the cliff""-in the numerous caverns with which the cliffs of En-gedi abound. And in those same caverns David with his followers afterwards took refuge, and in one of them occurred the encounter with Saul, so romantic, and yet so true to the peculiar customs of the East. Yet again, at a still later time, the first hermits of Palestine-the solitary sect of the Essenes -had their chief seat at En-gedi; as afterwards the earliest Christian monastery of Palestine was planted not far distant, in the valley of the Kedron, the secluded Convent of St. Saba, the dwelling and burial-place of St. John of Damascus. And yet once more, visible from the heights above En-gedi, towers the tremendous stronghold, "The 'Fastness," as it was emphatically called, in which the treasures of Jerusalem were deposited for security in the troubled times of the monarchy, and in which the last remnant of the insurgents assembled at the close of the war of Titus, and destroyed themselves and their families rather than surrender to the conquerors. Plain and II. The history of the Jordan gradually carries us upwards on its course. In order to understand fully the scenes which follow, we must form an accurate conception of its stage between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. Through this Terraces of whole interval, the river runs between successive the Jordan terraces, one, two, or three, according as the hills Valley. approach more or less near to its banks. It is crossed by three, or at most four, well-known fords. The first and second are marked by remains of Roman bridges, immediately below the Sea of Galilee, and again, immediately above its confluence with the Jabbok'; the third and fourth occur just above and below the present bathing-place of the pilgrims opposite Jericho. No important streams join it on its western children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah, which lieth in the south of Arad." (Judges i. 16.) The "city of palms' may, of course, be Jericho. But Lightfoot (ii. 7) justly contends that it may with equal propriety be En-gedi; which much more naturally suits the context, and agrees with Balaam's allusion, in Numbers xxiv. 21, "Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest thy nest in the cliff,' as appropriate to a place within his view, abounding in caverns and rocks, as it would be inappropriate either to the original seat of the great body of the Kenites on the shore of the Gulf of Akaba, or to the wide upland desert where they were afterwards found south of Judæa. 1 Masada, i. c. metzad, the 'lair' or 'fastness'; see Appendix. It is now called Sebbeh, and has been visited and described by Wolcot, Lynch, De Sauley, and Van de Velde; whose accounts well agree with that of Josephus, B. J. vii. 8. 2 For the bridges, see Schwarz, 49. 3 Van de Velde, ii. 348. side; on its eastern side two, of almost equal magnitude, the Hieromax and the Jabbok. It is below the confluence of the latter stream that the rapid descent' begins. What may be its general character above this point is little known. But, south of the confluence it begins to wear the aspect well known to all travellers, and important in connection with the historical events which it has witnessed. The higher terraces on each side, immediately under the ranges of mountains, are occupied by masses of vegetation, of which I shall have occasion to speak again more particularly. This region is succeeded by the desert-plain, or "Arabah," properly so called, and from this desert-plain begin the regular descents to the bed of the Jordan. Of these, the first is over a long line of white argillaceous hills, somewhat resembling those in the Wady Feiran, down to a flat occupied chiefly with low shrubs of agnus-castus. The second descent is upon a still lower flat, occupied chiefly with a jungle of tamarisks and willows, and this last flat is, in most parts of the river's course, the bed of the river itself. Nearer its mouth there is yet a third descent, consisting of a brake of canes and reeds. The actual stream of the Jordan, as it flows between these banks, is from sixty to a hundred feet wide, and varies from six to four feet in depth. Where it is widest, the bottom is mud; where narrowest, rock or sand'. Of these terraces, the only one, probably, which is continuous through its whole course, is that of the jungle. Higher up the stream the canes and reeds cease to form a continuous brake. The argillaceous hills on the eastern side approach so near the river, that they probably occupy the place of the highest terrace of agnus-castus on the west. But the long line of the jungle never ceases, and, as the valley contracts in its upper channel, sometimes extends across its whole width 3. Plain of 1. The course of the river, thus diversified, is confined between the two ranges of hills, which, like those of the Nilevalley, extend with more or less regularity along the Abel-Shitshores of the Dead Sea, and even to the Gulf of Akaba. In most parts of the Jordan, the plain thus enclosed is not more than eight miles in breadth, but immediately above tim. 1 Lynch, 284. 2 Newbold, Journal of R. As. Soc. xvi. 21. 