Imatges de pàgina
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BRICKS

ARTICHOKES-VEGETABLE GLOBES.

563

XXXVII.

the great similarity of name, for a site so close to the locality of the ancient CHAPTER city, is not to be forgotten. My company at Mesmia gave me names of villages, ruins, old sites, tells, and wells sufficient to fill two pages. None in this direction, however, seemed to be of any historic interest except 'Aglan and this Lakis. We shall come to 'Aglan in half an hour. There are no ruins at either of these places to remind one of ancient glory; but the same remark applies to all the sites on this plain, and that for two reasons: the cities were Brick built chiefly of unburned brick; and such parts as were of stone were either buildings taken from that soft arenaceous formation which is found all along the coast, or from that cretaceous rock which is so characteristic of all these southern hills of Judea, and which is often nothing more than indurated marl. We are not, therefore, to expect ruins; and the name, with a tell of greater or less height, composed of such debris, pottery scattered over the neighbourhood, and a well or two, with a sarcophagus or a stone trough--these are the things by which we identify old sites in Philistia.

The plain from this to Beit Jibrin is destitute of villages and barren of historic interest; and, after taking our lunch at this 'Aglan, we must quicken our pace, or we shall be out on this desert later than is exactly safe. The whole distance, at our rate of riding, is nine hours, and this may be taken as the utmost breadth of the proper territory of the Philistines. The great Wady Simsim branches out to the north-east and south, but it is everywhere destitute of water except in winter. The largest of these branches, called Wady el Hasy, wanders about in a general direction toward the south-east, and drains the western slopes of the mountains of Hebron.

What sort of vegetable is this whose stems our muleteers are cutting up and chewing with so much relish?

It is the wild artichoke. We can amuse ourselves with it and its behaviour Wild arti choke. for a while, and may possibly extract something more valuable than the insipid juice of which our men are so fond. You observe that in growing it throws out numerous branches of equal size and length in all directions, forming a sort of sphere or globe a foot or more in diameter. When ripe and dry in autumn, these branches become rigid and light as a feather, the parent stem breaks off at the ground, and the wind carries these vegetable globes whither- Vegetable soever it pleaseth. At the proper season thousands of them come scudding globes. over the plain, rolling, leaping, bounding with vast racket, to the dismay both of the horse and his rider. Once, on the plain north of Hamath, my horse became quite unmanageable among them. They charged down upon us on the wings of the wind, which broke them from their moorings, and sent them careering over the desert in countless numbers. Our excellent native itinerant, A F had a similar encounter with them on the eastern desert, beyond the Hauran, and his horse was so terrified that he was obliged to alight and lead him. I have long suspected that this wild artichoke is the qulgal, which, in Psalm lxxxiii. 13, is rendered wheel, and in Isaiah xvii. 13, Gulgal a rolling thing. Evidently our translators knew not what to call it. The

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Gulgal.

Beit Jib

in, or Eleutheropolis

Sacred sites.

first passage reads thus: "O my God, make them like a wheel (gulgal), as the stubble before the wind;" and the second, "Rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing (gulgal) before the whirlwind." Now, from the nature of the parallelism, the gulgal cannot be a "wheel," but something corresponding to chaff. It must also be something that does not fly like the chaff, but, in a striking manner rolls before the wind. The signification of gulgal in IIebrew, and its equivalent in other Shemitic dialects, require this, and this rolling artichoke meets the case most emphatically, and especially when it rolls before the whirlwind. In the encounter referred to north of Hamath, my eyes were half blinded with the stubble and chaff which filled the air; but it was the extraordinary behaviour of this "rolling thing" that rivetted my attention. Hundreds of these globes, all bounding like gazelles in one direction over the desert, would suddenly wheel short round, at the bidding of a counterblast, and dash away with equal speed on their new course. An Arab proverb addresses this rolling thing thus: "Ho! 'akkûb, where do you put up tonight?" to which it answers as it flies, "Where the wind puts up." They also derive one of their many forms of cursing from this plant: "May you be whirled, like the 'akkûb, before the wind, until you are caught in the thorns, or plunged into the sea." If this is not the "wheel" of David and the "rolling thing" of Isaiah, I have seen nothing in the country to suggest the comparison.

April 18th. How is it ascertained that this Beit Jibrin is the site of the ancient Eleutheropolis?

