnificence of its buildings, 
 which are yet entitled to a place among the ruins of Syria. 
 “ The whole convent appears to have been built of large 
 hewn stones, and is about a quarter of a mile in length. 
 The church especially,” says Pococke, “ is very magnificent, 
 and is built in form of a Greek cross. At the east end of the 
 choir are three semicircles, where, without doubt, there 
 were three altars, and the entrances to them are adorned 
 
 * Irby and Mangles, p. 229. Bucking-ham, p. 562. Pococke, p. 387 
 
S22 
 
 RUINS IN THE* NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 with reliefs.”* The breadth of the church is two hundred 
 and seventy-eight feet, and on the south side there is a 
 handsome portico : the whole length was computed at three 
 hundred and fifty-two feet. Without the church, on the 
 back part of the altar, are two rows of six Corinthian pil¬ 
 lars, &c. The cloisters, or cells for the monks, have been 
 very extensive, with a grandeur proportioned to that of the 
 church.t 
 
 “ The reputed sanctity of the place invited a vast number 
 of deluded enthusiasts to settle around it, so that the whole 
 hill, together with a great part of the plain below, was cov¬ 
 ered with buildings. From the ruins that are found in all 
 these countries, it appears that the meanest buildings had 
 been of solid architecture. Several villages in the vicinity, 
 now in ruins, were built of hewn stone.”:}: 
 
 Ruins of cities and of churches are numerous in the inte¬ 
 rior of Northern Syria, as well as along the Phoenician 
 coast; and in passing to a review of them, we may cast a 
 glance at another convent in the north of Syria, and at thick¬ 
 set churches, now in ruins, dedicated to other saints. The 
 unimpeachable testimony of Maundrell, who was chaplain 
 to the British factory at Aleppo, may be here adduced ; and 
 the preamble may tend to show that idolatry, or superstition, 
 is not a solitary vice. 
 
 “We went to Sydonaiia, a Greek convent about four 
 hours distant from Damascus, to the northward, or north by 
 east. This place was first founded and endowed by the 
 Emperor Justinian. It is (A.D. 1697) possessed by twenty 
 Greek monks and forty nuns, who seem to live promiscu¬ 
 ously together, without any order or separation. There are 
 upon this rock, and within a little distance round it, no less 
 than sixteen churches or oratorios, dedicated to several 
 names. The 1st, to St.John; 2d, to St. Paul; 3d, to St. 
 Thomas ; 4th, to St. Babylas ; 5th, to St. Barbara ; 6th, to 
 St. Christopher ; 7th, to St. Joseph ; 8th, to St. Lazarus ; 
 9th, to the Blessed Virgin; 10th, to St. Demetrius ; 11th, 
 to St. Saba ; 12th, to St. Peter ; 13th, to St. George ; 14th, 
 to all Saints ; 15th, to the Ascension ; 16th, to the Trans¬ 
 figuration of our Lord ; from all which we may well con- ' 
 elude this place was held anciently in no small repute for 
 sanctity. Many of these churches I actually visited, but 
 
 * Pococke, p. 170. t Drummond’s Travels, p. 196, 197. 
 
 t Drummond, p. 195, 196. Pococke, p. 170. 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 323 
 
 found them so ruined and desolate that I had not courage to 
 go to all.”'^ 
 
 In a previous part of his work, the same author, after de- 
 scribing how, in the midst of the ruins of Tyre, there stands 
 up one pile higher than the rest, which is the east end of a 
 great church, probably of the Cathedral of Tyre, adds, 
 
 “ I cannot omit an observation made by most of our com¬ 
 pany in this journey, viz., that in all the ruins of churches 
 which we saw, though their other parts were totally demol¬ 
 ished, yet the east end we always found standing and toler¬ 
 ably entire. Whether the Christians, when overrun by in¬ 
 fidels, redeemed their altars from ruin with money; or 
 whether even the barbarians, when they demolished the 
 other parts of the churches, might voluntarily spare these, 
 out of an awe and veneration ; or whether they have stood 
 thus long by virtue of some peculiar firmness in the nature 
 of their fabric [the most likely supposition] ; or whether 
 some occult Providence has preserved them, as so many 
 standing monuments of Christianity in these unbelieving re¬ 
 gions, and presages of its future restoration, I will not de¬ 
 termine. This only I will say, that we found it, in fact, so 
 as I have described, in all the ruined churches that came in 
 our way, being perhaps not fewer than one hundred; nor 
 do I remember ever to have seen one instance to the con¬ 
 trary. This might justly seem a trifling observation, were 
 it founded upon a few examples only; but it being a thing 
 so often, and, indeed, universally observed by us, throughout 
 our whole journey, I thought it must needs proceed from 
 something more than blind chance, and might very well de¬ 
 serve this animadversion.”! 
 
 And it does well deserve notice, and animadversion too. 
 Whatever be its cause, the fact is as striking as it is true. 
 Of such walls of churches in regions not visited by Maun- 
 drell, the reader has already heard, and of niches for stat¬ 
 ues still visible where altars have been overthrown. The 
 eyes of the Lord are set continually upon the land; and it 
 is justly said that the remarkable fact, as Maundrell thought, 
 must proceed from something more than blind chance. Not 
 a sparrow can fall to the ground without the Father. It was 
 not without him that hundreds, or, rather, thousands of 
 churches fell in Syria; and it was not by chance, we may 
 well say, that the only part, if any, that alike in all uniform- 
 
 * Maundrell’s Travels, p. 176, 177. May 9. t Ibid., p. 65, 66. March 20. 
 
324 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 iy Stood, was that which showed, and shows as a witness 
 still, that each church which fell had an altar, if not, also, 
 each altar a niche. Maundrell, a most correct observer of 
 facts, looked on Samaria without seeing or noting the ful¬ 
 filment of any of the striking predictions concerning it. 
 Had he regarded the prophecy which assigns the cause of 
 all the predicted desolations, even Because they have changed 
 the ordinance and broken the everlasting covenant, therefore 
 hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell there¬ 
 in are desolate,* &c., he might have laid vain conjectures 
 aside, and have looked^ on the only standing wall of each 
 fallen church amid desolate cities as a monument and me¬ 
 morial of the fact. 
 
 In journeying from Antioch to Aleppo, Captains Irby and 
 Mangles “ passed many sites of ancient towns, castles, banks, 
 temples, all of the lower empire, and very uninterest¬ 
 ing : on one occasion they counted eleven sites in a rich 
 plain, with a firm loamy soil, now left desolate and unin¬ 
 habited.”! 
 
 But, reverting to the cities nearer to the ancient borders 
 of Israel, w’^e may trace them in their ruins from south to 
 north, so far as these have been discovered and are most 
 worthy of notice, though a transient view is all that can be 
 taken. 
 
 The banks of the Orontes were adorned with other noble 
 cities besides Antioch. Near its source, Mr. Buckingham 
 saw, at a distance of about three miles, a ruined town (El- 
 Jussee), said to be a large city, with pillars, aqueducts, and 
 castles, but now entirely deserted. About two miles below 
 it, on the plain, was another town, which retained some in¬ 
 habitants-! 
 
 In the valley of Bekaa stand the noble ruins of the ancient 
 Baalhec (Heliopolis, or Baalath of Scripture). Neither in 
 a general view of the ruins of Syria, nor in a prospective 
 view of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, are they to 
 be overlooked, though comparatively well Imown. Many 
 other cities, when raised again, shall be numbered for the 
 first time among the cities of that kingdom, as the throne of 
 David had fallen before the stones which formed them were 
 taken from their original quarry ; but, built as it was by Sol¬ 
 omon, Baalbec has a prescriptive title to a place in the king- 
 
 * Isa., xxiv., 5. t Travels, p. 231. 
 
 t Buckingham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 490. 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 325 
 
 dom ; and its columns, worthy of a world’s fame, and its tem¬ 
 ple walls a world’s wonder, still stand to adorn a city of Is¬ 
 rael, even while its everlasting columns endure, and the cov¬ 
 enant of the Lord shall stand fast with his people, as his or¬ 
 dinance shall stand with the sun, to the worship of which, in 
 pagan times, which these pillars have outlived, Heliopolis, 
 as the name imports, was dedicated. 
 
 Burckhardt and Buckingham decline the description of its 
 ruins, because the task, to which his graphic powers were 
 equal, had been so well and so faithfully executed by Vol- 
 ney. His description, though familiar to some, may be part- 
 ly given, for the sake of other readers. An infidel may de¬ 
 scribe a pagan temple, and yet the glory may redound, as 
 yet it shall, to the Holy One of Israel, who has placed such 
 ruins within the heritage of Jacob. 
 
 “ At the entrance of the city (Baalbec) we perceive a ru¬ 
 ined wall, flanked with square towers, which ascends the 
 declivity to the right, and traces the precincts of the ancient 
 city. Over this wall, which is only 10 or 12 feet high, we 
 have a view of those void spaces, and heaps of ruins which 
 are the invariable appendage of every Turkish city ; but what 
 principally attracts our attention is a large edifice on the left, 
 which, by its lofty walls and rich columns, manifestly ap¬ 
 pears to be one of those temples which antiquity has left for 
 our admiration. These ruins, which are among the most 
 beautiful, and in the best preservation of any in Asia, de¬ 
 serve to be particularly mentioned. 
 
 “ To form a just idea of them, we must conceive ourselves 
 descending from the interior of the town. After crossing 
 the rubbish and huts with which it is filled, we arrive at a 
 vacant place which appears to have been a square ; there, 
 in front towards the west;, we perceive a grand view, con¬ 
 sisting of two pavilions ornamented with pilasters, joined at 
 their bottom angle by a wall 160 feet in length. This front 
 commands the open country from a sort of terrace, on the 
 edge of which we distinguish with difficulty the bases of 
 twelve columns, which formerly extended from one pavilion 
 to the other, and formed a portico. The principal gate is 
 obstructed by heaps of stones ; but that obstacle surmounted, 
 we enter an empty space which is an hexagonal court of 
 180 feet diameter. This court is strewed with broken col¬ 
 umns, mutilated capitals, and the remains of pilasters, entab¬ 
 latures, and cornices; around it is a row of ruined edifices, 
 
 E E 
 
326 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 which display all the ornaments of the richest architecture. 
 At the end of this court we perceive a still more extensive 
 range of ruins, whose magnificence strongly excites curios¬ 
 ity. To have a full prospect of these, we must ascend a 
 slope, which led by steps to this gate, and we then arrive 
 at the entrance of a square court much more spacious than 
 the former (350 feet wide, and 336 long). The end of this 
 court first attracts the eye, where six enormous and majes- 
 tie columns render the scene amazingly grand and pictu¬ 
 resque. Another object, not less interesting, is a second 
 range of columns to the left, which appear to have been part 
 of the peristyle of a temple ; but, before we pass thither, the 
 edifices which enclose this court on each side demand par¬ 
 ticular attention. They form a sort of gallery which con¬ 
 tains various chambers, seven of which may be reckoned in 
 each of the principal wings, viz., two in a semicircle, and 
 five in an oblong square. The bottoms of these apartments 
 still retain pediments of niches and tabernacles, the sup¬ 
 porters of which are destroyed. At length we arrive at the 
 foot of the six columns, and there first conceive all the bold¬ 
 ness of their elevation, and the richness of their workman¬ 
 ship. Their shafts are 21 feet 8 inches in circumference, 
 and 58 high, so that the total height, including the entabla¬ 
 tures, is from 71 to 72 feet. The sight of this superb ruin, 
 thus solitary and unaccompanied, at first strikes us with as¬ 
 tonishment ; but in a more attentive examination we discov¬ 
 er a series of foundations, which mark an oblong square of 
 268 feet in length and 146 wide, and which, it seems prob¬ 
 able, was the peristyle of a grand temple, the original pur¬ 
 pose of this whole structure. It presented to the great court 
 —that is, to the east—a front of 10 columns, with 19 on 
 each side, which, with the other six, make in all 54. The 
 ground on which it stood was an oblong square, in a level 
 with this court, but narrower than it, so that there was only 
 a terrace of twenty seven feet wide round the colonnade. 
 The esplanade this produces fronts the open country, towards 
 the west, by a sloping wall of about thirty feet. This de¬ 
 scent, as you approach the city, becomes less steep, so that 
 the foundation of the pavilion is on a level with the ter¬ 
 mination of the hill, whence it is evident that the whole 
 ground of the courts has been raised by art. Such was the 
 former state of this edifice ; but the southern side of the 
 grand temple was afterward blocked up to build a smaller 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 327 
 
 one,'the peristyle and walls of which still remain. This 
 temple, situated some feet lower than the other, presents a 
 side of 13 columns by 8 in front (in all 34), which are like¬ 
 wise of the Corinthian order; their shafts are 15 feet 8 inch¬ 
 es in circumference, and 44 in height. The building they 
 surround is an oblong square, the front of which, facing the 
 east, is out of the line of the left wing of the great court. 
 To reach it, you must cross trunks of columns, heaps of 
 stone, and a ruinous wall which now hides it. Having sur¬ 
 mounted these obstacles, you arrive at the gate, where you 
 may survey the enclosure which was once inhabited by a 
 god j but, instead of the awful scene of a prostrate people, 
 and a multitude of priests offering sacrifices, the sky, which 
 is open from the falling in of the roof, only admits light to 
 show a chaos of ruins, covered with dust and weeds. The 
 walls, formerly encircled with all the ornaments of the Co¬ 
 rinthian order, now present nothing but pediments of niches, 
 and tabernacles, of which almost all the supporters are fall¬ 
 en to the ground. Between these niches is a range of flu¬ 
 ted pilasters, whose capitals sustain a broken entablature, 
 but what remains of it displays a rich frieze of foliage, rest¬ 
 ing on the heads of satyrs, horses, bulls, &c. Over this en¬ 
 tablature was the ancient roof, which was 57 feet wide and 
 110 in length. The walls by which it was supported are 
 31 feet high, and without a window. We can form no idea 
 of the ornaments of this roof, except from the fragments ly¬ 
 ing on the ground; but it could not have been richer than 
 the gallery of the peristyle. Nothing can surpass the work¬ 
 manship of the columns; they are joined without any ce¬ 
 ment, yet there is not room for the blade of a knife between 
 their interstices. After so many ages they in general retain 
 their original whiteness. But what is still more astonish¬ 
 ing is the enormous stones which composed the sloping wall. 
 To the west the second layer is formed of stones which are 
 from 28 to 35 feet long, by about nine in height. Over this 
 layer, at the northwest angle, there are three stones which 
 alone occupy a space of 175|^ feet, viz., the first, 58 feet 7 
 inches ; the second, 58 feet 11; and the third, exactly 58 
 feet, and each of these is 12 feet thick. A stone still lies 
 there, hewn on three sides, which is 69 feet 2 inches long, 
 12 feet 10 inches broad, and 13 feet 3 inches in thickness. 
 By what means could the ancients move these masses ? 
 This is, no doubt, a problem in mechanics curious to re- 
 
328 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 solve.*' “ Three of the stones,” says Maundrell, “ we tooli 
 the pains to measure, and found them to extend sixty-one 
 yards in length ; one, twenty-one ; the other two, each twen¬ 
 ty yards. These three stones lay in the same row, end to 
 end. The rest of the wall was made also of great stones, 
 but none, I think, so great as these. That which added to 
 the wonder was, that these stones were lifted up into the 
 wall more than twenty feet from the ground.”! 
 
 If from the grave of Cassarea or the heaps that cover it, 
 marble baths could be constructed and a palace be adorned, 
 and if a trifling repair, at slight expense, would suffice for 
 the restoration of the magnificent port of Caesarea, that has 
 been choked with sand and lashed with waves for ages, 
 surely the masses of ruins that cover Baalbec shall not lie 
 forever undisturbed. If new arts were needed for their res¬ 
 toration instead of those that would seem to be lost, they 
 are not now wanting; for new powers, which heathens 
 knew not, are now in operation for the construction of edi¬ 
 fices, sufficient, if needful, to raise, as feathers, burdens 
 which a thousand slaves could not bear. The wondrous 
 walls which, for so many ages, have witnessed pagan wor¬ 
 ship and an apostate faith, have not stood so long in vain, 
 but shall yet resound to holier strains, and Heliopolis (the 
 city of the sun) be a city on which the Sun of righteousness 
 shall shine, and the Holy One of Israel be adored. And those 
 noble and beauteous pillars, on which such admirable work 
 has been wrought by human hands, which yet stand around 
 a fallen temple, erected in honour of false gods, whose'broken 
 images are strewed on its base, may be looked on as the em¬ 
 blem of a nobler workmanship than that of man, and of the ful¬ 
 filment of a better promise than ever pagans knew : Him that 
 overcometh will I make a 'pillar in the temple of my God, and 
 I will write upon him the name of the city of my God.^ 
 
 “ In the days of paganism both Emesa and Heliopolis 
 were addicted to the worship of Baal, or the sun ; but the 
 decline of their superstition and splendour has been marked 
 by a singular variety of fortune. Not a vestige remains of 
 the temple of Emesa, which was equalled in poetic style to 
 the summits of Mount Libanus, while the ruins of Baalbec, 
 invisible to the writers of antiquity, excite the curiosity and 
 wonder of the European traveller.”*^ It is with the cities 
 
 * Volney’s Travels, chap, xxix., English trans. t Maundrell, p. 156. 
 
 X Rev., iii., 12. Gibbon, vol. ix., c. li., p. 404. 
 

 r 
 
 BEYOND THE AN'CIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. S29 
 
 I 
 
 I as with the land of Israel—a few gleaning grapes are left 
 when the vintage is past—two or three berries on the utmost 
 i; bough, when the olive has been shaken. Many other cit¬ 
 ies of Syria were in ancient times far more ]|^nowned than 
 Baalbec, which claims a first place among ruins. It stands 
 so far as yet erect, a witness of what was ; and, without 
 such ocular demonstration of their ancient magnificence, 
 the records of their greatness might have ranked among fab¬ 
 ulous tales, were not the structure of an ancient wall a prob¬ 
 lem to the moderns. But a variety of fortune, no less sin¬ 
 gular than that noted by Gibbon, Jias marked, in a different 
 manner, the checkered fate of Emesa and Heliopolis, now 
 Homs and Baalbec. While the latter has scarcely an inhab¬ 
 itant, the former has its thousands. Siege after siege, and 
 earthquake after earthquake, have laid its glory in the dust, 
 till its great temple must be sought for in the ground, with- 
 I out a vestige to guide the digger of its grave. “ No more 
 remains,” says Mr. Buckingham, “ of the ancient city of 
 Emesa, than perhaps the basework of the castle, a sepul- 
 i chral monument, and some granite columns and stone sar- 
 1 cophagi, scattered up and down, and sometimes used in the 
 construction of the more modern buildings. The population 
 of the town is thought to amount to 10,000, of whom 8000 
 are Moslems.”* 
 
 i But Emesa has still a monument and memorial of its 
 strength, and of the vast expenditure of wealth and labour 
 at which cities of Syria in ancient times were fortified or 
 adorned. “ The castle (see Plate) stands on a high, artifi¬ 
 cial mound of earth, the sides of which were originally cased 
 all round with masonry, rising in a steep slope, resembling 
 !i the lower part of a pyramid. It was surrounded by a broad 
 
 ! and deep ditch, lined also with a wall of stone. It is now 
 
 entirely ruined.”t The mound, faced with stone, is encom- 
 |! passed by a fosse twenty feet deep and one hundred broad, 
 i over which is a bridge of several arches. The top of the 
 
 ; hill may be half a mile in circumference.J 
 
 I' The ruins of a very large convent, as seen by Pococke, 
 [>art of the walls, the line of the streets, and the pedestals oi 
 some columns at Restoun, seem to mark the site, of the an¬ 
 cient Aretliusia.^ 
 
 * Buckingham’s Travels, p. 496, 497. t Ibid., p. 494, 
 
 i Mr. Robinson’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 241. 
 i> Pococke, p. 142. Irby and Mangles, p. 254. 
 
 E E 2 
 
 
830 RTINS m THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 A few ruined habitations beside the castle Medyk, a mosque 
 enclosed by a wall, and several columns scattered about, are 
 supposed to occupy the site of Apamea, which, as a sister 
 city, ranked '^ith Antioch and Seleucia. 
 
 Maarah, which stayed the march of Crusaders, and tempt¬ 
 ed its victor to remain, has nothing but a khan or tempora¬ 
 ry lodging-place to attract the notice of the passing travel¬ 
 ler, and its towers and walls, razed to their foundations in 
 the beginning of the twelfth century,* yet lie as they were 
 cast down, level with the ground. A poor little village bears 
 the name of Maarah.f .A century ago were to be seen a 
 beautiful square tower of hewn stone, and a little ruin of a 
 very old church, not mentioned by recent travellers.J 
 
 Between Maarah and Aleppo are several sites of ancient 
 towns. The mountain of Richa is full of the ruins of cities.*^ 
 Near to the village of El-Bara are the ruins of what Mr. 
 Drummond denotes “ a once glorious city, fully as large as 
 Aleppo, and greatly superior to it in point of magnificence, 
 as then appeared by the ruins. Here have been several 
 churches highly ornamented, particularly one which was 
 very large ; great numbers of columns were then to be seen, 
 with many pyramidal monuments.” In a grotto (or sepul¬ 
 chre) near the ruins “ was an episcopal figure with his cro¬ 
 sier in his right hand, and on each side of him was an angel 
 holding a laurel wreath in one hand and an olive-branch in 
 the other.”11 In the immediate vicinity of the town Burck- 
 hardt met with a sepulchral cave with an inscrip¬ 
 tion. The annexed figure, in relief, was over it. 
 
