THE LAND

Patriarchal Palestine! There are some who would tell us that the very name is a misnomer. Have we not been assured by the German critics and their English disciples that there were no patriarchs and no Patriarchal Age? And yet, the critics notwithstanding, the Patriarchal Age has actually existed. While criticism, so-called, has been busy in demolishing the records of the Pentateuch, archaeology, by the spade of the excavator and the patient skill of the decipherer, has been equally busy in restoring their credit. And the monuments of the past are a more solid argument than the guesses and prepossessions of the modern theorist. The clay tablet and inscribed stone are better witnesses to the truth than literary tact or critical scepticism. That Moses and his contemporaries could neither read nor write may have been proved to demonstration by the critic; yet nevertheless we now know, thanks to archaeological discovery, that it would have been a miracle if the critic were right. The Pentateuch is, after all, what it professes to be, and the records it contains are history and not romance.

The question of its authenticity involves issues more serious and important than those which have to do merely with history or archaeology. We are sometimes told indeed, in all honesty of purpose, that it is a question of purely literary interest, without influence on our theological faith. But the whole fabric of the Jewish Church in the time of our Lord was based upon the belief that the Law of Moses came from God, and that this God “is not a man that He should lie.” And the belief of the Jewish Church was handed on to the Christian Church along with all its consequences. To revise that belief is to revise the dogmas of the Christian Church as they have been held for the last eighteen centuries; to reject it utterly is to reject the primary document of the faith into which we have been baptized.

It is not, however, with theological matters that we are now concerned. Patriarchal Palestine is for us the Palestine of the Patriarchal Age, as it has been disclosed by archaeological research, not the Palestine in which the revelation of God’s will to man was to be made. It is sufficient for us that the Patriarchal Age has been shown by modern discovery to be a fact, and that in the narratives of the Book of Genesis we have authentic records of the past. There was indeed a Patriarchal Palestine, and the glimpses of it that we get in the Old Testament have been illustrated and supplemented by the ancient monuments of the Oriental world.

Whether the name of Palestine can be applied to the country with strict accuracy at this early period is a different question. Palestine is Philistia, the land of the Philistines, and the introduction of the name was subsequent to the settlement of the Philistines in Canaan and the era of their victories over Israel. As we shall see later on, it is probable that they did not reach the Canaanitish coast until the Patriarchal Age was almost, if not entirely, past Their name does not occur in the cuneiform correspondence which was carried on between Canaan and Egypt in the century before the Exodus, and they are first heard of as forming part of that great confederacy of northern tribes which attacked Egypt and Canaan in the days of Moses. But, though the term Canaan would doubtless be more correct than Palestine, the latter has become so purely geographical in meaning that we can employ it without reference to history or date. Its signification is too familiar to cause mistakes, and it can therefore be used proleptically, just as the name of the Philistines themselves is used proleptically in the twenty-first chapter of Genesis. Abimelech was king of a people who inhabited the same part of the country as the Philistines in later times, and were thus their earlier representatives.

The term “Palestine” then is used geographically without any reference to its historical origin. It denotes the country which is known as Canaan in the Old Testament, which was promised to Abraham and conquered by his descendants. It is the land in which David ruled and in which Christ was born, where the prophets prepared the way for the Gospel and the Christian Church was founded.

Shut in between the Desert of Arabia and the Mediterranean Sea on the east and west, it is a narrow strip of territory, for the most part mountainous, rugged, and barren. Northward the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon come to meet it from Syria, the Anti-Lebanon culminating in the lofty peaks and precipitous ravines of Mount Hermon (9383 feet above the level of the sea), while Lebanon runs southward till it juts out into the sea in its sacred headland of Carmel. The fertile plain of Esdraelon or Megiddo separates the mountains of the north from those of the south. These last form a broken plateau between the Jordan and the Dead Sea on the one side and the Plain of Sharon and the sea-coast of the Philistines on the other, until they finally slope away into the arid desert of the south. Here, on the borders of the wilderness, was Beersheba the southern limit of the land in the days of the monarchy, Dan, its northern limit, lying far away to the north at the foot of Hermon, and not far from the sources of the Jordan.

Granite and gneiss, overlaid with hard dark sandstone and masses of secondary limestone, form as it were the skeleton of the country. Here and there, at Carmel and Gerizim, patches of the tertiary nummulite of Egypt make their appearance, and in the plains of Megiddo and the coast, as well as in the “Ghor” or valley of the Jordan, there is rich alluvial soil. But elsewhere all is barren or nearly so, cultivation being possible only by terracing the cliffs, and bringing the soil up to them from the plains below with slow and painful labour. It has often been said that Palestine was more widely cultivated in ancient times than it is to-day. But if so, this was only because a larger area of the cultivable ground was tilled. The plains of the coast, which are now given over to malaria and Beduin thieves, were doubtless thickly populated and well sown. But of ground actually fit for cultivation there could not have been a larger amount than there is at present.

