cliffs and the rugged road rendering their cavalry unavailable against the merciless fury of their pursuers; they were only saved, as the Canaanites were not saved,-by the too rapid descent of the shades of night over the mountains, and under the cover of those shades they escaped to Antipatris in the plain below. Ages afterwards the Crusading armies, in the vain hope of reaching Jerusalem, advanced up the same valleys from their quarters at Ascalon and Jaffa, and the last eastern point at which Richard encamped was at Beit-Nuba, in the wide vale of Ajalon. A well near the village of Ajalon bears the name of Bir-el-Khebir, "the well of the hero." It is a strange complexity of associations which renders it doubtful whether "the hero" so handed down by tradition be the great leader of the hosts of Israel, or the flower of English chivalry. II. From the passes of the tribe of Benjamin we turn by a natural connection to those remarkable heights Heights of which guard their entrance into the table-land, and Benjamin. which diversify with their pointed summits that table-land itself. The very names of the towns of Benjamin indicate how eminently they partook of this general characteristic of the position of Judæan cities-Gibeah-Geba-Gibeon-all signifying "hill,"-Ramah, "the high place,"-Mizpeh, "the watchtower." And it has been already observed how from these heights to the north of Jerusalem, is in all likelihood derived the ancient image of God "standing about his people." On most of them it is needless to enlarge. El-Bireh, "The well," the ancient Beeroth, is remarkable as the first halting-place of caravans on the northern road from Jerusalem, and therefore, not improbably, the scene of the event to which its monastic tradition lays claim,-the place where the "parents" of Jesus "sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance, and when they found him not, turned back again to Jerusalem." Er-Ram, marked by the village and green patch on its summit-the most conspicuous object from a distance in the approach to Jerusalem from the south-is certainly "Ramah of Benjamin." Tel-elFulil, distinguished by its curiously knobbed and double top, is in all probability Gibeah, the birth-place of Saul, and during his reign the capital of his tribe and kingdom, and from him deriving the name of "Gibeah of Saul," as before "of Benjamin';" "the hill of Benjamin," or "of Saul." Just out of sight of Jerusalem, Anathoth, the birth-place of Jeremiah, looks down on the Dead Sea. Jeba, on the wild hills between Gibeah and Michmash, is clearly "Geba," famous as the scene of Jonathan's first exploit against the Philistines'. From its summit is seen northward the white chalky height of Rûmmon, "the 'cliff' Rimmon" overhanging the Jordan "wilderness," where the remnant of the Benjamites maintained themselves in the general ruin of their tribe. Further still, is the dark conical hill of Tayibeh, with its village perched aloft, like those of the Apennines, the probable' representative of Ophrah of Benjamin; in later times "the city called Ephraim" "near to the wilderness," to which our Lord retired, after the raising of Lazarus'. Nebi Samuel or 1. But two of these heights, in historical importance, stand out from all the rest. Of all the points of interest about Jerusalem, none perhaps gains so much from an actual visit to Palestine as the lofty peaked eminence which fills up the north-west corner of the table-land; seen in every direction, the highest elevation in the whole country south of Hermon, commanding a view far wider than that of Olivet, inasmuch as it includes the western plain and Mediterranean Sea on one side, as well as Olivet and Jerusalem in the distance, backed by the range of Moab. It is in fact the point from which travellers mounting by the ancient route through the pass of Beth-horon obtained their earliest glimpse of the interior of the hills of Palestine. "It is a very fair and delicious place," says Maundeville, "and it is called MountJoy, because it gives joy to pilgrims' hearts; for from that place men first see Jerusalem." And it was probably on that height that Richard Coeur de Lion, advancing from his camp in the Valley of Ajalon, stood in sight of Jerusalem, but buried 11 Sam. x. 26; xi. 4; xv. 34; 2 Sam. xxi. 6; Isa. x. 29. 21 Sam. xiii. 2, 15, 16; xiv. 16; 2 Sam. xxiii. 29. 3 1 Sam. xiii. 3. In xiii. 16; xiv. 5. "Geba" is wrongly rendered "Gibeah;' Saul and Jonathan having evidently seized the stronghold from which they had dispossessed the Philistines. In 2 Kings xxiii. 8; Zech. xiv. 10; it is spoken of as the northern boundary of the kingdom of Judah. Judg. xx. 47. See Robinson, ii. 124. * Josh. xviii. 23; 1 Sam. xiii. 17. his face in his armour, with the noble exclamation, "Ah! Lord God, I pray that I may never see thy Holy City, if so be that not rescue it from the hands of thine enemies'." I may It can only be from the uncertainty of its ancient identity that it has been passed over by modern travellers in comparative silence. At present it bears the name of Nebi-Samuel, which is derived from the Mussulman tradition-now perpetuated by a mosque and tomb-that here lies buried the prophet Samuel'. In the time of the Crusaders it was regarded-not unnaturally, if they merely considered the grandeur of the position-as the site of the great sanctuary of Shiloh. In the manifest impossibilities of either of these assumptions, it has by the latest investigators been identified with Mizpeh. But a closer examination of its position will probably lead to a more certain and satisfactory result. It stands, as we have already seen, at the head of the pass of Beth-horon and on a lower eminence at its northern roots-one of those rounded hills which characterise especially the western formation of Judæa-rises the village of El-Jib, which, both by its name and situation, is incontestably identified with the ancient Gibeon. Gibeon was the head of the powerful Hivite league which included three of the adjacent towns, Beeroth, Kirjathjearim, and Chephirah; and this circumstance, with its important post as the key of the pass of Beth-horon, made it "a great city," and, though not under royal government, equal in rank to "one of the royal cities;" celebrated for its strength and the wisdom of its inhabitants. Hence it was that the raising of the siege of Gibeon, as already described in the account of the battle of Beth-horon, was so vital to the conquest of Canaan. But the chief fame of Gibeon in later times. was not derived from the city itself, but from the "great high place" hard by; whither, after the destruction of its seat at 1 Gibbon, c. 59, but inaccurately from Joinville (part 2). Joinville mentions no place. But Vinisauf, though without the speech, relates the king's ascent of a hill; and Coggeshalle (p. 823), though without any allusion to this story, speaks of his visit to a hermit "apud Samuelem in monte quodam," which can hardly be anything else than Nebi-Samuel. And no other suits Richard's position. 