CHAPTER XI.

THE LAKE OF MEROM AND THE SOURCES OF THE JORDAN.

Judges xviii. 9, 10, 29. "Arise, that we may go up against them for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good. When ye go, ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large land: for God hath given it into your hands; a place where there is no want of any thing that is in the earth. And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born unto Israel: how beit the name of the city was Laish at the first."

Matt. xvi. 13.

"Jesus came into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi."

I. Upper valley of the Jordan-Kedesh-Naphtali-II. Lake of MeromBattle of Merom-III. Sources of the Jordan.-1. Dan.-2. CæsareaPhilippi-Hazor-Paneas-The Transfiguration.

THE LAKE OF MEROM AND THE SOURCES

OF THE JORDAN.

Jordan.

THE Sea of Galilee, as we have seen, has no sacred associations but those of the New Testament. One peaceful Upper valPresence dwells undisturbed on its shores and its ley of the waters from end to end. But the moment that the traveller emerges from its basin, he finds himself once more in the scenes of the old wars of the earliest times. The last object which he saw on the south, before descending into its deep basin, was the encampment of Barak; and now, on ascending and advancing northwards, he is again amidst the troubled times of Joshua and the Judges.

Mounting from the shores of the Plain of Gennesareth, wider and wider glimpses of the lake open before he sees it for the last time. The broad opening at its southern end marks the rapid descent of the Jordan valley; Tabor, with the Mount of the Beatitudes as an outpost, is long visible above it. Over the wild green hills which skirt the feet of the commanding heights of Safed, he reaches the long undulating plain enclosed between the two lines of Anti-Libanus-the uppermost stage of the Jordan. The northern horizon is closed by Hermon, with its double' snow-clad peak, and beyond by Lebanon with, its many heads, in the further distance.

On the eastern range, which still retains its horizontal character, was Golan (of which the name is preserved), the sanctuary of the trans-Jordanic Manasseh'. On the western, which is broken and varied, are perched here and Ranges of there castles of crusading celebrity, but mostly without any ancient interest, Tibnîn, Hunîn and Belfort, which, from the masonry of their lower walls, appear to have been built on ancient Canaanite or Jewish foundations.

1 Hence the plural number, "Hermonites," or "Hermons," used in Psalm xlii. 6.

Naphtali

and Man

asseh.

2 Deut. iv. 43; Josh. xx. 8; xxi. 27 -now Djaulan.

Kedesh

The cities of this region may all be characterised as standing on rocky spurs or ridges, above peaceful green basins, high among the hills'. Of these the most remarkable is 'KedeshNaphtali. Naphtali, the birth-place of Barak; the sanctuary, as its name implies, of the great tribe of Naphtali, by which the whole of this western range was occupied. The modern village crowns the hill. The fragments of columns on this hill-the tombs of every kind in the valley behind, and on the platform in front of the village-the ruins of two considerable structures on the same platform-constitute together the largest amount of ancient vestiges that are to be found in any of the cities of Galilee. The green plain which extends north and south of the platform and hill of the village is studded with terebinths, in sufficient numbers to illustrate the scene of Jael's encampment under trees of this kind on this very spot.

II. But it is on the plain and its river that the main historical interest is concentrated. The plain is broken by wild downs, studded with Arab encampments-covered with countless herds of cattle-chiefly the "bulls" and "buffaloes" of Hermon and Bashan, which wander over the wide plain, and wallow or repose at full length in the copious streams, here as elsewhere in the Jordan valley, descending from the western declivities. The rocks here begin to exchange the gray colour of the limestone formation of Central Palestine for the dark basalt-the "iron" as it was called in ancient days-of Bashan'. In the centre of this plain, half morass', half tarn, lies the uppermost lake of the Jordan, about seven miles long, and in its greatest width six miles broad, the mountains slightly compressing it at either extremity, surrounded by an almost impenetrable jungle of reeds, abounding in wild fowl; the sloping hills near it scoured by herds of gazelles.

1 See Forrest, in Journal of American Oriental Society, ii. 242, 244.

2 Robinson, iii. 355. Judges iv. 6. 3 The "buffalo" is the reem (mistranslated "unicorn") of the Old Testament. The pilgrim Willibald (Early Travellers, p. 17) describes them as gigantic sheep.

4 For the question whether the word basalt is derived from this, its main seat in Bashan, see Von Raumer's Palästina,

84.

"The whole plain, taken together,

is the largest marsh I have ever seen
(Account of the sources of the Jordan, by
the Rev. W. M. Thomson, whose descrip-
tion of this region in the third volume
of the Bibliotheca Sacra (1846), is by far
the best extant. See also chapter xv. of
his Land and Book). It is, perhaps, in this
marshy region, rather than in the present
Abil, that we ought to look for Abel
Bethmaachab, also called Abel-Maim-
the meadow of waters. 2 Kings xv. 29;

2 Chr. xvi. 4.

6 "I asked an Arab if I could not

Battle of

This lake, now called Hûleh, in old times bore the name of Merom, and afterwards of Samachon, both probably Lake of from its upland situation,-" The High Lake'." On Merom. its shores was fought the third and last conflict of Joshua with the Canaanites. After the capture of Ai and the battle of Beth-horon, which secured to him the whole of the south and centre of Palestine, a final gathering of the Merom. Canaanite races took place in the extreme north, under the king, who bore the hereditary title of Jabin'; and the name of whose city, Hazor, still lingers at the head of the plain, and in the surrounding hills. Round him were assembled the heads of all the tribes who had not yet fallen under Joshua's sword. As the British chiefs were driven to the Land's End before the advance of the Saxon, so at this Land's End of Palestine were gathered for this last struggle, not only the kings of the north in the immediate neighbourhood, but from the Desert-valley of the Jordan south of the sea of Galilee, from the maritime plain of Philistia, from the heights above Sharon, and from the still unconquered Jebus, to the Hivite who dwelt in the valley of

He

reach the lake through the swamp. regarded me with surprise for some time, as if to ascertain whether I was in earnest, and then, lifting his hand, swore by the Almighty, the Great, that not even a wild boar could get through" (Thomson).