It was not in any way a well-wooded land. On the slopes of the Lebanon and of Carmel, it is true, there were forests of cedar-trees, a few of which still survive, and the Assyrian kings more than once speak of cutting them down or using them in their buildings at Nineveh. But south of the Lebanon forest trees were scarce; the terebinth was so unfamiliar a sight in the landscape as to become an object of worship or a road-side mark. Even the palm grew only on the sea-coast or in the valley of the Jordan, and the tamarisk and sycamore were hardly more than shrubs.

Nevertheless when the Israelites first entered Canaan, it was in truth a land “flowing with milk and honey.” Goats abounded on the hills, and the bee of Palestine, though fierce, is still famous for its honey-producing powers. The Perizzites or “fellahin” industriously tilled the fields, and high-walled cities stood on the mountain as well as on the plain.

The highlands, however, were deficient in water. A few streams fall into the sea south of Carmel, but except in the spring, when they have been swollen by the rains, there is but little water in them. The Kishon, which irrigates the plain of Megiddo, is a more important river, but it too is little more than a mountain stream. In fact, the Jordan is the only river in the true sense of the word which Palestine possesses. Rising to the north of the waters of Merom, now called Lake Huleh, it flows first into the Lake of Tiberias, and then through a long deep valley into the Dead Sea. Here at a depth of 1293 feet below the level of the sea it is swallowed up and lost; the sea has no outlet, and parts with its stagnant waters through evaporation alone. The evaporation has made it intensely salt, and its shores are consequently for the most part the picture of death.

In the valley of the Jordan, on the other hand, vegetation is as luxuriant and tropical as in the forests of Brazil. Through a dense undergrowth of canes and shrubs the river forces its way, rushing forward towards its final gulf of extinction with a fall of 670 feet since it left the Lake of Tiberias. But the distance thus travelled by it is long in comparison with its earlier fall of 625 feet between Lake Huleh and the Sea of Galilee. Here it has cut its way through a deep gorge, the cliffs of which rise up almost sheer on either side.

The Jordan has taken its name from its rapid fall. The word comes from a root which signifies “to descend,” and the name itself means “the down-flowing.” We can trace it back to the Egyptian monuments of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties. Ramses ii., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, has inscribed it on the walls of Karnak, and Ramses iii., who must have reigned while the Israelites were still in the wilderness, enumerates the “Yordan” at Medinet Habu among his conquests in Palestine. In both cases it is associated with “the Lake of Rethpana,” which must accordingly be the Egyptian name of the Dead Sea. Rethpana might correspond with a Hebrew Reshphon, a derivative from Resheph, the god of fire. Canaanite mythology makes the sparks his “children” (Job and it may be, therefore, that in this old name of the Dead Sea we have a reference to the overthrow of the cities of the plain.

Eastward of the Dead Sea and the Jordan the country is again mountainous and bare. Here were the territories of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh; here also were the kingdoms of Moab and Ammon, of Bashan and the Amorites. Here too was the land of Gilead, south of the Lake of Tiberias and north of the Dead Sea.

We can read the name of Muab or Moab on the base of the second of the six colossal statues which Ramses ii. erected in front of the northern pylon of the temple of Luxor. It is there included among his conquests. The statue is the only Egyptian monument on which the name has hitherto been found. But this single mention is sufficient to guarantee its antiquity, and to prove that in the days before the Exodus it was already well known in Egypt.

To the north of Moab came the kingdom of Ammon, or the children of Ammi. The name of Ammon was a derivative from that of the god Ammi or Ammo, who seems to have been regarded as the ancestor of the nation, and “the father of the children of Ammon” was accordingly called Ben-Ammi, “the son of Ammi” (Gen. xi. Far away in the north, close to the junction of the rivers Euphrates and Sajur, and but a few miles to the south of the Hittite stronghold of Carchemish, the worship of the same god seems to have been known to the Aramaean tribes. It was here that Pethor stood, according to the Assyrian inscriptions, and it was from Pethor that the seer Balaam came to Moab to curse the children of Israel. Pethor, we are told, was “by the river (Euphrates) of the land of the children of Ammo,” where the word represents a proper name (Num. xxi. To translate it “his people,” as is done by the Authorized Version, makes no sense. On the Assyrian monuments Ammon is sometimes spoken of as Beth-Ammon, “the house of Ammon,” as if Ammon had been a living man.