The identification is due to the skill of Robinson and Smith, and the process of discovery and verification is detailed with great care in their "Researches." Owing to the fact that Eusebius and Jerome take this as the central station from which to mark the direction and distance of many other places, there are few geographical points in the country of greater value, and Dr. Robinson very justly magnifies its importance. Having myself derived the highest gratification in following out his results in my own excursions in this region, I gladly embrace every opportunity to express my obligations. There is a whole nest of sacred sites scattered around this important centre. On the east we have Beit Nusib-Nezib; and further over the hills to the north-east Jeb'a-the Gibeah of Judah; and north, a little east, we find Shochoh in Shuwiekeh; and beyond it Jarmuth in Yarmuk. 'Ain Shemsh is Beth-shemesh; and north-west of this, Tibneh is the Timnath of Samson's wife. North-east of this is Zorah, the city of his father; and south-east of that is Zanuah. The wady in which Zorah lies is called Wady es Sumpt, and this is probably the battle-field of David and Goliath of Gath. Dr. Robinson thinks that Gath may have been at or near Bethoga Deir Dubban, where are very remarkable excavations and other indications of an ancient city. It appears to me that Bethogabra-Eleutheropolis—Beit Jibrîn, and Gath are all one and the same city. Khurbet Get―ruins of Gath

bra.

Query,
Gath?

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--Gath.

is the name now applied to one of the heaps of rubbish a short distance CHAPTER westward from the castle of Beit Jibrin. The Hebrew word Bethogabra and XXXVII. the Arabic Beit Jibrîn may be rendered house of giants,—which reminds us of Goliath of Gath and his family. And further, I think that the Mareshah of Joshua xv. 44, which was rebuilt by Rehoboam, and is repeatedly mentioned in connection with Gath,1 was a suburb of this great capital of the Philistines. Benjamin of Tudela makes Mareshah and Beit Jibrîn identical, and Jerome Mareshah places them so near each other that they may be regarded as one and the same place. Micah probably wrote " Moresheth-gath" in order to fix the location of the suburb by the name of the main city. All these identifications lend additional interest to this vicinity. Not only did Goliath and his family of giants reside here, but in this beautiful valley king Asa achieved that grand victory over Zerah the Ethiopian, with his host of "a thousand thousand, and three hundred chariots;" for the battle was at Mareshah, in the valley of Zephathah. These facts and suggestions will be sure to quicken your zeal for this day's explorations, notwithstanding your growing disgust with old ruins. There are, in fact, many things about Beit Jibrîn which merit a careful examination. The most striking is this immense quadrangular enclosure which marks out the boundaries of an old castle. It is about six hundred feet square, and was built of large heavy stone. Then, too, the castle Castle of within this inclosure has points of interest. Some parts of it appear very ancient, Beit Jibwhile this confused mass of arches, vaults, and broken walls speaks of Saracenic and crusading times. Besides this building there are immense artificial caverns hewn out of these cretaceous hills, and some of them carefully ornamented. They are found chiefly in the wady which runs up south by east, and in which is situated the ruined church called Mar Hannah. Dr. Robinson has given a detailed account of these remarkable excavations, the object of which he is at a loss to comprehend. Some of them were undoubtedly cisterns, and it is not impossible that all were originally such, but subsequently some of them may have been enlarged into temples and under-ground chapels, and others made into granaries. In travelling through this sacred territory, few things please me more than to Country of light upon those circumstances which prove the accuracy of ancient Bible narratives even in the most incidental remarks and the minutest allusions. We are now not far from Zorah, the birth-place of Samson,3 and it is pleasant to find his home still in existence, in that secluded mountain village above ’Ain Shemsh. On one of the hard rocks of that village Manoah placed his sacrifice, and the angel of the Lord did wondrously while Manoah and his wife looked on; "for it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame." 4

Josephus has a curious addition to the Bible narrative of these transactions, in which, after extolling the beauty of Manoah's wife, he says that her husband was exceedingly jealous; and when he heard her expatiate upon the

iin.

Samson

1 2 Chron. xi. 8.

2 Micah i. 14.

3 Judges xiii. 2.

4

Judges xiil. 20.

PART
III.

beauty of the man who had appeared to her and announced the birth of a son, he was so consumed with this terrible passion that he besought God to send the messenger again, that he might see him-and much more to the same purport. But to return to the history. It is said that Samson went down to Timnath. Timnath, and there saw the woman whom he desired to marry. Now Timnath still exists on the plain, and to reach it from Zorah you must descend through wild, rocky gorges,-just where one would expect to find a lion in those days, when wild beasts were far more common than at present. Nor is it more remarkable that lions should be met with in such places than that fierce leopards should now maintain their position in the thickly settled parts of Lebanon, and even in these very mountains, within a few hundred rods of large villages. Yet such I know is the fact.