 “We saw,” he adds, “ the same figure, with vari¬ 
 ations, over the gates of several buildings of these 
 ruins ; the episcopal staff is found in all of them. 
 
 The town walls on the east side are yet standing; they are 
 very neatly built with small stones. The ruins extend for 
 about half an hour from south to north, and consist of a num¬ 
 ber of public buildings, churches, and private habitations, the 
 walls and roof of some of which are still standing.”^ But* 
 the episcopal city, as it would seem to have been, though of 
 unknown name, must have fallen greatly into decay since it 
 was visited by Pococke and Drummond, for Burckhardt saw 
 no building worth noticing except three tombs. Whatever 
 city it may have been, situated in a rugged mountain, the 
 
 * See above, p. 178. t Mr. Robinson’s Trav., vol. ii., p. 248. 
 
 t Pococke, p. 144. i) Burckhardt, p. 130. 
 
 II Drummond’s Trav.,p. 235. ^ Burckhardt, p. 130, 131. 
 
1 BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 331 
 
 : supposed seat of anchorites, the laurel and the olive-branch 
 
 ^ were there carved in vain in the hands of graven angels, 
 i and the city has met a fate of which these are not the em¬ 
 blems. It has followed Chorazin. 
 
 But, though the ruins near El-Bara might recently have 
 shown that it had once been a city larger and more magnifi¬ 
 cent than Aleppo, the ancient greatness of many cities of 
 Syria, like the desolate Caesarea, cannot be judged of by what 
 they are, nor can the richness of the ancient produce of the 
 regions around them be known by what is now to be seen. 
 Of these truths, the once famous Calchis, or Kinnesrin, may 
 supply an illustration—one instance out of hundreds. 
 
 Calchis, in remote ages the Zobah (Aram-Zobah) of the 
 Hebrews, was the capital of the province of Calcidine, to 
 which it gave its name. Its opulence and the fertility of 
 j the circumjacent territory are manifest by the tax or redeem- 
 j ing tribute which it paid to the Saracens, including, besides 
 : four hundred-weight of silver and as much of gold, and two 
 
 thousand robes of silk, five thousand ass-loads of figs and 
 olives. “ I surveyed its vestiges,” says Mr. Drummond, “ for 
 I cannot call them ruins, as nothing like a house is seen 
 standing; though we found many great squared stones and 
 foundations, particularly those of walls, which are nine [or, 
 as stated by Pococke, about ten] feet thick, and occupy a 
 great extent of space. The castle, or citadel, has covered 
 a very large hill adjoining to the city, and was surrounded 
 by a double wall.”* All is a confused heap of ruins.f 
 “ From the castle-hill we enjoyed a delightful view of the 
 champaign country, extending to a prodigious distance all 
 j around; but not one fiftieth part of it was cultivated.”]; 
 
 ' Different was the view in the sight of David, and afterward 
 
 of Solomon, from the hill of Zobah, when the golden shields 
 I of the servants of Hadad-ezer lay at their feet, or were sus- 
 I pended in the palace of Jerusalem as a trophy of the victo¬ 
 ry of Zion’s king; and different, too, shall be the view from 
 J the hill of Zobah, when all the enemies of the Son of David 
 shall be subdued before him, and the kingdom be restored 
 I to Israel, and Calcidine shall be given, not to the sons of 
 Ishmael for a prey, but to the sons of Isaac in everlasting 
 possession, for each man to sit under his own vine and under 
 his fig-tree. 
 
 * Drummond’s Trav., p. 235. 
 t Drummond’s Trav., p. 236. 
 
 t Pococke, p. 149. 
 
332 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 Harem was a strong fortress in the days of the Crusaders, 
 when it suffered many a fierce siege, and was the scene of 
 many a bloody strife, as its possession was contested by the 
 alternate lords of Syria. In last century, the remains of a 
 palace and many good edifices, the castle upon the top of a 
 hill, the ascent of which was paved with square hewn stones, 
 a neat chapel excavated from the rock, a pretty belfry, and 
 the remains of outworks surrounding the whole,* showed 
 that it had been a residence worthy of princes, who often 
 sought shelter within its walls. The frequent foundations 
 and ruins of villages testify to the ancient populousness of 
 the adjoining territory. We have seen how it resisted the 
 assaults of the King of Jerusalem, and how many princes 
 and nobles, with the King of Armenia, strove in vain to de¬ 
 liver it when besieged by Noureddin. A different tale has 
 now to be told; and it has ceased, as it now is, to be “ an 
 agreeable place.” “ It is now,” as described by Mr. Rob¬ 
 inson, “ a complete ruin, and the only place affording shel¬ 
 ter was a stable, to obtain possession of which, we were 
 obliged to turn out some poor gipsies, called here Kurphadh ; 
 these Kurphadh are spread over the whole of Anadolia and 
 Syria. We were sufficiently punished for this act of injus¬ 
 tice by the restless night we spent, it being impossible to 
 get any sleep, owing to the swarms of fleas which infested 
 the place.”! When visited by Mr. Buckingham in 1816 , 
 Harem was inhabited by about twenty Mohammedan fami¬ 
 lies, governed*by their own sheik. The castle stands on 
 the summit of an oblong pyramidal mound, exactly like that 
 of Homs, and like it, too, cased with stone in the sides. 
 Near to Harem he saw a considerable number of scattered 
 fragments of former buildings, and on an eminence near 
 this stood the portion of a small font more complete. The 
 base was formed of very large stones and good masonry, 
 and in a lower doorway was a fine Roman arch still perfect. 
 “ On these foundations was erected a modern building, ap¬ 
 pearing to have been deserted in an unfinished state ; for, 
 though prepared for a pent roof, none had ever been put on 
 it. Such trifling features are too characteristic of the coun¬ 
 try and its government to be omitted; for here it may be 
 said, with the strictest propriety, that he who begins to build 
 a house knows not whether himself or another shall finish 
 it, and that he who sows is not always sure of reaping. 
 
 * Drummond’s Trav., p. 182. t Robinson’s Travels, vol. ii., p. 972, 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 333 
 
 
 .Large hewn blocks, some sculptured stones, &c., continued 
 to line our road to nearly half a mile, and half an hour be¬ 
 yond their discontinuance we passed through other ruins of 
 a similar kind.”* 
 
 Corns, the Cyrrus of Ptolemy, and in later ages Kyros, 
 a metropolitan see, of which Theodoret was bishop, was the 
 capital of the province of Cyrrestice, in which were nine¬ 
 teen cities. The ruined metropolis shows some signs that 
 it was once a noble city. It stood upon the plain surface of 
 a hill, the site of the castle being the summit of a higher. 
 From the foundations of the walls that still remain, the cas¬ 
 tle* and the city seem to have been very large, walled very 
 strongly with huge square stones. Within are observable 
 the ruins, pillars, &c., of many noble buildings, among which 
 it is doubtful if the cathedral be distinguishable. The whole 
 is now in ruins.t There is reason to believe that every 
 house was built of excellent well-polished square stones, 
 which may be called a sort of marble.^ One noble square 
 building, of great capacity, was encompassed with good 
 walls, having five gates. A noble row of pillars, of great 
 length, led to another grand building, now of undefinable 
 form. But there are the remains of a very superb theatre, 
 built in good taste, the front of which extends to seventy- 
 two yards.^ 
 
 Among the cities of Cyrrestice, Hierapolis had a place.|| 
 Strabo relates that Bambyce was called Hierapolis, and that 
 Atargatis, the Syrian goddess, was worshipped there.^ 
 Pliny, in like manner, states that Bambyce was called by 
 another name, Hierapolis, and by the Syrians Magog, where 
 the monstrous Atargatis (prodigiosa Atargatis)** was wor¬ 
 shipped.ft Of the once famous city of Bambyce, the chief 
 scene of the worship of a heathen god or goddess, nothing 
 but “ miserable vestiges” are to be seen. But these show 
 that it was full three miles in circumference, surrounded by 
 walls extremely well built, of fine polished stone both inside 
 and out, some parts of which, as seen by Pococke, then re¬ 
 mained entire, nine feet thick, and above thirty feet high. 
 The wall was defended by towers at the distance of fifty 
 
 * Buckingham, p. 569. t Maundrell, p. 211. 
 
 - i Drummond’s Trav., p. 201. 1) Ibid. II See above, p. 5 j. 
 
 IT f) BafjLdvKT] ' lepavKoXiv KoXovatv, sv ripaxri tt]v 'Hvpiav deov rrjv ' A-Tapyariv .— 
 Strabo, lib. xvi., p. 1062. 
 
 ** So called, in nil likelihood, from her monstrous fom, the head of a woman and 
 the body of a fish, the reputed mother of the goda< 
 
• 334 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 paces from each other. The four gates of the city were 
 about fifteen feet wide, and defended by a semicircular tow¬ 
 er on each side. But here, as throughout the land, the Lord 
 has made of a city a heap—of a dcfenced city a ruin. The 
 few travellers who have visited it may doubt or dispute, as 
 concerning Corns, about the site of a temple, or a theatre, 
 or a pagan or papal altar. Its magnificence is gone, but 
 the polished stones remain ; and although not only Cilicia 
 and Cappadocia, but even Arabia and Babylonia, contributed 
 to the support of its magnificent temple, the Lord hath fam¬ 
 ished Atargatis (Ashteroth), “the abomination of the Sido- 
 nians,” even as he will famish all the gods of the earth* 
 But the tribute may be turned to Israel at last, and all that 
 remains of Bambyce, the polished stones of its walls, its 
 temples, its theatres, and its houses, razed from their found¬ 
 ations, may be formed into a city, which, like the horses’ 
 bells in Jerusalem, shall be holiness to the Lordf and Hi- 
 erapolis (a holy city) be at last worthy of its name. 
 
 Jerahees, on the banks of the Euphrates, w^hich had prob¬ 
 ably its name from the worship of the Syrian god Jerabolus, 
 is now, like the very grave of idolatry, an oblong field of 
 ruins, distinguished only by the higher elevation, as in oth¬ 
 er idolatrous cities, of the supposed sites of a temple, church¬ 
 es, or other public buildings,J the fit monuments of a worship 
 that, over all the world, shall perish forever, when the cities 
 of Israel shall be raised again, and the Euphrates be the 
 border of a land that shall then be a blessing in the midst of 
 the earth.^ 
 
 At Utch-Kilesi three churches are the ruins of houses 
 which had once been edifices of some pretensions. Even 
 in passing over an inhospitable district, the traveller con¬ 
 stantly discovers traces of early Christianity—ecclesiastical 
 and monastic edifices, often of great beauty ; remains of 
 large villages, with deep cisterns and reservoirs hewn out of 
 the solid rock.|l 
 
 All that remains of the once celebrated city of Samoeisat, 
 on the northeastern extremity of Syria, the seat of the King 
 of Cornmagena, and an episcopal city in the Middle Ages, is 
 a partly artificial mound, and the fragmentary remains cf a 
 castle on its summit. The modern town is a poor place ol 
 about four hundred houses.*f| 
 
 * Zech., ii.. 11. t Ibid., xiv., 20. t Pococke, p. 165. ^ Isii , xix., 24 
 
 [I Travels, vol. i., p. *286-7 laid., 285 
 

 BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 335 • 
 
 While, on the east of the Jordan, towns ruined or desert¬ 
 ed have recently been disclosed to view in far greater num¬ 
 bers than were ever recorded by Grecian or Roman geog¬ 
 raphers, man}/ cities were enumerated by them, or had 
 their place in the lists of episcopal cities in Christian times, 
 in other parts of Syria, of which the ruins have yet to be 
 sought. ThesCj utterly destroyed, exist now only in their un- 
 distinguishable or undiscovered ruins. But they shall rise 
 —as they have fallen—at the word of the Lord. 
 
 Besides the ruins specially noted in the preceding cursory 
 view, the reader may have marked the uniform testimony 
 which is borne to the fact that “ the country is full of the sites 
 of ruins, whether on the south of Judea, or on the coast of 
 Phoenicia, or in the interior or the north of Syria and if he 
 compare the lists of ancient cities previously given, he will 
 not fail to perceive that many a name still wants a spot to 
 mark it, while ruins like those of El-Bara, and many heaps 
 of unknown name, have lost their genealogy, or have not 
 been identified with the cities of their origin. , The less dis¬ 
 tinguished that they are, of no note —as the ruins of Askelon 
 were accounted till Ibrahim Pasha sought to restore a city, 
 and as those of Caesarea appeared till Djezzar Pasha wanted 
 beautiful marble columns to ornament a palace, and the port 
 of Seleucia with the ruins of the city, not worth while to 
 travel half an hour to see, till another pasha purposed its res¬ 
 toration, and a modern engineer gave in an estimate—the 
 cities because hid from view, and the ports because they 
 i were filled up, have lain secure in the dormancy of ages, to 
 awaken at the same voice that bade them repose. The cities 
 i of the Haouran, constructed of the hardest stones, which are 
 bound together, though uncemented, with the firmness of a 
 ! rock, have withstood the ravages of time, which has passed 
 I over them in the exposure of ages with the lightness of a 
 j painter’s brush, and only tinged them with a fairer hue. But 
 ^ the cities on the other side of the Jordan, as the caverned 
 i but inexhaustible quarries and partial ruins show, were con- 
 ; structed of stones varying from compact limestone, slightly 
 j shading into marble, as in the hills of Judea, to fine yellow 
 ' freestone, of softer texture, as in the ruins near El-Bara; 
 i and destined as they were both to fall and to be built again, 
 
 K their fractured walls have not stood exposed to a slow decay 
 ' from age to age, but razed from their foundations, as the towns 
 i of Judea by the Romans, or cast down by earthquakes as by 
 I ‘ P 
 
 
• 336 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 the hand of the Lord, covered with thorns, and guarded by 
 wild beasts, the last word of the Lord concerning them shall 
 be true as all the rest; and cities of Israel are yet ready at 
 his voice to rise again, fresh as when they fell. 
 
 For many generations desolations were to continue, yet 
 there was an appointed term for them all, when the Lord would 
 comfort Zion, and her cities, through prosperity, should finally 
 he spread abroad* He shall cause them that come of Jacob 
 to take root. Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face 
 of the world with fruit. Yet the defenced city shall be left, 
 and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness ; there 
 shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume 
 the branches thereof.! “ Upon the land of my people shall 
 come up thorns and briers, yea, upon all the houses of joy 
 in the joyous city. Because the palaces shall be forsaken, 
 the multitude of the city shall be left; the forts and towers 
 shall be for dens forever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture for 
 flocks, until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high. 
 Then my people shall dwell in a peaceful habitation, and in 
 sure dwellings, and in quiet resting-places.”! 
 
 It is not, then, till the curses pass away, and the blessing 
 come, when Israel shall take hold of the strength of his 
 God,^ that we can look for the proof of what these cities 
 were, or the evidence, save of faith, of what they still shall 
 be. But we have seen some token of the ancient greatness, 
 as well as of the vast number, of the cities that lay within the 
 land of Israel as anciently possessed, and also within the 
 bounds of Solomon’s dominion. 
 
 Numerous these ruins manifestly are, as those of the cit¬ 
 ies or towns of any land ; but fallen as they lie, the many 
 once noble cities of Syria may be owned as such rather by 
 the ancient records concerning them, than by looking on 
 their graves overgrown with rank weeds, or searching for 
 their ruins among thorns. The desolation to which they 
 have been brought down is the visible issue of the iniquity 
 with which the land was defiled ; and, as we have seen, 
 enough is left to show the justice of the judgment, and to 
 meet its cause, as announced in Scripture. And we may 
 take a parting glance at these ruins, by looking for a moment 
 on another city in its desolation, in which, as in Baalbec and 
 Gerasa, enough is also left to show, as no other country can, 
 
 * Zech., i., 17. 
 i Ibid., xxxii., 13-15, or 18. 
 
 t Isa., xxvii., 6, 10. 
 () Ibid., xxvii., 5. 
 
BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS OF ISRAEL. 337 
 
 that cities of surpassing splendour once lay within the bounds 
 of the kingdom of Israel. 
 
 The greatest days which Rome in all her glory ever saw, 
 were those in which captive generals or kings were led in 
 triumph through her streets, and the richest treasures and 
 most splendid spoils were borne in procession before her 
 victorious consuls or emperors. The greatest of these, as 
 recorded in Roman annals, was that in which Zenobia gra¬ 
 ced the triumph of Aurelian, and “ the Queen of the East,” 
 who had reigned at Palmyra, bowed her neck beneath the 
 yoke of Rome. The spectacle, which called forth the shouts 
 of admiring citizens and slaves, was but the idle pageant of 
 an hour. Not a fragment of her royal city could be trans¬ 
 ferred to Rome. But its ruins yet remain, and hundreds of 
 its columns are yet erect; and when the way of the kings 
 of the East shall be prepared, and the kingdom be returned 
 to the daughter of Jerusalem, and the bands of her neck be 
 loosed by the triumphant King who leads captivity captive, 
 the ruins of Palmyra, whose fame has spread throughout the 
 world, shall be an enduring monument of Israel’s glory, 
 while the voice of harpers and of trumpeters shall he heard no 
 more, and the light of a candle shall shine no more at alP" in 
 the city that triumphed over Jerusalem and Palmyra, and 
 gloried greatly in the day of their fail. 
 
 Palmyra not only lay within the borders of Solomon’s 
 kingdom, or of the proper heritage of Israel, but was also a 
 city which he built; and when the kingdom shall return, it 
 doubtless shall be raised again. Its ruins, well known, need 
 not be described ; but, having heard much from many a 
 traveller of hewn stones irflheaps where the cities of Israel 
 stood, we may see them as they lie uncovered in Palmyra, 
 or still reposing in its walls, as in those of the gate of Anti¬ 
 och. The cities of Israel, whether cast down by earth¬ 
 quakes or by the hand of man, fell not, like fractured walls, 
 in useless pieces, in whose fragments the stones are imbed¬ 
 ded as before, and unfit to be built up again, but the unce¬ 
 mented stones lie singly, ready for the builder’s hand. 
 
 But the Lord will do better to Israel than at the begin¬ 
 ning, and better than He did to Greeks or Romans in a land 
 not theirs. A Protestant king, but of late, ignorant or for¬ 
 getful, perhaps, that far more than a hundred cathedrals lie 
 in ruins in Syria, boasted that the quarry would be opened 
 
 * Rev., xviii., 23. 
 
 F F 
 
338 
 
 RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, 
 
 again to renew the building of the cathedral of Cologne, sus¬ 
 pended since the days of the Reformation ; but, though that 
 shall be in vain, if experience deceive not, the owls and the 
 bats shall not be scared in vain by the echoes awakened by 
 many a resounding hammer breaking the long silence that 
 has rested in all the quarries from end to end of the land of 
 Israel, wherever ruins yield not hewn stones in sufficient 
 abundance and perfection for the raising again of one and 
 all of the cities that have fallen, and for enlarging tenfold 
 those that still remain. 
 
 True it is concerning the cities as concerning the land, 
 that the glory of Jacob has been made thin, and the fatness 
 of his flesh has become lean. Yet gleaning grapes have 
 been left in it, as the shaking of an olive-tree, two or three 
 berries in the top of the uttermost bough, four or five in the 
 outmost fruitful branches thereof, as said the Lord God of 
 Israel. True it is that the strong cities have become as a for¬ 
 saken bought and an uppermost branch which they left, and 
 there is a desolation. Yet, however cursorily we have sur¬ 
 veyed the ruined cities within the chartered bounds of Isra¬ 
 el’s inheritance, in these very ruins there is as the gleaning 
 of grapes when the harvest is done, two or three berries on 
 the top of the uttermost bough, four or five in the outmost 
 branches thereof. And even thus, comparing some rem¬ 
 nants of ruins in Gerasa, Kanouat, Baalbec, and Palmyra, 
 with the streets or edifices of the cities of any modern king¬ 
 dom, may we not say that the gleaning of the grapes of 
 Ephraim is better than the vintage of Eliezer : and may we 
 not ask where, on any olive-tree fresh and in full bearing, 
 are four or five berries to be seeif^like those which hang on 
 the outmost branches of the shaken olive of Israel ? And 
 what shall Israel be when the good olive-tree shall again 
 blossom and bud, and bear fruit far richer than before—not 
 for the renovation of cities only, but for the healing of the 
 nations—and Israel’s God shall be Israel’s glory 1 Then the 
 monuments of a departed paganism and popery, first reared 
 by those who trusted in the gods that could not save or in 
 the intercessors that could not hear, shall be the antique orna¬ 
 ments of the renovated cities of Israel, and Immanuel’s land 
 forever bear the trophies of his victory over the gods of the 
 heathen, and over that wicked one whom He will yet de¬ 
 stroy with the word of His mouth and with the brightness 
 of his coming.* 
 
 * Isa., xvii., 6. 
 
339 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OP JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 * 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, AND OF THE NORTH OF 
 
 SYRIA. 
 