Like Moab, Ammon was a region of limestone mountains and barren cliffs. But there were fertile fields on the banks of the Jabbok, the sources of which rose not far from the capital Rabbath.

North of Gilead and the Yarmuk was the volcanic plateau of Bashan, Ziri-Basana, or “the Plain of Bashan,” as it is termed in the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna. Its western slope towards the Lakes of Merom and Tiberias was known as Golan (now Jolan); its eastern plateau of metallic lava was Argob, “the stony” (now El Lejja). Bashan was included in the Hauran, the name of which we first meet with on the monuments of the Assyrian king Assur-bani-pal. To the north it was bounded by Ituraea, so named from Jetur, the son of Ishmael (Gen. xx, the road through Ituraea (the modern Jedur) leading to Damascus and its well-watered plain.

The gardens of Damascus lie 2260 feet above the sea. In the summer the air is cooled by the mountain breezes; in the winter the snow sometimes lies upon the surface of the land. Westward the view is closed by the white peaks of Anti-Lebanon and Hermon; eastward the eye wanders over a green plain covered with the mounds of old towns and villages, and intersected by the clear and rapid streams of the Abana and Pharphar. But the Abana has now become the Barada, or “cold one,” while the Pharphar is the Nahr el-Awaj.

The Damascus of to-day stands on the site of the city from which St. Paul escaped, and “the street which is called Straight” can still be traced by its line of Roman columns. But it is doubtful whether the Damascus of the New Testament and of to-day is the same as the Damascus of the Old Testament. Where the walls of the city have been exposed to view, we see that their Greek foundations rest on the virgin soil; no remains of an earlier period lie beneath them. It may be, therefore, that the Damascus of Ben-Hadad and Hazael is marked rather by one of the mounds in the plain than by the modern town. In one of these the stone statue of a man, in the Assyrian style, was discovered a few years ago.

An ancient road leads from the peach-orchards of Damascus, along the banks of the Abana and over Anti-Lebanon, to the ruins of the temple of the Sun-god at Baalbek. The temple as we see it is of the age of the Antonines, but it occupies the place of one which stood in Heliopolis, the city of the Sun-god, from immemorial antiquity. Relics of an older epoch still exist in the blocks of stone of colossal size which serve as the foundation of the western wall. Their bevelling reminds us of Phoenician work.

Baalbek was the sacred city of the Bek’a, or “cleft” formed between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon by the gorge through which the river Litany rushes down to the sea. Once and once only is it referred to in the Old Testament. Amos declares that the Lord “will break the bar of Damascus and cut off the inhabitant from Bikath-On” the Bek’a of On. The name of On reminds us that the Heliopolis of Egypt, the city of the Egyptian Sun-god, was also called On, and the question arises whether the name and worship of the On of Syria were not derived from the On of Egypt. For nearly two centuries Syria was an Egyptian province, and the priests of On in Egypt may well have established themselves in the “cleft” valley of Coele-Syria.

From Baalbek, the city of “Baal of the Bek’a,” the traveller makes his way across Lebanon, and under the snows of Jebel Sannin nearly 9000 feet in height to the old Phoenician city of Beyrout. Beyrout is already mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna under the name of Beruta or Beruna, “the cisterns.” It was already a seaport of Phoenicia, and a halting-place on the high road that ran along the coast.

The coastland was known to the Greeks and Romans as Phoenicia, “the land of the palm.” But its own inhabitants called it Canaan, “the lowlands.” It included not only the fringe of cultivated land by the sea-shore, but the western slopes of the Lebanon as well. Phoenician colonies and outposts had been planted inland, far away from the coast, as at Laish, the future Dan, where “the people dwelt careless,” though “they were far away from the Sidonians,” or at Zemar (the modern Sumra) and Arka (still called by the same name). The territory of the Phoenicians stretched southward as far as Dor (now Tanturah), where it met the advance guard of the Philistines.

Such was Palestine, the promised home of Israel. It was a land of rugged and picturesque mountains, interspersed with a few tracts of fertile country, shut in between the sea and the ravine of the Jordan, and falling away into the waterless desert of the south. It was, too, a land of small extent, hardly more than one hundred and sixty miles in length and sixty miles in width. And even this amount of territory was possessed by the Israelites only during the reigns of David and Solomon. The sea-coast with its harbours was in the hands of the Phoenicians and the Philistines, and though the Philistines at one time owned an unwilling allegiance to the Jewish king, the Phoenicians preserved their independence, and even Solomon had to find harbours for his merchantmen, not on the coast of his own native kingdom, but in the distant Edomite ports of Eloth and Ezion-geber, in the Gulf of Aqabah. With the loss of Edom Judah ceased to have a foreign trade.

