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THE HEIGHTS AND THE PASSES OF

BENJAMIN.

the frontier

Ephraim.

JERUSALEM, as we have seen, was on the very outskirts of Judah, only excluded from the territory of Benjamin by the circumstance, that at the division of the land Benjamin, by Joshua, Jebus was not yet conquered. Indeed, in tribe of the blessing on Benjamin it would appear to be Judah and reckoned as his portion. "The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety, and the'' Most High' shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his shoulders,”—that is, between the rocky sides of Jerusalem. The southern frontier of Benjamin ran through the ravine of Hinnom, and it is evidently on them that the charge of exterminating the Jebusites was thought to have rested:-"The children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem, but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin to this day'."

This peculiar relation to Jerusalem may be traced in the whole history of Benjamin. It was the frontier tribe, and covered the debateable ground between the great rival families, and afterwards kingdoms, of Judah and Ephraim. Alternately it seems to have followed the fortunes of each. In earlier times it certainly clung to the kindred tribes of Joseph, which had been its associates in the passage through the wilderness3. It took its place with Ephraim and Manasseh in the gathering

1 Deut. xxxiii. 12. The translation here given seems the most probable. The word translated "shoulder" is the same that is usually employed (like our English word) for the "side" of a hill,

and is so used of this very situation in
Josh. xviii. 16, "The shoulder of the
Jebusite." See Appendix; Cataph.
2 Judges i. 21.

3 Numb. ii. 18-24.

of the tribes under Deborah and Barak'. The bitterest enemies of the house of David-Saul, Shimei, and Sheba-were Benjamites. It is expressly included under the house of Joseph, both at the beginning of the national disruption as well as during its continuance. Two of its most important towns, Bethel and Jericho, were within the territory of the northern kingdom. On the other hand, besides the fact that Jerusalem belonged to Judah, there must have been a portion at least which remained faithful to the house of David, in order to justify the expression, that Rehoboam "assembled all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin'" to fight against Jeroboam; Ramah, though once occupied by the kings of Samaria', seems to have been more generally included within the limits of Judah; and, finally, after the return from the Captivity, the chiefs of Judah and Benjamin always appear together at the head of the restored people.

Small as the tribe was, this ambiguous situation gave it considerable importance-an importance which was increased by a further peculiarity of the Benjamite territory. Of all the tribes of Israel, none, except perhaps Manasseh, contained such important passes of communication into the adjacent plains-none possessed such conspicuous heights, whether for defence or for "high places" of worship. These advantages in the hands of a hardy and warlike tribe ensured an Independent power independence to Benjamin, which the. Hebrew records constantly contrast with its numerical feebleness and limited territory.—“Little Benjamin their ruler," “Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel?" In his mountain passes-the ancient haunt of beasts of prey', Benjamin “ravined as a wolf in the morning," descended into the rich plains of Philistia on the one side, and of the Jordan on the other, and "returned in the evening to divide the spoil"." In the troubled period of the Judges, the tribe of Benjamin

of the tribe.

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maintained a struggle, unaided, and for some time with success, against the whole of the rest of the nation'. And to the latest times they never could forget that they had given birth to the first king. Even down to the times of the New Testament, the name of Saul was still preserved in their families; and when a far greater of that name appealed to his descent, or to the past history of his nation, a glow of satisfaction is visible in the marked emphasis with which he alludes to the "stock of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin'," and to God's gift of "Saul, the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin'."

min.

I. Let us examine this peculiarity of position in detail, so far as it elucidates the events which have occurred on The Passes the territory of this illustrious tribe. I have already of Benjasaid that the table-land on which Jerusalem is situated extends for some miles into the heart of the territory of Benjamin. Along this water-shed, the direct road from Jerusalem to the north is now and must always have been carried. But it is not on this ridge itself that the passes of Benjamin occur. They run, like all the valleys which deserve this name, in southern and central Palestine, not from north to south, but from east to west, or west to east-often, as Dr. Robinson observes, overlapping each other's heads in the centre of the table-land from which they take their departure".

From the Valley of the Jordan, accordingly, on the one hand, and from the Maritime Plain, on the other, two main ascents may be selected, in which almost all the important military operations of central Palestine are concentrated.

1. Jericho was the key of the eastern pass. From this point, the most direct, and without doubt the ancient The Eastern road, into the interior of the country, was through Passes. the deep ravine, now called the Wâdy Harith, which runs parallel to the deep chasm of the Wâdy Kelt and the Wâdy

1 Judges xx., xxi.

2 Philippians iii. 5.

3 Acts xiii. 21. Gischala, which Jerome asserts (in contradiction to the Apostle's own statement) to be the birthplace of the Apostle, but which may possibly have been that of his parents,is said to be near Ramah.