2 "He built the tomb in his lifetime," said the Mussulman guardian of the mosque to us, "but was not buried here till after the expulsion of the Greeks." 3 Josh. ix. 17. 5 Josh. ix. 4, x. 2. 61 Kings iii. 4; ix. 2; 2 Chron. 3, 13. Nob or Olivet, the tabernacle was brought, and where it remained till it was thence removed to Jerusalem by Solomon. It can hardly be doubted that to this great sanctuary the lofty height of Nebi-Samuel, towering immediately over the town of El-Jib, exactly corresponds. The tabernacle would be appropriately transferred to this eminence, when it could no longer remain at Nob on the opposite ridge of Olivet; and, if this peak were thus the "great high place" of Solomon's worship, a significance is given to what otherwise would be a blank and nameless feature in a region where all the less conspicuous hills are distinguished by some historical name. This would then be a ground for the sanctity with which the Mussulman and Christian traditions have invested it, as the Ramah and the Shiloh of Samuel, even though those traditions themselves are without foundation. In Epiphanius' time' it still bore the name of the Mountain of Gibeon; and from its conspicuous height, the name of "Gibeon," (" belonging to a hill,") was naturally derived to the city itself, which lay always where its modern representative lies now, on the lower eminence. From thence the Gibeonites "hewed the wood" of the adjacent valley, and "drew the water" from the springs and tanks with which its immediate neighbourhood abounds, and carried them up to the Sacred Tent, and there attended the "altar of the Lord," which, from its proud elevation, overlooked the wide domain of Israel. The same point-although here one must speak more doubtfully-was, probably, "the hill of God'," which, from its commanding situation, was garrisoned by the Philistines in the time of Samuel to guard the pass, and on which, for a similar reason, though with a different object, the prophets assembled on "the high place," whence they were descending when Saul met them on his return from the neighbourhood of Bethlehem to his own home at Gibeah'. Probably, too, it is "the mountain" where the Gibeonites hung up the seven sons of 1 Epiph. (Her. 394). "The mountain of Gibeon, eight miles from Jerusalem, is the highest." This identifies it with Nebi-Samuel. 2 Josh. ix. 27. 31 Sam. x. 5. 4 It is of course doubtful whether "the hill" mentioned in x. 5, 10, (and, lxx. 13, for "high place,") is not Gibeah. But the mention of the high place above and the city below (x. 5), and the arrival of Saul thither, apparently before his return home, is in favour of the view given in the text. It might, however, be Bethel. BETHEL. Saul "before the Lord," that is, before the tabernacle on its summit, in revenge for the massacre of their kindred by Saul'. 2. From the sanctuary which guarded the entrance into Judæa from the west, we advance naturally to the still greater sanctuary which guarded it on the north and east. As the passage of Beth-horon led up to Gibeon, so the passage of Michmash and Ai led up to Bethel. Bethel lay in the direct thoroughfare of Palestine'; whether the course of a conqueror or a traveller brought him through the long valley so often described, from the bed of the Jordan, or through the mountains of Judah, Benjamin, and Ephraim, north and south, he could not avoid seeing the heights of Bethel. Hence arises what may be called its peculiar antiquity of interest. It thus comprises (with the single exception of Shechem) a longer series of remarkable scenes of Sacred History than has fallen to the lot of any other spot in Palestine. 66 It was the first place where Abraham is said to have "pitched his tent" when he "journeyed"" through the land," "going on still toward the south," on his way to Egypt'; and to the same spot, even to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, unto the place of the altar which he had made there at the first," (so emphatically is the locality marked) he came again as to the familiar scene of his first encampment, Sanctuary on his return from Egypt. The tent and altar were and View of not, however, strictly speaking at Bethel, but on the mountain east of Bethel, having Bethel on the west, and Ai on the East'." This is a precision the more to be noticed, because it makes the whole difference in the truth and vividness of the remarkable scene which follows. Immediately east of the low gray hills, on which the Canaanitish Luz and the Jewish Bethel afterwards stood, rises, as the highest of a succession of 1 2 Sam. xxi. 9. Here again (if the text is rightly translated) the comparison with verse 6, ("We will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul whom the Lord did choose") suggests the identification of the mountain of the Lord with Gibeah. But the expression "mountain" and "before the Lord" are hardly suitable to anything, except the high place of the Tabernacle. 2 Compare, "the highway" that goeth 66 Abraham. up to "Bethel," Jud. xx. 31; "the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem," Judg. xxi. 19. 3 Gen. xii. 8, 9. 4 Gen. xiii. 3, 4. 5 Gen. xii. 8. It is this, apparently, which is called the mountain of Bethel. Josh. xvi. 1; 1 Sam. xiii. 2; 2 Kings xxiii. 16, where in all cases the context implies a situation east of the town. |