The Negeb, or desert of the south, was then, what it still is, the haunt of robbers and marauders. The Beduin of to-day are the Amalekites of Old Testament history; and then, as now, they infested the southern frontier of Judah, wasting and robbing the fields of the husbandman, and allying themselves with every invader who came from the south, Saul, indeed, punished them, as Romans and Turks have punished them since; but the lesson is remembered only for a short while: when the strong hand is removed, the “sons of the desert” return again like the locusts to their prey.

It is true that the Beduin now range over the loamy plains and encamp among the marshes of Lake Huleh, where in happier times their presence was unknown. But this is the result of a weak and corrupt government, added to the depopulation of the lowlands. There are traces even in the Old Testament that in periods of anarchy and confusion the Amalekites penetrated far into the country in a similar fashion. In the Song of Deborah and Barak Ephraim is said to have contended against them, and accordingly “Pirathon in the land of Ephraim” is described as being “in the mount of the Amalekites” (Judges xi. In the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna, too, there is frequent mention of the “Plunderers” by whom the Beduin, the Shasu of the Egyptian texts, must be meant, and who seem to have been generally ready at hand to assist a rebellious vassal or take part in a civil feud.

Lebanon, the “white” mountain, took its name from its cliffs of glistening limestone. In the early days of Canaan it was believed to be the habitation of the gods, and Phoenician inscriptions exist dedicated to Baal-Lebanon, “the Baal of Lebanon.” He was the special form of the Sun-god whose seat was in the mountain-ranges that shut in Phoenicia on the east, and whose spirit was supposed to dwell in some mysterious way in the mountains themselves. But there were certain peaks which lifted themselves up prominently to heaven, and in which consequently the sanctity of the whole range was as it were concentrated. It was upon their summits that the worshipper felt himself peculiarly near the God of heaven, and where therefore the altar was built and the sacrifice performed. One of these peaks was Hermon, “the consecrated,” whose name the Greeks changed into Harmonia, the wife of Agenor the Phoenician. From its top we can see Palestine spread as it were before us, and stretching southwards to the mountains of Judah. The walls of the temple, which in Greek times took the place of the primitive altar, can still be traced there, and on its slopes, or perched above its ravines, are the ruins of other temples of Baal at Der el-’Ashair, at Rakleh, at Ain Hersha, at Rasheyat el-Fukhar all pointing towards the central sanctuary on the summit of the mountain.

The name of Hermon, “the consecrated,” was but an epithet, and the mountain had other and more special names of its own. The Sidonians, we are told (Deut. ii, called it Sirion, and another of its titles was Sion (Deut. i, unless indeed this is a corrupt reading for Sirion. Its Amorite name was Shenir (Deut. ii, which appears as Saniru in an Assyrian inscription, and goes back to the earliest dawn of history. When the Babylonians first began to make expeditions against the West, long before the birth of Abraham, the name of Sanir was already known. It was then used to denote the whole of Syria, so that its restriction to Mount Hermon alone must have been of later date.

Another holy peak was Carmel, “the fruitful field,” or perhaps originally “the domain of the god.” It was in Mount Carmel that the mountain ranges of the north ended finally, and the altar on its summit could be seen from afar by the Phoenician sailors. Here the priests of Baal called in vain upon their god that he might send them rain, and here was “the altar of the Lord” which Elijah repaired.

The mountains of the south present no striking peak or headland like Hermon and Carmel. Even Tabor belongs to the north. Ebal and Gerizim alone, above Shechem, stand out among their fellows, and were venerated as the abodes of deity from the earliest times. The temple-hill at Jerusalem owed its sanctity rather to the city within the boundaries of which it stood than to its own character. In fact, the neighbouring height of Zion towered above it. The mountains of the south were rather highlands than lofty chains and isolated peaks.

But on this very account they played an important part in the history of the world. They were not too high to be habitable; they were high enough to protect their inhabitants against invasion and war. “Mount Ephraim,” the block of mountainous land of which Shechem and Samaria formed the centre, and at the southern extremity of which the sacred city of Shiloh stood, was the natural nucleus of a kingdom, like the southern block of which Hebron and Jerusalem were similarly the capitals. Here there were valleys and uplands in which sufficient food could be grown for the needs of the population, while the cities with their thick and lofty walls were strongholds difficult to approach and still more difficult to capture. The climate was bracing, though the winters were cold, and it reared a race of hardy warriors and industrious agriculturists. The want of water was the only difficulty; in most cases the people were dependent on rain-water, which they preserved in cisterns cut out of the rock.