Lion.

Bees.

Wedding

feast in Timnath.

There were then vineyards bolonging to Timnath, as there now are in all these hamlets along the base of the hills and upon the mountain sides. These vineyards are very often far out from the villages, climbing up rough wadies and wild cliffs, in one of which Samson encountered the young lion. He threw the dead body aside, and the next time he went down to Timnath he found a swarm of bees in the carcass. This, it must be confessed, is an extraordinary Occurrence. The word for bees is the Arabic for hornets, and these, we know, are very fond of flesh, and devour it with the greatest avidity. I have myself seen a swarm of hornets build their comb in the skull of a dead camel; and this would incline me to believe that it was really our debabir—hornets-that had settled in the carcass of Samson's lion, if it were known that they manufactured honey enough to meet the demands of the story. However, we find that not long after this, bees were so abundant in a wood at no great distance from this spot, that the honey dropped down from the trees on the ground; and I have explored densely wooded gorges in Hermon and in southern Lebanon where wild bees are still found, both in trees and in the clefts of the rocks. It keeps up the verisimilitude of the narrative that these are just the places where wild beasts still abound; and though bees ordinarily avoid dead carcasses, it is possible that they on this occasion selected that of the lion for their hive. The circumstances of the wedding-feast in Timnath are also in keeping with such occasions at the present day. Even the weddings of ordinary people are celebrated with great rejoicings, which are kept up several days. Samson, however, was not an ordinary peasant, but the son of an emeer or nobleman, and the marriages of such are attended with quite as much display as that of Samson. The games and sports also, by which the companions of the bridegroom pass away the time, are not unlike those mentioned in the 14th chapter of Judges; and such occasions frequently end in quarrels, and even bloodshed. I have known many fatal feuds grow out of the sports of these boisterous festivals. And yet one thing more: Samson's wife was a weak and wicked woman, who had no real love for her husband; and this is certainly common enough at the present day. Wives are procured now as then by the intervention of parents, and without any of that personal attachment between the parties which we

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deem essential. They are also very often ready to enter into any treacherous CHAPTER conspiracy against their husbands by which they can gain some desired advan- XXXVII. tage either for themselves or their friends. Indeed, there are very many hus- Treachery bands in this country who neither will nor dare trust their wives. On the of wives. contrary, they watch them with the utmost distrust, and keep everything locked up for fear of their treachery. And yet these distrusted but cunning wives have wonderful power over their husbands. Though uneducated in all that is good, they are perfect masters of craft and deceit. By their arts and their importunity they carry their point, often to the utter and obvious ruin of their husbands, and this, too, when there is really no love between them. It is not at all contrary to present experience, therefore, that Samson's wife should conspire against him in the matter of the riddle, nor that she should succeed in teasing him out of the secret.

We are now in the neighbourhood where David began his illustrious career David and by slaying Goliath of Gath. The Philistines went up against Judah and Goliatl. pitched near Shochoh,-which site is ascertained to be at Shuwiekeh, about six miles to the north-east of us. Beit Netif is on a hill some three miles nearly north of it, and between them is the deep Wady es Sumpt, which passes down the plain, by Timnath, to the great Wady Surar. Dr. Robinson identifies this Wady Sumpt with the Elah of 1 Samuel xvii. 2, by which Saul encamped, probably on the north side, opposite the Philistines; and it was into this wady that the champion of the "uncircumcised" descended every day to defy the armies of the living God: his height nearly ten feet, his proportions enormous, his visage terrible; covered with a shining coat of mail weighing five thousand shekels, a helmet of brass on his head, a target of brass between his shoulders, and greaves of brass on his legs, he appeared like a brazen statue of colossal size, holding a spear whose staff was like a weaver's beam. No wonder the stoutest heart quailed, and that "all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were sore afraid." Forty days did this terrible giant come into the valley, morning and evening, to defy the hosts of Israel, exclaiming, with impious insolence, "Give me a man, that we may fight together." Thus he stood and cried in the morning when the youthful David drew nigh with the parched corn and the ten loaves which his father had sent to his elder brothers. He hears the tumult, and the defiance, and his heroic soul takes fire. Eagerly he inquires into the case, and, undeterred by the rebukes of his envious brothers, he offers to meet the dreadful champion. He is brought before Saul, who said unto him, "Thou are not able to go against this Philistine to fight, with him; thou art but a youth." David modestly replies that, though young, he had already performed, by God's aid, deeds as daring and desperate as this could be. He had killed both a lion and a bear with his empty hands: “And the Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine."1 Declining armour

11 Sam. xvii. 37.

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