 When the Israelites were in the wilderness of Paran, 
 Moses, at the command of the Lord, sent twelve men, one 
 from each tribe, who were the heads of the children of Is¬ 
 rael, to spy out the land; and he said unto them, Get you 
 this way southioard, and go up into the mountain^ and see the 
 land what it is; and the people that dwell therein, whether 
 they he weak or strong, few or many, and what the land is that 
 they dwell in, whether it he good or had; and what cities they 
 he that they dwell in, whether in tents or in strongholds; and 
 what the land is, whether it he fat or lean, whether there he 
 wood therein or not; and bring of the fruit of the land. They 
 came again, two of the men hearing upon a staff one cluster 
 of grapes, and they brought of the pomegranates and figs, and 
 they all testified that the land fiowed with milk and honey, 
 and that the cities were walled and very great.* 
 
 In the preceding pages we have seen something of the 
 intermediate history and state of the land from that day to 
 this ; and coming at last to espy the land from south to 
 north, it is not, as an appropriate emblem of it all, that one 
 cluster of grapes has to be cut down and to be borne on a 
 staff between two. But single gleaning grapes, left after 
 the vintage, may everywhere be gathered to show, bare and 
 desolate as it is, what fruit the land has borne, and may yet 
 bear again. 
 
 The various features of its desolation, according to each 
 and all the predicted judgments or curses of a broken cov¬ 
 enant, which have come upon the land, the writer has else¬ 
 where shown. The subject is now familiar to many, and 
 the truth of the prophetic word is attested by each succeed¬ 
 ing traveller who visits it. 
 
 As connected with the Abrahamic covenant respecting 
 the everlasting possession by his seed of their promised in¬ 
 heritance, our proper theme here is the natural fertility and 
 capability of high cultivation—notwithstanding the existing 
 
 * Numbers, xiii., 1, 2, 17-28. 
 
340 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 desolation—of the land west of the Jordan and north of 
 Dan, as previously we viewed that of the regions east of 
 the Jordan. 
 
 The hill-country of Judea,* which has been waste for ages 
 past, as seen from the plain, with the face of bare rocks pre¬ 
 sented to view, seems not only utterly desolate as soon as* 
 the summer’s sun has scorched any partial vernal verdure, 
 but absolutely sterile ; and great, as the author can testify, 
 is the traveller’s astonishment on contemplating the wild 
 scene ; and he marvels how they could ever have been cov¬ 
 ered with the shadow of the vine. They are as desolate 
 or waste as the cities of Judah. The curse has lighted 
 fearfully indeed, but equally on both. These hills want the 
 grandeur of precipitous mountains, whose bare peaks and 
 towering ridges set forth the sublimity of the works of God, 
 till the mind is elevated as the mountain top penetrates the 
 sky, and may well feel a trace of its own higher nature in 
 the rising thought of Him who hath laid the foundations of 
 the everlasting hills. The sublime in such a scene may 
 fairly take the place of the beautiful, and awe, if it cannot 
 captivate, the spectator. But the rounded yet rocky hills 
 of Judea swell out in empty, unattractive, and even repul¬ 
 sive barrenness (could their name be forgotten), with no¬ 
 thing to relieve the eye or captivate the fancy ; and worthy 
 they seem of being taken up in the lips of talkers, and of be¬ 
 ing, as they have been, an infamy of the people J The very 
 labour expended on them of old completes their apparent 
 sterile desolateness. Had they been left untouched by hu¬ 
 man hands, the mark of infamy could not, in the natural 
 course of things, as with other hills in a kindred clime, have 
 been stamped upon them as it is. The sloping mountains, 
 in their natural form, might have been clothed with nature’s 
 verdure, a fitting pasturage for sheep and goats; or else, 
 though tenanted by wild beasts, they might, however uncul¬ 
 tivated, have been clothed in beauty like the mountains of 
 Gilead, that lie on the opposite side of the valley. Bare 
 though they had been, the winds of heaven and the birds of 
 the air could scarcely have but carried seeds of wild flow¬ 
 ers and fruit where there is soil sufficient for their growth, 
 that the nakedness of the hills might have been wholly 
 clothed, but that of the rocky wilderness of Judea. All is 
 now alike a wilderness; and covered as these mountains 
 
 * Lnke, i., 39, 65, t Ezek., xxxvi,, 3 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 341 
 
 are with terraces, whose bare fronts alone are to be seen, 
 the bald hills, looked on at a short distance or from beneath, 
 present at first sight one uniform aspect of sterility, which 
 seems to bid defiance to cultivation, and to say that the 
 blessings of God never rested, nor, without a miracle, could 
 rest on a scene so desolate and repulsive. 
 
 But they frown on every passer-by only because the 
 Lord has frowned on them. And at the sight of them, 
 blighted by the written curses of the covenant, which have 
 been transferred from the book of the Lord to the mount¬ 
 ains of Israel, the reflecting mind may be struck with a 
 deeper awe than that which the grandest scenes of nature 
 can inspire, which, speak as they may, cannot bring His 
 voice so near, or tell more plainly what the Lord hath 
 wrought, as these echoing mountains, like the voices of the 
 dead from their graves, respond to every predicted judg¬ 
 ment, Thus saith the Lord. 
 
 These words, which preface the judgments which have 
 come in all their terribleness, preface also the promises 
 which shall be fulfilled in all their truth ; and the mountains 
 of Israel have yet to respond to the voice of the Lord in a 
 manner as different from what they now do, as the blessings 
 of the new covenant differ from the curses of the old. 
 “ Prophesy unto the mountains of Israel, and say. Ye mount¬ 
 ains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord : thus saith the 
 Lord God, Because the enemy hath said against you. Aha, 
 even the ancient places are ours in possession, therefore 
 prophesy and say, thus saith the Lord God, Because they 
 have made you desolate, and ye are taken up in the lips of 
 talkers, and are an infamy of the people; therefore, ye mount¬ 
 ains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God, Thus saith 
 the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills, to the rivers 
 and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes and to the cities that 
 are forsaken, which became a prey and derision to the residue 
 of the heathen that are round about you ; therefore thus saith 
 the Lord God, I have lifted up mine hand, surely the heathen 
 that are about you, they shall bear their shame. But ye, 
 O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and 
 yield your fruit to my people of Israel ; for they are at hand 
 to come. For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto 
 you, and ye shall be tilled and sown: and I will multiply men 
 upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it: and the 
 cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be budded; 
 
 F F 2 
 
r 
 
 342 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 and I will multiply upon you man and beast, and they shall 
 increase and bring fruit: and I will settle you after your old 
 estates, and will do belter unto you than at your beginnings : 
 and ye shall know that I am the Lord. Yea, I will cause 
 men to walk upon you, even my people Israel; and they 
 shall possess thee, and thou shalt be their inheritance. 
 
 Neither will I cause men to hear in thee the shame of the 
 heathen any more, neither shalt thou hear the reproach of ! 
 
 the people any more. I will call for corn, and will increase ; 
 
 it^ and I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of 
 the field; and the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it 
 lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. And they 
 shall say. This land that was desolate is become like the gar¬ 
 den of Eden; and the waste, and desolate, and ruined cities 
 are fenced and inhabited. Then the heathen shall know 
 that I the Lord plant that that was desolate: I the Lord 
 have spoken, and I will do it.”* 
 
 The mountains of Israel have indeed been taken up in | 
 the lips of talkers, and have become an infamy of the peo- ! 
 pie. Voltaire speaks of Palestine with derision, describes 
 it as one of the worst countries of Asia, and says that it 
 could only have been accounted fertile by those who had | 
 wandered forty years in the wilderness; while at Beyrout f 
 the writer of these pages was told of one of his disciples, ' 
 an infidel Frenchman, who a short time previously had 
 landed there from Europe, on purpose to visit the land and 
 mountains of Israel, that he might write a book to disprove i 
 utterly the scriptural accounts of their goodliness. His lips, 
 like those of his master and many other§ besides, were those 
 of a talker blaspheming the mountains of Israel. Not to 
 satisfy himself had he come, for he well knew that the land 
 reputed as the glory of all lands was a poor sterile country, 
 one of the worst in Asia; but that others might be convin¬ 
 ced, and the world might be enlightened, he was going to 
 see with his own eyes the nakedness of the land, and prove 
 the falsehood of the scriptural records concerning it. He 
 went; but, entering the mountains, the extreme barrenness 
 of which formed the fancied matter of his argument, the 
 grand idea was dissipated at the sight, and the poor book, 
 blighted in the conception, which, if it had been brought 
 forth, was to have convinced the world, formed but the re- 
 
 membrance of an idle dream. The talker’s mouth was i 
 
 i 
 
 t 
 
 * Ezekiel, xxxvi., 4, 7-11, 13-15, 29, 30, 34-36. 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 343 
 
 closed, and the mute traveller returned literally silenced at 
 the sight. Like the ruins of many cities, the hills of Judah 
 are not what at first sight they seem, but a narrow inspec¬ 
 tion shows what they have been and may speedily become. 
 Neither Askelon nor Caesarea, nor the port of Seleucia, nor 
 the princely Palmyra, are more ready for restoration than 
 are those very hills that cannot be looked on without pain¬ 
 ful melancholy now, to rejoice on every side so soon as the 
 curses that have scathed them shall have been taken away, 
 and the blessings of a better covenant shall rest on the 
 mountains of Israel. If the polished stones of ruined cities 
 may well cry out for the coming of the time when, ceasing 
 to be dens and caves for wild beasts, they shall be raised 
 into dwellings for righteous men in days of peace and bless¬ 
 edness, so may the desolate hills of Judah, once clad with 
 vines, but long scorched with an intenser heat than that of 
 the burning sun, also cry out that these days may come 
 when they shall cast off the briers and thorns that closely 
 cover their terraced sides, and be clothed anew with vines, 
 and pomegranates, and figs, and their infamy cease, and the 
 stranger from a far land, no lying spy when speaking of 
 their nakedness now, may longer ask wherefore hath the 
 curse devoured the land ? why hath the Lord done thus 
 unto the land ? 
 
 The stones of Csesarea, and of numberless buildings in 
 Palestine, are hewn or polished, but they lie as they fell, 
 and no farther labour, as not needed, has been wrought on 
 them. But the Word of the Lord concerning the mountains 
 of Israel, when He shall turn unto them, and they shall not 
 bear the shame of the heathen any more, promises better 
 things than a mere renewal of their ancient fruitfulness. 
 He will plant that that was desolate; He will multiply the 
 fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, and do better 
 unto them than at their beginnings. He hath spoken it, 
 and He will do it. And the predicted desolations of many 
 generations have, in respect both to the mountains and the 
 plains, been converted into means of preparing the way for 
 the blissful completion of the promise. 
 
 In regard to their ancient fertility, the most obvious and 
 abundant proofs may be adduced. The author has passed 
 along the Rhone, the Rhine, the Neckar, and the Danube, 
 where the terraced sides of the hills that skirt their banks 
 
344 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 form some of the finest vine districts of Europe, but nowhere, 
 in any of them, has he seen continuous terraces, at al-1 to be 
 compared in number or extent with those which, by their 
 multiplicity, astonish the traveller in the mountains of Isra¬ 
 el. The largest number of successive terraces which he 
 has anywhere else seen, covering for a short space the side 
 of a hill (on the banks of the Rhine), was thirty-four. But 
 the hill-country of Judea, with which the dreariest regions 
 of the earth might now bear a comparison, is no sooner en¬ 
 tered than a scene opens to view scarcely less marvellous 
 than the kindred multiplicity of the cities of Syria, and 
 the magnificence of the greatest of its ruins. As these re¬ 
 main to challenge the most splendid structure of modern 
 cities, and as the frequency of ruins, betokening from their 
 close vicinity what may be called congregated cities, is un¬ 
 paralleled by that of modern towns in any kingdom, so there 
 is not another hill-country of Europe which could now be 
 said to drop down new wine, as that of Judea did, and, ac¬ 
 cording to the Word of the Lord, shall do again. In many 
 places, and for many miles in extent, it is terraced through¬ 
 out. On reaching it, the astonishment previously excited at 
 the sight of barren mountains, seemingly unsusceptible of 
 culture, is changed into still greater amazement at the sight 
 of steep hills, converted into very numerous horizontal beds, 
 rising successively till the top of the mountain forms the 
 last, and ranging continuously on both sides of the valleys 
 till every spot is embraced within them, from end to end, 
 and from the summit to the base. The first hill on which 
 the writer narrowly looked was of a conical form, wholly 
 encircled with successive terraces, which doubtless repaid 
 the immense labour of their construction by a vintage or a 
 kindred produce, which no plain within a like circumference 
 could even equal. After having passed through a long val¬ 
 ley, terraced on both sides, the extremity of which was en¬ 
 closed, as if by a widespread amphitheatre of terraced hills, 
 on ascending a mountain pass he counted sixty-seven ter¬ 
 races, which occupied successively the whole side of the 
 hid, while considerably higher mountains were manifestly 
 terraced all over by a proportionally greater number. 
 
 The idea, as expressed in the Evidence of Prophecy, 
 which the author had previously formed of these terraces, 
 was, that the soil had been accumulated with astonishing 
 labour, as stated by Dr. Clarke, and the impression on his 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 345 
 
 mind was that it had been carried from the rich plains be¬ 
 neath. In some instances they seemingly have thus been 
 rendered productive, where the projecting calcareous rock, 
 of which these mountains consist, afforded no space for soil 
 prior to the formation of terraces ; and in some such cases 
 it is observable that the terrace, or top of the rock, when 
 cut, inclined into the mountain, or downward, for the better 
 •retaining, perhaps, the moisture and the soil. But, in gen¬ 
 eral, so far as witnessed, with comparatively unnoticeable 
 exceptions, the soil is that of the hill-country itself; and on 
 raising some large stones, they were found to be imbedded 
 in rich dark earth, a sharp light soil best adapted for the 
 vine, more than a foot in ascertained depth. In ancient 
 times, the numberless terraces, on which such astonishing 
 labour has been expended, even without the accumulation 
 of soil, doubtless lacked not a sufficiency to cover the now 
 barren mountains with fruit for the people Israel, when the 
 scene must have been as beauteous as now it is blasted, and 
 as fertile as now it is desolate. On inspecting the terraces, 
 the marvel is not, as when the hills are approached, how 
 they could ever have been crowned with plenty, but how 
 they could have lain so long and so utterly desolate ; and 
 just as the labour would now be little to build a city of hewn 
 stones lying ready on the spot, so the labour would now be 
 comparatively less, not by a tenth, not by a hundredth, or 
 sometimes not even by a thousandth part of what it origi¬ 
 nally was, to make the vines and other fruit-trees shoot forth 
 their branches and yield their fruits, were the good time of 
 the God of Israel come to turn again to the mountains of Is¬ 
 rael. 
 
 Whether in the poorest or the richest regions of the land, 
 terraces everywhere abound in places where the form of 
 the hills suited their construction, and the produce was there¬ 
 by ameliorated or increased in an inconceivable degree. 
 
 “ Even in these parts,” says Dr. Robinson, “ where all is 
 now desolate, as in the rugged sloping mountains between 
 Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, which present nothing but 
 an aspect of dreary desolation, there are everywhere traces 
 of the hands of tlie men of other days—terraces, walls, stones 
 gathered along the paths, frequent cisterns, and the like. 
 Most of the hills exhibit the remains of terraces built up 
 around them, the undoubted sites of former cultivation.”'*^ 
 
 * Robinson and Smith, ii., 187. 
 
346 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 The city of Samaria, situated on an oblong isolated hill at 
 the head of the fat valley, trusted in its strength, and gloried 
 in its riches. Purchased, as was the hill on which it stood, 
 by Omri of Shemer, it is reserved, like all the mountains of 
 Samaria, and the land over which it reigned, as the free gift 
 of the Lord to his people Israel. The beasts of the field, 
 according to the Word of the Lord, now feed on the grassy 
 terraces which encircle the hill, like beds of down, all ready 
 for cultivation; but, like those around it, whose terraced 
 sides formed hanging gardens beautifully closing in the rich 
 valley, they are yet reserved for their primitive use and for 
 their ancient occupants ; for in the same chapter in which 
 the prophet announces the new covenant which the Lord 
 will make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 
 it is written. The virgin of Israel shall yet plant vines upon 
 the mountains of Samaria: the planters shall plant and eat 
 them as common things. For, saith the Lord', I am a Father 
 to Israel, and Ephraim is my first-born. They shall pos¬ 
 sess the fields of Samaria.t Beyond the hills of Judea and 
 the mountains of Samaria, and the ancient borders of the 
 land in which the Israelites dwelt, “ in the Lebanon of the 
 Druses and the Maronites, the rocks,.now abandoned to fir- 
 trees and brambles, present us,” says Volney, “in a thou¬ 
 sand places with terraces, which prove that they were infi¬ 
 nitely better cultivated and much more populous than in our 
 days.” The hills near Baalbec were anciently covered with 
 vines ; and in the days of Strabo, Laodicea on the coast, 
 near to the extremity of the promised land, chiefly supplied 
 Alexandria with its abundant wines, the vineyards in its vi¬ 
 cinity then reaching almost to the very summits of the hills. 
 
 If we return again from the north of Syria to the south of 
 Judea, and look from end to end of the gleaning grapes, 
 though no more, may be found throughout it when the vin¬ 
 tage is past; and the terraces, with few exceptions, are bare 
 and bereft of all but the creeping thorns, which closely cov¬ 
 er them and conceal the soil, while the rocky fronts are ex¬ 
 posed to view. 
 
 The spies who went up from the wilderness of Zin to 
 search the land whether it was good or bad, ascended by 
 the south, and, after traversing it, came to Hebron : and the 
 vale of Hebron, near to the cave of Machpelah, may yet, in 
 
 * Jeremiah, xxxi., 5. t Obadiah, 19. 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 347 
 
 the largeness and excellence of its grapes, outvie the envi¬ 
 rons of Bourdeaux, and the richest spots on the banks of the 
 Rhine or of the Rhone. They still abound in the gardens 
 near to the burying-place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
 and cluster in all their native richness there, as if waiting 
 the time when the covenant made with these patriarchal 
 fathers shall be fulfilled, and when their children, faithful 
 like themselves, shall drink new wine in another and better 
 kingdom than the world has seen since the weeping parents 
 of the human race, cast out of paradise, first tilled the earth 
 that had been cursed for their sakes. Immense bunches of 
 grapes, unripe, and not of full size, intermingled with the 
 bright flowers of the pomegranate, hung over the fences of 
 the vineyards of Hebron when passed by the writer and the 
 friends who accompanied him, who were there informed that 
 these gardens sometimes produced bunches of grapes, when 
 fully ripe, of six pounds’ weight; and on a succeeding day, 
 Sir Moses Montefiore got a bunch of grapes about a yard in 
 length.* On a plain near to Hebron, supposed to be that of 
 Mamre, stands, pre-eminent among other trees, one which 
 bears the name of Abraham’s oak, that yet remains as a wit¬ 
 ness of the goodliness of the land. The circumference of 
 its trunk, as carefully measured, is twenty-two feet nine 
 inches, and where the branches separate, twenty-five feet 
 nine inches. It spreads nearly equally around to a great 
 extent, the circumference of its branches being two hundred 
 and fifty-six feet, and the diameter, from their opposite ex¬ 
 tremities, eighty-one feet, thus covering an area of about five 
 hundred square yards. 
 
 Tadmor and Baalbec, built by Solomon, though fallen, 
 are magnificent in their ruins; but the pools of Hebron and 
 the pools of Solomon, most substantially and finely construct¬ 
 ed, are yet entire. The former has ever watered the city 
 where David first reigned; and slight repairs of the aque¬ 
 duct by Mehemet Ali have made the water to flow from the 
 latter, a distance of six miles, to the city where his throne 
 was finally established. The larger pool of Hebron is a 
 hundred and thirty-three feet on each side—nineteen hun- 
 dred and forty-three square yards of superficial extent—and 
 its depth above twenty feet. Of the pools of Solomon, the 
 average length of the first is three hundred and eighty-four 
 feet, the breadth two hundred and thirty-two, and the depth 
 
 * Narrative, p. 240, 
 
348 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 twenty-five feet. Of the second, the length is four hundred 
 and twenty-five feet, and the average breadth two hundred 
 and four. Of the third, the length is five hundred and eighty- 
 three feet, and the average breadth one hundred and seventy- 
 five. These have not continued entire for so many ages 
 merely to suit the purpose of the Pasha of Egypt, the tem¬ 
 porary lord of Palestine, or to supply water to Gentiles that 
 tread Jerusalem under foot. 
 
 Some cultivated spots scattered throughout the land, in the 
 vicinity of a town or village protected by a Turkish governor 
 or an Arab sheik, still show what the vine-clad hills of Is¬ 
 rael were, and what they are yet destined to be ; and more 
 delicious fruits may yet be found in that desolate land than 
 wealth can command or art produce in less genial climes; 
 and grapes and other fruits may still be gleaned, which put 
 to shame the best artificial vineries of England. 
 
 The village of Kurieh, in the mountains, on the way from 
 Gaza to Jerusalem, is imbosomed among olives, pomegran¬ 
 ates, and large fig-trees, a solitary palm rising above the 
 cluster. Many of the terraces are finely cultivated, showing 
 what these mountains might speedily become.* Near Ku- 
 loneah, on the same road, about five miles distant from Je¬ 
 rusalem, figs, olives, and vines have resumed their place on 
 many terraces ; and the bottom of the valley, though stony, 
 exhibits all the richness and beauty of a land once the gar¬ 
 den of the Roman Empire. It is, so far as cultivated, an or¬ 
 chard of fruit-trees, intermingled with vineyards, in which 
 vines, figs, olives, pomegranates, peaches, &c., conspire, in 
 rich luxuriance, to show what fruit Judea can produce 
 wherever it is recultivated, even where the ground is very 
 stony, while many far larger, and naturally far richer valleys, 
 and hills alike terraced throughout, are utterly waste. 
 
