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Yale University Library

EVIDENCE

TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

DERIVED FROM THE

LITERAL FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY-

PARTICULARLY AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS,
AND BY THE DISCOVERIES OF RECENT TRAVELLERS.

ALEXANDER KEITH, D.D.

THIRTY-EIGHTH EDITION, MUCH ENLARGED.

Opiiiionum commenta dies delet, Natnrje judicia confirmat.— Cic. De Nat. Deo.

LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;

EDINBURGH ; AND NEW YORK.

PREFACE
TO
THE THIRTY-SIITH EDITION.

In searching for facts alone, in illustration of prophecies, it
has uniformly been the Author's endeavour to adduce the
most unexceptionable and conclusive evidence ; and hence
unbelievers, condemned out of their own mouths, have in
general been the leading witnesses. As soon as photography
began to take its place among the wonderful arts or inven
tions of the present day, he anticipated a mode of demon
stration that could neither be questioned nor surpassed ; as,
without the need of any testimony, or the aid of either pen
or pencil, the rays of the sun would thus depict what the
prophets saw. "With this intent, on his first visit to the
East, he took with him some calotype paper, &c, the mode
of preparing which was then secret ; but on reaching Syria
it was whoHy useless. Then engaged in another object, he
passed within an hour of Ashkelon and another of Tyre,
without seeing either. A second visit to Syria, accompanied
by one of his sons, Dr G. S. Keith, Edinburgh, by whom
the daguerreotype views were taken, enables him now to
adduce such proof; and has led besides to such an enlarge
ment of the evidence from manifold additional facts, as he
fain hopes may impart that lesson to others with which
his o wn mind has been impressed, — a stiH deeper conviction
of the defined precision of the sure word of prophecy.

PREFACE

THE THIRTY-SEVENTH EDITION.

In previous editions the Author had thankfully to acknow
ledge his obligations to Captains Irby and Mangles for their
printed, but then unpublished, "Travels in Syria;" and also
to General Straton, Lord Claude Hamilton, and Count
Pourtallis, for the use of their valuable Journals. He has
now to own a similar obligation to Cyril C. Graham, Esq.,
who kindly gave him the manuscripts of his " Explorations
East of the Hauran," which he had read to the Royal Geo
graphical Society, and which will speedily appear in their
Transactions. He penetrated farther into that region than
any previous traveller, and was the first to visit other
forsalcen cities there, besides Beth-gamuL which occupies as
large a space as Jerusalem, and of which the houses and
streets are entire, but in which no mam, dwells. New Hlus-
trations are also added from the published works of other
recent traveHers ; and the means of information are now so
abundant from -what they were when this treatise was first
published, that there is now a Handbook of Syria.
In the last of the previous editions, and stiU more in the
present, the scriptural connection is marked between those
prophecies concerning Palestine which have become accom
plished facts, and other predictions of propitious import,
which wait for their fulfilment in the appointed time.

VI PREFACE.
Scripture thus presents an obvious refutation of the fallacy
that the period of their completion is past, or that the deso
lations of many generations, which shall be raised up, have
come to an end, while these desolations stiU continue.
For years past the Author has been occupied in preparing
for the press a new work, entitled " The History and Destiny
of the World and of the Church, according to Scripture.''
It pertains to Prophetic History, more especially, to show for
what cause these desolations have come, and by what Powers
they have been effected. No fragmentary view, however
complete within itself, can fully show " the whole counsel
of God," as revealed in his word, concerning these things ;
but, when seen in the connection which Scripture assigns
them, each separate part becomes then iUustrative of the
rest. There is a converging-point for them all ; but the
terminus at which the testimony of all the prophets finaUy
rests, is the restitution of all things, of the times of which
God hath spoken by them all.1
i Acts iii. 21.

May 1S59.

CONTENTS.

Chap, I.
II.
III. IV.' V.

VI.
VII.
VIII. IX.

X.
XI.

XII.
XIII. XIV. XV.
XVI.

Introduction
Prophecies Conoerning Christ and the Christian Re
The Destruction of Jerusalem
The Jews ...
The Land op Israel
Desolation of the Cities of Israel
Desolation of the Land of Israel-
Predicted Degree of Desolation
Samaria and Jerusalem
AmmonMoab
Idumea, or Edom
Philistia ...
Gaza
Summary of the Prophecies Conoerning Judea, &c,
Nineveh Babylon The Land of Chaldea ...
Fallen Babylon
Tyre, ... 
Egypt The Arabs ...
Slavery of the Africans — European Colonies in Asia
The Seven Churches of Asia ,
Conclusion

Index to Texts
Geographical Index

Page 1
1549 03S3
114163208242
200 275

3783S4
390 400442458 4S7497 510513518533547551

EVIDENCE OF PROPHECY.

INTRODUCTION.
No subject can be of greater importance, either to the un
believer or to the Christian, than an investigation of the
evidence of Christianity. The former, if his mind be not
fettered by the strongest prejudice, and if he be actuated
in the least by a spirit of free and fair inquiry, cannot dis
avow his obligation to examine its claim to a divine origin.
He cannot rest secure in his unbelief, nor have fair ground
of satisfaction in his own mind, without manifest danger of
the most fatal error, till he has impartially weighed all the
reasons that may be urged on behalf of revealed truth. The
proof of a negative is acknowledged and felt to be difficult ;
and it can never, in any case, be attained, till aU direct and
positive evidence in favour of the affirmative be completely
destroyed. And this, at least, must be done before it can
be proved that Christianity is not true. Without this care
ful and candid examination, all gratuitous assumptions and
fanciful speculations, all hypothetical reasonings, or analo
gical inferences, that seem to militate against the truth of
religion, may be totaUy erroneous ; and though they may
tend to excite a transient doubt, they cannot justify a
settled unbelief. Being exclusively regarded, or being united

2 INTRODUCTION.
to a misapprehension of the real nature of the Christian re
ligion, the understanding may embrace them as convincing ;
but such conviction is neither rational nor consistent, it is
only a misapplication of the name of freethinking. For, as
Christianity appeals to reason and submits its credentials,
as it courts and commands the most trying scrutiny, that
scrutiny the unbeliever is bound, upon his own principles, to
engage in. If he be fearless of wavering in his unbelief, he
wiH not shrink from the inquiry ; or, if truth be his object,
he wiH not resist the only means of its attainment, that he
may either disprove what he could only doubt of before, or
yield to the conviction of positive evidence and undoubted
truth. This unhesitating chaUenge religion gives ; and that
man is neither a champion of infidelity, nor a lover of wis
dom or of truth, who will disown or decline it.
To the believer such a subject is equaUy important and
interesting. The apathy of nominal Christians, in the pre
sent day, is often contrasted with the zeal of those who first
became obedient to the faith. The moral influence of the
Christian religion is not what it has been, or what it ought
to be. The difference in the character of its professors may
be greatly attributed to a fainter impression and less confi
dent assurance of its truth. Those early converts who wit
nessed the miracles of our Lord and of his apostles, and heard
their divine doctrine, and they who received the immediate
tradition of those who both saw and heard them, and who
could themselves compare the moral darkness from which
they had emerged, with the marveUous light of the gospel,
founded their faith upon evidence ; possessed the firmest
conviction of the truth ; were distinguished by their virtues,
as well as by their profession, according to the testimony
even of their enemies ;T cherished the consolations, and were
1 Plinii Epist. lib. f.. ep. 97. Tertul. Ap. c. 2. Gibbon, u. 15. vol. ii. p. 315,
317, edit. Lond. 1815.

INTRODUCTION. 3
inspired by the hopes of religion ; and lived and died, actu
ated by the hope of immortality and the certainty of a
future state. The contrast, unhappily, needs no elucida
tion. The lives of professing Christians, in general, cease to
add a confirmation to the truth of Christianity, while they
have often been the plea of infidels against it. Yet religion
and human nature are still the same as they were when men
were first caUed Christians, and when the believers in Jesus
dishonoured not his name. But they sought more than a
passive and unexamining belief. They knew in whom they
believed ; they felt the power of every truth which they
professed. And the same cause in active operation, would
be productive of the same effects. The same strong and
unwavering faith established on reason and conscious con
viction, would be creative of the same peace and joy in be
lieving, and of all their accompanying fruits. And as a
mean of destroying the distinction, wherever it exists, be
tween the profession and the reality of faith, it is ever the
prescribed duty of all, who profess to believe in the gospel,
to search and to try, " to prove all things, and hold fast
that which is good," and to " be ready always to give an
answer to every man that asketh them a reason of the hope
that is in them."1
To the sincere Christian it must ever be an object of the
highest interest to search into the reason of his hope. The
farther that he searches, the firmer will be his belief. Know
ledge is the fruit of mental labour, the food and the feast of
the mind. In the pursuit of knowledge, the greater the
excellence of the subject of inquiry, the deeper ought to be
the interest, the more ardent the investigation, and the
dearer to the mind the acquisition of the truth. And that
knowledge which immediately affects the soul, which tends
to exalt the moral nature and enlarge the religious capa-
1 1 Thess. v. 21. 1 Poter iil. 15.

4 INTRODUCTION.
cities of man, which pertains to eternity, which lead3 not
merely to the contemplation of the works of the great Archi
tect of the universe, but seeks also to discover an accredited
revelation of his will and a way to his favour, and which
rests not in its progress tiU it find assurance of faith or com
plete conviction, a witness without as well as a witness within,
is surely, " like unto a treasure which a man found hid in
a field, and sold aU that he had and bought it." 1 And it
is delightful to have every doubt removed by the positive
proof of the truth of Christianity— to feel that conviction
of its certainty, which infidelity can never impart to her
votaries, — and to receive that assurance of the faith, which
is as superior in the hope which it communicates as in the
certainty on which it rests, to the cheerless and disquieting
doubts of the unbelieving mind. Instead of being a mere
prejudice of education, which may be easily shaken, belief,
thus founded on reason, becomes fixed and immovable ;
and all the seoffings of the scorner, and speculations of the
infidel, lie as lightly on the mind, or pass as imperceptibly
over it, and make as little impression there, as the spray
upon a rock.
In premising a few remarks, introductory to a sketch of
the prophecies, little can be said on the general and compre
hensive evidence of Christianity. The selection of a part
implies no disparagement to the whole. Ample means for
the confirmation of our faith are within our reach. Newton,
Bacon, and Locke, whose names stand pre-eminent in human
science, to which they opened a path not penetrated before,
found proof sufficient for the complete satisfaction of their
minds. The internal evidence could not be stronger than
it is. There are manifold instances of undesigned coinci
dences in the Acts and Epistles of the apostles, which give
intrinsic proof that they are genuine and authentic. No
1 Matt. xiii. 44-46.

INTRODUCTION 0
better precepts, no stronger motives, than the gospel con
tains, have ever been inculcated. No system of religion has
ever existed in the world at all to be compared to it ; and
none can be conceived more completely adapted to the neces
sities and nature of a sinful being like man, endowed with
the faculty of reason and with capacities of religion. And
the miracles were of such a nature as excluded the idea of
artifice or delusion ; — they were wrought openly in the pre
sence of multitudes ; they testified the benevolence of a
Saviour, as well as the power of the Son of God. The dis
ciples of Christ could not be deceived respecting them ; for
they were themselves endowed with the gift of tongues and
of prophesying, and with the power of working miracles ;
they devoted their lives to the propagation of the gospel, in
opposition to every human interest, and amidst continual
sufferings. The Christian religion was speedily propagated
throughout the whole extent of the Roman empire, and even
beyond its bounds. The written testimony remains of many
who became converts to the truth, and martyrs to its cause :
and the most zealous and active enemies of our faith acknow
ledged the truth of the miracles, and attributed them to the
agency of evil spirits. Yet all this accumulation of evidence
is disregarded, and every testimony is rejected unheard,
because ages have since intervened, and because it bears
witness to works that are miraculous. Though these gene
ral objections against the truth of Christianity have been
ably answered and exposed, yet they may fairly be adduced
as confirmatory of the proof which results from the fulfil
ment of prophecy, and as binding infidels to its investigation.
For it supplies that evidence which the enemies of religion,
or those who are weak in the faith, would require, which
applies to the present time, and which stands not in
need of any testimony, — which is always attainable by the
researches of the inquisitive, and often obvious to the

O INTRODUCTION.
notice of all, — and which past, present, anl coming events
alike unite in verifying ; — it affords an increasing evi
dence, and receives additional attestations in each succeed
ing age.
But, while some subterfuge has been sought for evading
the force of the internal evidence, and the conviction which
a belief in the miracles would infallibly produce, and while
every collateral proof is neglected, the prophecies also are set
aside without investigation, as of too vague and indefinite a
nature to be applied, with certainty, to the history either of
past ages or of the present. A very faint view of the pro
phecies of the Old and New Testament will suffice to rectify
this equally easy and erroneous conclusion. Although some
of the prophecies, separately considered, may appear ambi
guous and obscure, yet a general view of them all — of the
harmony which prevails throughout the prophecies, and of
their adaptation to the facts they predict — must strike the
mind of the most careless inquirer with an apprehension
that they are the dictates of Omniscience. But many of
the prophecies are as explicit and direct as it is possible that
they could have been; and, as history confirms their truth,
so they sometimes tend to its illustration, of which our future
inquiry will furnish us with examples. And if the pro
phetical part of Scripture, which refers to the rise and fall
of kingdoms, had been more explicit than it is, it would
have been a communication of the foreknowledge of events
which men would have grossly abused and perverted to
other purposes rather than to the establishment of the truth •
and, instead of being a stronger evidence of Christiamty it
would have been considered as the cause of the accomplish
ment of the events predicted, by the unity and combination
it would have excited among Christians ; and thus have
afforded to the unbeliever a more reasonable objection ao-ainst
the evidence of prophecy than any that can be now alleo-ed.

INTRODUCTION. V
It is in cases wherein they could not be abused, or wherein
the agents instrumental in their fulfilment were utterly igno
rant of their existence, that the prophecies are as descrip
tive as history itself. But whenever the knowledge of future
events would have proved prejudicial to the peace and happi
ness of the world, they are couched in allegory, which their
accomplishment alone can expound; and drawn with that
degree of light and shade that the faithfulness of the picture
may best be seen from the proper point of observation, the
period of their completion. Prophecy must thus, in many
instances, have that darkness which is impenetrable at first,
as well as that light which shall be able to dispel every
doubt at last; and, as it cannot be an evidence of Chris
tianity until the event demonstrate its own truth, it may
remain obscure till history become its interpreter, and not
be perfectly obvious till the fulfilment of the whole series
with which it is connected. But the general and often sole
objection against the evidence from the prophecies, that they
are all vague and ambiguous, may best be answered and set
aside by a simple exhibition of those numerous and distinct
predictions which have been literally accomplished ; and there
fore to this limited view of them the following pages shall
chiefly be confined.
Little need be said on the nature of proof from prophecy.
That it is the effect of divine interposition cannot be disputed.
It is equivalent to any miracle, and is of itself evidently
miraculous. The foreknowledge of the actions of intelligent
and moral agents is one of the most incomprehensible attri
butes of the Deity, and is exclusively a divine perfection.
The past, the present, and the future, are alike open to his
view, and to his alone ; and there can be no stronger proof
of the interposition of the Most High, than that which
prophecy affords. Of all the attributes of the God of the
Universe, his prescience has bewildered, and baffled the most,

8 INTRODUCTION.
all the powers of human perception; and an evidence of the
exercise of this perfection in the revelation of what the infi
nite mind alone could make known, is the seal of God, which
can never be counterfeited, affixed to the truth which it
attests. Whether that evidence has been afforded, is a
matter of investigation; but if it has unquestionably been
given, the effect of superhuman agency is apparent, and the
truth of what it was given to prove, does not admit 01 a
doubt. If the prophecies of the Scriptures can be proved
to be genuine ; if they be of such a nature as no foresight
of man could possibly have predicted ; if the events foretold
in them were described hundreds or even thousands of years
before those events became parts of the history of man; and
if the history itself correspond with the prediction : then the
evidence which the prophecies impart is a sign and a wonder
to every age ; no clearer testimonj7- or greater assurance of
the truth can be given ; and if men do not hear Moses
and ihe prophets, neither would they be persuaded though
one rose from the dead.1 Even if one were to risefrom
the dead, evidence of the fact must precede conviction ; and
if the mind be satisfied of the truth of prophecy, the result,
in either ease, is the same. The voice of Omnipotence alone
could call the dead from the tomb ; the voice of Omniscience
alone could tell all that lay hid in dark futurity, which to
man is as impenetrable as the mansions of the dead ; and
both are alike the voice of God.
Of the antiquity of the Scriptures there is the amplest
proof. The books of the Old Testament were not, like
other writings, detached and unconnected efforts of genius
and research, or mere subjects of amusement or instruction.
They were essential to the constitution of the Jewish state ;
the possession of them was a great cause of the peculiarities
of that people ; and they contain their moral and their civil
1 Luke xvi. 31.

INTRODUCTION. 9
law, and their history, as well as the prophecies, of which
they were the records and the guardians. They were re
ceived by the Jews as of divine authority; and as such they
were published and preserved. They were proved to be
ancient eighteen hundred years ago.1 And in express refer
ence to the prophecies concerning the Messiah, contained in
them, they were denominated by Tacitus, the ancient writ
ings of the priests. Instead of being secluded from observa
tion, they were translated into Greek above two hundred
and fifty years before the Christian era ; and they were read
in the synagogues every Sabbath-day. The most ancient
part of them was received, as divinely inspired, and was
preserved in their own language by the Samaritans, who
were at enmity with the Jews. They have ever been
sacredly kept unaltered, in a more remarkable degree, and
with a more scrupulous care, than any other compositions
whatever.2 And the antiquity and authenticity of them
rest so little on Christian testimony alone, that it is from
the records of our enemies that they are confirmed, and
from which is derived the evidence of our faith. Even the
very language in which the Old Testament Scriptures were
originally written, had ceased to be spoken before the coming
of Christ. No stronger evidence of their antiquity could be
alleged, than what is indisputably true ; and if it were to be
questioned, every other truth of ancient history must first be
set aside.
That the prediction was prior to the event, many facts in
the present state of the world abundantly testify ; and many
1 Josephus o. Apion.
2 There are not wanting proofs of the most scrupulous care of the Hebrew text on
the part of the Jews : they have counted the large and small sections, the verses, the
words, and even the letters in some of the books. They have likewise reckoned
which is the middle letter of the Pentateuch, which is the middle clause of each
book, and how -many times each letter of the alphabet occurs in all the Hebrew
Scriptures. This, at least, shows that the Jews were religiously careful to preserve
the literal sense of Scripture. — (Allen's Modern Judaism. Simon, Crit. Hist. 6, 26.)

1 0 INTRODUCTION.
prophecies remain even yet to be fulfilled. But, independ
ently of external testimony, the prophecies themselves bear
intrinsic marks of their antiquity, and of their truth. Pre
dictions concerning the same events are sometimes delivered
by a succession of prophets. Sometimes the same prophecy
concerning any city or nation gradually meets its fulfilment
during a long protracted period, where the truth of the pre
diction must be unfolded by degrees. They are, in general,
so interwoven with the history of the Jews ; so casually in
troduced in their application to the surrounding nations ; so
frequently concealed in their purport, even from the honoured
but unconscious organs of their communication, and preserv
ing throughout so entire a consistency ; so different in the
modes of their narration, and each part preserving its own
particular character ; so delivered without form or system ;
so shadowed sometimes under symbols ; so complete when
compared and combined ; so apparently unconnected when
disjoined, and revealed in such a variety of modes and ex
pressions, that the ver}r manner of their conveyance forbids
the idea of artifice : or if they were false, nothing could ad
mit of more easy detection ; if true, nothing could be more
impossible to have been conceived by man. And they
must either be a number of incoherent and detached pre
tensions to inspiration, that can bear no scrutiny, and that
have no reference to futurity but what deceivers might have
devised ; or else, as the only alternative, they give such a
comprehensive, yet minute representation of future events —
so various, yet so distinct — so distant, yet so true — that
none but He who knoweth all things could have revealed
them to man, and none but those who have hardened their
hearts and closed their eyes, can forbear from feeling and
from perceiving them to be credentials of the truth, clear as
light from heaven. To justify their pretensions to their
contemporaries, the prophets referred, on particular occa-

INTRODUCTION. 1 1
sions, to some approaching circumstance as a proof of their
prophetic spirit, and as a symbol or representation of a more
distant and important event. They could thus be dis
tinguished in their own age from false prophets, if their pre
dictions were then true : and they ventured to raise, from
the succeeding ages of the world, that veil which no unin
spired mortal could touch. They spoke of a deliverer of the
human race ; they described the desolation of cities and of
nations, whose greatness was then unshaken, and whose
splendour has ever since been unrivalled ; and their predic
tions were of such a character, that time would infallibly
refute or realize them.
Religion deserves a candid examination, and it demands
nothing more. The fulfilment of prophecy forms part of
the evidence of Christianity. And are the prophecies false,
or are they true ? Is their fallacy exposed, or their truth
ratified by the event ? And whether are they thus proved
to be the delusions of impostors, or the dictates of inspira
tion ? To the solution of these questions a patient and im
partial inquiry alone is requisite ; reason alone is appealed
to, and no other faith is here necessary but that which
arises as the natural and spontaneous fruit of rational con
viction. The man who withholds this inquiry, and who
will not be impartially guided by its result, is not only
reckless of his fate, but devoid of that on which he prides
himself the most, — even of all true liberality of sentiment :
he is the bigot of infidelity, who will not believe the truth
because it is the truth. It is incontestable, that, in a variety
of ways, a marvellous change has taken place in the religious
and political state of the world since the prophecies were
delivered. A system of religion, widely different from any
that then existed, has emanated from the land of Judea, and
has spread over the civilized world. Many remarkable cir
cumstances attended its origin and its progress. The history

1 2 INTRODUCTION.
of the life and character of its Founder, as it was written at
the time, and acknowledged as authentic by those who be
lieved on him, is so completely without a parallel, that it
has often attracted the admiration, and excited the astonish
ment of infidels ; and one of them even asks, if it be possible
that the sacred Personage, whose history the Scripture con
tains, should be himself a mere man ; and acknowledges that
the fiction of such a character is more inconceivable than
the reality.1 He possessed no temporal power, — he incul
cated every virtue, his life was spotless and perfect as his
doctrine, — he was put to death as a criminal. His religion
was rapidly propagated, — his followers were persecuted, but
their cause prevailed. The purity of his doctrine was main
tained for a time, but it was afterwards corrupted. Yet
Christianity has effected a great change. Since its estab
lishment, the worship of heathen deities has ceased; all sacri
fices have been abolished, even where human victims were
immolated before ; and slavery, which prevailed in every
state, is now unknown in every Christian country through
out Europe ; — knowledge has been increased, and many
nations have been civilized. The Christian religion has been
extended over a great part of the world, and it is still
enlarging its boundary ; and the Jews, though it originated
among them, yet continue to reject it. In regard to the
pohtical changes or revolutions of states, since the prophecies
concerning them were delivered, — Jerusalem was destroyed
and laid waste by the Romans : the land of Palestine, and
the surrounding countries, are now thinly inhabited, and. in
comparison of their former fertility, have been almost con
verted into deserts : the Jews have been scattered among
the nations, and remain to this day a dispersed and yet a
distinct people : Egypt, one of the first and most powerful
of nations, long ceased to be a kingdom : Nineveh is no
• Rousseau's Emilius, vol. ii. p. 215, quoted in Brewster's Testimonies, p. 133.

INTRODUCTION. 1 3
more: Babylon is now a ruin: the Persian empire succeeded
to the Babylonian : the Grecian empire succeeded to the
Persian, and the Roman to the Grecian : the old Roman
empire has been divided into several kingdoms : Rome
itself became the seat of a government of a different nature
from any other that ever existed in the world : the doctrine
of the gospel was transformed into a system of spiritual
tyranny and of temporal power : the authority of the pope
was held supreme in Europe for many ages : the Saracens
obtained a sudden and mighty power ; overran great part
of Asia and of Europe ; and many parts of Christendom suf
fered much from their incursions : the Arabs maintain their
warlike character, and retain possession of their own land :
the Africans are a humble race, and are still treated as
slaves : colonies have been spread from Europe and Asia,
and are enlarging there : the Turkish empire attained to
great power ; it continued to rise for the space of several
centuries, but it paused in its progress, has since decayed,
and now evidently verges to its fall. These form some
of the most prominent and remarkable facts of the history
of the world from the ages of the prophets to the present
time ; and if to each and all of them, from the first to the
last, an index is to be found in the prophecies, we may
warrantably conclude that they could only have been re
vealed by the Ruler among the nations, and that they
afford more than human testimony of the truth of Chris
tianity In the following treatise an attempt is made to give a
general and concise sketch of such of the prophecies as have
been distinctly foretold and clearly fulfilled, and as may be
deemed sufficient to illustrate the truth of Christianity.
And, if one unbeliever be led the first step to a full and
candid investigation of the truth, — if one doubting mind be
convinced, — if one Christian be confirmed more strongly in

1 4 INTRODUCTION.
his belief, — if one ray of the hope of better things to come
arise from hence, to enliven a single sorrowing heart, n
one atom be added to the mass of evidence, the author of
these pages will neither have lost his reward, nor spent his
labour in vain.

OF THE COMING OF A SAVIOUR. 1 5

CHAPTER II.
PROPHECIES CONCERNING CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIAN
RELIGION.
It is one of the remarkable peculiarities of the Jewish reli
gion, that, while it claimed superiority over every other
and was distinguished from them all, as alone inculcating
the worship of the only living and true God, and while it
was perfectly suited to the purpose for which it was de
signed, it acknowledged that it was itself only preparatory
to a future, a better, and perfect revelation. It was pro
fessedly adapted and limited to one particular people; — it
was confined, in many of its institutions, to the land of
Judea; its morality was incomplete; its ritual observances
were numerous, oppressive, and devoid of any inherent
merit;1 and being partial, imperfect, and temporary, and
full of promises of better things to come, for which it was
only the means of preparing the way, it was evidently in
tended to be the presage of another. It was not even cal
culated of itself to fulfil the promise which it records as
given unto Abraham, that in him all the families of the
earth should be blessed; though its original institution was
founded upon this promise, and although the accomplish
ment of it was the great end to be promoted, by the dis
tinction and separation of his descendants from all the
nations of the earth. But it was subservient to this end,
1 " Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes,
and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers' idols; where
fore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they
should not live." (Ezek. xx. 24, 25. Acts xv. 10.)