4 This tract has been but very imperfectly explored. All that Dr. Robinson saw, and all that we saw, was the Wady Suweinit and the close of the Wady Harith. See Robinson, vol. ii. 116, 307. (The authority here followed, is the oral description and map of M. Van de Velde.)

Suweinit, and then climbs into the heart of the mountains of Benjamin, till it meets the central ridge of the country at Bethel. Indefinite as this description, in our imperfect state of information, must necessarily be, it agrees well with all the ancient notices of the communication between Jericho and the interior, in the Old Testament. At the Christian era it was apparently superseded by the present road by Bethany to Jerusalem, of which I shall speak hereafter'.

(a.) The first great ascent was that of Joshua. Jericho had Battle of been taken; and the next step was to penetrate into ᎪᎥ . the hills above. It was a critical moment, for it was exactly at the similar stage of their approach to Palestine from the south, that the Israelites had met with the severe repulse at Hormah, which had driven them back into the desert for forty years. "Joshua," accordingly, "sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Bethaven, on the east side of Bethel, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country." The precise position of Ai is unknown; but this indication points out its probable site in the wild entanglement of hill and valley at the head of the Wâdy Harith. The two attempts of the Israelites that followed upon the report of the spies, are quite in accordance with the natural features of the pass. In the first attempt, the inhabitants of Ai, taking advantage of their strong position on the heights, drove the invaders “from before the gate3," . . . and smote them in "the going down" of the steep descent. In the second attempt, after the Israelites had been reassured by the execution of Achan "in the valley of Achor,"-probably one of the valleys opening into the Ghorthe attack was conducted on different principles. An ambush was placed by night high up in the Wâdy Harith, between Ai and Bethel. Joshua himself took up his position on the north side of the ravine,' apparently the deep chasm through which the Wady Harith, as before described, descends to the

1 See Chapters VII. and XIII. 2 Joshua vii. 2.

"Even unto 'the' Shebarim." Gesenius makes this "even to destruction," as in Lam. ii. 11, iii. 47; Prov. xvi. 18; Isa. i. 28. May it not be "even to the

breakings," "the fissures" at the opening of the passes as in Isa. xxx. 12, 14, lxv. 14; Lev. xxi. 19, xxiv. 20; Ps. Ix. 2. (Thus Zunz ad loc. "bis zu den Brüchen.") The LXX omits the words,

Wâdy Kelt'. From this point the army descended into the valley, Joshua himself, it would seem, remaining on the heights; and, decoyed by them, the King of Ai with his forces pursued them as before into the "desert" " valley of the Jordan; whilst the ambush, at the signal of Joshua's uplifted spear, rushed down on the city; and then amidst the mingled attack at the head of the pass from behind, and the return of the main body from the desert of the Jordan, the whole population of Ai was destroyed. A heap of ruins on its site, and a huge cairn over the grave of its last king, remained long afterwards as the sole memorials of the destroyed city'.

(b.) The next time that the pass of Ai appears is in a situation of events almost exactly reversed. The lowest Battle of depression which the Israelite state ever reached be- Michmash. fore the Captivity, was in the disastrous period during the first struggles of the monarchy, when the Philistines, after the great victory over the sons of Eli, became the virtual masters of the country; and not content with defending their own rich plain, ascended the passes from the west',-and pitched in the heart of the mountains of Benjamin, in "Michmash, eastward of Bethaven." The designation of the site of Michmash is so similar to that which is used to describe Ai as inevitably to suggest the conjecture that it was the successor, if not to its actual site, at least to its general position; and this agrees with the identification of the two in the conflicting traditions of the inhabitants of the modern village, by whose name (Mukmas)

1 Josh. viii. 11. The use of the article and the word ge (ravine) identifies the scene. There is some uncertainty thrown over this part of the battle by the variations of the LXX, who read the 11th, 12th, and 13th verses as follows: "And all the people of war that were with him went up, and in their march came before the city on the east, and the ambush (before) the city on the west."

2 Both words are used for the same region, "the plain" (Arabah), viii. 14, "the wilderness" (Midbar), 15, 20, 24.

3 Josh. viii. 28, 29. Two words are used in these two places, Tel and Gal, the first indicating the ruin of the city itself, the other, the cairn over the king's grave. It would almost seem from the stress laid

on the ruins, and from the disappearance of the name from this time forward, as if "Ai" (or, more strictly, Ha-ai, the ruins) was a later name to indicate its fall. 4 1 Sam. xiii. 5. "The Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand upon the sea-shore in multitude; and they came up and pitched in Michmash." This is one of the places where it is difficult not to suspect the numbers in the text. It should be observed, that the gathering of the chariots and horsemen may, and indeed must, be understood to be on the Philistian plain, before the ascent of the mountain-passes.

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