 We cannot pass by the waste places around Jerusalem 
 without looking to a more sure augury of a plenteous prod¬ 
 uce and a returning glory than that of the fairest flowers 
 or the richest fruit. Desolation has indeed come up upon 
 the land, and environed the now feeble walls of Jerusalem. 
 The hills around it are waste. Upon them, except occasion¬ 
 ally, and partially along the valleys at their base, there is 
 scarcely a field that is ploughed, except that, according to 
 the Word of the Lord, which Zion itself has become. In 
 the bottom of the deep valley of Jehoshaphat, over the brook 
 
 * Narrative, p. 164. 
 
.ggW ora one's 
 
/ 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 349 
 
 Kedron, large and venerable olive-trees keep their place in 
 the garden of Gethsemane, once stained with that blood 
 which shall redeem from the curse the land, the people, 
 and the world. A few trees are thinly scattered over the 
 mount, whose name still tells that it was once, in truth, the 
 Mount of Olives. “ The Lord shall comfort Zion ; He will 
 comfort all her waste places ; and he will make her wilder¬ 
 ness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; 
 joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and 
 the voice of melody.”'*' “ Break forth into joy, sing togeth¬ 
 er, ye waste places of Jerusalem, for the Lord hath comfort¬ 
 ed his people. He hath redeemed Jerusalem.”! Jerusalem 
 will be more appropriately our theme in treating—at anoth¬ 
 er time, if God will—on the covenant with David. It is not 
 from the waste places around it, nor from a city often visit¬ 
 ed by plague, oppressed by strangers, and trodden down of 
 the Gentiles, that any shadow can be seen of the eternal ex¬ 
 cellency which the Lord will make it, nor can any sound be 
 there heard of the joy into which its waste places shall break 
 forth when the Lord shall make it also the dwelling of peace 
 and the joy of many generations.j; But the God of Jerusa¬ 
 lem shall therefore be glorified the more. The record is 
 plain, and the truth is clear, and the word of our God abi- 
 deth forever. He is ever mindful of his covenant; and pre¬ 
 fixed to these glorious things that are written concerning Je¬ 
 rusalem is this command to Israel, “ Look unto Abraham 
 your father, and unto Sarah that bare you : for I called him 
 alone, and blessed him, and increased him. For the Lord 
 shall comfort Zion,Ӥ &;c. 
 
 The two plates here inserted, from the engravings illus¬ 
 trative of the work on Syria of the able and worthy Schubert, 
 give a view of Jerusalem from the south and from the north. 
 In the former. Mount Zion and Mount Moriah, between it 
 and the valley of Jehoshaphat, are distinctly marked, togeth¬ 
 er with that valley itself, and the Mount of Olives, on the 
 east of Jerusalem. In the other, an ampler view is given of 
 the waste places around it. (See Plates.) 
 
 The view of the site of Solomon’s gardens shows how ut¬ 
 terly desolate the fairest portions of Palestine have become, 
 while a few fig and olive trees are, like many others in like 
 patches, spread over th*e land, the memorialists of a depart 
 ed glory, and the heralds of a greater than that of Solomon. 
 
 * Isaiah, li., 3. + Ibid., lii., 9. t Ibid., lx., LA ^ Ibid , li., 
 
350 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 About twelve miles north of Jerusalem stood the great 
 city of Gibeon, now the poor village of El-Jib. The natu¬ 
 ral fertility of the country around it, together with its ter¬ 
 raced hills, was worthy of a royal city. The bare fronts of 
 the close terraces of a steep mountain, as seen from beneath, 
 present to view little or nothing but stones or rocks, and ten 
 or twelve olives are the only relief to the eye in surveying a 
 seemingly sterile hill. But the whole was terraced, and yet 
 awaits the time when it shall bud forth anew. Another hill 
 of similar appearance was partially cultivated. The terra¬ 
 ces were filled with fruit, as all those of Israel yet shall be : 
 and the stony mountain side, as it seemed, till cultured anew, 
 was transformed into a rich hanging garden. The green 
 and close foliage of the branches which the mountain shot 
 forth, vines being entwined round fig-trees and pomegran¬ 
 ates, wholly hid the frowning rock from view, and presented 
 a smiling vineyard in its stead. In all the higher ground 
 desolation towered over it, and every empty terrace spoke of 
 a curse yet unremoved ; but the base of the mountain, in 
 one beauteous spot, formed a vineyard and a garden, which, 
 were it not unweeded from the budding of the blossom to the 
 ripening of the fruit, would be still worthy of Israel, and 
 show how the land shall become like the garden of Eden. 
 
 Farther on the way from Jerusalem to Samaria, in pass¬ 
 ing through the terraced hills of Ephraim, now at best a pas¬ 
 ture for flocks, but more generally the resort of wild beasts, 
 partial spots are to be seen, as near the village of Ain Jeh- 
 rub, covered with vines and other fruit-trees. In an ampler 
 space the valley of Mazrah shows how the bare and bleak 
 terraces were once luxuriantly clothed, and in passing 
 through it the traveller forgets that he sojourns in a desolate 
 land. All along the declivities of the opposite hills, and in 
 the bottom of the valley, thousands of fig and olive trees, and 
 seemingly in the distance vines, wholly cover the terraces, 
 and, though untouched by the primer’s knife, and left to Na¬ 
 ture’s care, a rich orchard spreads everywhere around. 
 
 Beyond it the valley of Lebonah, partially cultivated, is 
 surrounded by terraced hills, mostly bare and waste—a 
 blighted paradise. There, as of old, it may be seen— where 
 men go to the place lohich was in Shiloh, where the Lord set 
 his name at the first —what the Lord hath done to it and to 
 the land, because of the wickedness of them that dwell 
 therein : yet even there none can look on the environs of a 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 351 
 
 village, or on the terraces ranged in order on the surround¬ 
 ing hills, without seeing what the Lord shall yet do for Is¬ 
 rael, when his name shall be set up at the last in Jerusalem, 
 and the covenant of peace shall be established with his peo¬ 
 ple. 
 
 Sihor, with its lonely vale, whose inhabitants came forth 
 to see Jesus, and many of whom, without a miracle but that 
 of grace, believed on him there, has hitherto, in a great 
 measure, escaped the curse which has lighted on the cities 
 that would not hear the messenger of the Lord. Groves of 
 olives, orchards, and gardens are intermingled with fields of 
 corn, as if the hill of Gerizzim, at the foot of which it stands, 
 yet echoed some of the blessings which Joshua read, while 
 all the curses, taken up by the four winds of heaven, have 
 spread over the land. Almonds, oranges, pomegranates, 
 olives, figs, peaches, dates, may all be gathered in a single 
 spot; and as they successively ripen, the ground is literally 
 covered with fruit. The place where Abraham was first 
 stayed on reaching Canaan, and where Jesus held not his 
 hands as among Israelites to an unbelieving people, is a well 
 watered garden, and thus a token of what the land shall be 
 when the day that Abraham saw afar off and was glad shall 
 come, and all the renovated cities of the land shall know 
 that Jesus is the very Christ. In speaking as all the proph¬ 
 ets spake of that glorious consummation, the mountains of 
 Ephraim and Samaria were not forgotten any more than 
 those of Judah. Less blighted than these, they are in many 
 places covered with rich pasture ; and the terraced mount¬ 
 ains of Samaria, like that on which its capital stood, need 
 no more than the planting of vineyards, that the shoutings 
 of the vintage, that long have ceased, may return. They 
 too cry out for the completion of the promises of the God 
 of Israel. Thou shall yet plant vines upon the mountains of 
 Samaria; the planters shall plant, and shall eat them as com¬ 
 mon things. For there shall he a day that the watchmen upon 
 Mount Ephraim shall cry, Arise, and let us go up to Zion, to 
 the Lord our God. For thus saith the Lord, sing with glad¬ 
 ness for Jacob, and shout among the chief of the nations: 
 publish ye, and praise ye, and say, O Lord, save thy people, 
 the remnant of Israel. Behold, I will bring thee, and gather 
 thee, saith the Lord ; for I am a father to Israel, and Ephra¬ 
 im is my frst-born.* 
 
 * Jer., xxxi., 5-9. 
 
352 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 • 
 
 The glory of Jacoh has indeed waxed thin, but some ves¬ 
 tiges may thus still be seen of what it was : and other ex¬ 
 ceptions to the general desolation that has come over the 
 mountains of Israel have been marked in various directions 
 by passing travellers. The land has enjoyed its Sabbaths, 
 and has rested for ages ; but, like that of fallowed or long- 
 pastured fields, its rest has not been in vain. Its unproduc¬ 
 tiveness in produce for man during centuries past has pro¬ 
 gressively increased ; and instead of being reduced by un¬ 
 ceasing cropping, the soil has been accumulating from gen¬ 
 eration to generation. The terraces are so constructed that 
 they act as filters, and the mould, instead of being washed 
 down the sides of the hills by the earlier and latter rains, 
 has not only been retained, but has received new accessions 
 by the annual decay of the rank grass, or the thickset 
 thorns, and briers, and thistles, which grow in confirmation 
 of the threatened curse, and in preparation for the promised 
 blessing. The substance that is in it is not wasted, but in¬ 
 creased. The wild produce, often impenetrable in its rank¬ 
 ness, has kept the mountains in continued manure ; and the 
 strangers who have boasted that the mountains of Israel 
 were given unto them for a possession, by the very act of 
 extirpating the vines and destroying the vineyards, have 
 made way for a produce that could not profit them, but 
 which unceasingly deposited on the surface of the soil the 
 substance which the roots of the thorns drew from the in¬ 
 terstices of the rocks. The terraces, as it were, are carpet¬ 
 ed all over with low thorny plants, covered with thick prick¬ 
 ly leaves, which turn aside the foot of the intruder, and pay 
 all their tribute to a land which a blessing yet aw'aits, till 
 Jacob become an inheritor of his own mountains again. 
 The desolations of many generations, during which the 
 mountains of Israel have been always waste, have not pass¬ 
 ed unprofitably for Israel, though unproductively to aliens. 
 
 While the hills of Judah and of Ephraim have been rest¬ 
 ing and gathering strength in their repose, labour, where 
 needful, has been called into exercise in other lands than 
 those which the Israelites anciently possessed, in preparation 
 for the time when they shall enlarge the place of their tent, 
 and stretch forth the curtains of their habitations. The peo¬ 
 ple who have dwelt within their inheritance, driven from 
 the fertile plains that needed no culture to promote their fer¬ 
 tility, have not been idle in other mountains where their la- 
 
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AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 353 
 
 hour would finally be profitable to the rightful possessors of 
 the land. * 
 
 Dan lay on the south of Lebanon, which, though all in¬ 
 cluded in the promised heritage, formed no part of the land 
 in which the Israelites dwelt. But the Lord will bring his 
 people into the land of Lebanon* and there the preparation 
 for their entering seems to be completed, and the day may 
 be at hand when it shall be said. Is it not yet a very little 
 while and Lebanon shall be turned into a fertile field.\ 
 
 “ The country of Kesrouan (northeast of Beyrout),” says 
 Burckhardt, “ presents a most interesting aspect; on the 
 one hand are steep and lofty mountains full of villages and 
 convents, built on their rocky sides, and on the other a fine 
 bay, and a plain of about a mile in breadth, extending from 
 the mountains to the sea. There is scarcely any place in 
 Syria less fit for culture than the Kesrouan, yet it has become 
 the most populous part of the country. The quantity of silk 
 produced annually amounts to about three hundred and thir¬ 
 ty hundred weight English. The extraordinary extortions 
 of the government are excessive. 
 
 “ On the summit and on the eastern side of Anti-Libanus 
 (between Damascus and Baalbec) there are many spots af¬ 
 fording good pasturage. It abounds also in short oak-trees. 
 The monastery of Mar-Elias has extensive grape and mul¬ 
 berry plantations, and on the river side a well-cultivated 
 garden. The town of Zahle is surrounded by vineyards.il 
 The terraces in the vicinity of the convent are covered with 
 vines,®!! as recently seen and painted by Colonel Macniven. 
 Though few in number compared to those of the mountains 
 of Israel, which often embrace the whole sides of successive 
 valleys to the very summits of the hills, the view of them as 
 in the plate may convey to the reader some idea of the la¬ 
 bour expended in ages past in preparation for the fulness of 
 the covenanted promises to Israel. 
 
 Nothing can be more striking than a comparison of the 
 fertile but uncultivated districts of Bekaa and Baalbec, with 
 the rocky mountains in the opposite direction, where, not¬ 
 withstanding that Nature seems to afford nothing for the 
 sustenance of the inhabitants, numerous villaoes flourish, 
 and every inch of ground is cultivated. Bshirrai is sur¬ 
 rounded with fruit-trees, mulberry plantations, vineyards, 
 
 * Zechariah, x., 10. t Isaiah, xxix., 17. t Burckhardt, p. 182-187, 188, 
 
 h Ibid., p. 20, 21. II Ibid., p. 7. 1 Ibid., p. 7. 
 
 G G 2 
 
354 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 fields of dhouna, and other corn, though there is scarcely a 
 natural plain twenty feet square. The inhabitants, with 
 great industry, build terraces to level the ground, and pre¬ 
 vent the earth from being swept down by the winter rains, 
 and at the same time to retain the water requisite for the 
 irrigation of their crops. Water is very abundant, as streams 
 from numerous springs descend on every side into the Ka- 
 desha, whose source is two hours distant from Bishinai. 
 
 In journeying from Hamah to Tripoli, Burckhardt pass¬ 
 ed the village of Mashegad, in the neighbourhood of which 
 are large plantations of mulberry-trees, which are watered 
 by numerous rivulets descending on all sides from the mount¬ 
 ain into the valley, and as few of them dry up in summer, 
 it must be a delightful residence during the hot season. 
 Travelling from thence for an hour and a half, he reached 
 the village of Soueida, near to which were some plantations 
 of mulberry-trees. Between it and Nyshaf, a considerable 
 village, with large plantations of the same tree, are several 
 ruined castles. Near it, at Shennyn (an Anzeyry village), 
 the declivity of the mountains is covered with vineyards 
 growing upon narrow terraces. On the top of the mountain 
 is ^ne pasturage, with several springs. The romantic val¬ 
 ley of Rowyd is full of mulberry and other fruit-trees. 
 
 * Crossing the wady at the foot of the mountain, he contin¬ 
 ued along its right bank on the slope of the mountain, through 
 orchards and fields, till he reached the foot of the mountain 
 upon which Kalaat-el-Hopn is built. From thence he de¬ 
 scended to the convent of Mar Djordjos, which has large 
 vine and olive plantations in its neighbourhood.'*' 
 
 In crossing the mountains from Tripoli to Baalbec, some 
 rich and beautiful scenes were seen and described by Mr. 
 Buckingham. From the summit of Jebel Armeto. “the 
 whole of the plain below, with the deep valleys which in¬ 
 tersect it, look beautiful, presenting corn-lands of the fresh¬ 
 est green, bare patches of ploughed land, showing a deep- 
 red soil, and olive-trees and streams of water in abundance.”! 
 
 The valley of Khezheyah was watered with a fine stream, 
 and presented on all sides marks of active industry. In the 
 valley were two or three small villages, the ground about 
 which was laid out in narrow slips or terraces, raised one 
 above another, in which were planted corn, olives, vines, 
 and mulberries, and the inaccessible parts were covered 
 
 * Burckhardt, p. 154, 155, 157, 159, IGO. f Buckingham, p. 468. 
 
AND THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 355 
 
 with pines and wild shrubs, among which were some fine 
 springs of excellent water. From thence he passed into a 
 second valley, which was of the most romantic kind, being 
 hemmed in on all sides by lofty cliffs of overhanging rocks, 
 so as to remind one of the happy valley of Rasselas. The 
 steep sides of the valley were laid out in cultivated terraces 
 as before, and the whole presented a most interesting pic¬ 
 ture.* Ascending to the highest summit of Lebanon, he 
 passed an elevated plain well covered with grain, before 
 reaching the village of Eden, where the whole ground, val¬ 
 ley, hill, and plain, was cultivated with great industry, and 
 promised a harvest of abundance. The famous cedars stand 
 at the foot of the ridge, which forms the highest peak of Leb¬ 
 anon. Several of the largest are from 10 to 12 feet in diam¬ 
 eter at the trunk, with branches of a corresponding size ; each 
 of them like large trees extending outward from the parent 
 stock, and overshadowing a considerable space of ground.f 
 
 From the plain of Mamre to the heights of Lebanon, bor¬ 
 dering on the eternal snow, it may thus be seen what trees 
 in all its varied climes the promised land of Israel can bear. 
 
 In journeying from Homs to Tartoos, or across the hill- 
 country that lies between Lebanon and the entrance into 
 Hamath, and again in repassirig them farther to the north, 
 from Laodicea to Antioch, Mr. Buckingham passed still rich¬ 
 er and lovelier scenes. The hills near Hussu were culti¬ 
 vated to their summits with corn and olives, which, added 
 to the fertility of the plain itself, its light green fields, and 
 darker lines of trees, presented as rich and beautiful a pic¬ 
 ture as he had seen in the country, though he had visited 
 Gilead. J We continued for about three hours through a val¬ 
 ley, enjoying a succession of the most beautiful views. The 
 landscape to the north presented successive beds of gentle 
 hills, with a profusion of wood.§ Entering the country of 
 the Neyzery Arabs (anciently of the Zemarites or Arkites), 
 “ one side,” he says, “ was through one continued park of in¬ 
 describable beauty ; and, although chiefly over level ground, 
 yet by the profusion of its wood, and here and there some 
 gentle eminences, the landscape varied at every point of 
 view. The state of agriculture was here, too, more perfect 
 and more flourishing than we had hitherto seen it elsewhere. 
 The fields were free from wood and stones, and many of 
 
 * Bucking-ham’s Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 469, 470. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 475, 476. t Ibid., p. 503. t) Ibid., p. 506. 
 
356 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 them were enclosed by light fences of twig work. Some of 
 the barley was nearly ripe for the perennial harvest, and 
 other grounds were tilling by four ploughs in succession, 
 each followed by a sower distributing the grain from a bas¬ 
 ket for the autumnal one. Fine fat cattle were seen in nu¬ 
 merous herds, with some few buffaloes among them, and all 
 wore an appearance of wealth, activity, and abundance. 
 We thought it remarkable, therefore, that in all our way from 
 Hussu hence we had not yet seen a village of any size, hav¬ 
 ing passed only a few hamlets scattered about on the hills, 
 until about three o’clock we passed through one called Yah- 
 moora, where there are extensive ruins.”* 
 
 The mountains of Amanus, which, from the northern por¬ 
 tion of the promised land, are rich in cedars and in pines, 
 &;c., and in many places abound with fruit as well as forest 
 trees—vestiges, among many others, of “ high civilization” 
 in ancient times—show what the farthest borders of the land 
 may yet be, and how Israel may look, in gratitude, if not in 
 pride, from the top of Amana. That mountain chain, linking 
 the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, preserves to its utmost 
 bounds the character of the land, which no hand of man can 
 touch, a land of hills and valleys^ a land of brooks of water, 
 of fountains and depths, that spring out of valleys and hills. 
 On the one extremity of Amanus we have seen the valley 
 of the Orontes, which forms the entrance into Hamath, than 
 which a lovelier might long be sought for in vain ; and on the 
 other, instead of irreclaimable waste-like mountains in more 
 northern regions, the Nezib hills, northwest of Beer, are cel¬ 
 ebrated for their olive groves.f Another illustration of their 
 conjoined richness and beauty may be drawn from another 
 spot, while in the vestiges of what these regions have been 
 may be seen the tokens of what they again shall become. 
 
 “ Nothing can be more beautifully picturesque,” says Mr. 
 Robinson, “ than the banks of the Beilan Sou ; the height 
 here being often abrupt, and well clothed with trees, at pres¬ 
 ent (April 2) in full blossom. Down their sides several 
 tributary rivulets fall into the river, and descend in pretty 
 cascades from rock to rock towards the sea. Here and 
 there are isolated cottages, with patches of cultivated soil 
 attached to them, from which the green corn is now spring¬ 
 ing up.J In travelling through these beautiful regions, one 
 
 * Buckingham, p. 507, 508. t Ainsworth’s Assyria, p. 298 
 
 % Robinson’s Travels in Syria, vol. ii., p. 286. 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 357 
 
 is struck with the magnificence of some of the khans, aque¬ 
 ducts, and other works of public utility, denoting a state of 
 great prosperity and high civilization, which everywhere 
 present themselves ; but, though these monuments at the 
 present day exhibit the marks of a long-standing neglect, 
 no timely repairs are made, and the work of destruction is 
 allowed to continue, as if they belonged to no one, and that 
 the soil was bereft of its rightful owners.”* 
 
 Its rightful owners are the Israelites, and it will not al¬ 
 ways be bereft of them. Israel, the restorer of cities to 
 dwell in, is not yet on his way. The Jews acting around 
 the exchanges of Europe, and trampled on as they have 
 been in ages past, kingdoms are now their creditors. The 
 time in their history seems past, or fast passing away, when 
 no man could lift up his head; and were they now to return, 
 some of them would be taken from among the chief men of 
 the earth. At present, per centage is their attraction among 
 the Gentiles ; and they cling to the stocks like needles to 
 a magnet. But were public credit to be affected, and the 
 magnetic influence to be destroyed, and were a way prepa¬ 
 red for their return to the land of their fathers, those infidel 
 Jews who, in great numbers throughout Germany, now for 
 the first time in their history, deny that their race shall re¬ 
 turn, freed from the bonds that link them to the land of the 
 Gentiles, might find their strongest attraction in the land 
 which they too at last begin to despise ; for, whenever se 
 curity of possession can be attained, where does per cent¬ 
 age rank higher among the exchanges of Europe than in a 
 purchased strip of land at the foot of Amanus ? “ There 
 
 is a strip of land on the banks of the Orontes which is de¬ 
 voted to the cultivation of the culinary vegetables peculiar 
 to Turkey, badinjan (egg-plant), bamijah, and capsicum. 
 Ibrahim Pasha had purchased this for sixty purses, or three 
 hundred pounds, and farmed it out. It probably yielded 
 more than two hundred pounds a year to the proprietor.”! 
 Before turning from the mountains of Israel, which have 
 been a derision, may we not ask. What would not the whole 
 land yield were it to overflow with the multitude of men 
 which shall yet cover it, when the desolate wilderness, in 
 which such gleaning grapes are left, shall become like the 
 garden of Eden 
 
 * Robinson’s Travels in Syria, vol. ii., p. 288. 
 
 t Ainsworth’s Aesj^ia, vol. ii., p. 95, 96, 
 
 I 
 
358 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 For the farther solution of this question, we must look 
 from the mountains to the still richer plains, which lie to the 
 west as to the east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, and in 
 the north of Syria, as in the kingdom of Bash an. 
 