1 6 OF THE COMING OF A SAVIOUR.
though it could not directly accomplish it; for the coming
of a Saviour was the great theme of prophecy, and the uni
versal belief of the Jews. From the commencement to the
conclusion of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, it is pre
dicted or prefigured. They represent the first act of divine
justice, which was exercised on the primogenitors of the
human race, as mingled with divine mercy. Before their
exclusion from paradise, a gleam of hope was seen to shine
around them, in the promise of a suffering but triumphant
Deliverer. To Abraham the same promise was conveyed
in a more definite form. Jacob spoke distinctly of the
coming of a Saviour. Moses, the legislator and leader of
the Hebrews, prophesied of another lawgiver that God was
to raise up in a future age.1 And while these early and
general predictions occur in the historical part of Scripture,
which sufficiently mark the purposed design of the Mosaic
dispensation, the books that are avowedly prophetic are
clearly descriptive, as a minuter search will attest, of the
advent of a Saviour, and of everything pertaining to the
kingdom he was to establish. Many things, apparently
contradictory and irreconcilable, are foretold as referring
to a great Deliverer, whose dignity, whose character, and
whose office were altogether peculiar, and in whom the fate
of human nature is represented as involved. Many pas
sages that can bear no other application, clearly testify of
him: Thy king cometh — thy salvation cometh — the Re
deemer shall come to Zion — the Lord cometh — the Mes
senger of the covenant, he shall come — blessed is he that
cometh in the name of the Lord,2 are expressions that occur
throughout the prophecies. These unequivocally speak of
the coming of a Saviour. But were every other proof
wanting, the prophecy of Daniel is sufficient incontroverti-
1 Deut. xviii. 15, 18.
3 Zech. ix. 9. Isa. lxii. 11. Isa. lix. 20. Isa. xxxv. 4. Mal. iii. 1. Psal.
cxviii. 26.

OF THE COMING OF A SAVIOUR. 17
bly to establish the fact, which we affirm in the very
words, — that the coming of the Messiah is foretold in the
Old Testament.1 The same fact is confirmed by the belief
of the Jews in every age. It has been so deeply and in
delibly impressed on their minds, that notwithstanding the
dispersion of their race throughout the world, and the dis
appointment of their hopes for eighteen hundred years after
the prescribed period of his coming, the expectation of the
Messiah has hitherto formed a bond of union which no
distance could dissolve, and which no earthly power could
destroy. As the Old Testament does contain prophecies of a
Saviour that was to appear in the world, the only question
to be resolved is, whether all that it testifies of him be ful
filled in the person of Jesus Christ? On a subject so inter
esting, so extensive and important, which has been so amply
discussed by many able divines, the reader is referred to
the works of Barrow, of Pearson, and of Clarke. A sum
mary view must be very imperfect and incomplete; but it
is here given, as it may serve to exhibit to the general
reader the connection between the Old and the New Testa
ment, and as it may of itself be deemed conclusive of the
argument in favour of Christianity.
A few of the leading features of the prophecies concern
ing Christ, and their fulfilment, shall be traced; as they
mark the time of his appearance, the place of his birth, and
the family out of which he was to arise ; his life and char
acter, his miracles, his sufferings, and his death; the nature
of his doctrine, the design and the effect of his coming, and
the extent of his kingdom.
The time of the Messiah's appearance in the world, as
predicted in the Old Testament, is defined by a number of
concurring circumstances, that fix it to the very date of the
' Dan. ix. 25, 26.

18 THE TIME OF THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
advent of Christ. The last blessing of Jacob to his sons,
when he commanded them to gather themselves together
that he might tell them what should befall them in the last
days, contains this prediction concerning Judah: "Ihe
sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from
between his feet, until Shiloh come."1 The date fixed by
this prophecy for the coming of Shiloh, or the Saviour, was
not to exceed the time that the descendants of Judah were
to continue a united people, that should be governed by
their own laws, and should have their judges from among
their brethren. The prophecy of Malachi adds another
standard for measuring the time; "Behold, I will send my
messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me; and
the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple,
even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in;. be
hold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts."2 No words
can be more expressive of the coming of the promised
Messiah; and they as clearly imply his appearance in the
temple before it should be destroyed. But it may also be
here remarked that Malachi was the last of the prophets:
with his predictions the vision and the prophecy were sealed
up, or the canon of the Old Testament was completed.
Though many prophets immediately preceded him, after his
time there was no prophet in Israel; but all the Jews,
whether of ancient or modern times, look for a messenger
to prepare the way of the Lord, immediately before his
.coming. The long succession of prophets had drawn to a
close; and the concluding words of the Old Testament, sub
joined to an admonition to remember the law of Moses,
import that the next prophet would be the harbinger of the
Messiah. Another criterion of the time is thus imparted.
In regard to the advent of the Messiah, before the destruc
tion of the second temple, the words of Haggai are remark-
1 Gen. xlix. 10. s Mal. iii. 1.

THE TIME OF THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 1 9
ably explicit: "The Desire of all nations shall come; and I
will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts. —
The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the
former." x The contrast which the prophet had just drawn
between the glory of Solomon's temple and that which had
been erected, in its stead, to which he declares it was, in
comparison, as nothing ; the excellency of the latter house
excelling that of gold and silver; the expression so charac
teristic of the Messiah, the "desire of all nations;" all de
note that He alone is spoken of, who was the hope of Israel,
and of whom all the prophets did testify, and that his pre
sence would give to that temple a greater glory than that
of the former. The Saviour was thus to appear, according
to the prophecies of the Old Testament, during the time of
the continuance of the kingdom of Judah, previous to the
demolition of the temple, and immediately subsequent to
the next prophet. But the time is rendered yet more
definite. In the prophecies of Daniel, the kingdom of
the Messiah is not only foretold as commencing in the
time of the fourth monarchy, or Roman empire; but the
express number of years, that were to precede his com
ing, are plainly intimated : " Seventy weeks are deter
mined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish
the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make
reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting right
eousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to
anoint the Most Holy. Know, therefore, and understand,
that from the going forth of the commandment to restore
and to build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah the Prince, shall
be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks."2 Compu
tation by weeks of years was common among the Jews, and
every seventh was the sabbatical year; seventy weeks thus
amounted to four hundred and ninety years. In these
' Hag. ii. 7, 9. s Dan. ix. 24, 25.

20 THE TIME OF THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
words the prophet marks the very time, and uses the very-
name of Messiah the Prince; and so entirely is all ambiguity
done away, that the destruction of the city and the sanctu
ary, the ceasing of the sacrifice and the oblation, and the
commencement of the long-continued desolation that has
ever since ensued, are all definitely marked as consequent
on the cutting off of Messiah : — " And after threescore and
two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, bub not for himself : and
the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the
city and the sanctuary : and the end thereof shall be with
a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are deter
mined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for
one week : and in the midst of the week he shall cause the
sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading
of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the
consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon
the desolate."1
The plainest inference may be drawn from these prophecies.
All of them, while, in every respect, they presuppose the
most perfect knowledge of futurity — while they were un
questionably delivered and publicly known for ages previous
to the time to which they referred — while there is the testi
mony, from great authorities among the Jews, of their
application to the time of the Messiah2 — and while they
refer to different contingent and unconnected events, utterly
undeterminable and inconceivable by all human sagacity;—
accord in perfect unison to a single precise period where all
their different lines terminate at once — the very fulness of
time when Jesus appeared. A king then reigned over the
Jews in their own land ; they were governed by their own
laws ; and the council of their nation exercised its authority
and power. Before that period, the other tribes were led
! Dan. ix. 26, 27.
2 Grotius de Verit. 1. v. c. xiv. Opera, torn. iv. p. 80, et Loud. 1679. Pearson
on the Creed. Art. ii.

THE TIME OF THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 21
into captivity, from which they never returned ; and the
Israelites were outcasts for ages, before the Jews were dis
persed among the nations. As an unbroken and unexpa-
triated tribe, Judah alone remained, and the last sceptre in
Israel had not then departed from it. Every stone of the
temple was then unmoved : it was the admiration of the
Romans, and might have stood for ages. The city was not
then destroyed ; but it was the flourishing and populous
capital of their own land, which was then peopled by four
millions of Jews. The sacrifice and oblation were then
offered up in Jerusalem, the place appointed for them, and
thither from all the land multitudes for that purpose still
continued to resort year by year continually. But in a
short space, all these concurring testimonies to the time of
the advent of the Messiah passed away. About the very
time when Christ, in the twelfth year of his age, first
publicly appeared in the temple about his Father's business,
Archelaus the king was dethroned and banished. Coponius
was appointed procurator, and the kingdom of Judea, the
last remnant of the greatness of Israel, was debased into a
part of the province of Syria.1 The sceptre was smitten
from the hands of the tribe of Judah ; their crown fell
from their heads ; their glory departed ; and, soon after the
death of Christ, of their temple one stone was not left upon
another ; their commonwealth itself became as complete a
ruin, and was broken in pieces ; and they have ever since
been scattered throughout the world, a name but not a
nation. Every mark that denoted the time of the coming
of the Messiah in the flesh, was erased soon after the
crucifixion of Christ, and could never afterwards be re
newed.2 1 Joseph. Antiq. lib. xvii. c. 15, (al. 13.) xviii. 1.
2 " When the angel says to Daniel, Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people,
dc. ; Was this written after the event % Or can it reasonably be ascribed to chance,
that from the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king, (when Ezra went up from

22 THE TIME OF THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
That the time at whichrthe promised Messiah was to
appear is clearly defined in these prophecies ; that the
expectation of the coming of a great king or deliverer, was
then prevalent, not only among the Jews, but among all the
eastern nations, in consequence of these prophecies ; that it
afterwards excited that people to revolt, and proved the
cause of their greater destruction, — the impartial and un
suspected evidence of heathen authors is combined, with
the reluctant and ample testimony of the Jews themselves,
to attest.
Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, and Philo, agree in testifying
the antiquity of the prophecies, and their acknowledged
reference to that period.1 Even the Jews, to this day, own
that the time when their Messiah ought to have appeared,
Babylon unto Jerusalem with a commission to restore the government of the Jews,)
to the death of Christ, (from ann. Nabon. 290, to ann. Nabon. 780,) should be pre
cisely 490 (seventy weeks of) years % When the angel tells Daniel, that in threescore
and two weeks the street (of Jerusalem) should be built again, and the wall, even in
troublous times ; (but this, in troublous times not like those that should be under
Messiah the Prince when he should come to reign ;) Was this written after the event?
Or can it reasonably be ascribed to chance, that from the 28th year of Artaxerxes,
when the walls were finished, to the birth of Christ, (from ann. Nabon. 311 to 745,)
should be precisely 434 (62 weeks of years 1) When Daniel further says, And he
shall confirm (or, nevertheless he shall confirm) the covenant with many for one week ;
Was this written after the event 1 Or can it reasonably be ascribed to chance, that
from the death of Christ, (ami. Dom. 33,) to the command first given to Peter to
preach to Cornelius and the Gentiles (ann. Dom. 40,) should be exactly seven (one
week of) years ? When he still adds, And in the midst of the week, (and in half a
week) he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading
of abominations he shall make it desolate : Was this written after the event? Or can
it with any reason be ascribed to chance, that from Vespasian's march into Judea in
the spring ann. Dom. 67, to the taking of Jerusalem by Titus in the autumn ann.
Dom. 70, should be half a septenary of years, or three years and a half." — Clarke's
Works, fol. edit. vol. ii. p. 721.)
1 " Pluribus persuasio inerat, antiquis sacerdotum Uteris contineri, eo ipso tempore
fore, ut valesceret Oriens, profeetique Judcea rerum potirentur. Qua amhages
Vespasianum et Titum pradixerant. Sed vulgus (Judseorum,) more humanse
3upidinis, sibi tantam fatorum magnitudinem interpretati, ne adversis quidem ad
vera mutabantur."— (Tacit. Hist. lib. v. cap. xiii.) " Percrebuerat Oriente toto
vetus et constam-s opinio, esse infatis, ut eo tempore Judaaaprofecti rerum potirentur.
Id de imperio Romano, quantum postea eventu patuit, prsedictnm Judsei ad se
trahentes, rebellarunt." Suet, in Vesp. lib. viii. o. iv. Julius Marathus, quoted by
Suetonius, lib. ii. u. xciv. Joseph, de Bello, lib. vi. v;. xxxi. (al. c. 5. § 4.) Philo de
Pram, et Pen. pp. 923-4. Clarke, &c. &c.

THE PLACE OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY-. 23
according to their prophecies, is long since past, and they
attribute the delay of his coining to the sinfulness of their
nation. And thus, from the distinct prophecies themselves,
from the testimony of profane historians, and from the con
cessions of the Jews, every requisite proof is afforded that
Christ appeared when all the concurring circumstances of
the time denoted the prophesied period of his advent.
The predictions contained in the Old Testament respect
ing both the family out of which the Messiah was to arise,
and the place of his birth, are almost as circumstantial, and
are equally applicable to Christ, as those which refer to the
time of his appearance. He was to be an Israelite, of the
tribe of Judah, of the family of David, and of the town of
Bethlehem. The two former of these particulars are implied
in the promise made to Abraham. — in the prediction of Moses
— in the prophetic benediction of Jacob to Judah — and in
the reason assigned for the superiority of that tribe, because
out of it the chief ruler should arise. And the two last,
that the Messiah was to be a descendant of David and a
native of Bethlehem, are expressly affirmed. There shall
come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall
grow out of his roots; and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest
upon him} That this prophecy refers to the Deliverer of
the human race, is evident from the whole- of the succeeding
chapter, which is descriptive of the kingdom of the Messiah,
of the calling of the Gentiles, and of the restoration of Israel.
The same fact is predicted in many passages of the prophe
cies ; — " Thine house and thy kingdom shall be established
for ever before thee. — I have made a covenant with my
chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant. Thy seed will
I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all genera
tions. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will
raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign
1 Isaiah xi. 1, 2.

24 THE PLACE OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY.
and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the
earth. — This is his name whereby he shall be called, the
Lord our righteousness." 1 The place of the birth of the
Messiah is thus clearly foretold : — " Thou Bethlehem Eph-
ratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah,
yet out of thee shall he come forth, unto me," or, as the
Hebrew word2 implies, shall he be born, "that is to be ruler
in Israel ; whose goings forth have been from of old, from
everlasting."3 — That all these predictions were fulfilled in
Jesus Christ ; that he was of that country, tribe, and family,
of the house and lineage of David, and born in Bethlehem, —
we have the fullest evidence in the testimony of all the evan
gelists ; in two distinct accounts of the genealogies, (by na
tural and legal succession,) which, according to the custom
of the Jews, were carefully preserved ; in the acquiescence of
the enemies of Christ to the truth of the fact, against which
there is not a single surmise in history ; and in the appeal
made by some of the earliest of the Christian writers to the
records of the census, taken at the very time of our Sav
iour's birth by order of Csesar.4 Here, indeed, it is impos
sible not to be struck with the exact fulfilment of prophe
cies which are apparently contradictory and irreconcilable,
and with the manner in which they were providentially
accomplished. ' The spot of Christ's nativity was distant from
the place of the abode of his parents, and the region in
which he began his ministry was remote from the place of
his birth ; and another prophecy respecting him was in this
manner verified :— " The land of Zebulun and the land of
Naphtali, — by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Gali
lee of the nations — the people that walked in darkness have
1 2 Sam. vii. 16. Psal. lxxxix. 3, 4. Jer. xxiii. 5, 6.
2 <7-en. x. 14 ; xvii. 6. 2 Sam. vii. 12, &c.
¦¦' Micah v. 2.
* Justin Mart. Ap. i. p. 55, ed. Thirl. Tert. in Mar. iv. 19. p. 713, ed. Paris,
Harrow.

THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 25
seen a great light ; they that dwell in the land of the sha
dow of death, upon them hath the light shined."1 Thus,
the time at which the predicted Messiah was to appear, the
nation, the tribe, and the family from which he was to be
descended — and the place of his birth — no populous city —
but of itself an inconsiderable place, were all clearly fore
told; and as clearly refer to Jesus Christ, and all meet their
completion in him.
But the facts of his life, and the features of his character,
are also drawn with a precision that cannot be misunder
stood. The obscurity, the meanness, and poverty of his
external condition are thus represented : — " He shall grow
up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry
ground ; he hath no form nor comeliness ; and when we
shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
Thus saith the Lord, — to him whom man despiseth, to him
whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, kings
shall see and arise, princes also shall worship." 2 That such
was the condition in which Christ appeared, the whole his
tory of his life abundantly testifies. And the Jews, looking
in the pride of their hearts for an earthly king, disregarded
these prophecies concerning him, were deceived by their
traditions, and found only a stone of stumbling, where, if
they had searched the Scriptures aright, they would have
discovered an evidence of the Messiah. " Is not this the
carpenter's son; is not this the son of Mary? said they, and
they were offended at him." His riding in humble triumph
into Jerusalem; his being betrayed for thirty pieces of silver,
and scourged, and buffeted, and spit upon; the piercing of
his hands and of his feet ; the last offered draught of vine
gar and gall ; the parting of his raiment, and casting lots
upon his vesture ; the manner of his death and of his
1 Isaiah ix. 1, 2. Matt. iv. 15, 16.
2 Isaiah liii. : xlix. 7.

26 THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF CHRIST.
burial, and his rising again without seeing corruptions-
were all expressly predicted, and all these predictions were
literally fulfilled. If all these prophecies admit of any appli
cation to the events of the life of any individual, it can only
be to that of the Author of Christianity. And what other
religion can produce a single fact which was actually fore
told of its founder ?
Though the personal appearance or mortal condition of
the Messiah was represented by the Jewish prophets, such
as to bespeak no grandeur, his personal character is de
scribed as of a higher order than that of the sons of men.
Thou art fairer than the children of men : grace is poured
into thy lips.2 He hath done no violence, neither was there
any deceit in his mouth.3 The Spirit of the Lord shall rest
upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit
of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear
of the Lord.4 The Lord God hath given me the tongue of
the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in
season to him that is weary5 He shall feed his flock like a
shepherd ; he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry
them in his bosom.6 A bruised reed shall he not break, and
the smoking flax shall he not quench.7 Behold, thy king
cometh unto thee ; he is just, and having salvation ; lowly,
and riding upon an ass.8 He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor
cause his voice to be heard in the street.9 He was oppressed
and afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth ; he was brought
as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shear
ers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.10 I gave my back
to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the
hair ; I hid not my face from shame and spitting.11 The

i Zech. ix. 9 ; xi. 12.

Isaiah 1. 6. Psalm xxii. 16 ; lxix. 21 ; xxii.

18.

Isaiah

liii. 9. Psalm xvi., 10.

2 Psalm xiv. 2

1 Isaiah lui. 9 » xi. 2.

M

. 4.

" Isaiah xl. 11.

7 xlii. 3. 8 Zech. ix. 9.

9 Isaiah xlii. 2.
10 liii. 7. X1 1. 6,
THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 27
Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious,
neither turned away back. The Lord God will help me,
therefore shall I not be confounded ; therefore have I set my
face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed."1
How many virtues are thus represented in the prophecies, as
characteristic of the Messiah ; and how applicable are they all
to Christ alone, and how clearly embodied in his character !
His wisdom and knowledge — his speaking as never man
spake — the general meekness of his manner and mildness of
his conversation — his perfect candour and unsullied purity
— his righteousness — his kindness and compassion— his
genuine humility — his peaceable disposition — his unrepin-
ing patience — his invincible courage — his more than heroic
resolution, and more than human forbearance — -his unfalter
ing trust in God, and complete resignation to his will, are
all portrayed in the liveliest, the most affecting, and expres
sive terms ; and among all who ever breathed the breath of
life, they can be applied to Christ alone.2
Mohammed pretended to receive a divine warrant to sanc
tion his past impurities, and to license his future crimes.
How different is the appeal of Jesus to earth and to heaven ;
" If I do not the works of my Father believe me not. —
Search the Scriptures, for these are they which testify of
me." They did testify of the coming of a Messiah, and of
the superhuman excellence of his moral character. And if
the life of Jesus was wonderful and unparalleled of itself, how
miraculous does it appear, when all his actions develop the
predicted character of the promised Saviour ! The internal
and external evidences are here combined at once ; and while
the life of Christ proved that he was a righteous person, it
proved also, as testified of by the prophets, that he was the
Son of God.
In describing the blessings of the reign of the Messiah,
1 Isaiah 1. 5, 7. 2 See Barrow on the Creed, p. 19.

28 NATURE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
the prophet Isaiah foretold the greatness and the benignity
of his miracles : — " The eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped : then shall the
lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.
The history of Jesus shows how such acts of mercy formed
the frequent exercise of his power : at his word the blind
received their sight, the lame walked, the deaf heard, and the
dumb spake.2
The death of Christ was as unparalleled as his life : and
the prophecies are as minutely descriptive of his sufferings
as of his virtues. Not only did the paschal lamb which
was to be killed every year in all the families of Israel —
which was to be taken out of the flock, to be without
blemish — to be eaten with bitter herbs — to have its blood
sprinkled, and to be kept whole that not a bone of it
should be broken ; not only did the offering up of Isaac,
and the lifting up of the brazen serpent in the wilderness,
by looking upon which the people were healed,— and many
ritual observances of the Jews, — prefigure the manner of
Christ's death, and the sacrifice which was to be made for
sin; but many express declarations abound in the pro
phecies, that Christ was indeed to suffer. Exclusive of the
repeated declarations in the Psalms,3 of afflictions which
apply literally to him, and are interwoven with allusions to
the Messiah's kingdom, the prophet Daniel,4 in limiting the
time of his coming, directly affirms that the Messiah was to
be cut off; and in the same manifest allusion, Zechariah uses
these emphatic words : " Awake, 0 sword, against my Shep
herd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord
of Hosts : smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scat
tered. I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the
1 Tsaiah xxxv. 5, 6. = Matt. ix. 33 ; xi. 5.
3 Psal. ii.; xxii. 1, 6, 7, 16, 18; xxxv. 7, 11, 12; lxix. 20, 21; cix. 2, 3, 5, 25;
cxviii. 12.
« Dan. ix. 26.

NATURE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 29
inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of suppli
cations ; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced,
and they shall mourn for him."1
But Isaiah, who describes with eloquence worthy of a
prophet, the glories of the kingdom that was to come, char
acterizes, with the accuracy of a historian, the humiliation,
the trials, and the agonies which were to precede the triumphs
of the Redeemer of a world; and the history of Christ forms,
to the very letter, the commentary and the completion of
liis every prediction. In a single passage,2 — the connection
of which is uninterrupted, its antiquity indisputable, and its
application obvious, — the sufferings of the servant of God
(who, under the same denomination, is previously described
as he who was to be the light of the Gentiles, the salvation
of God to the ends of the earth, and the elect of God in
whom his soul delighted,)3 are so minutely foretold that no
illustration is requisite to show that they testify of Jesus.
Of the multitude of parallel passages in the New Testament
a few of the most obvious may be here subjoined to the
prophecy. He is despised and rejected of men. " He came unto
his own, and his own received him not ; he had not where
to lay his head; they derided him." A man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief. Jesus wept at the grave of
Lazarus ; he mourned over Jerusalem ; he felt the ingrati
tude and the cruelty of men ; he bore the contradiction of
sinners against himself : and these are expressions of sorrow
which were peculiarly his own, " Father, if it be possible let
this cup pass from me; but for this end came I into the
world. My God ! my God ! why hast thou forsaken me?"
We hid, as it were, our faces from him, he was despised, and
wc esteemed him not. " All his disciples forsook him and
1 Zech. xiii. 7 ; xii. 10. 2 Isaiah lii. 13—15, and chap. liii.
" Isaiah xlii. 1 ; xlix. 6,

30 NATURE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
fled. Not this man but Barabbas; now Barabbas was a
robber. The soldiers mocked him, and bowed the knee
before him in derision." The catalogue of his sufferings is
continued in the words of the prophecy: We did esteem him
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. He was wounded,
he was oppressed, he was afflicted, he tvas brought as a lamb
to the slaughter. He was taken away by distress and by
judgment. And to this general description is united the detail
of minuter incidents, which fixes the fact of their application
to Jesus. He ivas cut off out of the land of the living. He
was crucified in the flower of his age. He made his grave
(or his grave was appointed) with the wicked, and with the
rich in his death. His grave was doubtless appointed with
the wicked, or the two thieves with whom he was crucified,
but Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man, went and begged the
body of Jesus, and laid it in his own new tomb. He tvas
numbered with the transgressors. Barabbas was preferred
before him. He was crucified between two thieves ; and
the Jews said unto Pilate, " If he were not a malefactor, we
would not have delivered him up unto thee." His visage
was so marred, more than any man, and his form more
than the sons of men, — without any direct allusion made
to it, but in literal fulfilment of the prophecy — the bloody
sweat, the traces of the crown of thorns, his having been
spitted on, and smitten on the head, disfigured the face;
— while the scourge, the nails in his hands and in his feet,
and the spear that pierced his side, marred the form of Jesus
more than that of the sons of men.
That this circumstantial and continuous description of the
Messiah's sufferings might not admit of any ambiguity, the
dignity of his person, the incredulity of the Jews, the inno
cence of the sufferer, the cause of his sufferings, and his
consequent exaltation, are all particularly marked, and are
equally applicable to the doctrine of the gospel. He shall

NATURE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 31
be exalted and extolled, and be very high. Who hath be
lieved our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed ? For he shall grow up as a tender plant, &c. The
mean external condition of Christ is here assigned as the
reason of the unbelief of the Jews, and it was the very rea
son which they themselves assigned. The prediction points
out the procuring cause of his suffering. He hath borne our
griefs, and carried our sorrows. " Christ was once offered
to bear the sins of many." He was wounded for our trans
gressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastise
ment of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we
are healed. " His own self bare our sins in his own body-
on the tree, that we, being dead unto sin, should live unto
righteousness; by whose stripes we are healed." All we,
like sheep, have gone astray ; we have turned every one to
his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all. " All flesh have sinned ; ye were as sheep going
astray, but ye are now returned unto the Shepherd and
Bishop of your souls." He hath done no violence; neither
was there any deceit in his mouth; Thou shalt make his
soul an offering for sin. " God made him to be sin for us,
who knew no sin "
The whole of this prophecy thus refers to the Messiah.
It describes both his debasement and his dignity — his re
jection by the Jews — his humility, his affliction, and his
agony — his magnanimity and his charity — how his words
were disbelieved — how his state was lowly — how his sorrow
was severe — how he opened not his mouth but to make
intercession for the transgressors. In diametrical opposition
to every dispensation of Providence which is registered in
the records of the Jews, it represents spotless innocence
suffering by the appointment of Heaven, death as the issue
of perfect obedience, his righteous servant as forsaken of
God, and one who was perfectly immaculate, bearing the

32 NATURE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
chastisement of many guilty, — sprinkling many nations
from their iniquity, by virtue of his sacrifice, — justifying
many by his knowledge, and dividing a portion with the
great, and the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured
out his soul unto death. This prophecy, therefore, simply as
a prediction prior to the event, renders the very unbelief of
the Jews an evidence against them, converts the scandal of
the cross into an argument in favour of Christianity, and
presents us with an epitome of the truth, a miniature of the
gospel in some of its most striking features. The simple
exposition of it sufficed at once for the conversion of the
eunuch of Ethiopia; and, without the aid of an apostle, it
can boast, in more modern times, of a nobler trophy of its
truth, in a victory which it was mainly instrumental in
obtaining and securing, over the strongly-riveted prejudices
and long-tried infidelity of a man of genius and of rank,
who was one of the most abandoned, insidious, and success
ful of the advocates of impurity, and of the enemies of the
Christian faith.1
Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer,
according to the Scriptures ; and thus the apostle testifies :
" Those things which God had showed by the mouth of all
the prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fuLfilled.''
That the Jews still retain these prophecies, and are the
means of preserving them, and communicating them through
out the world, while they bear so strongly against themselves,
and testify so clearly of a Saviour that was first to suffer,
and then to be exalted, — are facts as indubitable as they
are unaccountable, and give a confirmation to the truth of
Christianity, than which it is difficult to conceive any stronger.
The prophecies, as we have seen, by a simple enumeration of
a few of them that testify of the sufferings of the Messiah,
need no forced interpretation, but apply, in the plainest,
1 Burnet's Life of the Earl of Rochester, pp, 70. 71.

NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 33
simplest, and most literal manner, to the history of the suf
ferings and of the death of Christ. In the testimony of the
Jews to the existence of these prophecies long prior to the
Christian era; in their remaining unaltered to this hour; in
the accounts given by the evangelists, of the life and death
of Christ ; in the testimony of heathen authors,1 which has
been frequently quoted but never refuted ; and in the argu
ments of the first opposers of Christianity, from the mean
condition of its author, and the manner of his death ; we
have now greater evidence of the fulfilment of all these pro
phecies, than could have been conceived possible at so great
a distance of time.
But the prophecies further present us with the character
of the gospel as well as of its Author, and with a description
of the extent of his kingdom as well as of his sufferings. It
was prophesied that the Messiah was to reveal the will of
God to man, and establish a new and perfect religion : — " I
will raise them up a prophet,— and will put my words in
his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall
command him ; and it shall come to pass, that whosoever
will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in
my name, I will require it of him. — Unto us a child is born,
unto us a son is given ; and the government shall be upon
his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Coun
sellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince
of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace
there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon
his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment
and with justice from henceforth, even for ever. The zeal
of the Lord of hosts will perform this. — There shall come
forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse ; — he shall not judge
after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing
1 " Auctor nominis ejus Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per procuratorem Pontium
Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat." — Tacit. Annal. lib. xv. cap. xliv.
3

34 NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
of his ears ; but with righteousness shall he judge the poor,
and reprove with equity. — I the Lord have called thee in
righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee,
and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of
the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes. — Incline your ear and
come unto me ; hear, and your soul shall live ; and I will
make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mer
cies of David. Behold, I have given him for a witness to
the people, a leader and commander to the people. — I will
set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them; and
I will make with them a covenant of peace, and it shall be
an everlasting covenant ; and I will set my sanctuary in the
midst of them : one king shall be king to them all ; neither
shall they defile themselves any more with their idols. They
shall have one shepherd. They shall also walk in my judg
ments, and my servant David shall be their prince for ever. —
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a
new covenant; — and this shall be the covenant that I will
make with the house of Israel; After those days, I will put
my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts ,
and will be their God, and they shall be my people : and
they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every
man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all
know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them,
saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will
remember their sin no more."1 A future and perfect reve
lation of the Divine will is thus explicitly foretold. That
these promised blessings were to extend beyond the confines
of Judea, is expressly and frequently predicted: — "It is a
light thing that thou shouldest be my servant, to raise
up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of
Israel : I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles,
i Deut. xviii. 18, 19. Isa. ix. 6, 7; xi. 1, 3, 4; xlii. 6; lv. 3, 4. Ezek. xxxiv.
23, 25; xxxvii. 22-26. Jer. xxxi. 31, 33, 34.

NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 35
that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the
earth."1 While the prophecies which are descriptive of the glories
of the reign of the Messiah refer to its universal extension,
and to the final restoration of the Jews, they detail and
define, at the same time, the nature and the blessings of the
gospel; and no better description or definition could now be
given of the doctrine of Christ, and of the conditions which
he hath proposed for the acceptance of man, than those very
prophecies which were delivered many hundreds of years
before he appeared in the world. The gospel, as the name
itself signifies, declares glad tidings. Christ himself invited
those who were weary and heavy-laden to come unto him
that they might find rest unto their souls. He was the
messenger of peace. He came, as he professed, to offer a
sacrifice for the sins of the world, and to reveal the will of
God to man. He published the gospel of the grace of God.
His word is still that of reconciliation, his law that of love ;
and all the duty he has prescribed tends to qualify man for
spiritual and eternal felicity, for this is the sum and the ob
ject of it all. What more could have been given, and what
less could have been required? In similar terms do the
prophecies of old describe the new law that was to be
revealed, and the advent of the Saviour that was to come : —
" Rejoice greatly, 0 daughter of Zion ; shout, 0 daughter of
Jerusalem ; behold, thy King cometh unto thee. — How beau
tiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth
good tidings of good; that publisheth salvation.2 — The Spirit
of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed
me to preach good tidings unto the meek: he hath sent me
to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."3
Having read these words out of the law, in the synagogue,
1 Isa. xlix. 6 ; Ivi. 6-8. 2 Zech. ix. 9 ; Isa. lii. 7. 3 Isa. Ixi. 1, 2.

36 NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Jesus said, " This day is this Scripture fulfilled." He was
a teacher of righteousness and of peace, and in him alone it
could have been fulfilled. Tlie same character of joy,
indicative of the kingdom of the Messiah, is also given by
different prophets. He was to finish the transgression, to
make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity ;
to sprinkle clean water upon the people of God, to sprinkle
many nations, to save them from their uncleanness, and to
open a fountain for sin and for uncleanness. " Let the
wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his
thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will
have mercy upon him. I will forgive their iniquity, and
remember their sin no more." The Messiah was to be
anointed to comfort all that mourn, to appoint unto them
that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the
oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the
spirit of heaviness.1 And in the gospel of peace these
promised blessings are realized to all who believe, and to
whom he is precious. We now see what many prophets
and wise men did desire in vain to see. The Christian
religion has indeed been sadly perverted and corrupted, and
its corruptions are the subjects of prophecy. Bigotry has
often tarnished and obscured all its benignity. Its lovely
form has been shrouded in a mask of superstition, of tyranny,
and of murder. But the religion of Jesus, pure from the
lips of its author and the pen of his apostles, is calculated to
diffuse universal happiness; tends effectually to promote the
moral culture and the civilization of humanity; ameliorates
the condition and perfects the nature of man. It is a doc
trine of righteousness, a perfect rule of duty : it abolishes
idolatry, and teaches all to worship God only: it is full of
promises to all who obey it: it reveals the method of recon
ciliation for iniquity, and imparts the means to obtain it: it
> Dan. ix. 24. Isa. Iv. 7. Jer. xxxi. 34. Isa. Ixi. 2, 3.

NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 37
is good tidings to the meek : it binds up the broken-hearted,
and presents to us the oil of joy for mourning, and the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, or the most
perfect system of consolation, under all the evils of life, that
can be conceived by man. For the confirmation of all these
prophecies concerning it, we stand not in need of Jewish
testimony, or that of the primitive Christians, or of any
testimony whatever. It is a matter of experience and of
fact. The doctrine of the gospel is in complete accordance
with the predictions respecting it. When we compare it
with any impure, degrading, vicious, and cruel system of
religion that existed in the world when these prophecies
were delivered, its superiority must be apparent, and its
unrivalled excellence must be acknowledged. Deities were
then worshipped whose vices disgraced human nature; and
even impiety could not institute a comparison between them
and the God of Christians. Idolatry was universally pre
valent, and men knew not a higher homage than bowing
down in adoration to stocks and stones, and sometimes even
to the beasts. Sacrifices were everywhere offered up, and
human victims often bled, when the doctrine of reconciliation
for iniquity was unknown. And we have only to look be
yond the boundaries of Christianity, — -to Ashantee, or to
India, or to China, — to behold the most revolting of spec
tacles in the religious rites and practices of man. Regarding
the superiority of the Christian rehgion only as a subject of
prophecy, the assent can hardly be withheld, that the pro
phecies concerning its excellence, and the blessings which it
imparts, have been amply verified by the peace-speaking
gospel of Jesus.
But, in ascertaining the accomplishment of ancient pre
dictions, in evidence of the truth, the unbeliever is not
solicited to relinquish one iota of his scepticism in any
matter that can possibly admit of a reasonable doubt. For

38 NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
there are many prophecies, of the truth of which every
Christian is a witness, and to the fulfilment of which the
testimony even of infidels must be borne. That the gospel
emanated from Jerusalem; that it was rejected by a great
proportion of the Jews; that it was opposed at first by
human power ; that pagan idolatry was overthrown before
it ; that it has already continued for many ages, and that it
has been propagated throughout many countries, are facts
clearly foretold and literally fulfilled. " Rejoice greatly, 0
daughter of Zion; shout, 0 daughter of Jerusalem; behold,
thy King cometh unto thee: he is just and having salvation;
lowly and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of
an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and
the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut
off, and he shall speak peace unto the heathen, and his do
minion shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the
ends of the earth.1 He shall be for a sanctuary ; but for a
stone of stumbling, and for a rock of offence, to both the
houses of Israel; for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem. — The kings of the earth set themselves, and
the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against
his Anointed."2 In like manner, Christ frequently foretold
the persecution that awaited his followers, and the final suc
cess of the gospel, in defiance of all opposition.3 " The Lord
alone shall be exalted in that day, and the idols he shall
utterly abolish ; — from all your idols will I cleanse you ; —
I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and
they shall no more be remembered.4 To a servant of rulers,
kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship. — The
Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness
of thy rising.6 The Gentiles shall see thy righteousness :—
' Zech. ix. 9, 10. « Isa. viii. 14. Psalm ii. 2.
3 Matt. x. 17 ; xvi. 18 ; xxiv. 14; xxviii. 19.
4 Isa. ii. 17, 18 ; Ezek. xxxvi. 25; Zech. xiii. 2.
sIsa. xlix. 7; lx. 3.

PROPAGATION AND EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 39
I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not
called by my name. In that day there shall be a root of
Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people ; to it shall
the Gentiles seek. I will make an everlasting covenant with
you. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest
not; and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee."1
At the time the prophecies were delivered, there was not
a vestige in the world of that spiritual kingdom and pure
rehgion which they unequivocally represent as destined to
extend in succeeding ages, not only throughout the narrow
bounds of the land of Judea, and those countries which
alone the prophets knew, but over the Gentile nations also,
even to the uttermost ends of the earth. None are now
ignorant of the facts, that a system of religion which incul
cates piety, and purity, and love, — which releases man from
every burdensome rite, and every barbarous institution, and
proffers the greatest of blessings, — arose from the land of
Judea, from among a people who are proverbially the most
selfish and worldly-minded of any nation upon earth ; — that,
though persecuted at first, and rejected by the Jews, it has
spread throughout many nations, and extended to those who
were far distant from the scene of its origin ; and that it
freely invites all to partake of its privileges, and makes no
distinction between barbarian, Scythian, bond or free. A
Latin poet, who lived at the commencement of the Christian
era, speaks of the barbarous Britons as almost divided from
the whole world; and yet although far more distant from
the land of Judea than from Rome, the law which hath
come out from Jerusalem hath taken, by its influence, the
name of barbarous from Britain; and in our distant "' isle of
the Gentiles" are the prophecies fulfilled, that the kingdom
of the Messiah, or the knowledge of the gospel, would extend
to the uttermost part of the earth. And in the present day,
» Isa. lxii. 2; lxv. 1; xi. 10; lv. 3, 5.

40 PROPAGATION AND EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY.
we can look from one distant isle of the Gentiles to another,
— from the northern to the southern ocean, or from one ex
tremity of the globe to another, — and behold the extinction
of idolatry, and the abolition of every barbarous and cruel
rite, by the humanizing influence of the gospel. But it was
at a time when no divine light dawned upon the world,
save obscurely on the land of Judea alone ; when all the
surrounding nations, in respect to religious knowledge, were
involved in thick darkness, gross superstition, and blind
idolatry ; when men made unto themselves gods of cor
ruptible things ; when those mortals were deified, after their
death, who had been subject to the greatest vices, and who
had been the oppressors of their fellow-men; when the most
shocking rites were practised as acts of religion ; when the
most enlightened among the nations of the earth erected an
altar to the " unknown God," and set no limit to the num
ber of their deities ; when one of the greatest of the heathen
philosophers, and the best of their moralists, despairing of the
clear discovery of the truth by human means, could merely
express a wish for a divine revelation, as the only safe and
certain guide } when slaves were far more numerous than
freemen even where liberty prevailed the most ; and when
there was no earthly hope of redemption from temporal
bondage or spiritual slavery; — even at such a time the voice
of prophecy was uplifted in the land of Judea, and it spoke
of a brighter day that was to dawn upon the world. It
was indeed a light shining in a dark place. And from
whence could that light have emanated but from heaven?
A Messiah was promised, a prince of peace was to appear, a
stone was to be cut without hands, that should break in
pieces and consume all other kingdoms. And the spiritual
reign of a Saviour is foretold in terms that define its dura
tion and extent, as well as describe its nature : — " I shall
1 Plato in Phaedone et in Alcibiade ii.

PROPAGATION AND EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 41
see him, but not now ; I shall behold him, but not nigh. —
His name shall endure for ever ; his name shall be continued
as long as the sun ; and men shall be blessed in him : all
nations shall call him blessed. He shall have dominion
from sea to sea ; and from the river unto the ends of the
earth. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for
thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for
thy possession. All the ends of the world shall remember
and turn unto the Lord ; and all the kindreds of the nations
shall worship before thee.1 I will give thee for a light to
the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the
end of the earth. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed ;
and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord
hath spoken it.2 The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in
the eyes of all the nations. He shall not fail nor be dis
couraged, till he have set judgment in the earth; and the isles
shall wait for his law.3 He will destroy in this mountain
the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail
that is spread over all nations.4 I am sought of them that
asked not for me ; I am found of them that sought me not :
I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not
called by my name."5 " It shall come to pass, in the last
days," say both Isaiah and Micah in the same words, " that
the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the
top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills,
and all nations shall flow unto it.6 In the place where it
wras said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be
said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.r The
abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces
of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.8 Sing, 0 barren, thou
that didst not bear ; break forth into singing, and cry
1 Numb. xxiv. 17 ; Psal. lxxii. 17 ; ii. 8 ; xxii. 27.
* Isa. xlix. 6; xl. 5. 3 Isa. lii. 10; xlii. 4. * Isa. xxv. 7.
5 Isa. lxv. 1. 6 Isa. ii. 2; Micah iv. 1. 7 Hosea i. 10.
" Isa. Ix. 5.

42 PROPAGATION AND EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY.
aloud — for more are the children of the desolate than the
children of the married wife. Enlarge the place of thy tent,
and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations:
spare not, lengthen thy cords — for thou shalt break forth
on the right hand and on the left, and thy seed shall inherit
the Gentiles : for thy Maker is thine husband : the Lord of
hosts is his name — the God of the whole earth shall he be
called.1 The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for
them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose."2
These prophecies all refer to the extent of the Messiah's
kingdom; and clear and copious though they be, they form
but a small number of the predictions of the same auspicious
import: — and we have not merely to consider what part of
them may yet remain to be fulfilled, but how much has
already been accomplished, of which no surmise could have
been formed, and of which all the wisdom of short-sighted
mortals could not have warranted a thought. All of them
were delivered many ages before the existence of that reli
gion whose progress they minutely describe ; and, when we
compare the present state of any country where the gospel
is professed in its purity, with its state at that period when
the Sun of righteousness began to arise upon it, we see light
pervading the region of darkness, and ignorance and bar
barism yielding to knowledge and moral cultivation. In
opposition to all human probability, and to human wisdom
and power, the gospel of Jesus, propagated at first by a few
fishermen of Galilee, has razed every heathen temple from its
foundation, has overthrown before it every impure altar, has
displaced, from every palace and every cottage which it has
reached, the worship of every false god; the whole civilized
world acknowledges its authority; it has prevailed from the
first to the last in defiance of persecution, of opposition the
most powerful and violent, of the direct attacks of avowed,
1 Isa. liv. 1-3, 5. ° Isa. xxxv. 1.

PROPAGATION AND EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 43
and the insidious designs of disguised enemies; — and com
bating, as it ever has been combating, with all the evil
passions of men that impel them to resist or pervert it, the
lapse of eighteen centuries confirms every ancient prediction,
and verifies to this hour the declaration of its Author, —
" the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." How is it
possible that it could have been conceived that such a reli
gion would have been characterized in all its parts — would
have been instituted — opposed — established — propagated
throughout the world — adopted even professedly by so many
nations— and avowedly received as the rule of faith and the
will of God? How could all these things, and many more
respecting it, have been foretold, as they unquestionably
were, many centuries before the Author of Christianity
appeared, if these prophecies be not an attestation from on
high that every prediction and its completion is the work
of God and not of man? What uninspired mortal could
have described the nature, the effect, the progress, and final
triumph of the Christian religion, when none could have
entertained an idea of its existence? For paganism con
sisted in external rites and cruel sacrifices, and in pretended
mysteries. Its toleration, indeed, has been commended, and
not undeservedly; for in religion, it tolerated whatever was
absurd and impious, in morals it tolerated all that was im
pure and almost all that was vicious. But the Jewish
prophets, when the world was in darkness, and could supply
no Hght to lead them to such knowledge, predicted the rise
of a religion which could boast of no such toleration, but
which was to reveal the will and inculcate the worship of
the one living and true God; which was to consist in moral
obedience, to enjoin reformation of life and purity of heart,
to abolish all sacrifice by revealing a better means of recon
ciliation for iniquity, to be understood by all from the
simplicity of its precepts, and to tolerate no manner of evil ;

44 PROPAGATION AND EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY.
a religion in every respect the reverse of paganism, ana o^
which they could not have been furnished with any sem
blance upon earth. They saw nothing among the sur
rounding nations but the worship of a multiplicity of deities
and of idols; if they had traversed the whole world they
would have witnessed only the same spiritual degradation, and
yet they predicted the final abolition and extinction both of
polytheism and of idolatry. The Jewish dispensation was
local, and Jews prophesied of a religion beginning from
Jerusalem, which was to extend to the uttermost parts of
the earth. So utterly unlikely and incredible were the
prophecies either to have been foretold by human wisdom,
or to have been fulfilled by human power; and when both
these wonders are united, they convey an assurance of the
truth. As a matter of history, the progress of Christianity
is at least astonishing; as the fulfilment of many prophecies,
it is evidently miraculous.1
The predicted success and extension of the gospel is not
less obvious in the New Testament than in the Old. A
single instance may suffice : — " I saw another angel fly in
the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach
to them that dwell upon the earth, and to every nation, and
kindred, and tongue, and people." These are the words of
a banished man, secluded in a small island from which he
could not remove; a believer in a new religion every where
spoken against and persecuted. They were uttered at a
time when their truth could not possibly have been realized
to the degree in which it actually is at present, even if all
1 Were it even to be conceded, as it never will in reason be, that the causes assigned
by Gibbon for the rapid extension of Christianity were adequate and true, one diffi
culty, great as it is, would only be removed for the substitution of a greater. For
what human ingenuity, though gifted with the utmost reach of discrimination, can
ever attempt the solution of the question, how were all these occult causes, (for hidden
they must then have been,) which the genius of Gibbon first discovered, foreseen,
their combination known, and all their wonderful effects distinctly described for
many centuries prior to their existence, or to the commencement of the period of
their alleged operation ?

PROPAGATION AND EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 45
human power had been combined for extending, instead of
extinguishing the gospel. The diffusion of knowledge was
then extremely difficult; the art of printing was then un
known; and many countries which the gospel has now
reached, were then undiscovered. And, multiplied as books
now are, more than at any former period of the history of
man, — extensive as the range of commerce is, beyond what
Tyre, or Carthage, or Rome could have ever boasted, — the
dissemination of the Scriptures surpasses both the one and
the other: — they have penetrated regions unknown to any
work of human genius, and untouched even by the ardour
of commercial speculation; and, with the prescription of
more than seventeen centuries in its favour, the prophecy
of the poor prisoner of Patmos is now exemplified, and thus
proved to be more than a mortal vision, in the unexampled
communication of the everlasting gospel unto them that
dwell on the earth, to every nation, and kindred, and
tongue, and people. Christianity is professed over Europe
and America. Christians are settled throughout every part
of the earth. The gospel is now translated into one hundred
and fifty languages and dialects, which are prevalent in
countries from the one extremity of the world to the other:
and what other book, since the creation, has ever been read
or known in a fifth part of the number? Whatever may be
the secondary causes by which these events have been
accomplished, or whatever may be the opinion of men
respecting them, the predictions which they amply verify
must have originated by inspiration from him who is the
great First Cause. What divine warrant, equal to this
alone, can all the speculations of infidelity supply, or can
any freethinker produce, for disbelieving the gospel?
It is apparent, on a general view of the prophecies which
refer to Christ and the Christian religion, that they include
predictions relative to many of the doctrines of the gospel

46 PROPAGATION AND EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY.
which are subjects of pure revelation, or which reason of
itself could never have discovered ; and these very doctrines,
to which the self-sufficiency of human wisdom is often averse
to yield assent, are thus to be numbered, in this respect,
among the criterions of the truth of divine revelation ; for
if these doctrines had not been contained in Scripture, the
prophecies respecting them could not have been fulfilled.
And the more wonderful they appear, they were by so much
the more unlikely or inconceivable to have been foretold by
man, and to have been afterwards embodied in a system of
religion. It is also evident that there are many prophecies appli
cable to Jesus, to which no allusion is made in the history
of his life. The minds of his disciples were long impressed
with the prejudices, arising from the lowliness of his mortal
state, which were prevalent among the Jews ; and they viewed
the prophecies through the mist of those traditions which
had magnified the earthly power to which alone they looked,
and obscured the divine nature of the expected reign of the
Messiah, It was only after the resurrection of Christ, as
the Scriptures inform us, that their understandings were
opened to know the prophecies. But while the accomplish
ment of many of these predictions is thus unnoticed in the
New Testament, the fulfilment of each and all of them is
written, as with a pen of iron, in the life and doctrine and
death of Jesus ; — and the undesigned and unsuspicious
proof, thus indirectly but amply given, is now stronger than
if an appeal had been made to the prophecies in every in
stance ; — and, freed from the prejudices of the Jews, we
may now combine and compare all the antecedent prophecies
respecting the Messiah with the narrative of the New Testa
ment, and with the nature and history of Christianity ; and
having seen how the former, in all that has already been
fulfilled, is a transcript of the latter, we may draw the legiti-

PROPAGATION AND EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 47
mate conclusion, that the spirit of prophecy is indeed the
testimony of Jesus.
And may it not, on a review of the whole, be warrant-
ably asserted, that the time and the place of the birth of
Christ, the tribe and the family from which he was de
scended, the manner of his life, his character, his miracles,
his sufferings and his death, the nature of his doctrine,
and the fate of his religion, — that it was to proceed from
Jerusalem, that the Jews would reject it, that it would
be opposed and persecuted at first, that it would be ex
tended to the Gentiles, that idolatry would give way before
it, that kings would submit to its authority, and that it
would be spread throughout many nations, even to the most
distant parts of the earth , — -were all of them subjects of
ancient prophecy ?
Why, then, were so many prophecies delivered ? Why,
from the calling of Abraham to the present time, have the
Jews been separated, as a peculiar people, from all the
nations of the earth ? Why, from the age of Moses to that
of Malachi, during the space of one thousand years, did a
succession of prophets arise, all testifying of a Saviour that
was to come ? Why was the book of prophecy sealed for
nearly four hundred years before the coming of Christ?
Why is there still, to this day, undisputed if not miraculous
evidence of the antiquity of all these prophecies, by then-
being sacredly preserved in every age, in the custody and
guardianship of the enemies of Christianity? Why was
such a multiplicity of facts predicted that are applicable to
Christ and to him alone ? Why, but that all this mighty
preparation might usher in the gospel of Righteousness ; and
that, like all the works of the Almighty, his word through
Jesus Christ might never be left without a witness of his
wisdom and his power. And if the prophecies which testify
of the gospel and of its Author display, from the slight glance

48 PEOPAGATION AND EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY.
which has here been given of them, any traces of the finger
of God, how strong must be the conviction which a full view
of them imparts to the minds of those who diligently
search the Scriptures, and see how clearly they testify of
Christ !

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 49

CHAPTER III.
PROPHECIES CONCERNING THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
The commonwealth of Israel, from its establishment to its
dissolution, subsisted for more than fifteen hundred years.
In delivering their law, Moses assumed more than the
authority of a human legislator, and asserted that he was
invested with a divine commission; and in enjoining obedi
ence to it, after having conducted them to the borders of
Canaan, he promises many blessings to accompany their
compliance with the law, and denounces grievous judgments
that would overtake them for the breach of it. The history
of the Jews in each succeeding age, attests the truth of the
last prophetic warning of the first of their rulers; but too
lengthened a detail would be requisite for its elucidation.
Happily, it contains predictions, applicable to more recent
events, which admit not of any ambiguous interpretation,
and refer to historical facts that admit no cavil. He who
founded their government, foretold, notwithstanding the in
tervention of so many ages, the manner of its overthrow.
While they were wandering in the wilderness, without a city,
and without a home, he threatened them with the destruc
tion of their cities, and the devastation of their country.
While they viewed, for the first time, the land of Palestine,
and when victorious and triumphant they were about to
possess it, he represented the scene of desolation that it
would exhibit to their vanquished and enslaved posterity,
on their last departure from it. Ere they themselves had
entered it as enemies, he describes those enemies by whom
their descendants were to be subjugated and dispossessed,
4

50 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
though they were to arise from a very distant region, and
although they did not appear till after a millenary and a
half of years : "The Lord shall bring a nation against thee
from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle
flieth ; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand ; a
nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the
person of the old, nor show favour to the young. And he
shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land,
until thou be destroyed : which also shall not leave thee
either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks
of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee; and he shall
besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced
walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all
thy land."1 Each particular of this prophecy, though it be
only introductory to others, has met its full completion.
The remote situation of the Romans, the rapidity of their
march, the very emblem of their arms, their unknown lan
guage and warlike appearance, the indiscriminate cruelty
and unsparing pillage which they exercised towards the
persons and the property of the Jews, could scarcely have
been represented in more descriptive terms.2 Vespasian,
Adrian, and Julius Severus, removed with part of their
armies from Britain to Palestine, the extreme points of the
Roman world. The eagle was the standard of their armies,
and the utmost activity and expedition were displayed in
the reduction of Judea. They were a nation of fierce coun
tenance, a race distinct from the effeminate Asiatic troops.
At Gadara and Gamala, throughout many parts of the
Roman empire, and, in repeated instances, at Jerusalem
itself, the slaughter of the Jews was indiscriminate, without
distinction of age or sex. The inhabitants were enslaved
and banished, all their possessions confiscated, and the king-
1 Deut. xxviii. 49-52.
¦' See Jackson, Poole, Patrick, Whiston, Bishop Newton, &c.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 51
dom of Israel, humbled at first into a province of the Roman
empire, became at last the private property of the emperor.
Throughout all the land of Judea every city was besieged
and taken ; and their high and fenced walls were razed from
the foundation. But the prophet particularizes incidents
the most shocking to humanity, which mark the utmost
possible extremity of want and wretchedness ; the last act
to which famine could prompt despair, and the last subject
of a prediction that could have been uttered by man: "And
thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy
sons and of thy daughters, — in the siege and in the strait-
ness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee ; so that
the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his
eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of
his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children whom
he shall leave, so that he will not give to any of them of
the flesh of his children, whom he shall eat, because he hath
nothing left him in the siege, and in the straitness, where
with thine enemies shall distressthee in all thy gates. The
tender and delicate woman among you, which would not
adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for
delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the
husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her
daughter, and toward her young one, and toward her chil
dren which she shall bear : for she shall eat them for want
of all things secretly in the siege and straitness wherewith
thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates."1 No commen
tator, nor careful reader of Scripture and of Jewish history,
could fail to observe the repeated instances of the fulfilment
of this striking and awful prediction. When Samaria, then
the capital of Israel, was besieged by all the hosts of the
king of Syria, an ass's head was sold for eighty pieces of
silver.2 When Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, the
1 Dent, xxviii. 53-57. 2 2 Kings vi. 25.