This block of southern mountains was the first and latest stronghold of Israel. It constituted, in fact, the kingdoms of Samaria and Judah. Out of it, at Shechem, came the first attempt to found a monarchy in Israel, and thus unite the Israelitish tribes; out of it also came the second and more successful attempt under Saul the Benjamite and David the Jew. The Israelites never succeeded in establishing themselves on the sea-coast, and their possession of the plain of Megiddo and the southern slopes of the Lebanon was a source of weakness and not of strength. It led eventually to the overthrow of the kingdom of Samaria. The northern tribes in Galilee were absorbed by the older population, and their country became “Galilee of the Gentiles,” rather than an integral part of Israel. The plain of Megiddo was long held by the Canaanites, and up to the last was exposed to invasion from the sea-coast. It was, in fact, the battle-field of Palestine. The army of the invader or the conqueror marched along the edge of the sea, not through the rugged paths and dangerous defiles of the mountainous interior, and the plain of Megiddo was the pass which led them into its midst. The possession of the plain cut off the mountaineers of the north from their brethren in the south, and opened the way into the heart of the mountains themselves.

But to possess the plain was also to possess chariots and horsemen, and a large and disciplined force. The guerilla warfare of the mountaineer was here of no avail. Success lay on the side of the more numerous legions and the wealthier state, on the side of the assailant and not of the assailed.

Herein lay the advantage of the kingdom of Judah. It was a compact state, with no level plain to defend, no outlying territories to protect. Its capital stood high upon the mountains, strongly fortified by nature and difficult of access. While Samaria fell hopelessly and easily before the armies of Assyria, Jerusalem witnessed the fall of Nineveh itself.

What was true of the later days of Israelitish history was equally true of the age of the patriarchs. The strength of Palestine lay in its southern highlands; whoever gained possession of these was master of the whole country, and the road lay open before him to Sinai and Egypt. But to gain possession of them was the difficulty, and campaign after campaign was needed before they could be reduced to quiet submission. In the time of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty Jerusalem was already the key to Southern Palestine.

Geographically, Palestine was thus a country of twofold character, and its population was necessarily twofold as well. It was a land of mountain and plain, of broken highlands and rocky sea-coast. Its people were partly mountaineers, active, patriotic, and poor, with a tendency to asceticism; partly a nation of sailors and merchants, industrious, wealthy, and luxurious, with no sense of country or unity, and accounting riches the supreme end of life. On the one hand, it gave the world its first lessons in maritime exploration and trade; on the other it has been the religious teacher of mankind.

In both respects its geographical position has aided the work of its people. Situated midway between the two great empires of the ancient Oriental world, it was at once the high road and the meeting-place of the civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia. Long before Abraham migrated to Canaan it had been deeply interpenetrated by Babylonian culture and religious ideas, and long before the Exodus it had become an Egyptian province. It barred the way to Egypt for the invader from Asia; it protected Asia from Egyptian assault. The trade of the world passed through it and met in it; the merchants of Egypt and Ethiopia could traffic in Palestine with the traders of Babylonia and the far East. It was destined by nature to be a land of commerce and trade.

And yet while thus forming a highway from the civilization of the Euphrates to that of the Nile, Palestine was too narrow a strip of country to become itself a formidable kingdom. The empire of David scarcely lasted for more than a single generation, and was due to the weakness at the same time of both Egypt and Assyria. With the Arabian desert on the one side and the Mediterranean on the other, it was impossible for Canaan to develop into a great state. Its rocks and mountains might produce a race of hardy warriors and energetic thinkers, but they could not create a rich and populous community. The Phoenicians on the coast were driven towards the sea, and had to seek in maritime enterprise the food and wealth which their own land refused to grant. Palestine was essentially formed to be the appropriator and carrier of the ideas and culture of others, not to be itself their origin and creator.

But when the ideas had once been brought to it they were modified and combined, improved and generalized in a way that made them capable of universal acceptance. Phoenician art is in no way original; its elements have been drawn partly from Babylonia, partly from Egypt; but their combination was the work of the Phoenicians, and it was just this combination which became the heritage of civilized man. The religion of Israel came from the wilderness, from the heights of Sinai, and the palm-grove of Kadesh, but it was in Palestine that it took shape and developed, until in the fullness of time the Messiah was born. Out of Canaan have come the Prophets and the Gospel, but the Law which lay behind them was brought from elsewhere.