 The land of Israel is a land of hills, and valleys, and 
 plains. Chains of hills and mountains extend from its south¬ 
 ern to its northern extremity, and thus impart a variety of 
 richness and a diversity of climate to the separate portions 
 of each tribe, as they are destined to extend successively 
 from the bounds of the Red Sea to the top of Amana. The 
 mountains of Seir, the' hill-country of Judea, the hills of 
 Ephraim and Samaria, the goodly mountain of Lebanon, and 
 the Neyzery hills from thence to the north of the Orontes, 
 where they border with Amanus, occupy the whole length 
 of the land on the west of the El-Gha and the Orontes, 
 while the line of the hills of Moab, of Gilead, and of Bashan 
 is continued, valleys intervening throughout, by the higher 
 range of Anti-Lebanon, which borders with the land of Ha¬ 
 math. The marvellous manner in which these mountains 
 were made to contribute in rich abundance to the wants and 
 luxury of a dense population, is of itself the strongest of pos¬ 
 itive proofs that no pains were spared in the cultivation of 
 the plains, and the remains of numberless aqueducts and cis¬ 
 terns throughout the land show that it once was as a water¬ 
 ed garden. Continuous mountains, interspersed with nu¬ 
 merous valleys, sheltered and watered plains as continuous 
 and extensive ; and from end to end of the land, these too 
 succeed each other, in a natural richness and fertility so 
 great, that an exuberant produce called for little toil, even 
 as the prodigality of the ground in producing magnificent 
 thistles, and other wild plants and thorns, often exhibits in 
 their profusion a fecundity which renders the desolation as¬ 
 tonishing. 
 
 The plains of Philistia, of Sharon, of Acre, and of Phoe¬ 
 nicia, jointly extend along the coast from the south of Pal¬ 
 estine to the base of Mount Casius. The ridge of Carmel 
 hy the sea divides the plain of Sharon from that of Acre, and 
 from the great plain of Esdraelon ; and where Lebanon 
 touches the coast, it divides for a short space the Phoenician 
 plains. In the interior of the land, the valleys of the Jor¬ 
 dan, the Kasmich, and the Orontes extend from the Dead 
 Sea to Amanus, the rivers of which flow through extensive 
 plains ere they reach the Euphrates. 
 
NI-;W 'i'OHK.HAKl’I'lK .V M lU)'!’111 K S, UU i 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 359 
 
 The natural fertility of these immense plains, which thus 
 overspread the land, is such, that one general description of 
 a good land might suffice for all. Each, compared with what 
 it has been, is as a field that has been reaped ; but a glean¬ 
 ing is left in them all. The harvest is past, but there is the 
 promise of a better. Many pastors have destroyed the vine¬ 
 yard of the Lord, and have trodden his pleasant portioijijm- 
 der foot; but if the hills have profited by the thorns which 
 have come upon them, the wild but still more luxuriant 
 produce which the plains have yielded has also rendered 
 the land moxG fat than it was ; and it has not been pastured, 
 and in a great measure untilled, for ages in vain. The fal¬ 
 low of a single year, or the pasturage of a few, renews the 
 strength of cultivated grounds, and fits them for a repetition 
 of successive crops. But the land of Israel, while trodden 
 down of the Gentiles, has rested for ages, and has refused 
 to own any other people as its heirs or rightful possessors, 
 while those to wffiom the Lord gave it for an heritage have 
 been scattered abroad. The substance is in it, not less, but 
 rather more than ever ; and witnesses remain to show what 
 it yet can yield. Age after age has increased its desolation, 
 but the wild verdure and the withered grass have fallen year 
 by year on its native soil, to enrich it the more: and, as in 
 the mountains, continued preparation has been made for the 
 final completion of the promises of the Lord to Israel, that 
 he will do better unto them than at'their beginnings, when 
 the sons of the aliens shall not only build their walls, but 
 also be their ploughmen and their vine-dressers. For your 
 shame ye shall have double^ and for confusion they shall re¬ 
 joice in their portion ; therefore in their land they shall pos¬ 
 sess the double, everlasting joy shall be upon them.* 
 
 ■ On the southern extremity of the plain of Philistia, the 
 soil is seen to the depth of eight or ten feet, or so far as 
 the winter torrents have anywhere penetrated through the 
 ground and laid it open to view ; yet such is the existing 
 desolation, that in so deep a soil and so delicious a climate, 
 ten or twelve trees—all that the travellers can count stand¬ 
 ing singly and far apart, in a wide-spread plain—or forty or 
 fifty in another part of it, sprinkled somewhat less sparingly 
 in an extensive view, like a solitary palm in the plain of 
 Jericho, are the last sad mourners over the departed glory 
 of Jacob, the fatness of whose flesh has thus been made 
 
 * Isa,, Ixi., 5, 7. 
 
3G0 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA 
 
 lean. Yet, just because they stand so far between in soli¬ 
 tariness now, the bare remnants of fallen orchards or for¬ 
 ests, they may be the first of those trees which, in the ex¬ 
 pressive language of Scripture, shall clap their hands when 
 the joy of the land, shall return, and when instead of the thorn 
 shall come up the fg-tree, and instead of the brier shall come 
 up t^e myrtle-tree; and it shall'he to the Lord for a name 
 and for an everlasting sign that shall not he cut off forever f 
 even as they are now the sufficient witnesses that his judg¬ 
 ments were not altogether exterminating, but that a very 
 small remnant is left, that the land of I&rael should not be 
 like unto Sodom and Gomorrah. The last of their race in 
 ages past may well be the first of another, which shall never 
 thus be reduced again while the ordinances of heaven shall 
 stand, and the promises to the patriarchs be confirmed ; for 
 while the scriptural figure is ever so true to the past, and 
 the gleaning grapes alone are left, it seems as emphatically 
 to forbid that these sole and solitary memorials, now scarcely 
 spared, should also disappear till the land be visited by its 
 own children again, that something in the desolated plain, 
 as in the ruined cities, may be left to the house of Israel. 
 
 But, however few, there are also some groups and groves 
 of figs or olives, and other fruits, which still show that the 
 trees of the land did not always stand alone in the plains 
 any more than in the hills. 
 
 The days come when every Israelite shall call his neigh¬ 
 bour under the vine and under the fg-tree and, as an em¬ 
 blem of that lime, the weary stranger from a far land may 
 sometimes bend his way to a cluster of trees (as at, Deir- 
 Esnaib), and, as the writer may testify, find refreshing 
 shelter under the deep shade of the finest fig-trees he ever 
 saw ; while hundreds of plums and apricots may be brought 
 to him, for which a single piaster {2^d.) is deemed ample 
 payment. The close olive grove, extending for miles, near 
 Gaza, is full of trees, compared to which the olives of 
 Provence are like shrubs. Vines may there be seen en¬ 
 twined around fig-trees ; the luscious pomegranates, in their 
 season, may be seen, as at Nablous, covering the ground. 
 Lofty hedges of the Indian fig and prickly pear, the com¬ 
 mon and impenetrable fence of the remaining gardens of 
 Syria, there line each side of the road, each leaf of which, 
 with its thorny points, might well outweigh the flower-pot 
 
 Isa. Iv., 12, 13. f Zech., iii., 10. 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 361 
 
 plants of the same species in the greenhouses of England; 
 and fallen as Syria is, these hedges are covered vidth fruit. 
 The soil of the gardens of Gaza “ is exceeding rich and 
 productive. The apricots are delicious and abundant. The 
 fertile soil produces in abundance grains and fruits of every 
 kind, and of the finest quality.”* 
 
 Figs, pomegranates, watermelons, renowned for their ex¬ 
 cellence, grow luxuriantly and abundantly in the gardens of 
 Jaffa, the ancient Joppa, which opens out into the plain of 
 Sharon, apparently “ extremely fertile, but only partially 
 cultivated, and still less inhabited.”! “ All this country,” 
 says Pococke, “ is a very rich soil, and throws up a great 
 quantity of herbage, very rank thistles, rue, and fennel, and 
 a great variety of anemones, and many beautiful tulips.”| 
 The plain of Sharon, extending to the hills of Judea on the 
 east, and Carmel on the north, has lost all richness and 
 beauty but what the earth itself retains, and the wildness 
 of nature supplies. But while the vast herbage enriches 
 the soil, the traveller, whose face is not lighted up by the 
 hope of better days to come, is “ oppressed with a species 
 of melancholy which he is at a loss to account for, seeing 
 no cause for the existence of such a state of things but the 
 curse which has come upon the land.” Bashan and Car¬ 
 mel shake off their fruits, and Sharon is like a wilderness.^ 
 But, as the same prophet looking to Israel’s return, has 
 said. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad 
 for them ; the glory of Lebanon shall return unto it ; the ex¬ 
 cellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of 
 the Lord, and the excellency of our God.|| Sharon shall 
 be a fold for flocks, and the valley of Achor a place for the 
 herds to lie down, for the people that have sought me.®f[ 
 The large and fertile of Acre, as seen and described 
 by Pocock^e, was exceedingly rich, and, towards the east, 
 well cultivated with cotton and corn. Its soil resembles 
 the dark loam of Egypt, and is now chiefly covered with 
 large thistles.** “ The fine plain of Zabulon, extending to 
 die plain of Esdraelon, was, a century ago, a fruitful spot, 
 ill covered with corn.”tt A few years later, Hasselquist, 
 Fe pupil of Linnaeus, and to whom his letters were ad¬ 
 dressed, journeying from Acre to Nazareth, first passed 
 
 Robin.'!on and Smith’s Tiav., vo' ii., p. 376, S?7 
 ^ Mr. Robinson \ Tra\ vol. i., p. 25. t Poccx Xe’s Travels, p. 5. 
 
 Isa,, K'jciii., II Ibid , s xxv., ?. 2. -f Ibit’ . ixv., 10. 
 
 ' 'oix,) iM'. b. eking) p 62 t Ib d. D. fll. 
 
 "I nr T 
 
 h H 
 
362 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 through corn-fields which surrounded the remains of an 
 ancient town, and afterward came to a field about three 
 miles wide, which bore every year a quantity of good cot¬ 
 ton. From thence he passed through small hills, or rising 
 grounds covered with plants, and having fine valleys be¬ 
 tween them, and afterward the country around consisted of 
 the finest groves of the eastern oak (Quercus conifera). 
 He then entered on the fine plain of Zabulon, covered with 
 cotton, at the end of which was a fine grove of oaks, inter¬ 
 spersed with beech. He traversed a land then more beau¬ 
 teous and better cultivated than it is now, and which re¬ 
 tained some evidence, which it has since lost, that it was 
 once a land flowing with milk and honey. He saw nu¬ 
 merous beehives at the village of Sephoury, and, ascending 
 Tabor, was refreshed by the milk of its fine herds of cattle. 
 A fine country, covered with forests, lay between Nazareth 
 and Tabor. The extensive plain of Esdraelon, only par¬ 
 tially cultivated, was then an occasional scene of Arab war¬ 
 fare. Treading the vineyard of the Lord under foot, the 
 oxen and cows of Galilee constituted “ a remarkable part of 
 the riches of the country.”* It is now almost entirely de¬ 
 serted, except by the wandering Arabs. 
 
 Mount Tabor, rising from the plain of Esdraelon, of Jez- 
 reel, or Megidda, is on one side covered with oaks and other 
 trees, and bare on the other (see Plate). The view of it 
 may convey some idea of the desolation that has overspread 
 the land. At its base lies one of the most fertile plains on 
 earth, the wild and luxuriant herbage of which has added 
 for ages to the fatness of the soil. Studded, as it was in 
 ancient times, with cities and large villages, many pastors, 
 with their flocks of cattle, camels, sheep, and goats, have 
 long trodden it under foot. Not a town or village is visible 
 to the naked eye from the top of Tabor, and very few with 
 the aid of the glass. The Bedouin tribes are to this day 
 seen living there under tents surrounded by their flocks, for 
 the sake of the rich pasture it affords.f In many places it 
 is closely covered with briers and thorns, in others “ beauti¬ 
 fully variegated with immense fields of thistles and wild 
 flowers, giving the whole plain the appearance of a carpet- 
 ed floor.”J It is resting for a richer produce than it has 
 ever yielded; but it shall also be the scene of heavier judg- 
 
 * Hasselquist, p. 153, 154 t Mr. Robinson’s Trav., vol. i., p. 214, 215. 
 
 t Narrative, p, 402. 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 
 
 363 
 
 merits than it has ever witnessed, ere the land be redeemed 
 from its curse. In the first ages of Jewish history, as well 
 as during the Roman Empire and the Crusades, and even 
 in later times, it has been the scene of many a memorable 
 contest, and perhaps no soil has ever been so saturated with 
 human gore.”* But great shall be the day of Jezreel \— 
 greater far than it has ever seen. Never yet has any land 
 been so saturated with human gore that the blood came up 
 to the horses’ bridlesf 
 
 “ The vast plain of Jericho is rich, and susceptible of easy 
 tillage, an abundant irrigation, and a climate to produce any¬ 
 thing ; yet it lies almost a desert, and it needs only the hand 
 of cultivation to become one of the richest and most beauti¬ 
 ful spots on the face of the earth. The valley of Jordan (of 
 which it forms part) is for the most part susceptible of being 
 rendered in the highest degree productive, in connexion with 
 the abundance of water and heat of the climate. Indeed, its 
 fertility has been celebrated in every age,”*^ and, on the op¬ 
 posite extremity of the Lake of Tiberias, the fertile valley 
 extends to the sources of the Jordan. “ As we descended 
 towards Paneas,” says Captains Irby and Mangles, “ we 
 found the country extremely beautiful; great quantities of 
 wild flowers, and a variety of shrubs just budding, together 
 with the richness of the verdure of the grass, corn, and beans, 
 showed us at once the beauties of spring (Feb. 24). The 
 neighbourhood of Paneas is extremely beautiful, richly wood¬ 
 ed, and abounds with game. In ascending from Lake Ho- 
 reb (Miram) to Saphed, the plain we had quitted was liter¬ 
 ally covered with wild geese, ducks, widgeon, snipe, and 
 water-fowl of every description.”|| A fine plain watered 
 with numerous tributary streams, westward of Paneas, and 
 many old, ruined mills, testify to the ancient fruitfulness and 
 comparative desolation of a region where Crusaders carried 
 off a spoil unheard of in European territories. The greater 
 part of the plain is uncultivated, but luxuriant wild oats cov¬ 
 er many fields, which men have ceased to cultivate. 
 
 Beyond the ancient frontier of Israel, the land yet to be 
 possessed is not less fertile, whether in the plains or mount¬ 
 ains, than that which the Israelites occupied of old. 
 
 The space between Sidon and the mountains of Lebanon, 
 
 * Mr. Robinson’s Trav., vol. i., p. 214. , t Hosea, i., 11. 
 
 I Rev., xiv., 20. ^ Robinson and S'nith, vol. ii., p. 279-286, 289. 
 
 II Irby and Mangles, p. 286-291 . 
 
364 
 
 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, 
 
 as described by Pococke, was wnolly laid out in gardens or 
 orchards, which appeared very beautiful at a distance. “I 
 was one day,” he says, “entertained by the French mer¬ 
 chants with a collation in a garden under the shade of apri¬ 
 cot-trees ; and the fruit of them was shaken on us, as an in¬ 
 stance of their great plenty and abundance. Richly-culti¬ 
 vated gardens, with tall, verdant trees, still cover the plain.”* 
 
 The great plain of Phoenicia, between both the Lebanon 
 and Anzeyry Mountains and the sea, is naturally very fer¬ 
 tile, and “ no place could be better watered than it is by the 
 numerous streams or rivers which traverse it; but it is now 
 nearly deserted, and only partially cultivated, the cultivators 
 being chiefly the Anzeyrys who inhabit the mountains.”! 
 
 On the opposite side of the mountains, the valleys of Be- 
 kaa and the Orontes present throughout a vast expanse of 
 successive plains, extending for more than two hundred 
 miles, scarcely less desolate, or less tempting to the culti¬ 
 vator, than the plains of the Belkah or the Haouran. 
 
 “ The plain between Deir-el-Ahmer and Baalbec is fer¬ 
 tile to a degree, but apparently uncultivated. There are no 
 villages within sight of the road.”J Not a sixth part of the 
 'plain of Bekaa is cultivated between Zahl and Baalbec.§ 
 The district, like that of Bekaa, is fertile, but uncultivated. 
 The vast plain of Homs (Emesa) is beautiful, and of almost 
 unequalled fertility. The plain of Hamah exceeds even 
 that of Floms in the fertility of its soil, but is still less culti¬ 
 vated than that of the Bekaa. “ The lower tract, called 
 El-Huleh, is not less remarkable for its fertility. But these 
 plains, though so fertile by nature, are, like most of the plains 
 of Syria, less cultivated than the mountains. The district 
 of Selomya, lying east of the Asy (Orontes), was described 
 as exceeding even the neighbourhood of Homs and Hamah 
 in the fertility of its soil. It was (in 1834) entirely desert¬ 
 ed. |1 These plains retain all their natural fertility, as when 
 Seleucus Nicator and his successors maintained, in the vi¬ 
 cinity of Apamea, five thousand elephants, three thousand 
 breeding mares, and a great part of his army.*!! The plain 
 of Alaks, supposed to be that in which Aurelian conquered 
 Zenobia, and in which the traveller now counts many sites 
 of ruins, consists of a fine loamy soil, now left desolate and 
 
 * Pococke, p. 86. Narrative, p. 349. 
 
 t Van Egmont and Ileyman, p. 307, 308. Mr. Robinson, p. 67, 71. Irby and Man¬ 
 gles, &c. t Mr. Robinson, vol. ii., p. 92. ^ Burckhardt, p. 8. 
 
 I! Robinson and Smith, vol. iii., App., p. 174, 176, 178. Strabo, p 1068. 
 
AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA. 365 
 
 uninhabited.* plains of Kiftein, southwest of Aleppo, 
 
 are of vast compass, extending to the southward beyond the 
 reach of the eye, and are in most places very fruitful. Near 
 Kiftein are more dovecots than houses.f The great plain 
 of Uruk contains the Lake of Antioch in its centre. The 
 plain of Daena, which is very level, is badly supplied with 
 water; but it once has been, and still is, remarkable for its 
 fertility. It extends to the foot of Mount St. Simon on the 
 one side, and on the south beyond the visible horizon.J The 
 gardens of Aleppo have lost for a time their high renown, 
 but the slopes of the hills which border both sides of the 
 river are laid out into vineyards, olive plantations, and fig- 
 gardens.*^ There, as throughout most places in Syria, the 
 abundance of game is astonishing. Every day, say Irby 
 and Mangles, we had either woodcocks or partridges, wild 
 geese or ducks, teal, the bustard, or wild turkey,1| &c. 
 
 These extracts, brief and incomplete as they are, may, 
 from the ample evidence which they impart, leave some im¬ 
 pression on the reader’s mind of the vast extent, reaching 
 from end to end, of the land, and of the astonishing fertility, 
 and no less astonishing desolation of the plains which per¬ 
 tain to the covenanted inheritance of Israel. 
 
 Colonel Chesney’s work on the Euphrates Expedition, 
 now in the press, with many of the proof-sheets of which he 
 kindly furnished the writer of these pages, will throw a new 
 light on these regions, long mostly unknown to the world, 
 of which they held as long the chief dominion. As the first 
 spot on which the Euphrates Expedition landed has been 
 thereby exalted into an illustration of the facility with which 
 a once noble city of Syria could be restored, so also the spot 
 at which they rested may illustrate how the promised land, 
 embracing all the regions to the west of the Euphrates, has 
 still a sign to show in its utmost bounds, on the south as 
 well as on the north, what it yet shall be, when desolated 
 wastes shall become like watered gardens. 
 
 “ The country (on the liOwer Euphrates) produces great 
 quantities of barley and wheat, in their wild as well as cul¬ 
 tivated state. Onions, spinach, and beans are the usual 
 vegetables, and these are largely cultivated along the sides 
 of the rivers, where, just after the water recedes, the prog¬ 
 ress of vegetation is surprising. Some idea may be form- 
 
 * Irby and Mangles, p. 231. t Maundrell, p. 8. 
 
 i Ainsworth’s Assyria, p. 96, 98. ^ Mr. Robinson, vol. ii., p. 264, 
 
 II Irby and Mangles, p. 233. 
 