52 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
famine prevailed in the city, and there was no bread for the
people of the land. And Josephus, in his history of the
Jewish war, relates the direful calamities of the Jews in
their last siege, before they ceased to have a city. The
famine was too powerful for all other passions, for what was
otherwise reverenced was in this case despised. Children
snatched the food out of the very mouths of their fathers ;
and even mothers, overcoming the tenderest feelings of
nature, took from their perishing infants the last morsels
that could sustain their fives. — In every house where there
was the least shadow of food, a contest arose ; and the
nearest relatives struggled with each other for the miser
able means of subsistence.1 He adds a most revolting
detail.2 While, in all these cases, the eye of man was
thus evil towards his brother, in the siege and in the
straitness wherewith their enemies distressed them — the un
paralleled inhuman compact between the two women of
Samaria ; the bitter lamentation of Jeremiah over the
miseries of the siege which he witnessed, " The hands of the
pitiful women have sodden their own children : they were
their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people;"
and the harrowing recital, by Josephus, of the noble lady
killing, with her own hands, and eating secretly, her own
suckling (the discovery of which struck even the whole
suffering city with horror,) which are all recorded as facts,
without the least allusion to the prediction, — too faithfully
realize, to the very letter, the dread denunciations of the
prophet. When any well-authenticated facts, of so singular
and appalling a nature, were predicted for ages, they could
not possibly have been revealed but by inspiration from that
Omniscience which alone can foresee the termination of the
iniquities of nations.
1 Joseph. Hist. lib. v. c. x. § 3.— lib. vi. c. iii. § 3. Quoted by Eusebius, a.d. 315.
Ecc. Hist. lib. iii. c. vi. p. 95, 97. Patrick, &c.
2 Joseph, ibid. vi. c. iii. § 4.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 53
Moses, and the other prophets, foretold also that the Jews
would be left few in number, that they would be slain be
fore their enemies, that the pride of their power would be
broken, that their cities would be laid waste, that they would
be destroyed and brought to nought, plucked from off the
land, sold for slaves, and that none would buy them, — that
their high places were to be desolate, and their bones to be
scattered around their altars, — that Jerusalem was to be en
camped round about, to be besieged with a mount, to have
forts raised against it, to be ploughed over as a field, and to
become heaps, — that the end was to come upon it; and that
the Lord would judge them according to their ways, and re
compense them for all their abominations ; the sword without,
and the pestilence and the famine within : " he that is in the
field shall die with the sword; and he that is in the city,
famine and pestilence shall devour him."1
These predictions, which are recorded in the Pentateuch,
and in the subsequent prophecies, accord with the minute
prophetic narrative which Jesus gave of the siege and de
struction of Jerusalem. Any adequate delineation of it
alone would far surpass the limits of this treatise. But
the subject has been fully and frequently illustrated, and
the prediction harmonizes so completely with the unim
peachable testimony of impartial historians, that it is merely
necessary, for the elucidation of its truth, to compare the
prophetic description with the historical fact.2
x Lev. xxvi. 30, &c. Deut. xxviii. 62, &c. Isa. xxiv. 3. Ezek. vi. 5. Micah
iii. 12. Jer. xxvi. 18. Ezek. vii. 7-9, 15.
2 "The particular parts of the whole discourse have been admirably illustrated by
many learned commentators. Christian writers have always, with great reason, re
presented Josephus's History of the Jewish War, as the best commentary on thin
chapter, (Matt, xxiv.) and many have justly remarked it, as a wonderful instance of
the care of Providence for the Christian Church, that he, an eye-witness of these
things, and of so great credit, should (especially in such an extraordinary manner)
be preserved, to transmit to us a collection of important facts, which so exactly illus
trate this noble prophecy in almost every circumstance." — (Doddridge's Family Ex
positor, vol. ii. p. 373; second edition, 1745.) No author, perhaps, has been more
frequently quoted on any subject than Josephus on this ; his History of the Wars of

54 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
Besides frequent allusions, in his discourses and parables,1
the predictions of Christ, concerning Jerusalem, are recorded
at length by three of the evangelists. They are omitted by
the apostle John, in whose writings alone, from the age to
which he lived, their insertion could have been suspicious.
They were delivered to the disciples of Christ in answer to
those direct questions which they put, in their surprise and
alarm, at his declaration of the fate of the temple, " When
shall these things be? What shall be the sign of them, and
of the end of the world?" The reply embraces all the sub
jects of the query, and is equally circumstantial and distinct.
The death of Christ happened thirty-seven years previous
to the destruction of Jerusalem. By the unanimous testi
mony of antiquity, the three gospels were published, and at
least two of the evangelists were dead, several years before
that event. Copies of the gospels were disseminated so ex
tensively and rapidly, that any deceit must have been in
stantaneously detected by the powerful, and numerous, and
watchful enemies of the cross. And the evidence of the
prior publicity of the gospels was so strong, that it remained
the Romans with the Jews having been for many ages the common property of the
Christian Church, in illustration of the prophecies concerning the destruction of Jeru
salem. These prophecies were quoted and illustrated by Eusebius above 1500 years
ago, lib. iv. c. v.— ix. p. 92—102, edit. Cantab. 1720. After giving a tragic sum
mary, from the 5th and 6th books of Josephus's history, of the miseries sustained
from famine during the siege, he emphatically and justly states, that if any one com
pares the words of Christ with Josephus's narrative of the whole war, he cannot but
admire the wonderful prescience and prophecy of Christ, and confess they were truly
divine and exceedingly wonderful. So fully and frequently has the subject been illus
trated, as stated in every edition of this treatise, that any 'studious Christian,' at
all versant in the subject, could be at no loss to form, from -the works of various
writers in past ages, a volume of coincident illustrations of the same predictions from
the 3ame authorities. It may here suffice to mention the names of Eusebius, Grotius,
Tillemont, Jackson, Poole, Patrick, Tillotson, Whitby, Abbadie, Whiston, Doddridge,
Pearce, Bishop Newton, Lardner, &c, the last of whom, in a single treatise, has 250
references to Josephus alone. Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Eusebius, are
quoted or referred to in a single paragraph by Doddridge, as well as by many pre
ceding writers ; and in this brief and most imperfect summary, these authorities
were consulted from the first.
1 Matt. xxi. 18, 19, 33-44 ; xxii. 1-7 ; xxv. 14-30. Mark xi. 12-20, &c. Luke
xiii. 6-9; xiv. 16-24; xx. 9-18; xxiii. 27-31.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 55
unchallenged by Julian, Porphyry, or by Celsus. The
authenticity of the prophecy thus rests on sure grounds, and
the facts in which it received its accomplishment are incon
testable. Josephus was one of the most distinguished gene
rals in the commencement of the Jewish war ; he was an
eye-witness of the facts which he records; he appeals to Ves
pasian and to Titus for the truth of his history ; it received
the singular attestation of the subscription of the latter to its
accuracy ; it was published while the facts were recent and
notorious ; and the extreme carefulness with which he avoids
the mention of the name of Christ, in the history of the Jewish
war, is not less remarkable than the great precision with
which he describes the events that verify his predictions.
Not a few of the transactions are also related by Tacitus,
Suetonius, Philostratus, and Dion Cassius.
The different prophecies of Christ respecting Jerusalem
may be condensed into a single view.
" And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple ;
and his disciples came to him, for to show him the buildings
of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all
these things ? verily I say unto you, there shall not be left
here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.
And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came
unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall all these
things be ? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and
of the end of the world (the age) ? And Jesus answered
and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you ;
for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ ; and
shall deceive many. And the time draws near ; and ye
shall hear of wars, and rumours of wars, — or commotions :
these things must first come to pass, but the end is not yet.
Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against king
dom ; and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and
famines, and pestilences, and fearful sights ; and great signs

56 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
shall there be from heaven. All these things are the begin
ning of sorrows. But, before all these things, shall they
lay their hands upon you, and persecute you, delivering
you up to the synagogues and into prisons, being brought
before kings and rulers for my name's sake. And many
shall be offended. Ye shall be betrayed both by parents
and brethren, and kinsfolk and friends : and some of you
shall they cause to be put to death, and ye shall be hated
of all men for my name's sake. But there shall not a hair
of your head perish. And many false prophets will arise
and will deceive many : and because iniquity shall abound,
the love of many shall wax cold. When ye, therefore, shall
see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, and the abomination
of desolation stand in the holy place, and where it ought
not, then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains,
and let him which is in the midst of the city depart out. Let
him which is on the house-top not go down into the house,
neither enter therein to take anything out of his house.
Neither let him that is in the field turn back again for to
take up his garment, for these are the days of vengeance.
But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that
give suck in those days ; for there will be great distress in
the land, and wrath upon this people ; and they shall faE
by the edge of the sword, and shall be led captive into all
nations. And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the
Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.1
" Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees ; fill ye up the
measure of your fathers. Behold, I send unto you prophets,
and wise men, and scribes ; and some of them ye shall kill,
and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in your
synagogues, and persecute them from city to city. All
these things shall come upon this generation. 0 Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them
1 Matt. xxiv. Mark xiii. Luke xxi.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 57
which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered
thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not ! Behold, your house
is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not
see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh
in the name of the Lord.1
" When he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept
over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in
this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace ! but
now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come
upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee,
and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and
shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within
thee ; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon
another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." 2
These prophecies, from the Old Testament and from the
New, repel the charge of ambiguity. They are equally
copious and clear. History attests the truth of each and
all of them ; and a recapitulation of them forms an enumera
tion of the facte. False Christs appeared. Simon Magus
boasted that he was some great one. Dositheus, the Samari
tan, pretended that he was the lawgiver prophesied of by
Moses. Theudas, promising the performance of a miracle,
persuaded a great multitude to follow him to Jordan, and
deceived many.3 The country was filled with impostors and
deceivers, who induced the people to follow them into the
wilderness ;4 — their credulity became the punishment of their
previous scepticism, and, in one instance, the tumult was so
great that the soldiers took two hundred prisoners, and slew
twice that number. There were wars and rumours of wars ;
nation -rose against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
i Matt, xxiii. 29, 32, 34, 36-39.
2 Luke xix. 41-44.
3 Joseph. Ant. lib. xx. cap. v. sect. 1. Quoted by Grotius, Whitby, &c.
1 Ibid. lib. xx. cap. viii. quoted by Grotius, &c.

58 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
The Jews resisted the erection of the statue of Caligula in
the temple ; and such was the dread of Roman resentment,
that the fields remained uncultivated. At Caesarea, the
Jews and the Syrians contended for the mastery of the
city. Twenty thousand of the former were put to death,
and the rest were expelled. Every city in Syria was then
divided into two armies, and multitudes were slaughtered.1
Alexandria and Damascus presented a similar scene of
bloodshed. About fifty thousand of the Jews fell in the
former, and ten thousand in the latter.2 The Jewish nation
rebelled against the Romans ; Italy was convulsed with
contentions for the empire ; and, as a proof of the troubles
and warlike character of the period, within the brief space
of two years, four emperors, Nero, Galba, Otho, and Vitel-
lius, suffered death. There were famines, pestilences, and
earthquakes in divers places. In the reign of Claudius Csesar
there were different famines. They continued to be severe
for several years throughout the land of Judea. Pestilence
succeeded them. In the same reign there were earthquakes
at Rome, at Apamea, and at Crete. In that of Nero there
was an earthquake in Campania, and another in which
Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Colosse were overthrown, and
others are recorded to have happened in various places,
before the destruction of the city of Jerusalem.3 " The
constitution of nature," says the Jewish historian,4 " was con
founded for the destruction of men, and one might easily
conjecture that no common calamities were portended." And
there were fearful sights and signs from heaven. Tacitus
and Josephus agree in relating and describing events so
surprising and supernatural, that their narrative perfectly
1 Joseph. Hist. lib. ii. cap. xviii. sects. 1, 2. Tillotson, Bishop Newton, &c.
2 Ibid. lib. ii. c. xvii. sects. 7, 8, c. xx. sect. 2, Ibid.
3 Suet. Vit. Claud, cap. xviii. Tac. Ann. lib. xii. c. xliii. ; lib. xiv. c. xxvii. Jos.
lib. iv. c. iv. Grotius, Whitby, &c.
* Jos. ibid. Whitby, Newton, Scott's Commentary.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 59
accords with the previous prediction.1 And the fact cannot
be disputed, that, whatever these sights were, the minds of
men were impressed with the idea that they were indeed
signs from heaven : and even this could never have been
foreseen by man. There is surely something at least unac
countable in their prediction, and in their relation by his
torians, unprejudiced and unfriendly to the cause which their
testimony supports. The disciples of Jesus were persecuted,
imprisoned, afflicted, and hated of all nations, for his
name's sake, and many of them were put to death. Peter,
Simon, and Jude were crucified ;2 Paul was beheaded ;
Matthew, Thomas, James, Matthias, Mark, and Luke, were
put to death in different countries, and in various manners.
There was a war against the very name. They were accused
of hatred to the human race. The prejudices and the
interests of the supporters of paganism were everywhere
against them; and in one memorable instance, Nero, to
screen himself from the guilt of being the incendiary of his
capital, accused the innocent but hated Christians of that
atrocious deed, and inflicted upon them the most excruciat
ing tortures.3 He made their sufferings a spectacle and a
sport to the Romans. To compensate for his disappointment
in not trampling on the ashes of Rome, as well as to cloak
his iniquity, the monster (for the man and the monarch
were both laid aside) gratified his savage lust of cruelty, by
the substitution of one feast for another; he selected the
Christians for his victims, from the general odium under
which they lay; and their very name became the warrant
for that selection, and sufficed to sanction the infliction of
1 " Evenerant prodigia, qua? neque hosiiis neque votis piare fas habet gens super-
stitioni obnoxia, religionibus adversa. Visse per ccelum concurrere acies, rutilantia
arraa, et subito nubium igne collucere templum. Expassse repente delubri fores, et
audita major humana vox, excedere deos; simul ingens motus excedentium." (Tacit.
Hist. lib. v. cap. xiii.) Whitby, &c.
2 Cave's Lives of the Apostles. Dupin.
3 Tacit. Annal. lib. xv. cap. xliv. Whitby, &c.

60 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
unheard-of barbarities. Many shall be offended and shall
betray one another; and the love of many shall wax cold.
The apostle of the Gentiles often complained of false
brethren, that many turned away from him, and that he
stood alone, forsaken by all, when he first appeared before
Nero. And Tacitus testifies that very many were convicted,
on the evidence of others who had previously been accused.
Jerusalem was encompassed with armies. The Roman
armies, with their idolatrous ensigns, which were an abomi
nation to the Jews, surrounded it; but instead of being a
signal for flight, this would naturally have implied the
impossibility of escape, and the warning would have been in
vain. Yet the words of Jesus did not deceive his disciples.
Cestius Gallus, the Roman general, besieged Jerusalem; but
immediately after, contrary to all human probability, an
interval was given for escape. He suddenly and causelessly
retreated, though some of the chief men of the city had
offered to open 'to him the gates. Josephus acknowledges
that the utmost consternation prevailed among the besieged,
and that the city would infallibly have been taken.1 And
he attributes it to the just vengeance of God, that the city
and the sanctuary were not then taken, and the war termi
nated at once. He relates also, how many of the most
illustrious inhabitants departed from the city, as from a
sinking vessel; and how, upon the approach of Vespasian
afterwards, multitudes fled from Jericho into the moun
tainous country. Thither, and to the city of Pella, fled all
the disciples of Jesus:2 and, amidst all the succeeding
calamities, not a hair of their heads did perish.
There shall be great distress in the land, and wrath
upon this people. These are the days of vengeance. Such
are some of the words of Jesus, relative to the destruction
• ' Joseph, lit. ii. cap. xix. xx. Grotius, &c. &c.
2 Epiphanius in Hseres. Nazar. cap. vii. Eusebii Ec. Hist. lib. iii. cap. v. Whitby,
Doddridge, &c.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 61
of Jerusalem; and all the previous prophecies regarding it
were of the same sad import. The particulars of the siege
are all related by Josephus, and form a detail of miseries
that admit not of exaggeration; and which he repeatedly
declares, in terms that entirely accord with the language of
prophecy, are altogether unequalled in the history of the
world.— No general description can give a just idea of
calamities the most terrible that ever nation suffered. The
Jews had assembled in their city from all the surrounding
country, to keep the feast of unleavened bread. It was
crowded with inhabitants when they were all imprisoned
within its walls. The passover, which was commemorative
of their first great deliverance, had collected them for their
last signal destruction. Before any external enemy appeared,
the fiercest dissensions prevailed ; the blood of thousands was
shed by their brethren; they destroyed and burned in their
frenzy their common provisions for the siege; they were
destitute of any regular government, and divided into three
factions. On the extirpation of one of these, each of the
others contended for the mastery. The most ferocious and
fanatic, the robbers or zealots, as they are indiscriminately
called, prevailed at last. They entered the temple, under
the pretence of offering sacrifices, and carried concealed
weapons for the purpose of assassination. They slew the
priests at the very altar; and their blood, instead of that of
the victims for sacrifice, flowed around it. They afterwards
rejected all terms of peace with the enemy; none were
suffered to escape from the city; every house was entered,
every article of subsistence was pillaged, and the most
wanton barbarities were committed. Nothing could restrain
their fury; wherever there was the appearance or scent of
food, the human bloodhounds tracked it out; and though
a general famine raged around, though they were ever
trampling on the dead, and though the habitations for the

62 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
Hving were converted into charnel houses, nothing could
intimidate, or appal, or satisfy, or shock them, till Mary,
the daughter of Eleazar, a lady once rich and noble,
displayed to them and offered them all her remaining food,
the scent of which had attracted them in their search, —
the bitterest morsel that ever mother or mortal tasted, —
the remnant of her half-eaten suckling. Sixty thousand
Roman soldiers unremittingly besieged them ; they encom
passed Jerusalem with a wall, and hemmed them in on
every side ; they brought down their high and fenced walla
to the ground; they slaughtered the slaughterers, they
spared not the people; they burned the temple in defiance
of the commands, the threats, and the resistance of their
general With it the last hope of the Jews was extin
guished. They raised, at the sight, a universal but an
expiring cry of sorrow and despair. Ten thousand were
there slain, and six thousand victims were enveloped in its
blaze. The whole city, full of the famished dying, and of
the murdered dead, presented no picture but that of despair,
no scene but of horror. The aqueducts and the city sewers
were crowded as the last refuge of the hopeless. Two thou
sand were found dead there, and many were dragged from
thence and slain. The Roman soldiers put all*' indiscrimi
nately to death, and ceased not till they became faint and
weary and overpowered with the work of destruction. But
they only sheathed the sword to light the torch. They set
fire to the city in various places. The flames spread every
where, and were checked but for a moment by the red
streamlets in every street. Jerusalem became heaps, and
the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.
Within the circuit of a few miles, in the space of five
months, — foes and famine, pillage and pestilence within, — a
triple wall around and besieged ¦ every moment from with
out, — eleven hundred thousand human beings perished,

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 63
though the tale of each of them was a tragedy. Was there
ever so concentrated a mass of misery? Could any pro
phecy be more faithfully and awfully fulfilled ? The pro
spect of his own crucifixion, when Jesus was on his way to
Calvary, was not more clearly before him, and seemed to
affect him less, than the fate of Jerusalem. How full of
tenderness, and fraught with truth, was the sympathetic
response of the condoling sufferer, to the wailings and
lamentations of the Avomen who followed him, when he
turned unto them and beheld the city, which some of them
might yet see wrapt in flames and drenched in blood, and
said, " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for
yourselves and for your children. For, behold, the days are
coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren,
and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never
gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains,
Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these
things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" No
impostor ever betrayed such feelings as a man, or predicted
events so unlikely, astonishing, and true, as an attestation
of a divine commission. Jesus revealed the very judgments
of God ; for such the instrument, by whom it was accom
plished, interpreted the capture and destruction of Jerusa
lem, acknowledging that his own power would otherwise
have been ineffectual. When eulogized for the victory,
Titus disclaimed the praise, affirming that, he was only the
instrument of executing the sentence of Divine justice.
And their own historian asserts, in conformity with every
declaration of Scripture upon the subject, that the iniquities
of the Jews were as unparalleled as their punishment.
All these prophecies, of which we have been reviewing
the accomplishment, were delivered in a time of perfect
peace, when the Jews retained their own laws, and enjoyed
the protection, as they were subject to the authority, of the

64 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
Roman empire, then in the zenith of its power. The won
der excited in the minds of his disciples at the strength and
stability of the temple, drew forth from Jesus the announce
ment of its speedy and utter ruin. He foretold the appear
ance of false Christs and pretended prophets ; the wars and
rumours of wars ; the famines and pestilences and earth
quakes and fearful sights that were to ensue ; the persecu
tion of his disciples ; the apostasy of many; the propaga
tion of the gospel ; the sign that should warn his disciples
to flee from approaching ruin ; the encompassing and
enclosing of Jerusalem ; the grievous affliction of the tender
sex ; the unequalled miseries of all ; the entire destruction
of the city; the shortening of their sufferings, that still some
might be saved ; and that all this dread crowd of events,
which might well have occupied the progress of ages, was
to pass away within the limits of a single generation.
None but He who discerns futurity could have foretold and
described all these things ; and their complete and literal
fulfilment shows them to be indubitably the revelation of
God. But the prophecies also mark minuter facts, if possible
more unlikely to have happened. Jerusalem was to be
ploughed over as a field ; to be laid even with the ground ;
of the temple one stone was not be left upon another ; the
Jews were to be few in number ; to be led captive into all
nations ; to be sold for slaves and none would buy them.
And each of these predictions was strictly verified. Titus
commanded the whole city and temple to be razed from the
foundation. The soldiers were not then disobedient to
their general. Avarice combined with duty and with resent
ment : the altar, the temple, the walls, and the city, were
overthrown from the base, in search of the treasures which
the Jews, beset on every hand by plunderers, had concealed
and buried during the siege. Three towers and the rem-

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 65
nant of a wall alone stood, the monument and memorial of
Jerusalem ; and the city was afterwards ploughed over by
Terentius Rufus. In the siege, and in the previous and sub
sequent destruction of the cities and villages of Judea, accord
ing to the specified enumeration of Josephus, about one
million three hundred thousand suffered death. Ninety-
seven thousand were led into captivity. They were sold
for slaves, and were so despised and disesteemed, that many
remained unpurchased. And their conquerors were so pro
digal of their lives, that, in honour of the birth-day of
Domitian, two thousand five hundred of them were placed,
in savage sport, to contend with wild beasts, and otherwise
to be put to death.1
But the miseries of their race were not then at a close.
There was a curse on the land, that hath scathed it, a
judgment on the people that scattered them throughout the
world. Many prophecies respecting them yet remain to be
considered, and much of their history is yet untold, The
prophecies are as clear as the facts are visible.
Yet Jerusalem, though devoted to destruction, was not
given up to perpetual desolation. In pronouncing its doom,
while from the Mount of Olives he beheld the city, Jesus
wept over it. Bewailing Jerusalem and addressing it, he also
said, How often would I have gathered thy children together !
1 Tacitus, who flourished about thirty years after the destruction of Jerusalem,
speaks of the strength of the fortifications of that city, the immense riches and strength
of the temple, the factions that raged during the siege, as well as of the prodigies that
preceded its fall. And he particularly mentions the large army brought by Vespa
sian to subdue Judea, " a fact which shows the magnitude and importance of tlie
expedition." Philostratus particularly relates, that Titus declared, after the cap
ture of Jerusalem, that he was not worthy of the crown of victory, as he had only
lent his hand to the execution of a work in which God was pleased to manifest his
anger. Dion Cassius records the conquest of Judea by Titus and Vespasian, the
obstinate and bloody resistance of the Jews during the siege, the destruction of the
temple by fire. It is recorded by Maimonides, and in the Jewish Talmud, (as cited
by Basnage and Lardner,) that Terentius Rufus, an officer in the Roman army, tore
up with a ploughshare the foundations of the temple. The triumphal arch of Titus,
commemorative" of the destruction of Jerusalem, and with figures of Roman soldiers,
bearing on their shoulders the holy vessels of the temple, is still to be seen at Rome.
f)

66 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
and ye would not ! Behold your house is left unto you
desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me hence
forth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh vn the name
of the Lord. The men of Nineveh repented at the preach
ing of Jonah ; but the inhabitants of Jerusalem repented
not at the preaching of Jesus. They would not be gathered
together unto him, though he would have gathered them
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings ; and
they have been scattered unto all the ends of the earth,
and to this day they are wanderers throughout the world,
even in regions which their fathers never knew. To them
Jerusalem exists only in their memories and their hopes.
It has been possessed by Gentiles, but not by Jews. But
he who was crucified without the walls of Jerusalem by
Gentiles and by Jews, did not give up that city to the ever
lasting possession of an alien race ; yet he set no shorter
limit to the national expatriation of the people whose
capital Jerusalem had for ages been, than that which
involves the destiny of Jews and Gentiles. There shall be
great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.
And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be
led captive into all nations : and Jerusalem shall be trod
den down of tlie Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be
fulfilled} In a previous age Jerusalem had been destroyed,
and the Jews had been led captive into a distant land ; but
the walls of Babylon could confine them no longer, when
the prescribed time of their captivity had expired, but then
at once the kingdom was taken from Babylon and the Jews
returned to Jerusalem. Not seventy merely, but eighteen
hundred years confirm the words of Jesus : Jerusalem is
still trodden down — not by one people only, whether Greek
or Roman or any other,- — but by the Gentiles, or nations of
whatever name, while the Jews are still scattered among
* Luke xxi. 23, 24.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 67
them all. There is no prohibition in the words of Jesus
against the possession of Jerusalem by any other people,
but its own children alone, till the hitherto unaccomplished
times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled.
The times of the Gentiles were not fulfilled when Julian
tried in vain to rebuild the temple, and restore the Jews.
The times of the Gentiles were not fulfilled when Bona
parte said that Jerusalem did not he within the line of his
operations, though, not knowing his destiny, he thea idly
dreamt of being an Eastern conqueror. In the wailing
language of the prophet it might long have been asked,
Who shall have pity upon thee, 0 Jerusalem ? or who shall
bemoan thee ? or who shall turn aside to ask 'thy peace ?'1
But, without here noting other signs of these times which
differ from the past, it may be said that there are many
now, who understand the meaning of these words which were
written for a generation to come, Thou shalt arise, and
have mercy upon Zion ; for the time to favour her, yea,
the set time, is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her
stones, and favour the dust thereof.2
1 Jer. xv. 5. - Ps. cii. IS, 14.