3 Lynch, 228. Encamp the Dead Sea the mountains on each side retire, leaving a larger plain than usual; probably a distance of more than twelve miles across from range to range. It is this plain which. becomes the scene of the next great events in the history of the river; and it is fortunately that of which the physical ment of the features are best known to travellers. We must Israelites. imagine the Israelite host encamped on its eastern side. The place is so minutely specified, that it may be fixed in spite of the obscurity which still rests on the further bank of the Jordan'. It was in the "desert-plain" of Moab, so called, probably, in contradistinction to the cultivated "fields" on the table-land above. It was in the long belt of acacia groves (shittim) which, on the eastern as on the western side of the Jordan, mark with a line of verdure the upper terraces of the valley. These groves indicate at once the issue of the springs from the roots of the eastern hills, and the tropical climate to which the Israelites had now descended, and which brought them under these wild and thorny shades-probably for the first time since they had left them in the wilderness of Sinai. Their tents were pitched "from Abel-Shittim" on the north "to Beth-Jeshimoth" on the south'; from the 'meadow'' which marked the limit of those 'groves,' to the 'hamlet' or 'house',' which stood in the waste' on the shores of the Dead Sea. They looked straight across the Jordan to the green spot of Jericho on the western bank. High above them rose the 1 In Deut. i. 1, the scene of the last words of Moses is described as "on the 'other' side Jordan in the wilderness, in the desert' 'before' the [sea of] 'Weeds,' between Paran and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth (LXX Aúλúv), and Dizabab (καταχρύσεα - place of gold).' The difficulty here is, that whereas the expression, "on the 'other' side Jordan," confirmed by i. 5, ("on the 'other' side Jordan in the land of Moab,") fixes the scene to the north of the Dead Sea, all the other localities indicated are in the Arabah, south of the Dead Sea. Hengstenberg's explanation, quoted by Dr. Robinson, ii. 600, only evades the difficulty. 2 These springs and roots of the eastern hills are designated as Ashdoth-Pisgah, "the issuings forth of Pisgah." See Appendix. 3 Numb. xxxiii. 49. 4 Abel-Shittim ('meadow of the acacias')-of which the name is preserved in "Abila,"-is described by Josephus as still existing in his time on the spot, embosomed in palms, at the distance of six miles or more (60 stadia) from the Jordan. (Ant. IV. viii. 1; V. i. 1.) Possibly it is the same as appears once or twice in the Jewish war. (Bell. Jud. II. xiii. 2; IV. vii. 6.) 5 Beth ha-jeshimoth is the "house of the wastes." Its southern position is fixed by the place which it holds in the enumeration of the towns of Reuben (Joshua xiii. 20). Compare Josephus, Bell. Jud. IV. vii. 6. 6 On' or 'above' Jordan 'of' Jericho." So this lowest stage of the river seems to have been called (Numb. xxii. 1, xxxiii. 50). mountains to which their descendants gave the name of "Abarim," those on the further side,' the eastern wall of the valley, on whose tops they had so long sojourned in their long struggle with the Amorites of Heshbon. From these lofty summits were unfolded two successive views', of the valley below, of the camp, of the opposite hillsawakening thoughts most diverse to the two seers, but of almost equal interest to future times. From the "high places" there dedicated to Baal, from the 'bare hill' on "the top of the rocks," and lastly, from the cultivated" "field" of View from Zophim, on "the top of Pisgah," "from the top of Pisgah. Peor, that looketh on the face of the waste',' "the Assyrian Prophet, with the King of Moab by his side, looked over the wide prospect:— "He watch'd, till morning's ray On lake and meadow lay, And willow-shaded streams & that silent sweep Amid their banner'd lines, Where, by their several signs, The desert-wearied tribes in sight of Canaan sleep." He saw in that vast encampment amongst the acacia groves, "how goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel." Like the watercourses of the mountains, like gardens by the side of his own great river Euphrates', with The View their aromatic shrubs, and their wide-spreading cedars of Balaam. -the lines of the camp were spread out before him. Ephraim was there with "the strength of the 'wild bull'" of the north; Judah, "couching, like the lion" of the south; "a people dwelling alone," yet a mighty nation-" who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel?" He looked round from his high post over the table-lands of Moab ', to the line of mountains stretching away to Edom, on the south; over the high platform of the Desert beyond the Dead Sea, where dwelt the tribe of Amalek, then "first of the nations"; over the Kenite, not yet removed from his clefts in the rocks of En-gedi ', full in front of the Prophet's view. And for each his dirge of lamentation went up; till at the thought of his own distant land of “Asshur," of the land beyond the Euphrates, of the dim vision of ships coming from the Western sea which lay behind the hills of Palestine, "to afflict Asshur and to afflict Eber"-he burst into the bitter cry, "Alas, who shall live when God doeth this!" and he rose up and returned to his place. The View The view of Balaam from the top of Pisgah and of Peor is the first of those which have made the name celebrated. But it is the second view, which within so short a time succeeded to it, whilst Israel was still encamped in the acacia groves, that has become a proverb throughout the world. To these same mountains of Abarim, to the top of Pisgah, to a of Moses. high place dedicated to the heathen Nebo, as Balaam's standing-place had been consecrated to Peor, "Moses went up from the desert-plain' of Moab . . . . over against Jericho'." In the long line of those eastern mountains which so constantly meet the view of the traveller in all the western parts of Palestine, the eye vainly strives to discern any point emerging from this horizontal platform, which may be fixed as the top of Nebo. Nothing but a fuller description than has ever yet been given of these regions, can determine the spot where the great lawgiver and leader of his people looked down upon their 1 Numb. xxiv. 17. 2 Ibid. 18. 3 Ibid. 20. 4 Ibid. 21. 5 Ibid. 22, 24. "Asshur" of course is Assyria. "Eber" is the "people beyond the Euphrates." "Chittim" is the west, represented by the island of Cyprus-the only island visible from the heights of Syria. On a clear evening at sunset it is visible "in the midst of the great wide sea," from the range of Lebanon above the sources of the Zahrany. (Forest's Narrative in Journal of American Oriental Society, ii. 245.) See Chapter XII. See Numb. xxi. 11, and xxxiii. 44, 47. 7 Deut. xxxiv. 1. |