 H H 2 
 
366 NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, ETC. 
 
 ed of the productive qualities of the soil, from the fact of 
 eight crops of clover having been cut in the neighbourhood 
 of Basrah during the year.”* 
 
 The desolation and depopulation of the land, given up, as 
 in a great measure it is, to the beasts of the field and to the 
 fowds of the air, may have multiplied game, while the fish of 
 the rivers, however abundant, suffer little diminution from 
 the hand of man. “ Hares, black and stone-coloured par¬ 
 tridges, francolins, bramin, and common wild geese, ducks, 
 teal, pelicans, cranes, &;c., are abundant. The rivers are 
 full of fish, chiefly barbed, and carp, which latter grows to 
 an enormous size in the Euphrates.”! Upper Mesopotamia, 
 like the district south of the Khabur, abounds with the ordi¬ 
 nary kinds of grain, and the fruits of a warmer temperature, 
 such as oranges, grapes, and pomegranates (which are par¬ 
 ticularly fine) ; walnuts, pistachios, and other products of a 
 colder region, are equally good. Of game, the country about 
 Port William (Ulan Beer) has at one season the aigrette, the 
 parrot, stork, flamingo, bustard, and the Tardus Seleucus, 
 which are succeeded by wild geese, ducks, teal, swans, 
 snipes, tern,”J &c. The Euphrates turtle (Trionyx Euphra 
 tica), as Mr. Ainsworth states, abounds in large muddy pools. 
 The dates of the Lower Euphrates excel those of Tafitah, 
 and are decidedly finer than any produced along the Nile. 
 This region is well adapted for the growth of cotton, sugar, 
 indigo, and many of the fruits of a warm climate. About the 
 Khabur the date-tree (palm) almost ceases to bear ; but or¬ 
 anges, grapes, pears, apples, and other fruits and grain, ar¬ 
 rive at perfection.§ 
 
 “ The soil of Mesopotamia (on the eastern side of the Eu¬ 
 phrates) is generally a sandy clay, the surface of which, in 
 the absence of water, is a positive desert; but wherever it is 
 watered by the numerous inlets and* irrigating canals branch¬ 
 ing from the different rivers, it is rich and productive in the 
 extreme.” The renewal of irrigation would revive anew 
 both sides of the same river, as it flows through a plain. 
 But though first Israel, and then Judah, were carried captive 
 beyond the river, Mesopotamia itself, extending upward of 
 seven hundred miles in length, and one hundred and seventy 
 miles at its greatest breadth, is but a part of Assyria, all of 
 which must finally own the sovereignty of Israel. 
 
 * Chap, vi., p. 108. t Ibid. t Ibid. Ibid., p. 106. 
 

I 
 
 J 
 
OONCLUglON. 
 
 367 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 From tlie previous details, a few concluding words may 
 suffice for a succinct delineation of Syria, or the promised 
 land of Israel, which may but be given in the words of Vol- 
 ney. “ It was reserved for him,” says Malte Brun, one of 
 the first authorities in geography, “ to present the world with 
 a complete picture of Syria.” So complete was that picture 
 —inferior, in the variety of its discriminating features, to 
 none but that which was drawn by the prophets of old— 
 that, as we have elsewhere shown, he has supplied many 
 most precise and literal illustrations of the prophecies which 
 have gone forth against it. But in his day the land had not 
 fully reached its last prophetic degree of desolation and depop¬ 
 ulation. The population, rated by Volney at two millions and 
 a half, is now estimated at half that amount. 
 
 The soil in the plain of Syria “ is rich and loamy, and in¬ 
 dicates the greatest fecundity. In the territory of Aleppo it 
 resembles very fine brick-dust. Almost everywhere else the 
 earth is brown, and as fine as garden mould.”* 
 
 The difference of latitude between the different extremi¬ 
 ties of Syria—equal to that from Cornwall to Caithness— 
 gives rise of itself to variety of temperature ; but other nat¬ 
 ural causes far more powerfully tend, even in continuous lo¬ 
 calities, to diversify the climate in a very remarkable, if not 
 unparalleled degree. The palms in the deep valley of the 
 Jordan flourished in the greatest luxuriance in a tropical cli¬ 
 mate, while the magnificent cedars of Lebanon show how 
 goodly is the produce of the land in its highest elevations, 
 and in the vicinity of eternal snow. 
 
 Along the coast of Syria, and at Tripoli in particular, ac¬ 
 cording to Volney, “ the lowest to which the thermometer 
 falls in winter is eight or nine degrees above the freezing 
 point (40° or 41° of Fahrenheit). In winter, therefore, all 
 the chain of mountains is covered with snow, while the low¬ 
 er country is always freed from it, or, at least, it lies a very 
 short time. In the lower plains, the winter is so mild along 
 the seacoast that the orange, palm, banana, and other deli- 
 
 * Voliiey’s Travels, chap, xxi., ^ 6. 
 
368 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 
 cate trees flourish in the open air. In Syria diflerent cli¬ 
 mates are thus united under the same sky ; and in a narrow 
 compass, pleasures and productions, which Nature has else¬ 
 where dispersed at great distances, are collected. With us, 
 for instance, seasons are divided by months, there by hours. 
 If in Saide or Tripoli we feel the heat of summer trouble¬ 
 some, in six hours,we are in the neighbouring motSntains, in 
 the temperature of March (in France); or, again, if chilled 
 in the frosts of December at Beshirri, a day’s journey brings 
 us to the coast, amid the flowers of May. The Arabian po¬ 
 ets have therefore said that the Sannim (Lebanon) bears 
 winter on his head, spring upon his shoulders, and autumn 
 in his bosom, while summer lies sleeping at his feet. “ I 
 have myself,” says Volney, “ experienced this figurative ob¬ 
 servation during the eight months I resided at the monastery 
 of Marhanna, seven leagues from Beyrout. At the end of 
 February, at Tripoli, a variety of vegetables were in perfec¬ 
 tion, and many flowers in full bloom. The early figs were 
 past at Beyrout when they were first gathered with us.” 
 
 To this advantage, which perpetuates enjoyments by their 
 succession, Syria adds a second, that of multiplying them 
 by the variety of its productions. Were nature aided by art, 
 those of the most distant countries might be produced with- 
 'in twenty leagues. At present, notwithstanding the barba¬ 
 rism of a government which is inimical to all industry and 
 improvement, we are astonished at the variety. Besides 
 wheat, barley, rye, beans, and the cotton plant, which is 
 (was) everywhere cultivated, we find many useful and agree¬ 
 able productions, appropriated to different situations. In 
 Palestine sesamum abounds, from which they procure oil, 
 and dourra (a kind of pulse) as good as that of Egypt. 
 Maize thrives in the light soil of Baalbec ; and even rice is 
 cultivated with success on the borders of the marshy coun¬ 
 tries of Havula. They have lately begun to cultivate sugar- 
 canes in the gardens of Saide and of Beyrout, equal to those 
 of the Delta. Indigo grows without cultivation on the banks 
 of the Jordan, in the country of Bisan, and needs but care 
 to improve the quality. Tobacco is now cultivated through¬ 
 out all the mountains. As for trees, the olive of Provence 
 grows at Antioch, and at Ramlah to the height of the beech. 
 In the white mulberry-tree consists the wealth of the whole 
 country of the Druses, by the beautiful silk which it produ¬ 
 ces ; while the vine, supported by poles, or winding about 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 369 
 
 the oaks, supplies grapes, which afford red and white wines 
 equal to those of JBourdeaux. The watermelons of Jaffa 
 are preferred before the very fine watermelons of Broulas. 
 Gaza produces dates like Mecca, and pomegranates like 
 Algiers. Tripoli affords oranges like Malta. Beyrout, figs 
 like Marseilles, and bananas like St. Domingo. Aleppo 
 has the (not) exclusive advantage of producing pistachios ; 
 and Damascus justly boasts of possessing all the fruits known 
 in the provinces : its stony soil suits equally the apples of 
 Normandy, the plums of Touraine, and the peaches of Paris. 
 Twenty sorts of apricots are enumerated there, the stone of 
 one of which contains a kernel highly valued throughout 
 Turkey. The cochineal plant, which grows on all that 
 coast, contains, perhaps, that precious insect in as high per¬ 
 fection as it is found in Mexico and St. Domingo ; and if 
 we consider that the mountains of Yemen, which produce 
 such excellent coffee, are only a continuation of those of 
 Syria, and that their soil and climate are almost the same, 
 we shall be induced to believe that in Judea particularly 
 might be easily cultivated this valuable production of Arabia. 
 
 “ With these advantages of climate and soil, it is not sur¬ 
 prising that Syria should always have been reckoned a most 
 delicious country, and that the Greeks and Romans esteem¬ 
 ed it among the most beautiful of their provinces, and equal 
 even t-o Egypt.”* 
 
 Such is the description of the climate and soil of Syria by 
 the man who sought to adduce a conclusive proof against 
 revelation from the desolation of the land and the ruins of 
 its cities which prophets had foretold ; and such, as an eye¬ 
 witness, is the refutation which he gives to the hlasphemies 
 against the land of Israel, uttered by those who in other 
 things were his fellow-scoffers. Elsewhere he writes as 
 if in purpose to prove the inspiration which he denied ; 
 and infidel as he was, he here refutes the calumnies of oth¬ 
 ers, as if his design had been to bear testimony to the scrip¬ 
 tural record descriptive of the fertility and excellence of the 
 land, were nature again seconded by art, as it was in an¬ 
 cient times. Where is there another country in which such 
 varied excellences are naturally combined, or of which such 
 a description would be a picture, especially even in a land 
 so desolate as Syria was when seen by Volney ? And how 
 appositely does his delineation of its capabilities combine 
 
 ♦ Volney’s Trav., vol. i., p. 316-321, English translation. 
 
370 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 with the scriptural narrative of what the promised heritage 
 was when first peopled by those to whom the Lord gave it, 
 and as it shall become when given to them again, notin tem¬ 
 porary, but everlasting possession: a good land, a land of 
 brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of val¬ 
 leys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines and 
 fig-trees, and pomegranates and olives; a land wherein they 
 would eat bread without scarceness, and lack not anything in 
 it; a land of bread and vineyards ; a land of olive-oil and of 
 honey; a land which the Lord espied for them,fiowing with 
 milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands* Yet the 
 past is but an earnest of the future. Behold, the days come 
 that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader 
 of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop 
 sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring 
 again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build 
 the waste cities, and inhabit them ; and they shall plant vine¬ 
 yards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gar¬ 
 dens, and eat the fruit thereof. And I will plant them upon 
 their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of the land 
 which I have given them, saith the Lord God.\ And it shall 
 come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down 
 new wine, the little hills shallfiow with milk, and all the riv¬ 
 ers of Judah shall flow with waters. And Judah shall 
 dwell forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. 
 For I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed; for 
 the Lord dwelleth in Zion.X The Lord shall comfort Zion; 
 He will comfort all her waste places, .and he will make her 
 wilderness as Eden, and her desert like the garden of the 
 Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiv¬ 
 ing, and the voice of melody.§ Ye shall go forth with joy, 
 and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills 
 shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of 
 the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall 
 come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up 
 the myrtle-tree ; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for 
 an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.'^ The desolate 
 land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the .sight of all 
 that passed by. And they shall say, this land which was des¬ 
 olate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, and 
 desolate, and ruined cities are become fenced and are inhab- 
 
 * Deut., viii., 7-9 ; xi., 11, 12. Ezek., xx., 6. t Amos, ix., 13-15. 
 
 t Joel, iii., 18, 20, 21. ^ Isa., ii., 3. || Ibid., Iv., 12, 13. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 371 
 
 ited. Then the heathen that are round about you shall 
 know that I the Lord build' the ruined places, and plant that 
 that was desolate^ SfC* And it shall come to pass in that 
 day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and 
 they shall hear the earth ; and the earth shall hear the corn, 
 and the wine^ and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel,\ And 
 when the great day of Jezreel shall be past, They shall sit 
 every one under his vine and under his jig-tree^ and hone shall 
 make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken 
 
 The abortive attempt to rebuild Askelon was akin to the 
 attempt to restore or extend the cultivation of that land. In 
 the report of the commercial statistics of Syria by Dr. Bow¬ 
 ring, it is stated, that in the preceding year, 1837, “ Ibrahim 
 Pasha forced an increased cultivation throughout Syria, and 
 the inhabitants of the different towns were obliged to take 
 upon themselves the agricultural charge of every spot of land 
 susceptible of improvement. He himself set the example, 
 and embarked a large sum in such enterprises. The officers 
 of the army, down to the majors, were forced also to adven¬ 
 ture in similar undertakings. The result was, however, ex¬ 
 tremely unfortunate, from the want of the usual periodical 
 rains, which caused the failing of the crops generally in 
 Syria, and in most cases a total loss of capital ensued. Mr. 
 Wherry says, a considerable extension of the plantation of 
 the mulberry, and olive-tree, and vines took place at Tripoli, 
 Latakia, and to the south,”^ &;c. 
 
 As long as the Hebrews are in the land of their enemies, 
 so long the land lieth desolate. I will make your heaven as 
 iron and your earth as brass, and your strength shall be spent 
 in vain, and your land shall not yield her increase, ^c. They 
 have sown wheat, but shall reap thorns: they have put them¬ 
 selves to pain, but shall not yrofit; and they shall be ashamed 
 of your revenues because of the fierce anger of the Lord.\ 
 
 “ The agricultural produce of Syria,” as the same report 
 bears, “ is far less than might be expected from the exten¬ 
 sive tracts of fertile lands, and the favourable character of 
 the climate. In the districts where hands are found to cul¬ 
 tivate the fields, production is large, and the return for cap¬ 
 ital is considerable; but the want of population for the pur¬ 
 poses of cultivation is most deplorable. Regions of the higk^ 
 
 * Ezek., xxxvi., 34. t Hosea, xi., 21, 22. i Micah, iv-, 4. 
 
 ^ Report on Syria, p. 9, 10 II Lev., xxvi., 19, 20. Jer., xii., 13, 
 
372 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 est fertility remain fallow, and the traveller passes over con¬ 
 tinuous leagues of the richest soil which is wholly unproduc¬ 
 tive to man. Nay, towns surrounded by lands capable of the 
 most successful cultivation are often compelled to import 
 corn for the daily consumption, as is the case at Antioch, in 
 whose immediate neio-hbourhood the fine lands on the bor- 
 
 O 
 
 ders of the Orontes might furnish food for hundreds of thou¬ 
 sands of inhabitants.”* / ivill bring your land into desola¬ 
 tion ; and your enemies which dwell therein shall -be astonish¬ 
 ed at it. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as 
 it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies’ land; even then 
 shall the land rest and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it li¬ 
 eth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sab¬ 
 baths while ye dwelt upon it. The land shall be left of them, 
 and shall enjoy her sabbaths while she lieth desolate without 
 them.j 
 
 The astonishment is, not that a land now desolate should 
 once have teemed with population and produce, but that, rich 
 as it is, and able as ever to sustain many myriads through¬ 
 out all its borders, regions of the highest fertility should re¬ 
 main fallow; that continuous leagues of the richest soil 
 should be wholly unproductive to man; that corn should be 
 imported for ih.Q feiu men that are left, while surrounded by 
 the richest land capable of furnishing food for hundreds of 
 thousands of inhabitants. Well may a stranger from a far 
 land, and the enemies that dwell within it, be astonished at 
 it; even at the desolation of so fertile a country in so fine a 
 clime. But in vain do they try to redeem it from the curse, 
 or to rebuild the desolate cities, or to renew the face of the 
 land, till the time come when it shall smile again on the re¬ 
 turn of its children. 
 
 For this, the briers, and thorns, and thistles, from which 
 nothing could be carried away, and which, even when burn¬ 
 ed, yield ashes to fertilize the soil, have come upon the land ; 
 for this, the terraces have sustained the soil, and the rains 
 that have fallen from year to year, and that made the thorny 
 plants or wild herbage to shoot forth anew, instead of wash¬ 
 ing the soil away, were filtered as they passed down the 
 sides of the terraced hills, and every particle of soil retain¬ 
 ed, that the mountains of Israel might finally shoot forth 
 their branches, and rejoice on every side. For this end the 
 land has enjoyed its sabbaths ; not tilled by aliens, as it was 
 
 * Report on Syria, p. 9. t Lev,, xxvi., 32, 34, 35, 43. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 373 
 
 by Israelites of old, but resting still, as if awaiting their re¬ 
 turn : and though they suffered not the land to keep its sab¬ 
 baths, nor themselves kept the Sabbath of the Lord, yet has 
 the land enjoyed her sabbaths, or “ remains fallow” after many 
 generations, that when God shall make fat the bones of Ja¬ 
 cob, the glory of whose flesh he has made lean, and the land 
 be like a watered garden, the promise shall be fulfilled to 
 a covenant-keeping people, whom the Lord will guide con¬ 
 tinually : If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from 
 doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a 
 delight, the Holy of the Lord honourable ; and shalt honour 
 him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleas¬ 
 ure, nor speaking thine own words, then shalt thou delight 
 thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the 
 high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of 
 Israel thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.* 
 For the restoration of Israel other means may be prepa¬ 
 ring. All eyes of late years have been turned to Syria, and 
 commercial statistics are not unassociated with political 
 speculations. “ Since the twenty-five years’ war between 
 Britain and France, commerce to these countries has not 
 only assumed a new phase, but has acquired fresh vigour, 
 and the political and commercial relations of these countries 
 seem equally alienated from the sultan’s power, government, 
 and authority. New channels, furnishing immense supplies 
 of merchandise, have been opened : Trebizond and Erzerouin 
 supply the southern Persian provinces, and, in part, north¬ 
 ern Mesopotamia ; the Persian Gulf supplies the southern 
 Persian provinces, and, in part, Babylonia; while Syria, by 
 way of Damascus, supplies Babylonia for the same object, 
 and Aleppo northern Mesopotamia and Babylonia, thereby 
 completing the two former lines. Such are the channels 
 through which British capital flows, diffusing commerce and 
 affluence by the introduction of our manufactures and the ex¬ 
 tension of trade generally, and for whose promotion, in which 
 the great political magnitude of our East India colonies 
 form so important a connecting link, the sway of great Brit¬ 
 ain seems called on to maintain the chief direction of the 
 destinies of Eastern politics, to form, it may be hoped, a 
 counterpoise to the gigantic schemes of Russia; but for the 
 furtherance of such great national objects, Syria, both polit¬ 
 ically and geographically considered, should be made the 
 
 Isaiah, Iviii., 11-14. 
 
 I I 
 
I 
 
 374 
 
 CONCLUSION, 
 
 'point d'appui; its geographical position at this end of the 
 Mediterranean, of such easy access from Great Britain, 
 would seem to demand the chief attention of the British cab¬ 
 inet, to blend with its advantageous position every internal 
 facility and communication by which the commerce of Syria 
 can be made to increase, and politically to place it under a 
 good and permanent government.”* 
 
 Such is the close of a communication imbodying the opin¬ 
 ions of “ a gentleman long resident in Syria, and intimately 
 acquainted with Oriental politics,” w|;iich. Dr. Bowring states, 
 are undoubtedly entitled to greater weight than any obser¬ 
 vations of his own, and he has therefore given them a prom¬ 
 inent place in his report. 
 
 In it he states that, “ notwithstanding all Impediments and 
 difficulties, wherever repose and peace have allowed the ca¬ 
 pabilities of Syria to develop themselves, production and 
 commerce have taken rapid strides. Both for agriculture 
 and manufactures Syria has great capabilities. Were fiscal 
 exactions checked and regulated; could labour pursue its 
 peaceful vocations ; were the aptitudes which the country 
 and its inhabitants present for the development of industry 
 called into play, the whole face of the land would soon be 
 changed. The presence and influence of European, and es¬ 
 pecially of British merchants, cannot but produce habits of 
 greater punctuality and probity. They will also call forth 
 the undeveloped and productive energies of the country, 
 whenever peace and security shall succeed to frequent wars 
 and long-during armed truces, which have brought with 
 them perpetual disquiet and uncertainty, the frequent inter¬ 
 ruptions of trade and communication, of manufacturing and 
 agricultural industry, the consequence of the constant drain¬ 
 ings of the people, and the exhaustion of the wealth of the 
 land. The conquests of Ibrahim promised tranquillity and 
 improvement, but the insurrections and disturbances of the 
 last two years have again checked the progress of prosperity.” 
 
 Since that time Syria has again changed its master. But 
 a few years ago Ibrahim was looked on as a deliverer : but 
 he ruled Syria with an iron rod, and carried on an exter¬ 
 minating war in the Haouran. Revolt followed on revolt, 
 till the oppressed and miserable inhabitants were disarmed : 
 when, by European interference, they were armed anew, 
 and from the banks of the Euphrates to the borders of 
 
 * Report ou Syria, p. 49. 
 
 i 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 375 
 
 Egypt the Egyptian army was removed far away, Syria 
 was delivered over to the Turks, who were before unable 
 to retain it, anarchy worse than despotism ensued, and not 
 less, but rather more than ever, a land which has found no 
 rest for ages, cries out, in all but utter hopelessness at last, 
 for a good and permanent government, under which, on po¬ 
 litical and commercial views, and in the progress of events, 
 now of an unprecedented nature, it is said to be the duty 
 and the wisdom of the British cabinet to place it. 
 