68 THE JEWS.

CHAPTER IV.
PROPHECIES CONCERNING THE JEWS.
While Moses, as a divine legislator, promised to the Israel
ites that their prosperity and happiness and peace would all
keep pace with their obedience, he threatened them with a
gradation of punishments, rising in proportion to their
impenitence and iniquity : and neither in blessings nor in
chastisements hath the Ruler among the nations dealt in
like manner with any people. But their wickedness, and
consequent calamities, greatly preponderated and are yet
prolonged. The retrospect of the history of the Jews, since
their dispersion, could not, at the present day, be drawn in
truer terms, than in the un propitious auguries of their pro
phet above three thousand two hundred years ago. In the
most ancient of all records, we read the lively representation
of the present condition of the most singular people upon
earth. Moses professed to look through the glass of ages ;
the revolution of many centuries has brought the object
immediately before us : we may scrutinize the features of
futurity as they then appeared to his prophetic gaze ; and
we may determine between the probabilities whether they
were conjectures of a mortal who " knows not what a day
may bring forth," or the revelation of that Being " in whose
sight a thousand years are but as yesterday."
" I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw
out a sword after you ; and your land shall be desolate, and
your cities waste. And upon them that are left of you I
will send a faintness into their hearts, in the lands of their

THE JEWS. 69
enemies ; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them ;
and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword ; and they shall
fall when none pursueth ; — and ye shall have no power to
stand before your enemies. And ye shall perish among the
heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
And they that are left of you shall pine away in their ini
quity in your enemies' lands ; and also in the iniquities of
their fathers, shall they pine away with them. And yet for
all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will
not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy
them utterly.1 And the Lord shall scatter you among the
nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the hea
then, whither the Lord shall lead you.2 The Lord shall
cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies : thou shalt
go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before
them : and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the
earth.3 The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blind
ness, and astonishment of heart : and thou shalt grope at
noon-day as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt
not prosper in thy ways : and thou shalt be only oppressed
and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee. Thy
sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people,
— there shall be no might in thine hand. The fruit of thy
land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which thou knowest
not eat up ; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed
alway : so that thou shalt be mad for the sight of thine
eyes which thou shalt see. The Lord shall bring thee unto
a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known ; —
and thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a
by-word, among all nations whither the Lord shall lead
thee.4 Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with
joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of
' Lev. xxvi. 33, 36-39, 44. 2 Deut. iv. 27.
3 Dent, xxviii. 25. * Deut. xxviii. 28, 29, 32, 33, 36, 37.

70 THE JEWS.
all things ; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which
the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst,
and in nakedness, and in want of all things : and he shall
put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed
thee. And the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and
the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long con
tinuance.1 All these curses shall come upon thee, and shall
pursue thee, and overtake thee ; — and they shall be upon
thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for
ever. And it shall come to pass, that, as the Lord rejoiced
over you to do you good, and to multiply you ; so the Lord
will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to
nought ; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither
thou goest to possess it. And the Lord shall scatter thee
among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto
the other. And among these nations shalt thou find no
ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest : but the
Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of
eyes, and sorrow of mind : and thy life shall hang in doubt
before thee, and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt
have none assurance of thy life. In the morning thou shalt
say, Would God it were even ! and at even thou shalt say,
Would God it were morning ! for the fear of thine heart
wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes
which thou shalt see.2
The writings of all the succeeding prophets abound with
similar predictions. " I will cause them to be removed into
all kingdoms of the earth. — I will cast you out of this land
into a land that ye know not, where I will not show you
favour. I will feed them with wormwood, and give them
water of gall to drink. I will scatter them also among the
heathen, whom neither they nor their fathers have known.8
1 Deut. xxviii. 47, 48, 59. 2 Ibid. 45, 46, 63-67.
3 Jer. xv. 4; xvi. 13; ix. 15, 16.

THE JEWS. 71
I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of
the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach and a proverb, a
taunt and a curse, in all places whither I shall drive them :
and I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence
among them, till they be consumed from off the land that I
gave unto them and to their fathers.1 I will bereave them
of children. I will deliver them to be removed to all the
kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, and an astonishment,
and an hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations
whither I have driven them.2 I will execute judgments in
thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter into all
the winds.3 I will scatter them among the nations, and
disperse them in the countries.4 They shall cast their silver
in the streets, and their gold shall be removed : their silver
and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day
of the wrath of the Lord : they shall not satisfy their souls,
neither fill their bowels : because it is the stumblins--block
of their iniquity.6 I will sift the house of Israel among all
nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the
least grain fall upon the earth. Death shall be chosen
rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of
this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I
have driven them, saith the Lord of hosts. They shall be
wanderers among the nations.6 Make the heart of this
people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes ;
lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and
understand with their heart, and convert and be healed.
Then said I, Lord, how long ? And he answered, Until the
cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without
man, and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord have
removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in
the midst of the land.7 Though they go into captivity
, Jer. xxiv. 9, 10. 2 Jer. xv. 7; xxix. 18. 3 Ezek. v. 10.
* Ezek. xii. 15. ° Ezek. vii. 19.
8 Amos ix. 9. Jer. viii. 3. Hos. ix. 17. 7 Isa. vi. 10-12.

72 THE JEWS.
before their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and
it shall slay them : and I will set mine eyes upon them for
evil, and not for good.1 But he that scattereth Israel will
gather him and keep him.2 But fear not thou, 0 my ser
vant Jacob, and be not dismayed, 0 Israel : for, behold, I
will save thee from afar off, and thy seed from the land of
their captivity. — I will make a full end of all the nations
whither I have driven thee ; but I will not make a full end
nf thee, but correct thee in measure ; yet will I not leave thee
wholly unpunished.8 The children of Israel shall abide many
days without a king, and without a prince, and without a
sacrifice, and wdthout an image, and without an ephod, and
without teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel
return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their
king ; and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter
days."4 All these predictions respecting the Jews are delivered
with the clearness of history and the confidence of truth.
They represent the manner, the extent, the nature, and the
continuance of their dispersion, their persecutions, their
blindness, their sufferings, their feebleness, their fearfulness,
their pusillanimity, their ceaseless wanderings, their hardened
impenitence, their insatiable avarice, and the grievous
oppression, the continued spoliation, the marked distinction,
the universal mockery, the unextinguishable existence, and
unlimited diffusion of their race.
They were to be plucked from off their own land, smitten
before their enemies, consumed from off their own land,
and left few in number. The Romans destroyed their
cities and ravaged their country ; and the inhabitants who
escaped from the famine, the pestilence, the sword, and the
captivity, were forcibly expelled from Judea, and fled as
houseless wanderers, into all the surrounding regions. But
1 Amos ix. 4. 2 Jer. xxxi. 10. 3 Jer. xlvi. 27, 28. * Hosea iii. 4. 5.

THE JEWS. 73
they clung, for a time, around the land which their fathers
had possessed for so many ages, and on which they looked
as an inheritance allotted by Heaven to their race; and they
would not relinquish their claim to the possession of it by
any single overthrow, however great. Unparalleled as were
the miseries which they had suffered in the slaughter of
their kindred, the loss of their property and their homes,
the annihilation of their power, the destruction of their
capital city, and in the devastation of their country by
Titus, yet the fugitive and exiled Jews soon resorted again
to their native soil ; and sixty years had scarcely elapsed,
when, deceived by an impostor, allured by the hope of a
triumphant Messiah, and excited to revolt by intolerable
oppression, they strove by a vigorous and united but frantic
effort, to reconquer Judea, to cast off the power of the
Romans, which had everywhere crushed them, and to rescue
themselves and their country from ruin. A war which
their enthusiasm and desperation alike protracted for two
years, and in which, exclusive of a vast number that
perished by famine and sickness and fire, five hundred and
eighty thousand Jews are said to have been slain, terminated
in their entire discomfiture and final banishment. They
were so beset on every side, and cut down in detached
portions by the Roman soldiers, that, in the words of a
heathen historian, very few of them escaped. Fifty of their
strongholds were razed from the ground, and their cities
sacked and consumed by fire ; Judea was laid waste and
left as a desert.1 Though a similar fate never befell any
other people without proving the extirpation of their race
or the last of their miseries, that awful prediction, in its
reference to the Jews, met its full completion — which yet
they survived, to await in every country, when exiles from
their own, an accumulation of almost unceasing calamities,
1 Dion. Cassius, lib. lxix. Jackson, Patrick, Basnage, &c.

74 THE JEWS.
protracted throughout many succeeding ages — they were
rooted out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in
great indignation.1 A public edict of the Emperor Adrian
rendered it a capital crime for a Jew to set a foot in Jeru
salem;2 and prohibited them from viewing it even at a dis
tance. Heathens, Christians, and Mohammedans have alter
nately possessed Judea. It has been the prey of the Saracens:
the descendants of Ishmael have often overrun it : the chil
dren of Israel have alone been denied the possession of it,
though thither they ever wish to return, and though it forms
the only spot on earth where the ordinances of their rehgion
can be observed. And, amidst all the revolutions of states,
and the extinction of many nations, in so long a period, the
Jews alone have not only ever been aliens in the land of
their fathers, but whenever any of them have been permitted,
at any period since the time of their dispersion, to sojourn
there, they have experienced even more contumelious treat
ment than elsewhere. And to this day, (while the Jews
who reside in Palestine, or who resort thither in old age,
that their bones may not be laid in a foreign land, are alike
ill-treated and abused by Greeks and Franks,3) the haughty
deportment of the despotic Mussulman, and the abject
state of the poor and helpless Jews, are painted to the life
by the prophet. The stranger that is within thee shall get
up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very
low}
But the extent is still more remarkable than the manner
of their dispersion. Many prophecies describe it, and fore
told, thousands of years ago, what we now behold. They
have been scattered among the nations — among the heathen
' Isaiah vi. 11. Jer. iv. 29. Deut. xxix. 28.
2 Tertul. Ap. c. xxi. p. 51. Ibid. Adv. Juda»os, c. xiii. p. 146, ed. Paris, 1608.
Basnage's Continuation of Josephus, b. vi. c. 9, § 27.
3 General Straton's MS. Journal.
4 Deut. xxviii. 43.

THE JEWS. 75
— among the people, even from, one end of the earth unto
the other. They have been removed into all the kingdoms
of the earth; the whole remnant of them has been scattered
into all the winds; they have been dispersed throughout all
countries, and sifted among the nations like as corn is sifted
in a sieve, and yet not the least grain has fallen upon the
earth ; though dispersed throughout all nations, they have
remained distinct from them all. And there is not a country
on the face of the earth where the Jews are unknown. They
are found alike in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. They
are citizens of the world, without a country. Neither
mountains, nor rivers, nor deserts, nor oceans, which are the
boundaries of other nations, have terminated their wander
ings. They abound in Poland, in Holland, in Russia, and in
Turkey. In Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and Britain,
they are more thinly scattered. In Persia, China, and
India, on the east and on the west of the Ganges, they are
few vn number among the heathen. They have trod the
snows of Siberia, and the sands of the burning desert, and
the European traveller hears of their existence in regions
which he cannot reach, even in the very interior of Africa,
south of Timbuctoo.1 From Moscow to Lisbon, from Japan
to Britain, from Borneo to Archangel, from Hindostan to
Honduras, no inhabitant of any nation upon the earth
would be known in all the intervening regions but a Jew
alone. But the history of the Jews throughout the whole world,
and in every age since their dispersion, verifies the most
minute predictions concerning them; and to a recital of
facts too well authenticated to admit of dispute, or too
notorious for contradiction, may be added a description of
them all in the very terms of the prophecy. In the words
of Basnage, the elaborate historian of the Jews, " Kings
1 Lyon's Travels in Africa, p. 146.

76 THE JEWS.
have often employed the severity of their edicts, and the
hands of the executioner, to destroy them ; the seditious
multitude has performed massacres and executions infinitely
more tragical than the princes. Both kings and people,
heathens, Christians, and Mohammedans, who are opposite in
so many things, have united in the design of ruining this
nation, and have not been able to effect it. The bush of
Moses, surrounded with flames, has always burned without
consuming. The Jews have been driven from all places of
the world, which has only served to disperse them in aU
parts of the universe. They have, from age to age, run
through misery and persecution, and torrents of their own
blood."1 Their banishment from Judea was only the pre
lude to their expulsion from city to city, and from kingdom
to kingdom. Their dispersion over the globe is an irre
fragable evidence of this, and many records remain that
amply corroborate the fact. Not only did the first and
second centuries of the Christian era see them twice rooted
out of their own land, but each succeeding century has
teemed with new calamities to that once chosen but now
long-rejected race. The history of their sufferings is a
continued tale of horror. Revolt is natural to the oppressed;
and their frequent seditions were productive of renewed
privations and distresses. Emperors, kings, and caliphs, all
united in subjecting them to the same " iron yoke." Con-
stantine, after having suppressed a revolt which they raised,
and having commanded their ears to be cut off, dispersed
them as fugitives and vagabonds into different countries.
In the fifth century they were expelled from Alexandria,
which had long been one of their safest places of resort.
Justinian yielded to none of his predecessors in hostility and
severity against them. He abolished their synagogues, pro
hibited them even from entering into caves for the exercise
! Basnage, b. vi. c. i. sect. 1. Jortin's Remarks on Eccl. Hist. vol. ii. p. 181, &c.

THE JEWS. 77
of their worship, rendered their testimony inadmissible, and
deprived them of the natural right of bequeathing their
property ; and when such oppressive enactments led to
insurrectionary movements among the Jews, their property
was confiscated, many of them were beheaded, and so bloody
an execution of them prevailed, that, as is expressly related,
" all the Jews of that country trembled;"1 a trembling heart
was given them. In the reign of the tyrant Phocas, a
general sedition broke out among the Jews in Syria. They
and their enemies fought with equal desperation. They
obtained the mastery in Antioch ; but a momentary victory
only led to a deeper humiliation, and to the infliction of
more aggravated cruelties than before. They were soon
subdued and taken captive, many of them were maimed,
others executed, and all the survivors were banished from
the city. Gregory the Great afforded them a temporary
respite from oppression, which only rendered their spoliation
more complete, and their suffering more acute, under the
cruel oppression of Heraclius. That emperor, unable to
satiate his hatred against them by inflicting a variety of
punishments on those who resided within his own dominions,
and by finally expelling them from the empire, exerted his
influence so effectually against them in other countries, that
they suffered under a general and simultaneous persecution
from Asia to the furthest extremities of Europe.2 In Spain,
conversion, imprisonment, or banishment, were their only
alternatives. In France a similar fate awaited them. They
fled from country to country, seeking in vain any rest for
the sole of their foot. Even the wide-extended plains of
Asia afforded them no resting-place, but have often been
spotted with their blood, as well as the hills and valleys of
Europe. Mohammed, whose imposture has been the law and
the faith of such countless millions, has, from the precepts
1 Basnage's Hist. b. vi. v. xxi. sect. 9. 2 Ibid. 17.

78 THE JEWS.
of the Koran, infused into the minds of his followers a spirit
of rancour and enmity towards the despised and misbelieving
Jews. He set an early example of persecution against
them, which the Mohammedans have not yet ceased to imitate.
In the third year of the Hegira, he besieged the castles
which they possessed in the Hegiasa, compelled those who
had fled to them for refuge and defence, to an unconditional
surrender, banished them the country, and parted their pro
perty among his Mussulmans. He dissipated a second time
their re-combined strength, massacred many of them, and
imposed upon the remnant a permanent tribute. The
church of Rome ever ranked and treated them as heretics.
The canons of different councils pronounced excommunication
against those who should favour or uphold the Jews against
Christians; enjoined all Christians neither to eat nor to hold
any commerce with them; prohibited them from bearing
public offices or having Christian slaves; appointed them to
be distinguished by a mark ; decreed that their children
should be taken from them, and brought up in monasteries;
and what is equally descriptive of the low estimation in
which they were held, and of the miseries to which they
were subjected, there was often a necesshVy, even for those
who otherwise oppressed them, to ordain that it was not
lawful to take the life of a Jew without any cause.1 Hal-
lam's account of the Jews, during the middle ages, is short,
but significant. " They were everywhere the objects of
popular insult and oppression, frequently of a general mas
sacre. A time of festivity to others was often the season
of mockery and persecution to them. It was the custom at
Thoulouse to smite them on the face every Easter. At
Beziers they were attacked with stones from Palm-sunday
to Easter, an anniversary of insult and cruelty generally
1 Dupin's Ecc. Hist. Canons of different Councils. Toledo, a.d. 633. Meux, 845.
Paris, 846. Pavia, 850. Metz, Coyaco, 1050. Rouen, 1074. Ravenna, 1311. Saltz-
burgh, 1420.

THE JEWS. 79
productive of bloodshed, and to which the populace were
regularly instigated by a sermon from the bishop. It was
the policy of the kings of France to employ them as a sponge
to suck their subjects' money, which they might afterwards
express with less odium than direct taxation would incur.
It is almost incredible to what a length extortion of money
from the Jews was carried. A series of alternate persecution
and tolerance was borne by this extraordinary people with
an invincible perseverance, and a talent of accumulating
riches, which kept pace with the exactions of their plunderers.
Philip Augustus released all Christians in his dominions from
their debts to the Jews, reserving a fifth part to himself.
He afterwards expelled the whole nation from France."1
St Louis twice banished, and twice recalled them; and
Charles VI. finally expelled them from France. From that
country, according to Mezeray, they were seven times ban
ished. They were expelled from Spain; and by the lowest
computation, one hundred and seventy thousand families
departed from that kingdom.2 "At Verdun, Treves, Mentz,
Spires, Worms, many thousands of them were pillaged and
massacred. A remnant was saved by a feigned and transient
conversion; but the greater part of them barricaded their
houses, and precipitated themselves, their families, and their
wealth, into the rivers or the flames. These massacres and
depredations on the Jews were renewed at each crusade."3
In England, also, they suffered great cruelty and oppression
at the same period. During the crusades, the whole nation
united in the persecution of them. In a single instance, at
York, fifteen hundred Jews, including women and children,
were refused all quarter, could not purchase their lives at
any price, and, frantic with despair, perished by a mutual
slaughter. Each master was the murderer of his family,
i Hallam, vol. i. pp. 233, 234.
2 Basnage, b. vii. c. xxi. Bishop Newton.
3 Gibbon's Hist. vol. xi. c. lviii. p. 26.

80 THE JEWS.
when death became their only dehverance. The scene of
the castle of Massada, which was their last fortress in Pales
tine, and where nearly one thousand perished in a similar
manner,1 was renewed in the castle of York. So despised
and hated were they, that the barons, when contending with
Henry III., to ingratiate themselves with the populace,
ordered seven hundred Jews to be slaughtered at once, their
houses to be plundered, and their synagogue to be burned.
Richard, John,2 and Henry III. often extorted money from
them ; and the last, by the most unscrupulous and unsparing
measures, usually defrayed his extraordinary expenses with
their spoils, and impoverished some of the richest among
them. His extortions at last became so enormous, and his
1 Basnage, b. vii. c. x. sect. 20. Joseph, b. vii. u. viii. ix. Bp. Newton. Rapin's
Hist, of England, vol. iii. p. 97.
2 The persecutions to which the Jews were subjected at that period, are described
with strict truth in the historical romance of Ivanhoe. They are characterized as
"a race which, during these dark ages, was alike detested by the credulous and pre
judiced vulgar, and persecuted by the greedy and rapacious nobility." (Vol. i. p.
83.) "Except perhaps the flying fish, there was no race existing on the earth, in
the air, or the waters, who were the objects of suoh an unremitting, general, and
relentless persecution as the Jews at this period. Upon the slightest and most unrea
sonable pretences, as well as upon accusations the most absurd and groundless, their
persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury ; for Norman, Saxon,
Dane, and Briton, however adverse their races were to each other, contended which
would look with greatest detestation upon a people whom it was accounted a point of
religion to hate, to revile, to despise, to plunder, and to persecute. The kings of the
Norman race, and the independent nobles, who followed their example in all acts of
tyranny, maintained against this devoted people a persecution of a more regular, cal
culated, and self-interested kind. It is a well-known story of King John, that he
confined a wealthy Jew in one of the royal castles, and daily caused one of his teeth
to be torn out, until, when the jaw of the unhappy Israelite was half-disfurnishcd,
he consented to pay a large sum, which it was the tyrant's object to extort from him.
The little ready money that was in the country, was chiefly in the possession of this
persecuted people, and the nobility hesitated not to follow the example of their sove
reign in wringing it from them by every species of oppression, and even personal tor
ture." ( Ibid. pp. 120, 121. ) The fictitious history of Isaac of York is delineated in
a manner equally descriptive of the facts, aud confirmatory of the prophecies respect
ing the Jewish people ; and there exists not the history of any individual of any other
nation, whether drawn from fancy or from fact, which combines so many of the
prophetic characteristics of the fate of a Jew, as that which has thus been delineated,
by a master's hand, as a representation of their condition, at a period about twenty-
six centuries posterior to the prediction, and in a country two thousand miles remote
from the place where it was first uttered and from the only land ever possessed by
the Jews.

THE JEWS. 81
oppression so grievous, that, in the words of the historian,
he reduced the miserable wretches to desire leave to depart
the kingdom;1 but even self-banishment was denied them.
Edward I. completed their misery, seized on all their property,
and banished them the kingdom. Above fifteen thousand
Jews were rendered destitute of any residence, were despoiled
to the utmost, and reduced to ruin. Nearly four centuries
elapsed before the return to Britain of this abused race.
Some remarkable circumstances attest, without a pro
longed detail of their miseries, that they have been a people
everywhere peculiarly oppressed. The first unequivocal
attempt at legislation in France was an ordinance against
the Jews. And towards them alone one of the noblest
charters of liberty on earth — Magna Charta, the Briton's
boast — legalized an act of injustice.2 For many ages after
their dispersion, they found no resting-place in Europe,
Asia, or Africa, but penetrated, in search of one, to the
extremities of the world. In Mohammedan countries they
have ever been subject to persecution, contempt, and every
abuse. They are in general confined to one particular
quarter of every city, (as they formerly were to old Jewry
in London); they are restricted to a peculiar dress; and in
many places are shut up at stated hours. In Hamadan, as
in all parts of Persia, " they are an abject race, and support
themselves by driving a peddling trade; — they live in a
state of great misery, pay a monthly tax to the government,
and are not permitted to cultivate the ground, or to have
landed possessions."3 They cannot appear in public, much
less perform their religious ceremonies, without being treated
with scorn and contempt.4 The revenues of the prince of
Bohara are derived from a tribute paid by five hundred
1 Rapin's History of England, vol. iii. p. 405.
2 Articles xii. xiii.
3 Morier's Travels in Persia, p. 379.
4 Sir J. Malcolm's History of Persia, vol. ii. p. 425.
6

82 THE JEWS.
families of Jews, who are assessed according to the means
of each. In Zante they exist in miserable indigence, and
are exposed to considerable oppression.1 At Tripoli, when
any criminal is condemned to death, the first Jew who
happens to be at hand is compelled to become the execu
tioner; a degradation to the children of Israel to which no
Moor is ever subjected.2 In Egypt they are despised and
persecuted incessantly.3 In Arabia they are treated with
more contempt than in Turkey.4 The remark is common
to the most recent travellers both in Asia and Africa,5 that
the Jews themselves are astonished, and the natives indig
nant, at any act of kindness, or even of justice, that is
performed towards any of this " despised nation" and perse
cuted people. In Southey's Letters from Spain and Portugal,
this remarkable testimony is borne respecting them ; " Till
within the last fifty years the burning of a Jew formed the
highest delight of the Portuguese; they thronged to behold
this triumph of the faith, and the very women shouted with
transport as they saw the agonized martyr writhe at the
stake. Neither sex nor age could save this persecuted race ; and
Antonio Joseph de Silvia, the best of their dramatic writers,
was burned alive because he was a Jew." Few years have
elapsed since there was a severe persecution against them in
Prussia and in Germany, and in several of the smaller states
of the latter country they are not permitted to sell any goods
even in the common markets. The pope has lately re-enacted
some severe edicts against them : and ukases have been issued
in quick succession,6 restraining the Jews from all traffic
throughout the interior government of Russia. " They are
absolutely prohibited, on pain of immediate banishment,
1 Hughes' Travels, vol. i. p. 150.
2 Lyon's Travels, p. 16.
3 Denon's Travels in Egypt, vol. i. p. 213.
4 Niebuhr's Travels, vol. i. p. 408.
5 Morier'a Travels in Persia, p. 266. Lyon's Travels in Africa, p. 32.
6 15th November 1797. 25th February 1823. 8th June 1826.

THE JEWS. 83
from offering any article to sale,"1 whether in public or
private, either by themselves or by others. They are not
allowed to reside, even for a limited period, in any of the
cities of Russia, without an express permission from govern
ment, which is granted only in cases where their services
are necessary or directly beneficial to the state. A refusal
to depart, when they become obnoxious to so rigid a law,
subjects them to be treated as vagrants; and none are suffered
to protect or to shelter them. Though the observance of
such edicts must, in numerous instances, leave them destitute
of any means of support, yet their breach or neglect exposes
them to oppression under the sanction of the law, and to
every privation and insult, without remedy or appeal. And
though they may thus become the greatest objects of pity,
all laws of humanity are reversed by imperial decrees towards
them. For those who harbour Jews that are condemned
to banishment for having done what all others may inno
cently do, are, as a late Russian ukase respecting them
bears, "amenable to the laws as the abettors of vagrants,"2
1 Ukase, quoted from " The World," of date 31st October 1827. Ib. article viii.
2 Note. — While the prophecies described the past and existing miseries of the
Jews, they refer with no less precision to the time yet to come, when the children of
Israel shall have returned to the loved land of their fathers, and their rebuke shall
have ceased from off the face of the earth, and when they shall prize their blessings
the more highly, as contrasted with the former sufferings of their race. And the
word of God, confirmed as its prophetic truth is by the workings of the wrath of
man, and by the policy of earthly monarchs, will doubtless triumph over the highest
mandates of mortals, and receive new illustrations of its truth, when these shall have
passed away. And the eleventh article of the ukase, now in force, merits, in reference
to a special prediction, particular notice, and we may subjoin it here, together with
its corresponding text, premising merely that it is to a specific district of dismem
bered Poland that the Rabbins are sent away. " Rabbins, or other religious func
tionaries, are to be sent away by the police officer, immediately on the discovery that
they are such." " Thy teachers shall not be removed into a corner any more, but
thine eyes shall see thy teachers." (Isaiah xxx. 20.)
Lord Byron's brief and emphatic description of the Jews is equally characteristic
of the fact, and illustrative of the predictions.
Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast,
When shall we flee away and he at rest?
They shall find no rest for the sole of tlieir foot. I will send a faintness into their
heart,— a trembling heart and sorrow of mind. — But he that hath scattered Israel

84 THE JEWS.
and, as in numberless instances besides, no man shall save
them. While the recent ameliorated condition of the Jews in the
more civihzed countries of Europe begins to give promise
of the dawn of that day when the cup of trembling shall
be taken out of their hands, and while signs are not wanting
to show that it shall be given into the hands of their enemies,
new illustrations may still be adduced to this hour of the
indignities and miseries to which they are subjected. A
recent testimony from Turkey bears that " it is impossible
to express the contemptuous hatred in which the Osmanlis
(Turks) hold the Jewish people; and the veriest Turkish
urchin who may encounter one of the fallen nation on his
path, has his mite of insult to add to the degradation of the
outcast and wandering race of Israel. Nor dare the oppressed
party revenge himself even upon this puny enemy, whom
his very name suffices to raise up against him."1 Instances
are added of a Turkish boy of ten years of age felling to
the earth a feeble Jewess, and of Turkish boys, in their
amusement, insulting and tormenting a Jew. I will give
children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.
— As for my people, children are their oppressors.2
These facts, though they form but a brief and most im
perfect record, and therefore but a very faint image of all
their sufferings, show that the Jews have been removed into
all kingdoms for their hurt; that a sword has been drawn
after them; that they have found no rest for the sole of thei/r
foot; that they have not been able to stand before thei/r ene
mies; there has been no might in their hands; their very
avarice has proved their misery; they have been spoiled
will gather him— and it is asked, who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves
to their windows? (Isaiah lx. 8.)
1 The City of the Sultan, and the Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1836, by Miss
Pardoe, vol. ii. p. 362, 363.
2 Isaiah iii. 4, 12.