See Reland's Palestine, p. 262. This explanation of Merom is undoubted. Three explanations are given of Samachon, by which it is called in Josephus (Bell. Jud. III. x. 7; IV. i. 1) and all later writers. 1. From the Arabic Samak, "high," and thus a translation of Merom. 2. From the Chaldaic Samak, "red," in allusion to its muddy waters, as distinct from the clear basin of the Sea of Galilee. 3. From the Arabic Samach, "a fish." This last, in itself reasonable, becomes improbable from the fact that it could hardly be given as a distinctive epithet, in comparison with the plentiful fisheries of the Lake of Gennesareth. 4. From Sabac, "a thorn," so called from the thorny jungle round it. (See Lightfoot, Chorograph. Ant. i. 4; ii. 5.) It is called Sabac in the Babylonian, Samac in the Jerusalem Talmud, by the same interchange as Jamnia and Jabnia. (Ib. ii. 15.) The name of Huleht, as applied to the lake, is as old as the Crusades. (Robinson, iii. 356.) But as applied to the vicinity, it is at least as old as the Christian era. Josephus states

(Ant. XV. x. 3) that Augustus gave
Herod Οὐλάθαν καὶ Πανίαδα, and Οὐλάθα
is clearly the Greek form of Huleh, as
Ouλos (Ant. I. vi. 4) is of Hul in Genesis
x. 23. (Fleischer, in Zeitschrift D. M. G.,
ii. 428.) If it is called after this Hul,
the patriarch, we may compare the tomb
of Sitteh Hulch, the Lady Huleh, near
Baalbec. It would seem that the whole
country is called by this name, Beled-el-
Hûleh (see Schwarz, 41), and the Lake,
therefore, is probably called from the dis
trict, and not vice versa. The Ghawarîneh
Arabs on its banks call it the Lake of
El-Mallahah (the salt), and so it is called
by William of Tyre (xviii. 13; see New-
bold, Journ. As. Soc. xvi. 18), possibly
from the saline crust which Burckhardt
describes on its south-west shores (i. 316).
This probably is the explanation of the
name of Mellahah given to the clear
spring at its north-west extremity, and
which was so called as being held by the
neighbouring Arabs to be the source of
the lake. Schwarz speaks of it (p. 29)
as Ain Malka ("spring of the King").
Another name given by the Arabs to this
lake, from the fertility of its shores, is
Bahr Hit (the Sea of Wheat). In John
vi. 1, the lake of Gennesareth is called
"the sea of Galilee, of Tiberias," imply-
ing that Merom was also called "a sea of
Galilee."
2 Josh. xi. 1.

Baalbec "under Hermon;" all these "went out, they and all their hosts with them, even as the sand is upon the seashore in multitude, . . . and when all these kings were met together, they came and pitched together at the waters of Merom to fight against Israel'." The new and striking feature. of this battle, as distinct from those of Ai and Gibeon, consisted in the "horses and chariots very many," which now for the first time appear in the Canaanite warfare: and it was the use of these which probably fixed the scene of the encampment by the lake, along whose level shores they could have full play for their force. It was this new phase of war which called forth the special command to Joshua, nowhere else recorded: "Thou shalt hough their horses, and burn their chariots with fire." Nothing is told us of his previous movements. All that we know is, that on the eve of the battle he was within a day's march of the lake. On the morrow, by a sudden descent, like that which had raised the siege of Gibeon, he and all the people of war "fell" like a thunderbolt upon them in the " mountain" slopes of the plain, before they had time to rally on the level ground. In the sudden panic "the Lord delivered them into the hand of Israel, who smote them, and chased them westward over the mountains above the gorge of the Leontes "to Sidon," and eastward to the "plain" of "Massoch" or "Mizpeh." The rout was complete, and the cavalry and chariots which had seemed so formidable were visited with special destruction. The horses were hamstrung, and the

chariots burned with fire.

And it is not till the revival of the city of Hazor, under the second Jabin, long afterwards', that they once more appear in force against Israel, descending as now, from this very plain. Far over the western hills Joshua

(x. 17), "The 'plain' of Lebanon under Hermon." In this case the eastward direction (verse 8) is spoken of in reference to Sidon; and Baal Gad will be the Temple of the God of Destiny (Gad) in Baalbec. (See Ritter, iv. 229.) Mizpeh, or (LXX) Massoch, will then be some place in this plain. Misrephoth-maim

cannot be identified; but its name ("the flow of waters") is naturally applied to the rise or to the exit of the Leontes from the Valley of Baalbec.

5 Judg. iv. 2.