 Worldly politicians feel the necessity of an altered course 
 of things in Syria ; and four great 'powers of Europe, after 
 France had broken off from the alliance, took in hand the 
 settlement of its affairs, and transferred it from the firm 
 hands of the Pasha of Egypt to the feeble hands of the sul¬ 
 tan. Other powers than Britain are now concerned in the 
 settlement of Syria, indispensable, as it now seems, to the 
 peace of the world. A country which for previous centu¬ 
 ries no man inquired after, excites anew the liveliest inter¬ 
 est among the greatest of earthly potentates. After a 
 twenty-five years’ war between England and France, the 
 sovereigns of both these kingdoms, when sixteen more had 
 elapsed, simultaneously congratulated the Parliament of the 
 one and the Chambers of the other, in similar terms, on the 
 prospect of continued peace, because, as they imagined, the 
 Eastern question had been settled. On the 27th December, 
 1841, the speech of the King of France thus began : “ Since 
 the close of your last session, the questions which excited 
 in the East our just solicitude, have reached their term. I 
 have concluded with the Emperor of Austria, the Queen of 
 Great Britain, the King of Prussia, and the sultan, a con¬ 
 nexion which consecrates the common intention of the pow¬ 
 ers to maintain the peace of Europe, and consolidate the 
 repose of the Ottoman Empire.” 
 
 But the question of the settlement, or appropriation of 
 Syria, has not reached its term, and the repose of the Otto¬ 
 man Empire, then essentially associated with the peace of 
 Europe, is not yet consolidated. The breaking up of that 
 empire is the scriptural prognostic of another confederacy 
 and of a universal war, and hence the peace of Europe or 
 of the world seems dependant on its repose. Its fall—or 
 the drying up of the Euphrates, not unequivocally illustrated 
 by “the constant drainings of the people”—prepares the 
 way of the kings of the East. The great powers, ruled and 
 
376 
 
 OONCLUSION. 
 
 controlled by a power greater than they, and higher than 
 the highest, may, when the counsels of the Eternal shall be 
 evolved by their acts, in accordance with his Word, have 
 another work to do than that of either keeping Mohammed 
 Ali in his place, or the sultan on his throne. And as other 
 things seem ready for the national restoration of the Jews, 
 who can say that history may not in a little time, in the 
 discharge of the task assigned it, supply an illustration of 
 the Word of the Lord, and show how a nation, when brought 
 to the birth, may he horn in a day. Greece was given to 
 the Greeks ; and in seeking any government for Syria, may 
 not a confederacy of kings, for the sake of the peace of the 
 world, be shut up to the course of giving—if they think it 
 theirs to give—Judea to the Jews ? Connexions may be 
 concluded between earthly sovereigns, and the end may be, 
 as it has often been, to show that they are but of little 
 worth. And resolve the question as for the time they may, 
 yet, so soon as the Ruler of the nations suffers or sets them 
 to intermeddle with the Syrian question, that shall not reach 
 its term, or the issue assigned it from the beginning by the 
 Lord, till a covenant different from all earthly connexions, 
 even that which the Lord made with Abraham, and Isaac, 
 and Jacob, to give that land to their seed for an everlasting 
 possession, shall be realized. After the desolating qui¬ 
 escence of ages, revolution has succeeded to revolution in 
 the land, still ripening for more, as if its present history 
 were read in the words of the prophet, applicable to the 
 last days of its trouble, before the time of its peace, Over¬ 
 turn, overturn, overturn, till He come whose it is, and I will 
 give it him. While the sovereigns of this world speak of 
 connexions concluded and peace consolidated, the councils 
 of the Eternal interpose, and the King of Kings says. Over¬ 
 turn, overturn. When the question shall reach its final term, 
 whenever that shall be, the land, in blessedness and peace, 
 shall be the people’s to whom the Lord hath given it; and 
 all kings on earth shall see the glory of the Lord. 
 
 The result of the designs and doings of earthly govern¬ 
 ments is not unfrequently the reverse of what they devise. 
 The Lord, to whom power belongs, and with whom wisdom 
 dwells, turns wise men backward. Shortsighted is the wis¬ 
 dom that knows not what a day may bring forth, and weak 
 the power that cannot prepare for it. Kings, in other mat¬ 
 ters, are accomplishing now what the Lord may use as 
 
 t 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 377 
 
 means for the subversion of their kingdoms, as of this world 
 they yet are, and turn into instruments for the completion of 
 his promises to Israel, and for the better government of all 
 the nations of the earth, when the law shall go forth to them 
 all out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem* 
 Great kings of old were hewers of stone for cities of Israel 
 yet to be rebuilt. And at last the highways have to be cast 
 up, that the way of the Lord’s people may he prepared. Af¬ 
 ter the kingdoms that were to arise on the earth had been 
 symbolized, in other visions, before the eyes of Daniel, even 
 as they have actually passed in history before our own, the 
 things noted in the Scripture of Truth were finally revealed, 
 as rendered in the prophecy which concludes his book ; 
 and on declaring them, the angel said, I am come to make 
 thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter 
 days ; for yet the vision is for many daysj And after the 
 things were written, Daniel was commanded to “ shut up 
 and seal the hook, even to the time of the end. And the sign 
 of that time was given, many shall run to and fro, and knoiol- 
 edge shall he increased.” In all past ages, men would have 
 looked in vain for any such sign of the time of the end\ as that 
 which now, vividly, day by day, brightens more and more 
 in the sight of the existing generation. And the time, if 
 not come, may, as thus assigned, be at hand, in which the 
 Scripture of Truth, revealing the things that should befall the 
 Jews in the latter days, may at last be an open book, when 
 there is this warrant from the Lord for breaking the seal. 
 
 But if such a time be come, the kings or governments of 
 the earth, while entering into conventions for maintaining 
 the integrity of the Ottoman Empire—against which the 
 word of the Lord has gone forth, and on which that word 
 must fall whenever his work with it is done—may not be 
 idle in casting up the highway, and preparing the way for the 
 return of the Jews'5> in the predicted manner : they shall 
 come with speed swiftly, and fly as a cloud, and as the doves 
 to their windows ;11 and also for the better things that shall 
 follow, when that empire shall be overthrown, and the last 
 of battles shall have been fought, and men shall go front 
 year to year out of all the nations of the earth to Jerusalem 
 to worship before the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, and war shall 
 cease forever throughout all the ends of the earth. Much, 
 
 * Isaiah, xi., 3, t Dan., x., 14. t Ibid., xii., 4. 
 
 Isa., xii., 10. II Ibid., lx., 8. ^ Zeth., xiv., 16, 17. 
 
 I I 2 ' 
 
378 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 far more than ever, as men already run to and fro, yet new 
 facilities are opening up, so that in the course of a very few 
 years Europe may be passed through, from Hamburgh to 
 Trieste, in two days, or the North Sea be linked by a rail¬ 
 way to the Adriatic, and France may be traversed in a day 
 from the British Channel to the Mediterranean. 
 
 A sudden change of the atmosphere causes the doves, 
 spread far and wide all around, prompted by instinct, to fly 
 to their windows. With equal ease, and even so by a 
 change in the spirit of the times, can the Lord Almighty, 
 who has given that instinct to these, bring back the children 
 of Israel— the tribe of Judah first —from every country under 
 heaven, and cause them to come with speed swiftly (or very 
 swiftly), in a manner they never could have done till now, 
 to the land which He promised to their father, and to their 
 seed forever. 
 
 But around the land itself, as within its borders, there are 
 other indications that the time draweth nigh, of a different 
 character, though not less defined. 
 
 The land is in a great measure naked of inhabitants, and 
 there are few men left, and those few have but a slight hold 
 on the land that is not theirs. The inhabitants, instead of 
 being, like the peasants anciently iri many, and still in some, 
 countries of Europe, adstricti glebce, or bound to the soil, are 
 wanderers without settled habitation ; and instead of abiding 
 in houses, as is general throughout all cultivable regions of 
 the world, with comparatively few exceptions, they dwell in 
 tents, which are removed from place to place, as their des¬ 
 tined work of treading down the land, and fertilizing the soil 
 by pasturing it, is fulhlled. Their tents are struck whenever 
 , the green pasture is eaten up by their flocks, and are only 
 temporarily set up again, to be removed anew in their cease¬ 
 less wanderings. Few of the Bedouin or wandering Arabs, 
 as Burckhardt has remarked, die in the place in which they 
 were born. They still wander in the wilderness, till the pe¬ 
 riod arrive when they shall “ dwell in the presence of their 
 brethren.” The traveller occasionally witnesses the break¬ 
 ing up of an Arab camp, when hundreds, and sometimes 
 thousands, remove from one locality to another, with all their 
 flocks, in order to consume successively the herbage in the 
 place where it grows, like flocks of sheep penned succes¬ 
 sively, for enriching the soil, in all the different portions of 
 a field. But as the rams of Ncbaioth and the flocks of Kedar 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 379 
 
 shall yet minister to Israel, so the multitude of camels shall 
 cover the land, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephahf when 
 the people shall flow together, and fly as a cloud, and as the 
 doves to their windows. 
 
 The chief beasts of burden throughout the land are camels 
 or dromedaries, which, in many places, from one extremity 
 of it to the other, are very numerous. So soon as Pales¬ 
 tine is entered on the south, they are sometimes seen in 
 large numbers, spread over the plains; and as the sun de¬ 
 clines, they are gathered, together with the cattle, around 
 the tents of the Arabs, or the cottages for shepherds in the 
 land of Philistia,t so that in a wide-extended view, the face 
 of the country is simultaneously lighted up with fires on ev¬ 
 ery side, to protect them from the wild beasts, to which, 
 rather than unto men, the land is now given. On the north 
 of Syria Arabs now wander with their camels and flocks, 
 w'here a successor of Alexander the Great fed, in a single 
 narrow region, thousands of elephants. Of such facts the 
 writer had noted several illustrations ; but the most recent 
 is the most striking, communicated to him in a letter from 
 his esteemed friend, Dr. Wilson, of Bombay. “ On ap¬ 
 proaching Damascus from the Jizr Banat Jacub (Jacob’s 
 Bridge), we passed uninjured, though not without some ap¬ 
 prehension, through the camp of the Anazi of the great Ba- 
 riah, extending for twenty miles, and containing, according 
 to the smallest computation, no fewer than 35,000 camels. 
 At Damascus we witnessed the arrival of the Bagdad cara¬ 
 van of 4000 camels, loaded with spices and precious wares. 
 Both circumstances brought vividly to our remembrance the 
 promise : ‘ The multitude of camels shall cover thee ; the 
 dromedaries of Midian and Ephah: all they from Shebah 
 shall come ; they shall bring gold and incense; and they 
 
 * A singular fact in natural history, not unconnected with the fertility of the land, 
 is worthy of notice. In passing through the desert from Egypt, the author was sur¬ 
 prised to see the green verdure, in many instances, of tall grassy bushes, to which 
 the bending of the camel’s head not unfrequently directed his attention; and where 
 no water is near, he for some time tried in vain to satisfy himself as to the cause of 
 the verdure. Little holes were seen around the bushes, but their cause or purpose 
 was alike unknown. At Kan Younes the seeming mysteiy was solved. Multitudes 
 of beetles (the scarabeus of the Egyptians) were seen rolling the round pieces of cam¬ 
 el’s dung, and other deposites, speedily formed by them into a similar shape and size, 
 to suitable spots where the soil was bare, or around the roots of bushes ; there they 
 formed their holes, with the mathematical accuracy of instinct, into which the balls, 
 by a slight motion, were rolled down—these forming beds of incubation for the “ sharn- 
 bred beetle.” 7’hese little animals, which abound in myriads, at once preserve the 
 pureness of the air, and, increasing the fertility of the soil, are often the only, but 
 busy, cultivators where man is idle : and the wonder is diminished that the scarabeus 
 was in ancient times worshipped by the Egyptians. t Isa., lx., 6 
 
380 
 
 CONCT.UaiOlNi. 
 
 shall show forth the praise of the Lord.’ ” Such facts may 
 be numbered among the tokens that the time approaches. 
 And when it shall be come, nothing shall be wanting for the 
 completion of the promises : but the ships of Tar slush first, 
 shall be as ready as the camels of the desert. 
 
 The God of Israel is the Lord of Hosts. He ruleth ever 
 by his power; his eyes behold the nations. Nebuchadnez¬ 
 zar, who said in the pride of his heart, while the Jews were 
 captives in Babylon, “ Is not this great Babylon that I have 
 built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my pow¬ 
 er, and for the honour of my majesty ?” was constrained to 
 take up another language, and to “ bless the Most High, 
 and to praise and honour him that liveth forever and ever, 
 whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his king¬ 
 dom from generation to generation.”* The kings of the 
 earth are but the executioners of his purposes, the instru¬ 
 ments of his power. He is head of them, and of all their 
 hosts, though they know it not. And the result of all they 
 do, though their own design be frustrated, is inevitably that 
 which the Lord has determined. According to His word, 
 the land of Israel has bereaved the nations of men ; the 
 worst of the heathen have possessed it; and it has been de- 
 voured by strangers, till the v/ork assigned them has been 
 completed; and, it may be, other work has now to be done 
 by other hands. For promoting or securing the peace of 
 Europe, according to their design, the sovereigns of Britain, 
 Austria, Prussia, and Russia entered into a convention for 
 expelling the Pasha of Egypt from Syria ; and who can say 
 that this new interference with its destinies may not be the 
 beginning of a greater work, in which kings shall be the 
 carpenters for the reconstruction of the Jewish state. The 
 world has seen what the Lord has done to the city called 
 by his name, and to the people whom He did choose out of 
 all the nations of the earth ; and the world has yet to see 
 what the Lord will do for Israel. Future history may be 
 read in the Scriptures, like the past which was future when 
 they were written. “ Cry yet, saying. Thus saith the Lord 
 of Hosts, My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread 
 abroad, and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet 
 choose Jerusalem. Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, 
 and behold four horns. And I said unto the angel that talk¬ 
 ed with me, What be these ? And he answered me, These 
 
 * i)an., iv., 34, 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 381 
 
 are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Je¬ 
 rusalem. And the Lord showed me four carpenters. Then 
 said 1, What came these to do ? And He spake, saying, 
 These are the horns which have scattered Judah, so that 
 no man could lift up his head ; but these are come to fray 
 them, to cast out the horns of the Gentiles, which lifted up 
 their horn over the land of Judah to scatter it.”* 
 
 The time has been long during which no man of Judah 
 could lift up his head ; but, now that the period is come when 
 the cities are desolate without inhabitant, and the land re¬ 
 duced to a tenth, so there are men of Judah who do lift up 
 their heads, and rank among the chief men of the earth 
 from among whom the Lord will take his people. It would 
 thus seem as if the time of the horns that scattered and op¬ 
 pressed them were passing away, and that of the carpenters, 
 to whom the work of re-erection is assigned, were at hand. 
 
 In answer to the question. Watchman^ what of the night ? 
 Watchman, what of the night 1 The watchman said, the 
 morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire 
 ye: return, come. Repeated inquiry, here permitted, may 
 be needed ; but it will not always be in vain. 
 
 Of the order of unfulfilled predictions, as marked in Scrip¬ 
 ture, the author has already ventured to write ; and it was 
 his design to have here entered on the inquiry concerning 
 the time of Israel’s restoration, and on other kindred themes, 
 touching the completion of the covenant with Abraham con¬ 
 cerning the land, and the covenant with David concerning his 
 throne, and the glorious things that are written and ought to 
 be believed concerning Jerusalem. These, however, would 
 require another volume, for which, if the Lord will, they are 
 reserved. In the preceding pages he has, perhaps not un¬ 
 timely, touched upon a subject that is but the introduction to 
 other themes, to which speedily, it is his firm belief, the at¬ 
 tention of the world will not need to be directed, but be ne¬ 
 cessarily drawn, consequent as they are, in their scriptural 
 connexion and order, on facts already abundantly adduced,^ 
 and coeval as they shall be with Israel’s restoration. As 
 the blindness of Israel as a people was to continue until the 
 cities should be desolate without inhabitant and the houses 
 without man, &c., so the same Lord, who announced the 
 fact when He appeared to Isaiah in his glory, while he was 
 manifest in the flesh, wept over Jerusalem and foretold its 
 
 * Zech., i., 17-21. I Signs of the Times, last chapter. 
 
382 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 destruction, gave another measure of the time during which 
 it should be trodden of the Gentiles, even until the times of 
 the Gentiles should be fulfilled, and judgments come without 
 exception on all the nations of the earth. The fulfilling of 
 the times of the Gentiles, of which the prophets of old had 
 not kept silence, affects all nations, and is thus clearly syn- 
 chronical with the time when Jerusalem and the land of 
 Israel shall cease to be trodden down by them. 
 
 Hitherto, during many ages, the nations of the earth, save 
 those on whom by name judgments have fallen, have been, 
 as it were, spectators of what the Lord has done to Israel 
 and to the land; and they have been willing and active 
 agents, too, in the execution of the punishments that have 
 come upon the Jews, and in the spoliation and desolation 
 to which the land has been subjected. But they shall not 
 always be spectators merely of what the Lord hath deter¬ 
 mined to do. Jeremiah, to whom it was given to speak so 
 clearly of the new and everlasting covenant of the Lord 
 with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, was 
 commissioned and commanded to take the winecup of the 
 fury of the Lord, first given to Jerusalem, and cause all the 
 nations to drink it unto whom the Lord had sent it. Nor 
 was it given so that they should certainly be caused to 
 drink of it, as certainly they have, only to the nations enu¬ 
 merated one by one in the same judgment-roll, but also 
 finally to all the kingdoms of the world that are upon the 
 face of the earth. “ Therefore shalt thou say unto them. 
 Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Drink ye, 
 and be drunken, and spew, and fall and rise no more, be¬ 
 cause of the sword which I will send among you. And it 
 shall be, if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to 
 drink, then shalt thou say unto them, thus saith the Lord, 
 Ye shall certainly drink; for, lo, I begin to bring evil u'pon 
 the city, which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly 
 unpunished? Ye shall not be unpunished; for I will call 
 for a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth, saith the 
 Lord of Hosts. A noise shall come even to the ends of the 
 earth ; for the Lord hath a controversy with the nations ; He 
 will plead with all flesh; He will give them that are wicked 
 to the sword, saith the Lord,”* &c. 
 
 We have seen somewhat of the curses of a legal cove¬ 
 nant, which are set forth practically in the sight of all think- 
 
 * Jer., XXV., 27-31. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 383 
 
 ing as well as all believing men ; we have seen somewhat 
 of the judgments which the Lord has brought on his own 
 chosen people, and on the city called by his name, and on 
 the people of old denominated his own; and the question 
 put by the Lord to the people of all other cities and coun¬ 
 tries may be heard by all the nations and all the kingdoms 
 of the worlds as addressed individually to each, Art thou he 
 that shall escape ? The vision seen by Daniel, in which 
 the sanctuary was trodden down, was for many days.* 
 And when the angel revealed to him what should befall his 
 people in the latter days, the time appointed was long.\ But 
 the long time has to be succeeded by a short work. Esaias 
 crieth concerning Israel, saith the apostle, “ Though the 
 number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, 
 a remnant shall be saved : for He will finish the work, and 
 cut it short in righteousness, for a short work will the Lord 
 make upon the earth.\ The Lord, saith the prophet, shall 
 go forth as a mighty man ; He shall stir up jealousy like 
 a man of war ; He shall cry, yea, roar ; He shall prevail 
 against his enemies. I have long holden my peace ; I 
 have been still, and refrained myself: now will I cry like 
 a travailing woman ; I will destroy and devour at Qnce, &c. 
 And I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; I 
 will make darkness light before them, and crooked things 
 straight. These things will I do unto them, and not for¬ 
 sake them.Ӥ 
 
 It is for the glory of the Lord that, during many ages 
 while Israel has been in blindness, the Gospel has been 
 preached unto the Gentiles, that a people might be taken 
 from among them to the Lord. But when the question shall 
 be raised, as we think it has already begun to be, between 
 the Church-and the world, whether spiritual independence 
 can be maintained within the Church in connexion with any 
 kingdom on earth—whether Christ be, in fact, the Head of 
 his church and the King of nations—it is not, without irrev¬ 
 erence we may say, it is not for the glory of the Redeemer’s 
 crown that such a question, when fairly raised, should for a 
 long time be held practically in doubtful disputation. If the 
 time he come that judgment must begin at the house of God, 
 what shall the end be of those that obey not the Gospel ? If 
 the Lord’s fan be taken into his hand. He will not lay it down 
 till he thoroughly purge his floor, and separate the wheat 
 from the chaff, the one for the kingdom that shall endure for. 
 