THE JEWS. 85
evermore; they have been oppressed and crushed alway; they
have been mad for the sight of their eyes that they did see,
as the tragical scenes at Massada, and York, and many others
testify: they have often been left vn hunger, and thirst, and
nakedness, and in want of all things; a trembling heart
and sorrow of mind have been their portion; they have often
had none assurance of their life; their plagues have been
wonderful and great, and of long continuance; and they
Jtave been for a sign and for a wonder during many gene
rations. But the predictions rest not even here. It was distinctly
prophesied that the Jews would reject the gospel; that, from
the meanness of his mortal appearance, and the hardness of
their hearts, they would not believe in a suffering Messiah;
that iliey would be smitten with blindness and astonishment
of heart; that they would continue long, having their ears
deaf, their eyes closed, and their hearts hardened; and that
they would grope at noon-day, as the blind gropeth in dark
ness.1 And the great body of the Jewish nation has con
tinued long to reject Christianity. They retain the pro
phecies, but discern not their light, having obscured them
by their traditions. Many of their received opinions are so
absurd and impious, their rites are so unmeaning and frivo
lous, their ceremonies are so minute, absurd, and contempti
ble, that the account of them would surpass credibility, were
it not a transcript of their customs and of their manners,
and drawn from their own authorities.2 No words can more
strikingly or justly represent the contrast between their
irrational tenets, their degraded religion, their superstitious
observances, and the dictates of enlightened reason, and of
the gospel which they vilify, than the emphatic description,
Thou shalt grope at noon-day as the blind gropeth in dark- ,
1 Deut. xxviii. 28, 29.
2 See Allen's Modern Judaism. The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, art. Jews.

86 THE JEWS.
ness. And if any other instances be wanting of the predic
tion of events infinitely exceeding human foresight, the dis
positions of all nations respecting them are revealed as
explicitly as their own. That the Jews have been a pro
verb, an astonishment, a by-iuord, a taunt, and a hissing
among all nations, — though one of the most wonderful of
facts, unparalleled in the whole history of mankind, and as
inconceivable in its prediction as miraculous in its accom
plishment, — is a truth that stands not in need of any illus
tration or proof, and of which witnesses could be found in
every country under heaven. Many prophecies concerning
the Jews, of more propitious import, that yet remain to be
accomplished, are reserved for testimonies to future genera
tions, if not to the present. But it is worthy of remark,
as prophesied concerning them, that they have not been
utterly destroyed, though a full end has been made of their
enemies; that the Egyrjtians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians,
the Romans, though some of the mightiest monarchies that
ever existed, have not a single representative on earth;
while the Jews, oppressed and vanquished, banished and
enslaved, and spoiled evermore, have survived them all, and
to this hour overspread the world. Of all the nations around
Judea, the Persians alone, who restored them from the
Babylonish captivity, yet remain a kingdom.
The Scriptures also declare that the covenant with
Abraham, that God would give the land of Canaan to his
seed for an everlasting possession} would never be broken;
but that the children of Israel shall be taken from among
the heathen, gathered on every side, and brought into then-
own land, to dwell for ever where their fathers dwelt.
Three thousand seven hundred years have elapsed since
the promise was given to Abraham: and is it less than a
miracle, that, if this promise had been made to the de-
1 Gen. xvii. 8. Psal. cv. 8-12.

THE JEWS. 87
scendants of any but of Abraham alone, it could not now
possibly have been realized, as there exists not on earth
the known and acknowledged posterity of any other in
dividual, or almost of any nation, contemporary with him?
That the people of a single state (which was of very
limited extent and power in comparison with some of the
monarchies which surrounded it) should first have been
rooted up out of their own land in anger, wrath, and
great indignation, the like of which was never experienced
by the mightiest among the ancient empires, which all fell
imperceptibly away at a lighter stroke; and that after
wards, though scattered among all nations, and finding no
ease among them all, they should have withstood eighteen
centuries of almost unremitted persecution; and that after
so many generations have elapsed, they should still retain
their distinctive form, or, as it may be called, their indivi
duality of character, is assuredly the most marvellous event
that is recorded in the history of nations ; and if it be not
acknowledged as a " sign," it is in reality, as well as in
appearance, " a wonder," the most inexplicable within the
province of the philosophy of history. But that, after the
endurance of such manifold woes, such perpetual spoliation,
and so many ages of unmitigated suffering, during which
their life was to hang in doubt within them, they should
still be, as actually they are, the possessors of great wealth;
and that this fact should so strictly accord with the pro
phecy, which describes them on their final restoration to
Judea, as taking their silver and their gold with them, and
eating the riches of the Gentiles;1 and also that, though
captives or fugitives "few in number," and the miserable
remnant of an extinguished kingdom at the time they were
" scattered abroad," they should be to this hour a numerous
people, — and that this should have been expressly implied
1 Isaiah ix. 9 ; Ixi. 6.

88 THE JEWS.
in the prophetic declaration descriptive of their condition
on their restoration to Judea, after ah their wanderings,
that the land shall be too narrow by reason of the inhabi
tants — and that place shall not be found for them;1 are
facts which as clearly show, to those who consider them at
all, the operation of an overruling providence, as the revela
tion of such an inscrutable destiny is the manifest dictate
of inspiration. Such are the prophecies, and such are the facts respecting
the Jews ; — and from premises like these the feeblest
logician may draw a moral demonstration. If they had
been utterly destroyed ; if they had mingled among the
nations ; if in the space of nearly eighteen centuries after
their dispersion, they had become extinct as a people ; even
if they had been secluded in a single region, and had
remained united ; if their historjr had been analogous to
. that of any nation upon the earth — an attempt might, with
some plausibility or reason, have been made, to show cause
whyT the prediction of their fate, however true to the fact,
ought not in such a case to be sustained as evidence of the
truth of inspiration. Or if the past history and present
state of the Jews were not of a nature so singular and
peculiar, as to bear out to the very letter the truth of the
prophecies concerning them with what triumph would the
infidel have produced these very prophecies as fatal to the
idea of the inspiration of the Scriptures. And when the
Jews have been scattered throughout the whole earth ; when
they have remained everywhere a distinct race ; when they
have been despoiled evermore, and yet never destroyed ;
when the most wonderful and amazing facts, such as never
occurred among any people, form the ordinary narrative of
their history, and fulfil literally the prophecies concerning
them, may not the believer challenge his adversary to the
1 Isaiah xlix. 19. Zech. i. 10.

THE JEWS. 89
production of such credentials of the faith that is in him ?
They present an unbroken chain of evidence, each link a
prophecy and a fact, extending throughout a multitude of
generations, and not yet terminated. Though the events,
various and singular as they are, have been brought about
by the instrumentality of human means, and the agency of
secondary causes, yet they are equally prophetic and miracu
lous ; for the means were as impossible to be foreseen as
the end, and the causes were as inscrutable as the event ;
and they have been, and still in numberless instances are,
accomplished by the instrumentality of the enemies of
Christianity. Whoever seeks a miracle, may here behold a
sign and a wonder, than which there cannot be a greater.
And the Christian may bid defiance to all the assaults of
his enemies from this stronghold of Christianity, im
penetrable and impregnable on every side.
These prophecies concerning the Jews are as clear as a
narrative of the events. They are ancient as the oldest
records in existence ; and it has never been denied that they
were all delivered before the accomplishment of one of
them. They were so unimaginable by human wisdom, that
the whole compass of nature has never exhibited a parallel
to the events. And the facts are visible, and present, and
applicable even to a hairbreadth. Could Moses, as an
uninspired mortal, have described the history, the fate, the
dispersion, the treatment, the dispositions of the Israelites
to the present day, or for three thousand four hundred
years, seeing that he was astonished and amazed on his
descent from Sinai, at the change in their sentiments, and
in their conduct, in the space of forty days ? Could various
persons have testified, in different ages, of the self -same and
of similar facts, as wonderful as they have proved to be
true ? Could they have divulged so many secrets of
futurity, when of necessity they were utterly ignorant of

90 THE JEWS.
them all ? The probabilities were infinite against them.
For the mind of man often fluctuates in uncertainty over
the nearest events, and the most probable results ; but in
regard to remote ages, when thousands of years shall have
elapsed, and to facts respecting them, contrary to all pre
vious knowledge, experience, analogy, or conception, it feels
that they are dark as death to mortal ken. And, viewing
only the dispersion of the Jews, and some of its attendant
circumstances — how their city was laid desolate — their
temple, which formed the constant place of their resort
before, levelled with the ground, and ploughed over like a
field — their country ravaged, and themselves murdered in
mass — falling before the sword, the famine, and the pesti
lence — how a remnant was left, but despoiled, persecuted,
enslaved, and led into captivity, — driven from their own
land, not to a mountainous retreat, where they might subsist
with safety, but dispersed among all nations, and left to the
mercy of a world that everywhere hated and oppressed
them — shattered in pieces like the wreck of a vessel in a
mighty storm — scattered over the earth, like fragments on
the waters, and, instead of disappearing, or mingling with
the nations, remaining a perfectly distinct people, in every
kingdom the same, retaining similar habits, and customs,
and creeds, and manners, in every part of the globe, though
without ephod, teraphim, or sacrifice — meeting everywhere
the same insult, and mockery, and oppression — finding no
resting-place without an enemy soon to dispossess them —
multiplying amidst all their miseries — surviving their
enemies — beholding, unchanged, the extinction of many
nations, and the convulsions of all — robbed of their silver
and of their gold, though cleaving to the love of them still,
as the stumbling-block of their iniquity — often bereaved of
their very children — disjoined and disorganized, but uniform
and unaltered — ever bruised, but never broken — weak,

THE JEWS. 91
fearful, sorrowful, and afflicted — often driven to madness at
the spectacle of their own misery — taken up in the lips of
talkers — the taunt, and hissing, and infamy of all people,
and continuing ever, what they are to this day, the sole
proverb common to the whole world ; how did every fact,
from its very nature, defy all conjecture, and how could mortal
man, overlooking a hundred successive generations, have
foretold any one of these wonders that are now conspicuous
in these latter times? Who but the Father of Spirits,
possessed of perfect prescience, even of the knowledge, of the
will, and of the actions of free, intelligent, and moral agents,
could have revealed their unbounded and yet unceasing
wanderings, unveiled all their destiny, and unmasked the
minds of the Jews and of their enemies, in every age and
in every clime ? The creation of a world might as well be
the work of chance as the revelation of these things. It is
a visible display of the power and of the prescience of God,
an accumulation of many miracles. And although it forms
but a part of a small portion of the Christian evidence, it
lays not only a stone of stumbling, such as infidels would
try to cast in a Christian's path, but it fixes an insurmount
able barrier at the very threshold of infidelity, immovable
by all human device, and impervious to every attack.
Still it may be said, that, however truly such prophecies
depict the condition of the Jews in past ages, yet they do
not in all things apply so closely, in some lands at least, to
the state of that people now. But there are other prophecies
besides these, and other times for them. Signs are not
wanting to show, that according to the Scriptures the times
of the Gentiles may be drawing near to their completion;
and with that completion is associated another history for
Israel than that of the past. The angel who showed unto
Daniel " that which is noted in the scripture of truth," said

92 THE JEWS.
unto him, " I am come to make thee understand what shall
befall thy people in the latter days, and there is none that
holdeth with me in these things but Michael your prince."1
He spake of a time when Michael shall stand up, the great
prince which standeth for the children of thy people 
But thou, 0 Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book,
even to the time of the end : many shall run to and fro, and
knowledge shall be increased} Ye that make mention of ihe
Lord (or, ye who are tlie Lord's remembrancers), saith Isaiah,
give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem
a praise in the earth  Prepare ye the way of the people;
cast up, cast up the highway} &c. When many run to and
fro, and knowledge is increased, and these signs are seen of
the time when the words shall no longer be shut up nor the
book sealed, the dark ages are not to return ; and con
nected as these words are with what shall befall the Jews
in the latter days, the long dark night of Judaism, however
it may terminate, may be drawing to its close. In these
railway times, and railway progress of political events and
increasing knowledge, no marvel it is, according to many
scriptures, that some change should come over the spirit of
the time, affecting both Gentiles and Jews. The fulfilling
of the times of the Gentiles is fixed by Jesus as affecting
the one as well as the other. And if the preparation for
that be begun, or about to begin, it must needs touch the
seed of Jacob, — a people who are not a nation, and who for
eighteen centuries have not had a land which, except in
name, they could call their own, — as well as the kingdoms
of the world, whose times hang on the continuance of their
dispersion. We only glance at such a theme here, as there
is evidence which points to that which is to come ; a line of
demarcation, as it were, yet not stationary now, between
the past and the future. The subject properly pertains to
1 Dan. ^. 14, 21. 2 Dan. xii. 1, 4. a Isa. Ixii. 6, 7, 10.

THE JEWS. 93
the prophetic history and destiny of Israel, — and also of the
world. The time was, for many days and in many lands, when,
of scattered Judah, no man did lift up his head.1 But now
there are Jews who take their places among the chief men
of the earth; a Jewish family can count its barons; a Jew,
of late, has for the first time been Mayor of London; and in
kingdoms, which enacted severe laws against them, Jews
now rank among legislators. The time long was when they
were a people not only scattered but also peeled, or spoiled
evermore; and, as "necessity is the mother of invention,"
the banished and outlawed Jews, when about to fly from any
land from which they were expelled, unable to take their
gold or silver or goods from thence, exchanged these for
whatever money-order they could obtain, available in another
kingdom, whither they were to wander in seeking rest for
their unresting feet. Hence originated bills of exchange.
But now the presentation of scrip in the hands of " the
Hebrews" can any day affect, if not even control, the ex
changes of Europe; and though the prediction has respect to
a future day, yet were they to leave this kingdom or that
to-morrow, to return after many centuries of expatriation to
the land given by an everlasting covenant to the seed of
Jacob, they could legally and openly take their silver and
" gold with them. The time long was, when in papal king
doms they were bereaved of their children, and no man did
save them. But the time now is, when the imperial govern
ment of France, — a kingdom from which sentences of ex
pulsion were repeatedly passed and enforced against them, —
whose soldiers garrison the city of the popes, can deal with
the papal government of Rome, concerning "the abduction
of a Jewish child;" and a single instance in an Italian city
of such an act, once so common and disregarded, can supply
1 Zech. i. 21.

94 THE JEWS.
a theme for a leading article in "the leading journal of
Europe," in terms such as these, — " We need not swell the
chorus which has arisen from all parts of Europe against the
iniquity of the transaction. We may leave the matter to
France and Austria, which are too much indebted, in the
strictest sense of the word, to the co-religionists of Mortara
to aUow the papal theology to be fully carried out against
them. The Jews know how to take care of themselves ;
they are rich, united, and love their tribe; they are high in
the councils of emperors, and they know that not even the
pope and cardinals are independent of their aid. They will
no doubt carry the day, and restore the infant Mortara to
the faith, the habits, and the antipathies of his race."1 The
time is changed since imperial edicts prohibited a Jew from
resting in Judea, or coming within sight of Jerusalem : and
one of the results of the Crimean war has been the procla
mation of equal rights and of religious privileges to all
throughout the Turkish empire; and foreigners, without dis
tinction of Jew or Gentile, are temptingly invited to settle
in its thinned provinces. In the land of Judea there are
few men left; and open as it is, without any legal impedi
ment to them, there are not wanting Jews to fill it to over
flowing because of ihe multitude of men, more numerous by
far than their fathers were when they were plucked from off
the land. But, while "the Grand Seignior" has not security
to give to any people for the peaceful possession of any part
of his dominions, the customs of the ports of Palestine have
been pledged in security to a Jewish House for a Turkish
Loan. While the Turkish government is too feeble to main
tain its authority in that land, who can say that a political
necessity may not arise in these eventful times, for " settling
the affairs of Syria" in another manner than has yet been
tried, by restoring Judea to the Jews, and thereby showing,
1 The Times, October 26, 1858.

THE JEWS. 95
however unconsciously, in the appointed time, whose counsel
shall stand, and whose word shall prevail. But the spirit of
prophecy shows, by many testimonies yet to be fulfilled, that
such an event would not be the end of ihe matter, but rather,
in these accelerating days, another step to " the beginning of
the end."
In " the statutes and judgments and laws which the Lord
made between him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai
by the hand of Moses," it is -written, " I will send a faintness
into their hearts in the lands of their enemies : and the
sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them, <§zc. And yet, for
all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will
not cast them away. But I will for their sakes remember
the covenant of their ancestors",1 &c. Ezekiel saw, in vision,
an open valley, full of bones, very many and very dry. He
was commanded to prophecy upon these bones. And as I
prophesied, he says, there was a noise, and behold a sliak-
ing, and the bones came together, bone to his bone, &c. The
interpretation of the vision was Jehovah's, not man's; and
it repudiates any other. Then he said unto me, These bones
are the whole house of Israel} Scattered as they have been
among the nations, and sifted like corn in a sieve, — for these
varied similes all show vivid facts, — yet now it may truly be
said that " the Jews are a united people, and love their tribe ;"
as if the bones were seen coming together, bone to his bone,
when all was noiseless and motionless before; and the time
may thus be come when the tribe shall be seen in united
action again. In the present day this vision alone, in the
changes which it indicates, would admit of voluminous illus-
trations, diverse from those of their prophetic and actual
history in ages past. But here we only say that these
changes in the house of Israel, known to all who look within
it, do not falsify the past, but rather prognosticate the
1 Lev. xxvi. 36, 44-46. 2 Ezek. xxxvii. 1-18.

96 THE JEWS.
future, as denoting changes which show the effect of this
vision, in accordance with similar predictions, as other words
of prophecy begin to fall upon the people Israel, in token
of the commencement of the transition through which, in
all its parts, they have to pass ere it be completed, and
these dry bones shall live, and stand upon their feet, an
exceeding great army. These are figures ; but they are
the interpreted figures of facts, showing what the house
of Israel has been, and what the same house of Israel yet
shall be.
In times past the Jews have been witnesses for God, in
the judgments which have come upon them according to his
word. Such witnesses, whatever be the change in their out
ward condition, they have still, according to Scripture, to be,
till they look on him whom they have pierced, and He shall
turn away ungodliness from Jacob. Of them it is testified
in the Old Testament and in the New, — This people have I
formed for myself: they shall show forth my praise.1 If
the casting away of them be ihe reconciling of the world,
what shall ihe receiving of them be, but life from ihe
dead I2
. After a separation of so many centuries, a long-continued
and uniform experience may prompt and seemingly sanction
the opinion that the Jews and Judea are dissevered for ever;
and dogmatical assertions are not wanting to show, if they
could, that that is a matter with which "chance" alone has
to do, and that an appeal to prophecy is an appeal to it.
The Lord of glory spake not thus to the prophet Isaiah,
when in response to the question touching the blindness of
this people; Lord, how long? He pointed first of all to the
cities and to the land; and told, in terms alike plain and
precise, what they should be, not only till Israel's blindness
1 Isa. xliii. 21. 2 Rom. xi. 15.

THE JEWS. 97
should cease, but ere the Jews should return to the land of
their fathers.1
1 Isa. vi. 13; xvii. 6, 9-14. The return of the Jews to their own land has been
objected to on the ground that promises do not pertain to an unconverted people.
Neither do they. The following words are not those of promise, but rather of
judgments which shall precede the final redemption and restoration of Israel : —
" The word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man, the house of Israel
is to me become dross : all they are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst
of the furnace ; they are even the dross of silver. Therefore thus saith the Lord
God : Because ye are all become dross, behold, therefore I will gather you into the
midst of Jerusalem. As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin,
into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to melt it; so will I gather you
in mine anger and in my fury, and I will leave you there, and melt you. Yea, I will
gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and ye shall be melted in
the midst thereof. As silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be
melted in the midst thereof ; and ye shall know that I the Lord have poured my fury
upon you." Ezek. xxii. 18-22. Their land lieth desolate so long as they be in their
enemies' land ; but they shall not see Jesus till they say, Blessed is he that cometh
in the name of the Lord. I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabi
tants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications ; and they shall look upon
me whom they have pierced. ... 7m that day there shall be a fountain opened to
thehouseof David, and to theinhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness. . . .
And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is re
fined, and will try them as gold is tried : and they shall call upon my name, and I
will hear them : I will say, It is my people : and they shall say, The Lord is my
God. And the Lord shall be King over all the earth. And there shall he no more
utter destruction; hut Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited. Zech. xii. 10; xiii. 1, 9;
xiv. 9, 11.

98 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.

CHAPTER V.
SECTION I.
PROPHECIES CONCERNING THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
The writings of the Jewish prophets not only described
the fate of that people for many generations subsequent to
the latest period to which the most unyielding scepticism
can pretend to affix the date of these predictions ; but while
the cities were teeming with inhabitants, and the land
flowing with abundance, for centuries before Judea ceased
to count its millions, they foretold the long reign of desola
tion that would ensue. The land is a witness as well as the
people. Its aspect in the present day is the precise like
ness delineated by the pencil of prophecy, when every
feature that could admit of change was the reverse of what
it now is : and it is necessary only to compare the predic
tions themselves with that proof of their fulfilment, which,
were all other testimony to be excluded, heathens and
infidels supply.
The calamities of the Jews were to rise progressively
with their iniquities. They were to be punished again and
again, " yet seven times for their sins."1 And in the
greatest of the denunciations which were to fill up the
measure of their punishments, the long-continued desolation
of their country is ranked among the worst and latest of
their woes ; and the prophecies respecting it which admit of
a literal interpretation, and which have been literally ful
filled, are abundantly clear and expressive.
1 Levit. xxvi. 18, 21, 24.

THE LAND OF ISRAEL. 99
" I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanc
tuaries unto desolation. — And I will bring the land into
desolation : and your enemies which dwell therein shall be
astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen,
and will draw out a sword after you ; and your land shall
be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land
enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in
your enemies' land ; even then shall the land rest and enjoy
her sabbaths. The land also shall be left of them, and
shall enjoy her sabbaths while she lieth desolate without
them.1 So that the generation to come of your children that
shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come
from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that
land, and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon it — ¦
Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land ? what
meaneth the heat of this great anger ? The anger of the
Lord was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the
curses that are written in this book."2
In the vision of Isaiah, which he saw concerning Judah
and Jerusalem, we read, Your country is desolate, your cities
are burned "with fire : your land strangers devour it in your
presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard,
as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.
Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small
remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should
have been like unto Gomorrah.3 Ye shall be as an oak
whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water.4 Of
a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair,
without inhabitant. Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield
one bath, and the seed of an homer shall yield an ephah. —
Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and the waste
> Levit. xxvi. 31-34, 43. 2 Deut. xxix. 22, 24, 27.
' Isaiah i. 7-9. ' Isaiai *¦ 30-

100 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
places of the fat ones shall strangers eat.1 Then, said I,
Lord, how long ? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted
without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the
land be utterly desolate, and the Lord hath removed men
far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the
land. But yet in it shall be a tenth ; and it shall return
and shall be eaten : as a teil-tree, and as an oak, whose
substance is in them when they cast their leaves.2 The
glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his
flesh shall wax lean. And it shall be as when the harvest-
man gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears with his arm ;
and it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of
Rephaim. Yet gleaning-grapes shall be left in it, as the
shaking of an olive-tree, two or three berries in the top of the
uttermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches
thereof, saith the Lord God of Israel.3 Behold, the Lord
maketh the earth4 (the land) empty, and maketh it waste,
and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inha
bitants thereof. The land shall be utterly emptied, and
utterly spoiled ; for the Lord hath spoken this word. The
earth (land) mourneth and fadeth away : — it is defiled under
the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the
laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that
dwell therein are desolate : — and few men left. The new
wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, all the merry-hearted
do sigh. The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them
' Isaiah v. 9, 10, 17. "- Isaiah vi. 11-13. 3 Isaiah xvii. 4-6.
4 The twenty-fourth chapter of Isaiah contains a continuous prophetic description
(exactly analogous to other predictions) of the desolation of Judea, during the time
that the "inhabitants thereof" were to be "scattered abroad;" and it is only
necessary, in order to prevent any appearance of ambiguity, to remark, that the
very same word in the original, which in the English translation is here rendered
earth, is, in subsequent verses of the same chapter, also translated land ; evidently
implying the land of Israel, the inhabitants of which were to be "scattered abroad:"
and so obviously is this the meaning of the word, that the chapter is properly
entitled "the deplorable judgments of God upon the land."

TIIE LAND OF ISRAEL. 101
that rejoice endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth. They shall
not drink wine with a song ; strong drink shall be bitter to
them that drink it. The city of confusion is broken down ;
every house is shut up, that no man may come in. There
is a crying for wine in the streets ; all joy is darkened, the
mirth of the land is gone.— -When thus it shall be in the
midst of the land among the people, there shall be as the
shaking of an olive-tree, and as the gleaning grapes when
the vintage is done.1 Yet the defenced city shall be deso
late, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness :
there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and
consume the branches thereof. When the boughs thereof
are withered, they shall be broken off : the women come and
set them on fire : for it is a people of no understanding.2
Many days and years shall ye be troubled, ye careless women :
for the vintage shall fail, the gathering shall not come.
Tremble, ye women that are at ease ; be troubled, ye
careless ones : strip you, and make you bare, and gird
sackcloth upon your loins. They shall lament for the teats,
for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. Upon the
land of my people shall come up thorns and briers ; yea,
upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city : because the
palaces shall be forsaken, the multitude of the city shall be
left ; the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever, a joy of
wild asses, a pasture of flocks ; until the Spirit be poured
upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field,
and the fruitful field be counted for a forest.3 The high
ways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth : he hath broken
the covenant, he hath despised the cities, he regardeth no
man. The earth mourneth and languisheth : Lebanon is
ashamed and hewn down : Sharon is like a wilderness ; and
Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits.4
1 Isaiah xxiv. 1, 3-11, 13. * Isaiah xxvii. 10, 11.
* Isaiah xxxii. 10-15. * Isaiah xxxiii. 8, 9.

102 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
Destruction upon destruction is cried ; for the whole land
is spoiled. — I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilder
ness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the pre
sence of the Lord and by his fierce anger. For thus hath
the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate ; yet will I
not make a full end. For this shall the earth mourn, —
because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not
repent, neither will I turn back from it.1 How long shall
the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the
wickedness of them that dwell therein ? — I have forsaken
mine house, I have left mine heritage ; — Many pastors have
destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under
foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilder
ness. They have made it desolate, and being desolate it
mourneth unto me ; the whole land is made desolate, because
no man layeth it to heart. The spoilers are come upon all
high places through the wilderness : — no flesh shall have
peace. They have sown wheat, but shall reap thorns : they
have put themselves to pain, but shall not profit : and they
shall be ashamed of your revenues, because of the fierce anger
of the Lord.2 Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains
(of Israel), and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys ;
Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will
destroy your high places. — In all your dwelling-places the
cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be deso
late ; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate,
and your idols may be broken and cease. — I will stretch
out my hand upon them, and make the land desolate, yea,
more desolate than the wilderness towards Diblath, in all
their habitations.3 I will bring the worst of the heathen,
and they shall possess their houses : I will also make the
pomp of the strong to cease ; and their holy places shall be
defiled. Say unto the people of the land, Thus saith the
> Jer. iv. 20, 26-28. 2 Jer. xii. 4, 7, 10-13. » Ezek. vi. 3, 6, 14.

THE LAND OF ISRAEL. 103
Lord God of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and of the land
of Israel ; They shall eat their bread with carefulness, and
drink their water with astonishment, that her land may be
desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of
all them that dwell therein. Every one that passeth thereby
shall be astonished.1 Hear this, ye old men, and give ear,
all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your
days, or even in the days of your fathers ? Tell ye your
children of it, and let your children tell their children, and
their children another generation. That which the palmer-
worm hath left hath the locust eaten ; and that which the
locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten ; and that which
the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten. The
field is wasted, the land mourneth — because joy is withered
away from the sons of men. And I will restore to you the
years that the locust hath eaten, the canker-worm, and the
caterpillar, and the palmer-worm. — And my people shall
never be ashamed.2 The city that went out by a thousand
shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an
hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel. Seek not
Bethel ; — Bethel shall come to nought.3 Behold, I will set
a plumb-line in the midst of my people Israel : I will not
again pass by them any more. And the high places of Isaac
shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid
waste.4 I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and
as plantings of a vineyard : and I will pour down the stones
thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations
thereof."5 Numerous and clear as these denunciations are, yet such
was the long-suffering patience of God, and such the rebel
lious spirit of the Israelites of old, that it had become a
proverb in the land, " the days are prolonged, and every
i Ezek. vii. 24 ; xii. 19. Jer. xix. 8. 2 Joel i. 2-4, 10, 12; ii. 25, 26.
8 Amos v. 3, 5. 4 Amos vii. 8, 9. " Micah i. 6.

104 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
vision faileth." But though that proverb ceased, when
great calamities did overtake them, and a temporary desola
tion came over their land, yet the curses denounced against
it were not obliterated by a partial and transient fulfilment,
but, on the renewed and unrepented wickedness of the peo
ple, fell upon them and their land with stricter truth, and,
as foretold, with sevenfold severity
Moses and the prophets set blessings and curses before the
Israelites, with the avowed purpose that they might choose
between them. But while the prophetical writings abound
with warnings, the Scriptural records of Israelitish history
show how greatly these warnings were disregarded. The
word of God, which is perfect work, abideth for ever : and it
returns not to him void, but fulfils the purpose for which he
sent it. And after the statutes and judgments of the Lord
had been set before the Israelites for the space of a thousand
years from the time that they were first declared, the " bur
den of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi," instead
of speaking, even then, of repealed judgments, closes the
Jewish Scriptures with this last command, " Remember ye
the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto
him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judg
ments ;" x and, affixed to the command to remember these,
the very last words of the Old Testament, which seal up the
vision and the prophecies, plainly indicate, that however long
the God of Israel might bear with the Jews for transgressing
the law, while the law only was given them, yet on their re
fusal to repent when the prophet, who was to be " the mes
senger of the Lord," would be sent unto them, the Lord
would come and " smite the earth, or the land, with a curse."
The term of the continuance of these judgments, and of
their full completion, is distinctly marked, as commensurate
with the dispersion of the Jews, and terminating with their
1 Malachi iv. 4.

THE LAND OF ISRAEL. 105
final restoration. So long as they be in their enemies' land,
their own land lieth desolate. The judgments were not to
be removed from it " until the Spirit be poured (upon the
Jews) from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field." 1
And the prophecies not only portray Judea while forsaken
of the Lord, his heritage left, and given into the hands of
its enemies, but they also delineate the character and condi
tion of the dwellers therein, while its ancient inhabitants
were to be scattered abroad, and ere the time come when he
shall reign in Jerusalem before his ancients gloriously.8
Annunciations of a future and final restoration almost uni
formly accompany the curses denounced against the land.
And frequent, and express as words can be, are the references
throughout the prophecies to the period yet to come, when
the children of Israel shall be gathered out of all nations,
and when the land then, at last and for ever, brought back
from desolation, and the cities, repaired after the desolations
of many generations, and the mountains of Israel, which
have been always waste, shall be no more desolate, nor the
people termed forsaken any more.3 After the Messiah wras
to be cut off, and the sacrifice and oblation to cease, the
ensuing desolations were to reach even to the consummation,
and till that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.4
And Jerusalem, as Jesus hath declared, shall be trodden
down of the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles be ful
filled.8 Neither the dispersion of the Jews nor the desolation of
Judea is to cease, according to the prophecies, tih other
evidence shall thereby be given of prophetic inspiration.
The application to the present period, or to modern times,
of the prophecies relative to the desolation of Judea, is thus
abundantly manifest. And the more numerous they are, so
' Isaiah xxxii. 15. 2 Isaiah xxiv. 1, 23.
8 Isaiah Ixi. 4. Ezek. xxxvi. 8, 10 ; xxxvii. 21 ; xxxviii. 8. Isaiah lxii. 4.
* Dan. ix. 27. s Luke xxi. 24.

106 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
much the more severe is the test which they abide. And
while the Jews are not yet gathered from all the nations,
nor planted in their own land to be no more pulled out of
it,1 — nor its destroyers and they that laid it waste, gone
forth from it,2 — nor the old waste places built, nor the foun
dations of many generations raised up, nor the land brought
back from desolation,3 — the effect of every vision is still to
be seen, and even now, at this late period of the times of
the Gentiles, though the blessed consummation may not be
very distant, there is abundant evidence to complete the
proof that the curses that are written in the book of the
Lord have been brought upon the land,4 and rest on it at
this day.
The devastation of Judea, is so "astonishing," and its
poverty as a country so remarkable, that, forgetful of the
prophecies respecting it, and in the rashness of their zeal,
infidels have attempted to draw an argument from thence
against the truth of Christianity, by denying the possibility
of the existence of so numerous a population as can accord
with Scriptural history, and by representing it as a region
singularly unproductive and irreclaimable.5 But though
1 Amos ix. 14, 15. 2 Isaiah xlix. 17. 3 Isaiah Iviii. 12. * Deut. xxix. 27.
* Voltaire, without adducing any authority whatever in support of his assertion,
and without expressly declaring that, in lieu of such evidence, he was gifted with
an intuitive knowledge of the historical and geographical fact, — speaks of the ancient
state of Palestine with derision, describes it as one of the worst countries of Asia ;
likens it to Switzerland, and says that it can only be esteemed fertile when com
pared with the desert. (Bp. Newton) "La Palestine n'e-tait que ce qu'elle est
aujourd'hui, un des plus mauvais pays de l'Asie. Cette petite province," &c.
(CEuvres de Voltaire, torn, xxvii. p. 107.) Without citing, on the other hand, the
ample evidence of Josephus and of Jerome, both of whom were inhabitants of Judea,
and more adequate judges of the fact, the following testimony to the great fertility
of that country, not being chargeable with the partiality which might be attached to
the opinion either of a Christian or of a Jevr, may be given in answer to the ground
less assertion of Voltaire ; testimony which ought to have been better known and
appreciated even by that high priest of modern infidelity, if the sacrifice of truth on
the altar of wit had not been too common an act of his devotion to the chief god of
his idolatry. " Corpora hominum salubria et ferentia laborum ; rari imbr-es, uber
solum. Exuberant fruges nostrum ad morem ; pvceterque eas balsamum et palmoz.
—Magna pars Judea? vicis dispergitur; habent et oppida. Hierosolyma genti

THE LAND OF ISRAEL. 107
they have voluntarily abandoned this indefensible assump
tion, they have left to the believer the fruits of their con
cession ; they have given the most unsuspicious testimony to
the confirmation of the prophecies, and have served to
establish the cause which they sought to ruin. The evidence
of ancient authors ; the fertility of the soil wherever a single
spot can be cultivated ; the vegetable mould, now covered
with thorns, on the sides of the terraced mountains, which
may have clothed them with a richer and more frequent
harvest than the most fertile vale ; and the multitude of
the ruins of cities that now cover the extensive but un
cultivated and desert plains, bear witness that there was a
numerous and condensed population in a country flowing
with food ; and that, if any history recorded its greatness,
or any prophecies revealed its desolation, they have both
been amply verified.
The acknowledgments of Volney, and the description
which he gives from personal observation, are sufficient to
confute entirely the gratuitous assumptions and insidious
sarcasms of Voltaire : and, wonderful as it may appear,
copious extracts may be drawn from that writer, whose
unwitting or unwilling testimony is as powerful an attesta
tion of the completion of many prophecies, when he relates
facts of which he was an eye-witness, as his untried theories,
his ideal perfectibility of human nature, if released from
the restraints of religion, and his perverted views both of
the nature and effects of Christianity, have proved greatly
instrumental in subverting the faith of many, who, un-
caput. Illic immensse opulentise templum et primis munimentis urbs." (Taciti
Hist. lib. v. cap. vi. viii. Rel. Pales.) "Ultima Syriarum est Patestina, per
intervalla magna protenta, cultis abundans terris et nitidis, et civitates habens quas-
dam egregias, nullam sibi cedentem, sed sibi vicissim velut ad perpendiculum
semulas." (Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xiv. cap. viii. § 11. ibid.) "Nee saneviris,
opibus, armis quicquam copiosius Syria." (Flori Hist. lib. ii. cap. viii. § 4.)
"Syria in hortis operosissima est. Indeque proverbium Grsecis, Multa Syrorum
olera." (Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. xx. cap. v.)

108 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
guarded by any positive evidence, gave heed to such seduc
tive doctrines. There needs not to be any better witness
of facts confirmatory of the prophecies, and in so far con
clusive against all his speculations, than Volney himself.
Of the natural fertility of the country, and of its abounding
population in ancient times, he gives the most decisive
evidence. '•' Syria unites different climates under the same
sky, and collects within a smaU compass pleasures and pro
ductions which nature has elsewhere dispersed at great
distances of time and place. To this advantage, which per
petuates enjoyments by their succession, it adds another,
that of multiplying them by the variety of its productions.
— With its numerous advantages of climate and soil, it
is not astonishing that Syria should always have been
esteemed a most delicious country, and that the Greeks and
Romans ranked it among the most beautiful of their pro
vinces, and even thought it not inferior to Egypt."1 After
having assigned several just and sufficient reasons to account
for the large population of Judea in ancient times, in con
tradiction to those who were sceptical of the fact, he adds ;
" Admitting only what is conformable to experience and
nature, there is nothing to contradict the great population
of high antiquity. Without appealing to the positive
testimony of history, there are innumerable monuments
which depose in favour of the fact. Such are the prodigious
quantity of ruins dispersed over the plains, and even in the
mountains, at this day deserted. On the remote parts of
Carmel are found wild vines and olive-trees, which must
have been conveyed thither by the hand of man : and in
the Lebanon of the Druses and Maronites, the rocks, now
abandoned to fir-trees and brambles, present us in a thousand
places with terraces, which prove that they were anciently
1 Volney's Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. i. pp. 316, 321. English Translation,
Lond. 1787.

THE LAND OF ISRAEL. 109
better cultivated, and consequently much more populous
than in our days."1
"Syria," says Gibbon, "one of the countries that have
been improved by the most early cultivation, is not un
worthy of the preference. The heat of the climate is
tempered by the vicinity of the sea and mountains, by the
plenty of wood and water ; and the produce of a fertile soil
affords the subsistence and encourages the propagation of
men and animals. From the age of David to that of He-
raclius the country was overspread with ancient and flour
ishing cities; the inhabitants were numerous and wealthy."2
Such evidence has merely been selected as the most unsus
picious, though that of many others might also be adduced.
The country in the vicinity of Jerusalem is indeed rocky, as
Strabo represents it. But these regions, as throughout the
hill country of Judea, are well adapted for the cultivation
of the vine and the olive; and of old Israel sucked, honey
from the rock, and oil out of the flinty-rock. " Even the
sides of the most barren mountains in the neighbourhood of
Jerusalem had been rendered fertile, by being divided into
terraces, like steps rising one above another, where soil has
been accumulated with astonishing labour."3 "In any part
of Judea," Dr Clarke adds, " the effects of a beneficial
change of government are soon witnessed in the conversion
of desolated plains into fertile fields. — Under a wise and
beneficent government the produce of the Holy Land would
exceed all calculation. Its perennial harvest, the salubrity
of its air, its limpid springs, its rivers, lakes, and matchless
plains, its hills and vales, all these, added to the serenity of
the climate, prove this to be indeed a field which the Lord
1 Volney's Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. ii. p. 368.
2 Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 403.
3 Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 520. General Straton describes these terraces as
resembling the gradus of a theatre, and particularly marked them as vestiges of
ancient "luxuriance."

110 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
hath blessed."1 But the facts of the former fertility, as well
as of the present desolation of Judea, are established beyond
contradiction ; and, in attempting in this respect to invalidate
the truth of sacred history, infidels have either been driven
or have reluctantly retired, from the defenceless ground
which they themselves had once assumed, and have given
room whereon to rest an argument against their want of
faith as well as of veracitj^. For, in conclusion of this
matter, it surely may, without any infringement of truth or
justice, be remarked, that the extent of the present desola
tion — the very allegation on which they would discredit the
Scriptural narrative of the ancient glory of Judea — being
itself a clearly-predicted truth, then the greater the difficulty
of reconciling the knowledge of what it was to the fact of
what it is, and the greater the difficulty of believing the
possibility of so "astonishing" a contrast, the more wonderful
are the prophecies which revealed it all, the more completely
are they accredited as a voice from heaven, and the argu
ment of the infidel leads the more directly to proof against
himself. Such is " the positive testimony of history," and
such the subsisting proofs of the former grandeur and
fertility of Palestine, that we are now left, without a cavil,
to the calm investigation of the change in that country from
one extreme to another, and of the consonance of that change
with the dictates of prophecy.
Having visited the land of Judea, the writer may con
fidently affirm that it sets before the eyes of every beholder,
who knows the Bible and can exercise his reason, a three
fold illustration of the truth of Scripture, in respect to its
past, present, and yet destined state. It not only presents
to view the scenes of Scriptural history, often recognisable
to this hour as the places of which the sacred penmen wrote,
and where events were transacted, the knowledge of which
1 Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 521.

THE LAND OF ISRAEL. Ill
shall ever be the common property of man; but it exhibits,
even among the barren but terraced mountains of Israel,
such proofs of ancient cultivation, as show to a demonstra
tion, that the ancient fertility and glory of the land were
not inferior to what Scripture represents. Looking on it
as it is, the whole land now bears the burden of the word
of the Lord. And yet it shows as clearly, whenever that
burden shall be removed and the Lord shall in mercy
remember ihe land, that it yet retains the capability, as if
it had never been laid waste, of blooming forth anew in all
its beauty, and bearing its fruits in all their profusion, till
its mountains and plains be again clothed with as rich and
varied a produce as any land on earth can yield.
To that consummation of all their predictions concerning
it, the prophets ever looked. The people that have been
scattered throughout the world shall finally be brought back
1,0 the land of their fathers, to be no more plucked out of it
for ever. And the fruitfulness of the land of Canaan, long
dormant but never dead, shall reappear in its glory, when
the wilderness shall be turned into a fruitful field, and
there shall be no more desolation. But notwithstanding
the blasphemies that have been spoken against the mountains
of Israel, no man who has stood in the midst of them could
fail to see that they lie desolate as smitten with a curse,
and that they shall be desolate no more when tha.t judgment
shall be taken away. Many prophetic songs of rejoicing
and praise await the time when ihe wilderness and the soli
tary place shall be glad for them, and the desert sliall rejoice
and blossom as the rose, and the terraced mountains of Israel
shall be planted anew by the hands of Israel's children, and
bear the shame of the heathen no more. Prophesy unto
the mountains of Israel and say, Ye mountains of Israel,
— Because they have made you desolate, — and ye are taken
up in the lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people :

112 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear ihe word of the Lord
God: Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains, and to
the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys, to the desolate
wastes, and to the cities that are forsaken, which became a
prey and derision to ihe residue of ihe heathen that are
round about, etc. — Ye, 0 mountains of Israel, shall yisld
your fruit to my people of Israel. — And I will settle you
after your old estates, and will do better unto you than at
your beginnings ; neither will I cause men to hear in thee
the shame of the heathen any more; neither shalt thou bear
the reproach of the people any more. — Ezek. xxxvi. 1-15.
The mockery of misjudging scoffers, and the blasphemies
from the lips of talkers, uttered in purposed refutation of
the truth of the word of God, are turned into a testimony
against themselves. And while the extent of the predicted
desolation shows how wonderful their realization has been,
another reversal of the fate of Judea is yet reserved and
destined to show, in obvious application to events yet to
come, how mercy rejoiceth over judgment; how truth, even
in things opposite to each other, when rightly discerned, is
ever triumphant; and how the lips of profane talkers, having
tendered their testimony, shall be silent for ever, and the
mountains of Israel be neither a derision nor a reproach any
more. Under any regular and permanent government, a region
so favoured by climate, so diversified in surface, so rich in
soil, and which had been so luxuriant for ages, would
naturally have resumed its opulence and power ; and its
permanent desolation, alike contradictory to every suggestion
of experience and of reason, must have been altogether in
conceivable by man. But the land was to be overthrown by
strangers, to be trodden down; mischief was to come upon
mischief, and destruction upon destruction, and the land
was to be desolate. The Chaldeans devastated Judea, and

THE LAND OF ISRAEL. 113
led the inhabitants into temporary captivity. The kings of
Syria and Egypt, by their extortions and oppression, often
impoverished the country. The Romans held it long in
subjection to their iron yoke. And the Persians contended
for the possession of it. But in succeeding ages, still greater
destroyers than any of the former appeared upon the scene
to perfect the work of devastation. "In the year 622 (636)
the Arabian tribes collected under the banners of Mohammed,
seized or rather laid it waste. Since that period, torn to
pieces by the civil wars of the Fatimites and the Ommiades;
wrested from the califs by their rebellious governors; taken
from them by the Turkmen soldiery ; invaded by the
European Crusaders; retaken by Mamelouks of Egypt, and
ravaged by Tamerlane and his Tartars, it has at length
faUen into the hands of the Ottoman Turks."1 It has been
overthrown by strangers; trodden under foot : destruction
has come upon destruction.
The Scriptural record bears, that when the Israelites first
entered into possession of their inheritance, the Lord, accord
ing to his word by Moses, gave them a land for which they
did not labour, and cities which they built not ; and they
dwelt in them.2 But ere that promise was thus fulfilled, at
the time when the law was given them, and statutes and
ordinances were set in Israel, it was written, among the
curses denounced against disobedience, I will make your cities
waste. — I will scatter you among the heathen — and your
cities shall be waste} Other prophecies, pointing to distant
ages, and to events not realized to this day, prescribe the
only term of the desolation of the cities as of the land, Upon
ihe land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea,
upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city : because the
palaces shall be forsaken, the multitude of the city shall be
left ; the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever — until
1 Volney's Travels, vol. i. p. 357. " Joshua xxiv. 13. a Lev. xxvi. 31, 33.

114 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilder
ness be a fruitful field.1 The curses, as recorded, were all
to be completed on the land and on the people; and the blind
ness of Israel was not to cease, until the cities should be
wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man.2

SECTION II.
THE DESOLATION OF THE CITIES OF ISEAEL.
When Israel first entered into Canaan, a hundred and
twelve cities, mentioned by name, together with their villages,
fell to the lot of the tribe of Judah.3 Forty-eight cities were
given to the Levites out of the possession of the other tribes.
The half tribe of Manasseh, east of the Jordan, had for an
inheritance all the region of Argob, with all the kingdom of
Bashan, from Salcah to Edrei, in which were sixty cities, fenced
with high walls, gates, and bars, besides unwalled towns a
great many} In the histories of the wars of the Romans
with the Jews, ere the last tribe of Israel was rooted out of
their own land to be dispersed in every other, Tacitus, as
already quoted, records that, besides the towns, great part
of Judea was overspread with villages ; and Josephus relates
that Upper and Lower Galilee were thickly set with cities,
and with populous villages. When finally the Jews were
besieged in all their gates, a Roman historian gives a speci
fication of their number, in testifying that five hundred
strongly fortified citadels, and nine hundred and eighty-five
noble villages, were overthrown to their foundations.5
Many of the cities of the land were rebuilt and repeopled,
but not by Jews any more. Ptolemy, in the second century,
gives in his geography the names of upwards of fifty cities
1 Isaiah xxxii. 13-15. 2 Isaiah vi. 11. " Joshua xv. 20-63.
' Deut. iii. 4, 5. « Dion. Cass. Hist Rom. lib. Ixix. p. 798.

DESOLATE CITIES. 115
or towns, situated within the ancient borders of Israel, and
a far greater number within the limits of the kingdom of
Solomon. In the fourth century, according to Ammianus
Marcellinus, Palestine had renowned cities that rivalled each
other in their greatness. Syria, in the words of Gibbon,
was overspread with ancient and flourishing cities to the
days of Heraclius, in the seventh century. It contained, in
the days of the Lower Empire, two hundred bishoprics ; and
though some of the sees are marked as villages, not a few
were populous and splendid cities. Csesarea, Antipatris,
Monte-Pellegrino (Athlite,) Ramlah, Ras, Lebona, Area,
Paneas, Safed, Akka (Acre,) Gerasa (Gerash,) Adgeloun,
besides many other fortresses and walled towns in Syria,
were strong enough to withstand the assaults of powerful
armies, in the wars of the Crusades, and some of them were
only taken after desperate and protracted sieges.1 In the
fourteenth century Syria, after the destruction of many of
its cities and strongholds, could still count thirty fortresses.
Such records suit not the present day, in which ruins
testify their truth as to the past. But the names of " ruined
or deserted places," though only partially ascertained, are
more numerous than the names which all ancient records,
now extant, supply, of the cities and villages which of old
were peopled either by Jews or Gentiles. City after city
may now be called by its name, that each and all may bear
witness to the word of the Holy One of Israel.
The progressive desolation of the cities of Syria has been
traced by the author in other pages, in which their existing
state of ruin or desertion is too minutely described to admit
of recapitulation here, where so many prophecies demand a
succinct illustration.2 But having visited Palestine a second
time since the treatise referred to was published, some sup
plementary proof, derived from personal observation, may
1 See Land of Israel, p. 200-268. * Ibid. pp. 296-333, 358-384.

116 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
be conjoined with other testimonies of the desolation that
has come upon the cities, which, long after the days of the
prophets, " overspread the land."
In the lists of Arabic names of places in Palestine given
by the Rev. Dr. Eli Smith, who resided many years in
Syria, and traversed many of its districts, one hundred and
three ruined or deserted places are named, in the district
of Hebron, and to the south of that town.1 Among these,
the ancient names of Kerioth, Arad, El-Moladah, Aroer (in
Judah,) Beersheba, Elusa, Eboda, Tekoa, Berachah, Ramah,
Ziph, Engedi, Maon, Carmel (of Judah,) Phogor, Gedor,
Adoraim, Dumah, Anab, Socoh, Jattir, and Nezib, are
recognised in the deserted ruins Karyetein, Tell Arad, el-
Milh, Ararah, Bir es Seba, el-Khulasah, Abdeh, Tekua,
Bereikut, er-Ram, Zif, Ain Jidy, Main, Kurmul, Faghur,
Jedur, Dura, Daumeh, Annabeh, esh-Schuweikeh, Attir, and
Beit Nusib.
Twenty-nine cities are named by Joshua as the uttermost
cities of Judah towards the coast of Edom. But in travel
ling, as the writer did, from Hebron to that coast, and
returning by a different route, not a single city, or town, or
house, did we pass, or see on any side, except in utter ruin.
In Smith's lists of places south of Hebron are the names
of thirty-six "ruined or deserted places," but not one that is
inhabited. They are all now numbered among the decayed
places of Judah.
The head of a valley once crowned with Carmel of Judah,
is now, on both sides and around it, covered with its ruins.
The remains of two large churches, half a mile apart, the
thick walls of a ruined castle, many heaps of hewn stones,
and remains of walls nearly levelled with the ground, indi
cate no mean ancient city; while its situation, though all
be desolate around it now, shows that of old it was worthy
1 Robinson and Smith's Palestine, Second Appendix, Arabic Lists, pp. 114-117.

DESOLATE CITIES. 1 1 /
of its name of Carmel or fruitful. At Karyetein heaps of
ruins mark the site of an ancient town. There are evident
marks and remains of buildings spread over a large space
at Araar, which, however decayed, recurring at short dis
tances, give proof that the valley of Aroer of Judah was
once thickly peopled ; and that near to its borders on the
south-east, Judah continued to be overspread with towns
and villages. Of the ruins both of Eboda and Tekoa, as
described by Dr Robinson and Dr. Smith, the principal in
each are those of a large church, and of a castle and fortress.
They "stumbled by accident" on the ruins of Ruhaibeh;
but though thus discovered, and from the space these cover,
they judged upon the spot that it must have been a city of
not less than 12,000 or 15,000 inhabitants. The ruins
of Elusa, once an episcopal city, cover, in their estimation,
a space large enough for a population of 15,000 or 20,000
souls. In the districts round Jerusalem there were, in 1835,
sixty-four ruined or deserted places ; and thirty-nine in the
territories of Ramlah and Lydda.1 Some of the viUages,
then inhabited, have since been added to their number.2 In
the districts of Nabulus or Neopolis, there were in the same
year, thirty ruined or deserted places ; twenty other villages
in the same regions had been reduced to similar desolation
or desertion in the year 1844. Among these Shiloh, once
so famous in Israel, " is nothing more than a heap of fallen
houses."3 Ras, a strong fortress in the days of the Crusaders,
Thebez, Endor, Hermon, and Taanach, in their altered con
dition, but scarcely altered names, have sunk into the tenant-
less er-Ras, Tubas, Endur, Haramon, and Tannak.
Smith's lists of the names of places in the extensive
districts of Tiberias, Nazareth, Acre, and Safed, and Huleh,
1 Smith's Arabic Lists, Second Appendix, pp. 121-126.
2 Shahmeh, el-Mansurah, Deir el-Muheisen, Deir Bezia.
" Van de Telde, vol. ii. p. 287.