 * Dan., viii. 25. t Ibid , x., 2. X Rom., i.x., 28. $ Isa.., xlii.. 15. 13 
 
384 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 ever, the other for the fire that never shall be quenched. 
 Persecuting powers, imperial and papal, were successively 
 to arise against the Church, and power was given to the beast 
 for a time, and time and a half. But these times have an 
 end ; and the judgment 6f the mighty city, which destroyed 
 Jerusalem and has persecuted the saints, shall come in one 
 hour. And when the Lord’s controversy with the nations 
 because of his people Israel shall begin, it too shall be quick¬ 
 ly finished. The denouement of the history of the world in¬ 
 cludes, and shall resolve, every controversy with the nations 
 of the earth concerning the seed of Abraham, whether by 
 the flesh or in the faith. All things shall be shaken, that 
 the things which cannot be shaken may remain. The counsel 
 and covenant of the Lord, which cannot be shaken, shall re¬ 
 main. The kingdoms of this world shall become as the chaff 
 of the summer thrashing-floor, even as the chaff before the 
 wind, and the thistle-down before the whirlwind, but the cov¬ 
 enant which the Lord made with Abraham, and with Isaac, 
 and with Jacob shall be established forever ; and all the fam¬ 
 ilies of the earth, blessed in their seed, shall see, in open 
 vision at last, how the covenant of the Lord with David con¬ 
 cerning his throne harmonizes at once with the Abrahamic of 
 old, and with the new and everlasting covenant of mercy and 
 of peace which, after all the days of dispersion and desolation 
 are past, the Lord will make with the house of Israel and 
 with the house of Judah. “ In that day there shall be a root 
 of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people ; to it 
 shall the Gentiles seek, and his rest shall be glorious. And 
 the Lord shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall as¬ 
 semble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the disper¬ 
 sed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” “ And in 
 that day shalt thou say, 0 Lord, I will praise thee: though 
 thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and 
 thou comfortedst me. Behold, God is my salvation ; I will 
 trust and not be afraid ; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength 
 and my song ; he also is become my salvation. Therefore 
 with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation. 
 And in that day shall ye say. Praise the Lord, call upon his 
 name, declare his doings among the people, make mention 
 that his name is exalted. Sing unto the Lord, for he hath 
 done excellent things ; this is known in all the earth. Cry 
 out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion, for great is the Holy 
 One of Israel in the midst of thee.”* 
 
 * Isa., xi., 10, 19, (Src. Isa., yii. 
 
 I 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 No. I.—Page 82. 
 
 Instead of keeping up to one uniform translation of Nah al Mitz- 
 razm, the LXX. sometimes render it ^apay^ Alyvirrov, the Gulf of 
 Egypt: Josh., xv., 4. Sometimes YloTayop Alyvirrov, the River of 
 Egypt: 1 Kings, viii., 65; Gen., xv., 18. Sometimes Xeipappog 
 AiyvTTTov, the Torrent of Egypt: 2 Chron., vii., 8 ; 2 Kings, xxiv., 
 7 ; Numb., xxxiv., 5; Josh., xv., 47; and, in the text before us, 
 VivoKopovpog ; hereby perplexing the very nature and quality, as 
 well as the geographical circumstances of this river, by attribu¬ 
 ting to it four different appellations. The like disagreement we 
 may observe in their translation of Tin’lJ'' Sihor or 
 
 Shihor, another name, as it will appear to be, of the River of Egypt. 
 For 1 Chron., xiii., 5, where the original has from Sihor of Egypt, 
 the LXX. render it airb bptuv AiyvTCTov, from the Borders of Egypt. 
 In Jer., ii., 18, for /./je waters of Sihor, they have the waters of Vyivv, 
 a river which encompassed the whole land of Chus, a province of Arabia, 
 Gen., li., 13. In Josh., xiii., 3, instead of Sihor, lohich is before 
 Egypt, they have airb ryg aoiKyrov yyq Kara irpSacdTrov ’AtyvixTov , from 
 the uninhabited land that lies before Egypt. And in Isa., xxiii., 3, for 
 the seed of Sihor, they have GTripya /ae raSoAwv, the seed of the mer¬ 
 chants; mistaking a r 5 ,'Samech, for a tj;, Shin, or Tprj for 
 geographical criticism, therefore, little stress can be laid upon the 
 authority of the LXX. version, where the phrase so frequently varies 
 from the original, and where so many different interpretations are 
 put upon one and the same thing.— Shaw'’s Travels, p. 24. 
 
 No. II.—Page 155, 156. 
 
 L&l'KACTS FROM THE ITINERARY OF ANTONINUS 
 
 AUGUSTUS. 
 
 Ab Anii'jchia usque ad 
 Pelusium. 
 
 Platanos .... 25 
 
 Cathela.24 
 
 Laodiceam . . .16 
 
 Gabalam . . . .18 
 
 Balanea .... 27 
 Antaradon .... 24 
 
 Areas.32 
 
 Tripolina . . . .18 
 
 Byblon.36 
 
 Beryhim .... 34 
 Sidoncm .... 30 
 
 Tyrum.24 
 
 Ptolemaiada ... 32 
 Sycaminon ... 24 
 Caesaream .... 20 
 Betaron.18 
 
 Diospolim .... 22 
 Lammiam .... 12 
 Ascalonem ... 20 
 
 Gazarn.16 
 
 Raphiam .... 22 
 Rhinocorura ... 22 
 Ostracenam ... 26 
 Cassium .... 26 
 Pentas-choenin . . 20 
 
 Pelusium .... 20 
 
 Iter a Pelusio Memphim, 
 122 miles. 
 
 Daphnem . . . .16 
 
 Jacasarat .... 18 
 
 Thou.24 
 
 Scenas Veterano- 
 rum.26 
 
 K K 
 
 Helin.14 
 
 Memphim .... 24 
 
 Item ah Antiochia Eme- 
 sam, 133 miles. 
 
 Niaccaba .... 25 
 Caperturi .... 24 
 Apameam .... 20 
 Larissam . . . .16 
 
 Epiphaniarn ... 16 
 Arethusam ... 16 
 Emesam . . . .16 
 
 Iteni a Carris Hierapo- 
 Urn, 83 miles. 
 
 Bathas.30 
 
 Thilaticomum . . 22 
 Hierapolirn ... 31 
 
386 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Item a Cyrrho Emesam, 
 151 miles. 
 
 Minnizain .... 20 
 
 Beroam.22 
 
 Chalcida .... 18 
 Arratn . . '. . .20 
 Cappareas .... 23 
 Epiphaniatn ... 16 
 Arethnsam ... 16 
 Emesam .... 16 
 
 Item a Dollche Serianem 
 Anunea, 127 miles. 
 
 Cyrrhon .... 24 
 Minnozam ... 24 
 Beroam .... 20 
 Chalcida .... 15 
 Andronain .... 26 
 Serianem .... 18 
 
 Item a Callecome Laris- 
 sam, 79 miles. 
 
 Chalcida .... 18 
 Temmelison ... 20 
 
 Apamea .... 25 
 Larissam . . . .16 
 
 Item a Bemmari Heapo- 
 lim, 227 miles. 
 
 Geroda.40 
 
 Thelseas . . . .16 
 Damascum ... 24 
 
 A ere.32 
 
 Neve.30 
 
 Capitoliada ... 36 
 Gadaram .... 16 
 Scythopolim ... 16 
 In Medio .... 10 
 Neapolim .... 7 
 
 Item a Seriane Scytho¬ 
 polim, 318 miles. 
 
 Salaminiada ... 32 
 Emesam .... 18 
 Laodiciam .... 18 
 
 Lybon.32 
 
 Heliopolim . . .32 
 
 Abilam.38 
 
 Damascum ... 18 
 
 Aere.... 32 
 
 Neve ... .30 
 
 Capitoliada ... 36 
 Gadara . . . . .16 
 
 Scythopolim ... 16 
 
 Item a CcBsarea Eleuthe- 
 ropolim, 77 miles. 
 
 Betaron . . . .31 
 Diospolim .... 28 
 Eleutheropolim . . 18 
 
 Item a Damasco Eme¬ 
 sam, 142 miles. 
 
 Abilam.38 
 
 Heliopolim ... 22 
 
 Conna.32 
 
 Laodicia .... 32 
 Emesam .... 18 
 
 Item a Neapoli Ascalo- 
 nem, 74 miles. 
 
 .(Eliam.31 
 
 Eleutheropolim . . 20 
 Ascalonem ... 24 
 
 INDEX OF TEXTS. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 V., 8, p. 61. 
 vi., 12, 13, p. 24. 
 
 X., 18, p. 90. 
 
 — 19, 30, p. 19. 
 
 xii. , 1-6, p. 20. 
 
 — 7, p. 60. 
 
 xiii. , 14, 15,17, p. 20. 
 
 — 14, 15-17, p. 61. 
 
 xiv. , 3, p. 129. 
 
 — 23, p. 62. 
 
 XV., 1, p. 20. 
 
 — 1-7, p. 21. 
 
 — 7-12, 17, &c., p. 21. 
 
 — 7, p. 19. 
 
 — 13-18, p. 26. 
 
 — 18-23, p. 62. 
 
 xvi. , 10, p. 133. 
 
 — 12, p. 133. 
 
 xvii. , 7, 8, p. 22. 
 
 — 9, 13, p. 22. 
 
 — 20, p. 132. 
 xviii., 27, p. 29. 
 xxi., 14, p. 133. 
 xxvi., 1-4, p. 22. 
 
 — 3-5, p. 63, 
 xxviii., 1, 3, 14, p, 63. 
 
 xxviii., 4, p. 22. 
 
 — 13-15, p. 23. 
 XXXV,, 9-12, p. 23. 
 
 — 12, p. 63. 
 xlvi., 1-4, p. 23. 
 xlvii., 29, 30, p. 23. 
 xlviii., 4, p. 23. 
 xlix., 29-32, p. 23. 
 
 1,, 24, 25, p. 23. 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 11., 25, p. 28. 
 
 111., 1-15, p. 27. 
 
 — 6, p. 60. 
 
 — 8. p. 63. 
 
 V., 7, p. 26. 
 
 — 12-17, p. 28. 
 vi., 1-8, p. 27. 
 
 — 9, p. 27. 
 
 xii., 31, p. 28. 
 
 xiv., 22, 28, 29, p. 28. 
 xxiii., 30-33, p. 64. 
 xxxiii., 2, p. 77. 
 xxxiv., 11, p. 77. 
 
 — 27, p. 29. 
 
 XXXV, , 12, p. 63. 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 xxvi., 19, 20, p. 371. 
 
 — 32-34, 35, 43, p. 372. 
 
 — 40-45, p. 37. 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 xiii. , 1, 2, 17-28, p. 339. 
 
 xiv, , 11, 12, p. 30. 
 
 — 15, 16, 21-^5, p. 30. 
 xxi., 23-26,33-35, p.l43. 
 
 — 33-35, p. 254. 
 xxiii., 17-19, p. 56, 
 xxiv., 17, 18, p. 71 
 xxvi., 51, p. 146. 
 xxxi., 10, 32-34, 48-53, 
 
 p. 144. 
 
 xxxii., 1-4, p. 144. 
 
 — 33, p. 144. 
 xxxiii., 36, 37, p. 128. 
 xxxiv., 1-4, p. 127. 
 
 — 6, p. 86. 
 
 — 6-11, p. 65. 
 
 — 7-11, p. 87. 
 
 — 7-9, p. 113. 
 
 — 8, 9, p. 120. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 387 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 1., 46, p. 128. 
 
 11., 1-5, 8, p. 128. 
 
 — 8, p. 129. 
 
 — 2-5, 9, 19, p. 71. 
 
 111., 3-10, p. 143. 
 
 — 10, p. 254. 
 iv., 30, 31, p. 37. 
 
 vi., 11, p. 143. 
 
 22, p. 147. 
 
 — 24, p. 77. 
 
 viii., 7-9, p. 142, 370. 
 
 xi., 11, 12, p. 142, 370. 
 
 — 22-26, p. 64. 
 
 — 24, p. 113. 
 xxvii., 16-19, p. 33. 
 
 — 26, p. 41. 
 
 xxviii., 49,51,52, p. 153. 
 xxix., 28, p. 39. 
 
 — 10-25, p. 33. 
 
 XXX., 1-10, p. 38. 
 
 — 7, p. 45. 
 
 — 19, 20, p. 38. 
 
 JOSHUA. 
 
 111., 16, p. 128. 
 
 V , 13, 14, p. 59. 
 
 X., 10, p. 294- 
 xi., 5, 7, p. 147. 
 
 — 10, p. 299. 
 xiii., 1, p. 65, 75. 
 
 — 2-0, p. 65. 
 
 — 4-6, p. 87. 
 
 -9-31, p. 144. 
 
 XV., 20-63, p. 148. 
 xviii., 3, p. 7.3. 
 xxi., 45, p. 73. 
 
 — 41, p. 148. 
 xxiii., 14, p. 73. 
 
 — 11-15, p. 74. 
 xxiv., 13, p. 143. 
 
 — 19, 20, p. 39. 
 
 — 22, &c., p. 34. 
 x.xiv., 31, pv 73. 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 1., 31, p. 304. 
 
 11., 11-14, p. 74. 
 
 — 20-23, p. 75. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 XV., 20, p. 56. 
 xxxi., 10, p. 296. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. * 
 
 V., 17-25, p. 79. 
 viii., 1, 2, 3, 5-8, 11, 14, 
 p. 79. 
 
 — 3. 8, p. 114. 
 
 1 KINGS, 
 iv., 21-24, p. 79. 
 
 — 25, p. 78, 80. 
 ix., 20, 21, p. 78. 
 
 — 21, 26, p. 80. 
 
 xi.,9,12,14,23,26, p. 78. 
 
 2 KINGS, 
 
 xiii, 3, p. 93. 
 
 xiv. , 25-28, p. 94. 
 xviii., 32, p. 142. 
 
 1 CHRONICLES. 
 
 V., 9, 18-22, p. 145. 
 xvi., 11-19, p. 49. 
 xviii., 1, 3, 5-8, 9-13, p. 
 79. 
 
 — 6, p. 118. 
 
 xxi., 5, p. 149. 
 
 2 CHRONICLES. 
 
 viii. , 3-6, p. 80. 
 
 — 5, p. 294. 
 
 — 7, 8, 17. p. 80. 
 
 ix. . 26. p. 79. 
 xiii., 3, p. 149. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 xvi. , 10, p. 58. 
 lx., 7, p. 287. 
 
 Ixviii., 18, p. 58. 
 
 Ixix., 35, 36, p. 306. 
 Ixxxix., 1-4, p. 45. 
 
 — 19, 20, 24-36, p. 45. 
 
 — 28, p. 50. 
 
 — 34, p. 19. 
 cv., 4-12. p. 49. 
 cxxvi., 1-5, p. 284. 
 
 SONG OF SOLOMON. 
 
 111., 8, p. 124. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 11., 3, p. 370. 
 
 vi. , 9-13, p. xiii. 
 
 — 11, p. 244. 
 
 vii. , 8. p. 93. 
 
 viii. , 20, p. 58. 
 
 ix. , 8, p. 45. 
 
 xi. , 3, p. 377. 
 
 — 10, 12, &c., p. 334. 
 
 — 10, 14, p. 72. 
 
 xii. , 10, p. 377. 
 
 — P.-384. 
 
 xvii. , 6, p. 338. 
 
 xix., 23-25, p. 85 137. 
 
 — 24, p. 334. 
 xxiii., 3, p. 85. 
 xxiv., 5, p. 324. 
 
 — 6, p. XV. 
 
 xxiv., 5, 6, p. 157. 
 
 XXV., 9-11, p. 72. 
 xxvii., 5, 6, 10, p. 336. 
 
 — 10, p. 243. 
 xxix., 17, p. 353. 
 xxxii., 14, p. 243. 
 
 — 13-15, or 18, p. 336. 
 xxxiii., 9, p. 280, 361. 
 XXXV., 1, 2, p' 361. 
 xl., 8, 9, p. 307. 
 
 xli., 4, p. 58. 
 
 xiii., 15, 16, p. 383. 
 xliv., 6, 7, p. 58. 
 
 — 23, 26, p. 307. 
 xlv., 17. p. 307. 
 
 11., 2, 3, p. 349. 
 
 111., 1, 8-10, p. 47. 
 
 — 9, p. 349. 
 
 1111., 8, p. 55. 
 liv., 2, p. 308. 
 
 Iv., 1-3. p. 45. 
 
 — 12, 13, p. 360, 370. 
 Ivi., 1, p. 124. 
 
 Iviii.. 12, p, 243. 
 
 — 11-14, p. 373. 
 lx.. 6, p. 379. 
 
 — 7, p. 132. 
 
 — 8, p. 377. 
 
 — 10, p. 320. 
 
 — 15, p. 349. 
 
 — 30, 31, p. 43. 
 
 Ixi., 4, p. 56. 
 
 — 5-7, p. 359. 
 
 Ixii., 1-4, &c., p. 56. 
 
 — 11, 12, p. ix. 
 
 Ixiii., 17, 19, p. 46. 
 Ixiv., 1, p. 46. 
 
 — 4, p. 46. 
 
 Ixv., 10, 361. 
 
 Ixviii., 18, p. 58. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 11., 14-18, p. 85. 
 
 — 28, p. 306. 
 
 111., 12, 14. 17, p. 124. 
 iv., 29, p. 244. 
 
 xi. , 3, p. 41. 
 
 xii. , 12, p. 169. 
 
 — 13, p. 371. 
 xxiii., 3-8, p. 59. 
 
 — 28, 29, 37, p. 60. 
 xxiv., 7, p. 50. 
 
 XXV., 27-31, p. 382. 
 xxxi., 5, p. 346. 
 
 — 5-9, p. 351. 
 
 — 21, p. 295. 
 
 — 20, 21, p. 51. 
 
 — 23, 28, p. 44. 
 
 — 31, &c., p. 42. 
 
 — 35-40, p. 44- 
 
388 
 
 xxxii., 36-41, p. 52. 
 xxxiii., 9 , p. 141. 
 
 — 13-15, p. 307. 
 
 — 14, 16, p. 59. 
 
 — 24-26, p. 58. 
 xlvii., 5-7, p. 225. 
 
 — 6, 7, p. 201. 
 xlviii., 47, p. 72, 229. 
 xlix., 6', p’. 72, 229. 
 
 — 25, p. 210. 
 
 — 33, p. 299. 
 
 1., 19, p. 287. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 vii., 21, p. 169. 
 xii., 19, p. 280. 
 xvi., 53, 55, p. 294. 
 
 XX., 6, p. 142, 370. 
 
 XXV., 5, p. 236. 
 
 — 16, p. 319. 
 xxix., 14, 15, p. 202. 
 XXXV., 9-14, p. 229. 
 xxxvi., 3, p. 340. 
 
 — 11, p. 209. 
 
 — 4,7-11,12-15,29, 30, 
 
 34-36, p. 342. 
 
 — 26, p. 50. 
 
 — 34, p. 374. 
 xxxvii., 19-26, p. 57. 
 xlvii., 13, 14, p. 60, 81. 
 
 — 13-23, p. 66. 
 
 — 15, p. 87. 
 
 — 15, 16, p. 120. 
 
 ~ 15-17, p. 87, 113. 
 
 — 19, p. 128. 
 
 — 20, p. 86. 
 
 xlviii., 1, p. 66, 87, 94, 
 113, 120. 
 
 — 23-29, p. 130. 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 iv., 34, p. 380. 
 ix., 26, 27, p. 54. 
 
 X., 14, p. 377. 
 
 xi. , 5, p. 320. 
 
 — 39, p. 164. 
 
 xii. , 4, p. 270, 377. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 HOSEA. 
 
 1., 11, p. 363. 
 
 111., 4, 5, p. 51. 
 
 xi. , 8, 9, p. 50. 
 
 — 21, 22, p. 371. 
 
 xii. , 5, p. 58. 
 
 JOEL. 
 
 1., 4, p. 191. 
 
 111., 18, 20, 21, p. 370. 
 
 AMOS. 
 
 V., 3, p. XV., 306. 
 ix., 11, 12, 15-, p. 72. 
 
 — 13, p. 279. 
 
 — 13-15, p. 370. 
 
 OBADIAH. 
 
 18, 19, p. 72. 
 
 19, p. 346. 
 
 MIC AH. 
 
 111., 6, p. 53. 
 iv., 4, p. 371. 
 
 — 7, 8, p. 126. 
 
 — 8, p. 119. 
 
 vii. , 14, 15, p. 145. 
 
 — 14, 15, 19, 20, p. 288. 
 
 ZEPHANIAH. 
 
 11., 7, p. 227, 319. 
 
 — 9, p. 72. 
 
 I 
 
 ZECHAUIAH. 
 
 1., 17, p. 336. 
 
 — 17-21, p. 381. 
 
 11., 11, p. 334. 
 
 111., 10, p. 361. 
 iv., 7, p. 47. 
 
 viii. , 26, p. 383. 
 
 X., 1, p. 383. 
 
 — 10, p. 288, 353. 
 xiv., 16, 17, p. 377. 
 
 — 20, p. 334. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 xviii., 2, 3, p. 160. 
 xxiii., 7, p. 161. 
 
 xxiii., 37-39, p. 54 . 
 xxvi., 53, 54, p. 55. 
 
 MARK. 
 
 viii. , 45, p. 300. 
 
 X., 42-44, p. 160. 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 i., 39, 65, p. 340. 
 xxi., 24, p. 54. 
 
 JOHN, 
 i., 1, p. 59. 
 iv., 24, p. 164. 
 
 ACTS. 
 
 1., 3, 6, p, 54. 
 vii., 2, p. 19. 
 
 XX., 17, 28, p. 161. 
 
 ROMANS. 
 
 ix. , 28, p. 383. 
 
 xi. , 28, 29, p. 47. 
 
 GALATIANS. 
 
 111., 8, p. 48. 
 
 — 10, p. 41. 
 
 — 15, p. 55. 
 
 — 17, p. 42. 
 
 — 17, 18, p. 35. 
 
 HEBREWS. 
 
 iii., 14, p. 30, 
 
 X., 1, p. 78. 
 
 vi. , 18, p. 48. 
 
 vii. , 19, p. 32. 
 
 viii. , 7-13, p. 42. 
 
 2 PETER. 
 
 111., 9, p. 73, 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 1., 11, p. 58. 
 
 111., 12, p. 328. 
 
 — 20, p. 46. 
 
 ix. , 4, p. 165, 167. 
 
 xii. , 6, p. 157. 
 xiv., 20, p. 363. 
 xviii., 23, p. 337. 
 
 THE END. 
 

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