1 1 8 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
do not embrace " the uninhabited places." These regions
included Upper and Lower Galilee, which, in the days of
Josephus, were full of people, and overspread with cities
and large villages. In traversing the great plan of Esdrae-
lon, anciently that of Jezreel, no dwellings but tents of the
wandering Arabs are passed, and no villages are now to be
seen throughout it, save those which very sparingly skirt
the base of the surrounding hills. The broad summit of
Gerizzim, and the spacious top of Tabor, are alike covered
with extensive ruins. Of the cities that bordered the lake
of Tiberias, none remain but as utterly desolate. In Upper
Galilee the towns of Ccesarea Philippi, into which Jesus went,
are no more. The names of seventeen ruined places in the
neighbourhood of Paneas, its miserable representative, are
given by Burckhardt.1 From Dan, in its vicinity, of which
scarce a vestige remains, to Beersheba, also desolate, the
traveller now passes — not from city to city — but from ruin
to ruin ; and from one end of the land to the other, anciently
embracing the thousands of Israel, cities once crowded, and
fortresses that could withstand armies, bear witness to the
truth and power of that word as the Lord's, which has laid
them in the dust, and made them a pasture for flocks, or dens
for beasts, and covered them with thorns ; and the traveUer
may now sometimes "stumble" on an ancient city, unseen
till he tread it under foot.
Cities that existed in their prime long after the days of
the latest of the prophets, are as utterly desolate as any in
the land ; and cities built by Romans are now as waste as
any they destroyed. Of the former, the once princely
capital of Herod the Great may here supply an illustration.
Csesarea, on the sea-coast, nearly midway between Acre and
Jaffa, fallen and ruined as it lies, still exhibits traces of its
ancient magnificence. Jesus was brought before Herod, as
¦ Pp. 44, 45.

DESOLATE CITIES. 119
Nazareth lay within his jurisdiction ; and Caesarea, which
rose to the height of its splendour seven centuries after the
days of Isaiah, has sunk into utter desolation under the
sentence that beforehand had passed indiscriminately on the
cities of the land. Its walls, of far later construction and
more circumscribed extent than those built by Herod, give
evidence of its strength in times comparatively recent. But
whether built anew by Saracens or Crusaders, whom its
capture successively enriched, they could not finally avert
its doom.
In the sixteenth century Rauwolf could speak of its large
and broad streets, in which scarcely any one was to be seen,
and of its stately antiquities, which then remained, though
they are less stately now. Its desolation has since been
perfected. Its streets are all encumbered and concealed by
its fallen and indistinguishable ruins ;— and the nobler build
ings of that once proud city, for the celebration of whosp-
games the palace of the Caesars was disfurnished of the
richest ornaments, form at best but the larger heaps. Twenty
thousand Jews were slain within it in the day of Jerusa
lem's fall ; but, populous as it long after was, it is now
without an inhabitant. Paul was there imprisoned for two
years, and though it ministered to the honour of Cassar and
the pride of Herod, it lies as low as if an apostle of Jesus
had shaken off the dust of his feet as a testimony against
it. Felix trembled when he there spake of judgment ;
Caesarea can now tell its own.
The comparatively modern wall that surrounded the less
extended city was strongly fortified with bastions, which,
though firmly built in the pyramidal form, have not re
mained unbroken. (See plate II.) Within it are seen
heaps of desolated buildings covered with thistles, noxious
weeds, and rank herbage, through which, covering the rough
ruins, it is not easy to penetrate. Wild boars, hyenas, and

120 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
wolves, snakes and scorpions have long made it their resort
or their abode.1 The writer saw no hving thing within it,
except, when wearied with wandering on foot over its
tangled ruins, — matted as they were, after the earlier rain,
with thistles, hemlock, and other wild plants intertwined —
'he had scarcely begun to ride through them by a beaten
track, when a large serpent darted across it through the
rustling plants, and at the sight, his horse starting back
literally shuddered under him, and could not be forced
onward, where the multitude, after the oration of Herod,
had shouted, "it is the voice of a god and not of a man,''
and where, in later times, proud Romans, Saracens, and
Templars, had gaily pranced along a street built of polished
stones. The ruins of a large church, which Pococke conjectured
to be the cathedral of the archbishop, rise conspicuously in
the midst of indiscriminate and indescribable heaps. It is
about 150 feet long and 60 broad, with a vault beneath,
5 6 feet in length. Many fallen and broken columns, chiefly
on the skirt of the ruins on the shore, denote the destruction
of a splendid city. Others of granite or marble, alike pros
trate, are partly buried in the ruins, where doubtless many
are wholly concealed, as some in recent times have been
raised up and carried away. The large columns, partly
projecting from the ruins, can still show that lofty pillars
adorned the city of Caesarea. Between the more modern
wall, on the south, and the ancient wall, which is distinctly
traceable, are large green mounds, seemingly the graves of
some of the noblest structures of Herod. Two of the most
elevated of these enclose on both sides an oblong space,
sweep round its eastern extremity, but leave it open towards
the shore (as described by Josephus); and thus constitute
1 Pococke, p. 59. Buckingham's Palestine, p. 137. Mr G. Robinson's Tra
vels, i. p. 190. Clarke's Travels, ii. 645.

DESOLATE CITIES. 121
the form, as they mark the site, of a grand amphitheatre
well fitted for the celebrated games of that joyous city.
But the green mounds are no less adapted now for their
present and predicted use, a pasture of the flocks of the
wandering Arabs, after that wealthy and renowned city,
like others in the land, has ceased to be a spoil and a
prey. The glory of man is as the flower of grass; but the word
of the Lord endureth for ever. And when the last pre
dicted fact concerning the cities of the land shall be accom
plished, Herod's once boasted but long-forgotten labours will
not be for ever lost. Caesarea, utterly desolate, has its
ample stores ready for the day when the sons of strangers
shall build up the walls of the desolate cities of Israel. It
was the capital of a kingdom in the days of Herod, and
subsequently of the Roman province of Palestina Prima,
and in later times an archiepiscopal city, to which seventeen
bishoprics were subject. But its cities, like itself, have
fallen. And in travelling along the desolate sea-shore of
Canaan from Dor on the one side, to Mukhalid on the other,
or from one miserable village to the next, a distance of
about twenty miles, not a single inhabited place was passed
or seen, and tents of the Bedouin, even close to the coast,
are now the only dwellings of men.
Concerning the cities already referred to, the prediction
is in each case a fact; and one and all are utterly desolate,
and without inhabitant.
But other cities of Israel are laid waste or desolate, be
sides those in which no man dwells. A few miserable huts
clustering round ruins, or raised as if in mockery over fallen
cities, cannot redeem them from desolation. What they are
may be contrasted with what they have been: and there is
a word also for them.

122 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
In the districts attached to Neapolis, as still ranked
among inhabited places, the defenceless villages or humble
hamlets of Lubban, Jeljuleh, Salim, Beit Dejan, Acrabeh,
Daumeh, Jeba, el-Fendakumieh, Jeblon, Shutta, Beisan, and
Sebustieh, are the wrecks that bear the names of Lebonah,
Gilgal, Salim, Beth Dagon, Acrabatene, Edumia, Geba,
Pentacomias, Gilboa, Beth Shitta, Bethsan, or Scythopolis,
once, according to Josephus and Pliny, the greatest city of
Decapolis, and Sebaste, or Samaria, the ancient capital of
the ten tribes of Israel
Beisan, as described by Dr Richardson, is "a collection
of the most miserable hovels, containing about 200 inhabit
ants." Its site is covered with large heaps of hewn stones,
with prostrate columns of Corinthian architecture, emblems
of the greatness of the fallen city. On the south end of
the same valley of the Jordan, close, as Josephus describes
the city, and as Mr Buckingham first marked its site, to the
foot of the hills of Judah, as they rise from the plain, are
the wide-spread vestiges of the city of Jericho, beside the
fountain of Elisha, and between it and the hill, as partly
on its sloping base. It is altogether in utter ruin. Bare,
and partly broken walls, around which were some naked
children, with not more than thirty houses covered with
roofs, and others in ruins, form the modern Rieha, perhaps
a suburb of the ancient city. In the country adjacent to
Ramlah, the ancient Arimathea, there are found, at every
step, as described by Volney, dry wells, cisterns fallen in,
and vast vaulted reservoirs, which prove that in ancient
times this town must have been upwards of a league and a
half in circumference. " Solomon built Beth-horon the
upper, and Beth-horon the nether, fenced cities, with wahs,
gates, and bars." The two small villages, " Beit' Ur, the
upper and lower, represent the ancient upper and lower
Bethoron." Though built by Solomon, they have been

DESOLATE CITIES. 123
overthrown to their foundations. In the one, " the founda
tions of large stones indicate an ancient site ;" the other
exhibits "traces of ancient walls and foundations." Be
tween them are " foundations of large stones, the remains
perhaps of a castle which once guarded the pass."1 While
foundations of many generations yet await the time when
they shall be raised up again, cities that were celebrated in
more modern times can only be renewed by a similar recon
struction. In the twelfth century the wealth of Paneas
could bribe a king of Jerusalem, Baldwin III., to break a
treaty that he might pay his debts; and the archbishop of
Tyre, the historian of the Crusades, relates that the prey
was so great and unheard of that the countries of the
Crusades could not furnish the ..like. Foundations are yet
firm where all else is fallen ; there are strong remnants of
an ancient wall built of long bevelled stones, with bastions,
along the edge of a ravine; a gate, and part of a waU yet
stand, in which are imbedded many pieces of granite
columns, the index of older ruins. A long space extending a
mile or more from the village is now overspread with ruins,
among which, if searched for in the adjoining wood, where
no wall any longer stands, are found many architectural
fragments, and prostrate columns and fallen altars. The
historical and predicted fact is amply corroborated on the
spot, that destruction has come upon destruction, till
nothing be left but memorials that it has done its work on
one of the richest cities of the land. Burckhardt described
Paneas as containing, in 1810, "about a hundred and fifty
houses, inhabited by Turks, Greeks, Druses," &c. In 1844,
they were reduced to about twenty houses, httle else than
miserable huts, loosely constructed with stones from the
ruins. Yet no natural cause exists why a city, whose name
did honour to both an emperor and a tetrarch, should not
' Robinson and Smith, iii. p. 59.

124 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
be as populous and prosperous as ever. There the Jordan,
in its primary source, rising beside a spacious cavern in a
limestone rock, gushes to the width of a hundred and eighty
feet from among loose stones at its base, and in the space of
a few yards beneath forms a shallow stream of equal breadth,
as if it flowed at once a river from a rock. Stones covered
with aquatic plants, speedily divide it for a while into lesser
streams, that in a soil so fertile, a climate so delicious, and a
spot so picturesque, might irrigate a paradise or enrich a
city. Desolate — and all but deserted — as Cassarea Philippi
is, many olives, figs, pomegranates, and vines, often inter
twined, adorn and enrich a bold ravine, down which the
river leaps, and other circumjacent valleys, in which too
luxuriant myrtles, woodbine*, holly, oleander, mint, thyme,
and passion flowers, combine their fragrance and their
beauty. Cataracts, in some places, may be heard when
they cannot be seen, from the closeness of the trees and the
density of the foliage. The beauties of nature flourish
amidst the ruins of art; and a magnificent terebinth-tree,
the trunk of which is thirteen feet eight inches in circum
ference, still stands in the humble village. The principal
part of the ancient city seems to have been, as Burckhardt
states, on the opposite side of the river, now destitute of
houses, and of standing though ruined walls, but covered
for a large space with old foundations and heaps of hewn
stones, which are overspread with thistles and shadowed by
trees. Philip the tetrarch did not build his capital, nor
Herod his, that in after ages their proud and joyous cities
might illustrate the power of another word than their own.
But sharing in the common doom of the cities of the land,
of the one and of the other as of the rest it is now true as
written for generations to come, Yet the defenced city — as
those cities were — shall be desolate, and the habitation for
saken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed,

DESOLATE CITIES. 125
and there shall he lie down and consume ihe branches
thereof1 But on the east no less than on the west of the Jordan, the
once famous as well as numerous cities that were situated
there, proclaim the truth of the word that alike went forth
against them. Bashan pertained to Israel as well as Car
mel, and Gilead no less than Ephraim; and a promise yet
unfulfilled still substantiates the claim. The cities of the
plain of Bashan (or the Hauran) were the possession of one
half of the tribe of Manasseh, as were those of the plain of
Sharon of the other. And two tribes besides had their
inheritance there.
East of that river — where the conquests of the Israelites
began, and where the Jews retained no mean portion of
their territory, till finally dispersed by the Romans when
Jerusalem was destroyed, — the land, as well as on the
western side, is studded all over with joint illustrations of
Scriptural history and prophecy, both where Israelites of
old did dwell, and where their enemies subsisted as thorns
in their sides.
Numerous were the cities of the Israelites beyond Jordan.
So soon as they began to possess the land they took all the
cities of Sihon, king of the Amorites, from Aroer, which is
by the brink of the river Arnon; and from the city that is
by the river, even unto Gilead, there was not one city too
strong for them : the Lord their God delivered all into their
hands. Great was their triumph when, at the battle of Edrei,
the king of Bashan was smitten before Israel, and his king
dom became a portion of their inheritance. There was not
a city which they took not, — threescore cities fenced with
high walls, gates, and bars. From the king of Bashan and
the king of the Amorites they took all the land " from the
1 Isa. xxvii. 10.

126 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
river of Arnon unto mount Hermon, all the cities of the
plain, and all Gilead and Bashan unto Salcah and Edrei,
cities of the kingdom of Bashan."1 These territories are
defined, as indubitably marked by the same natural bound
aries to this day. In full and literal accomplishment of a
prediction and a promise, the conquest of all these cities
was complete. They became the prey and the possession
of the children of Israel; and they dwelt in them. But as
complete is their predicted desolation or desertion now.
And as it was said in truth unto Moses, " I will deliver the
king of Bashan, and all his people, and his land, into thy
hand," (Deut. iii. 2,) so truly has the word of the Lord by
Moses and the prophets been accomplished, I will make
your cities waste. — Your cities shall be made waste with
out an inhabitant. — The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they
shall be for flocks which shall lie down, and none shall
make them afraid. — In that day shall the strong cities be
as a forsaken bough. The defenced cities shall be desolate,
and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness, &c.
The record of the curse that has not fallen " causeless,"
may be as brief as the Scriptural record of the accomplish
ment of the promise, when their primary occupancy of these
very cities was the earnest of still larger blessings to Israel's
tribes. Within the precisely defined regions of these royalties
then, but desolations now, from the river Arnon to mount
Hermon, (exclusive of Ammon and Moab, or places to the
east or south of As-Salt,) there were in the year 1834,
as their names are given in Smith's Arabic lists, three
hundred and forty-five places " in ruins or deserted." The
proof is thus plain that, as to the Scriptural record, besides
the threescore cities, there were " unwalled towns a great
many;" and the evidence is thus abundant and precise, that
1 Deut. iii. 1-13.

DESOLATE CITIES. 127
these cities are desolate or in ruins, or else deserted or with
out inhabitant.
But large as this number is, it comprehends not all the
ruined or forsaken cities or towns, with which this region
is so thickly studded. The author, while in Palestine, was
informed by Dr (then Mr) Eli Smith, who has traversed at
different times great part of Syria, and obtained the names in
the separate localities, that his lists were not complete; and
that on both sides of the Jordan, places previously inhabited
were then deserted, (in 1844.) The stroke that has con
tinued for ages upon the land has not yet ceased. Ancient
towns that retained a village population twelve or even two
years ago, now bear the emphatic name charab. Though
unable to penetrate farther than Gerash, the writer, in pass-
/ ing over Ajlun (or mount Gilead,) took down from natives
of the counfay the names of seventeen places, marked in
Dr Smith's lists as inhabited, in which no man any longer
dwelt. And from many more in the Hauran the inhabi
tants have since been driven out by the Bedouins, who live
not in houses but in tents.
The very term, in the Hebrew original, of that denuncia
tion which has fallen thus heavily upon the cities of Israel,
is unconsciously repeated in their cognate language by the
native Arabs, as descriptive of places now inhabited no
more. In questioning many of them, in different localities
on both sides of the Jordan, concerning such sites, we lieard
irniformly the same word from their lips, repeatedly by
several of them at the same moment: and places formerly
inhabited were declared to be charab, desolate.1
Ibrahim Pasha, after an " exterminating war " in the
Hauran, by the terror of his name controlled the Bedouins,
or incorporated them in his armies. When European policy
and arms gave anew to the Sultan the nominal sovereignty
'- Lev. xxvi. TIT Lev. xxvi. 31, 33. Isa. Ixi. 4. Ezek. vi. 6; xxvi. 35, 38, &c.

128 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
of Syria, an Osmanli governor in Turkish infatuation was
set over the Hauran. But he was speedily compelled to
abandon it to the Bedouins. So entirely had they over
spread the country, after defeating the troops of the Pasha
of Damascus in 1844, that though we watched for an open
ing, it was then impossible for us to penetrate it, either on
the west or on the north; and after passing through ten
thousand war-camels, about twelve miles from Damascus, a
cloud of dust in the distance, raised by the seeming advance
of a hostile tribe, so intimidated the guides or guards that
accompanied us, that, without a word of warning, they fled,
driving before them the mule that, with other articles, car
ried the plates, on which we hoped to transfer the views of
some of the desolate ruins or deserted cities of that stricken
region. In the following year, as stated in a letter from
Damascus, the Bedouins came like hungry wolves upon the
villages of the Hauran, so that there was hardly one re
maining.1 In that land a " treaty of peace " is often but a
short and uncertain truce; and respite from war is now
unknown in that still troubled country. Vain were the
attempt to draw from the testimonies of travellers a precise
estimate of the existing loneliness of these once populous
and crowded cities, or to say what villages or houses are
not now — or may not be to-morrow — bereft of the last
onan that lingered within them. But there is ample proof
how numerous and great, and densely peopled these cities
were, which had first to be in ruins, as many are, or else
deserted, as their respective designations (without any refer
ence to the prediction) bear, before they could thus jointly
testify, that each word which feU on them of old, was that
of the Lord.
Cities are desolate without inhabitant, and houses without
man, though the cities remain, and the houses in many
1 Free Church Missionary Eecord, vol. ii. 258. Letter from Rev. Mr Graham.

DESOLATE CITIES. 129
instances are yet " entire," while the once splendid capital
of Herod levelled with the dust, has only its holes for reptiles
and wild beasts ; and more modern towns built by triumphant
Romans in their Syrian provinces, are strewed upon the
ground, and, covered with briers, or thorns, or thistles, take
the lowest place among the desolate cities to be raised from
their foundations.
The mere number, however vast, of " places in ruins or
deserted," inadequately represents either the extent of the
desolation, or the import of their doom, as actually realized.
As the desolation or abandonment of these cities is somewhat
more minutely regarded, the verification of the prophetic
word rises more clearly and wonderfully into view; and may
here again, in one instance at least, be an object of sight.
Assyrian arts, long lost, and sometimes ignorantly despised,
are no longer wholly hid, when specimens of them, dug
from the ruins of Nineveh may now be seen in national
museums in Paris and in London. And records of antiquity
give no note of the splendour which once dazzled the now
lonely spot of Gerash, like that which, by a modern invention,
the sun's rays now reflect on a daguerreotype plate from its
ruins. The stateliest of its edifices, now its monuments, are
the only memorials of its greatness.
Its walls, from three to four miles in circumference, inclose
an area covered all over with ruins. Without a house that
is not levelled with the ground and overspread with thistles,
two theatres, ranking among the most entire of its ruins,
bear witness that Gerasa was once a joyous city. Of one
of these, the semicircular seats, formed for its gay inhabi
tants, may, on a minute inspection, be partly seen on the
upper edge of the plate, near the massy ruins of a magni
ficent temple, facing the empty niches in its broken walls.
In the theatre are twenty-eight rows of seats, the uppermost
of which is about a hundred and twenty paces in circuit.
9

1 30 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
The walls of the temple, fully eight feet thick, built by
Romans to last for ages, were surrounded by a Corinthian
peristyle of many columns, the once lofty shafts of which
now lie in immense heaps around its base. Fronting the
theatre there stood, as there now lies, a street lined on both
sides with columns, which bisected the city to its opposite
extremity, and terminated in a semicircular colonnade that
opened at once to the temple and the theatre. It -was
crossed by similar streets of which some of the columns are
still erect, amidst remaining foundations, broken walls, and
heaps of ruins. The lines of columns, crossed at right angles
by others, once closely ranged, may yet be seen as the chief
street traversed the city now buried in its ruins. The pave
ment of the streets, seldom equalled in modern capitals, is
in reany places as perfect as when foot-passengers thronged
the paths on both sides, and chariots passed between them.
The south-western gateway, as seen near the centre of the
plate, was not built, as now it stands, to lead to a desolate
city without an inhabitant. Many arched chambers, some
of very large dimensions, have now become fit tenements for
reptiles and wild beasts. Another temple, built on a spacious
area, closely lined by two hundred pillars, now fallen, was
adorned in front by columns that, still standing together,
may challenge competition with the ornaments of a modern
city, though it be not, as Gerasa was, a mere provincial
town. Discovered, like the city, in 1806, they stand after
many generations to testify that cities in the land of Israel
built by strangers, which could vie with each other in their
greatness, and give its name to the region, have yet, how
ever desolate, something to show what they were ; though,
according to the word of the Lord, not one citizen is left to
boast of them now, and none can claim these princely
columns, grand streets, and noble ruins, as their own. The
gods for whose honour these temples were built are gone;

DESOLATE CITIES. 131
as true it is that the Lord will famish all the gods of the
earth. But though temples decay and cities fall, His word
abideth for ever. And were the predicted time come, and
the covenanted people there, easy were the task, — without
hewing a stone, — for the sons of strangers to build up the
walls of the fallen Gerasa.
Burckhardt's pages contain as minute a description as
passing visits, during two tours in the Hauran, in the years
1810 and 1812, could supply, of many of the ancient cities
east of the Jordan, whether they then retained a village
population, or were abandoned by their inhabitants, or
reduced to ruins. Mr Buckingham travelled in the Hauran
in 1816: Mr G. Robinson, accompanied by Captain (now
Colonel) Chesney, in 1830; and Lord Lindsay in 1837, and,
more recently, Mr Porter in 1853, and Mr Cyril C. Graham
in 1857. They all testify how numerous are the ruined or
deserted cities in the lands of Gilead and Bashan. These
regions, the reputed fertility and ancient populousness of
which, sceptics down to the present day might have held in
derision without a challenge, — now at last vindicate the
most ancient record of conquests that long preceded the siege
of Troy, and disclose to view cities without inhabitant, and
houses without man, habitations forsaken and left like a
wilderness; yet such that, where in ruins, they can be raised
again from their foundations, or be repaired to dwell in,
and such, where deserted, that it may be said of them, in
yet unaccomplished promises, to the ancient people, Turn
again, 0 virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cit its.
On an isolated hill, to the east cf ihe lake of Tiberias,
extensive ruins of buildings and walls, quantities of polished
stone and prostrate columns, now called El Hossn, are con
jectured by Burckhardt to be the remains of the ancient
town of Regaba or Argob, and by some also to occupy the
site of the more modern town of Gadara. At Oom Keis,

132 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
now also tenantless, are the remains of two theatres, immense
heaps of he-wn stones, and lines of fallen columns that mark
a once colonnaded street, like that of Gerash, supposed to
be the site of the Jewish city of Gamala, that for a time
withstood Vespasian and Titus. The ruins of Draa or
Edrei, are two miles and a half in circuit. " The town of
Szalkhat, or Salcah, contains upwards of eight hundred
houses ; but it is now uninhabited."1 — The circuit of the
ancient city of Kanout, or Kenaih, is about two miles and
a half or three miles. Paved streets and courts, large
apartments, and smaller vaulted rooms, still entire in spacious
edifices, several towers, and upwards of forty columns still
erect, some of which rank among the finest in Syria, a
large building in ruins, apparently a church, beside another
seemingly a monastery, — denote no ignoble city;2 while the
whole ground upon which the ruined habitations stand,
overgrown with oak-trees, and streets that hide the ruins,
shows, like the sites of many cities besides, that the defenced
city is desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like
a wilderness; there shall the calf feed, and there shall
he lie down and consume the branches thereof. In the
seventh century, on the invasion of the Saracens, the
populous city of Bosra, as Gibbon relates, could send forth
from its gates twelve thousand horse. In the twelfth,
when treachery had failed, an army of Crusaders dared not
assault it. Its thick walls, about three miles in circuit,
are still in some places almost perfect. They are now, for
the most part, an enclosure of ruins, which spread also
beyond them. The principal ruin is that of a temple, in
front of which are four large Corinthian columns, upwards
of forty-five feet in height. Others are still erect; and
many are scattered in all directions. Two triumphal arches
still stand, as if in mockery of the fallen and forsaken
1 Burckhardt, p. 100. * Ibid. p. 83-86.

DESOLATE CITIES. 133
city. Ezra, the ancient Zavara, once a flourishing city,
is between three and four miles in circumference. " The
ancient buildings," says Burckhardt, " in consequence of the
strength and solidity of their walls, are, for the greater
part, in complete preservation." " We walked," says Lord
Lindsay, " through several streets of houses seemingly in
good repair, and almost all untenanted." From the top of a
large unoccupied house, " which is quite perfect, and
carpeted with grass, he saw the roofs of numberless smaller
houses, quite entire, and just as green."1 " In many places
are two or three arched chambers, one above the other,
forming so many stories. This substantial mode of building
prevails also in most of the ancient pubhc edifices remaining
in the Haouran," &c.
But throughout the same region, in the hills and plains
of Gilead and Bashan, many ancient but now deserted or
ruined cities, besides those whose names are recorded in
Scripture or in history, equally illustrate the truth of the
prophetic word, as it passed alike upon all. Shaara, once
a considerable city, and a well-peopled village after the
commencement of the present century, has since been
" abandoned" or forsaken, though " most of the houses
in the town are in good preservation."2 Missema, a ruined
town, three miles in circuit, "has no inhabitant,"3 Dhami,
or Dama, " may contain three hundred houses, most of
which are still in good preservation."4 It now ranks
among deserted places; as does also Kuffer, thus described
by Burckhardt : " Kuffer was once a considerable town.
It is built in the usual style of this country, entirely of
stone, most of the houses are still entire; the doors are
uniformly of stone, and even the gates of the town, between
nine and ten feet high, are of a single piece of stone. On
1 Lord Lindsay's Travels, vol. ii. p. 160.
3 Robinson's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 135, 136. Burckhardt, p. 114.
3 Burckhardt, pp. 115, 116. 4 Ibid. p. 111.

1 34 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
each side of the streets is a foot pavement two feet and a
half broad, and raised one foot above the level of the street
itself, which is seldom more than one yard in width. The
town is three-quarters of an hour in circumference, and,
being built on a declivity, a person may walk on it upon
the flat roofs of the houses," fee.1 " At Ayoun are about
four hundred houses without any inhabitant."2 At the
distance of five miles, in the deserted region in the vicinity
of Salcah, stands Oerman, an ancient city, somewhat larger
than Ayoun.3 For a similar distance the intermediate
country is full of ruined walls to Szalkhat, distant from
which, about ten miles, is the deserted city of Kereye
(Kerioth), which has several ancient towers and public
buildings, and "contains about five hundred houses."4 "My
guides," says Burckhardt, were " afraid of prolonging their
stay in these desert parts."5 The vision of Isaiah, and of
other prophets, is realized. The time is come in which the
cities are desolate without inhabitant, and the houses with
out man; and the defenced city is desolate, and the habita
tion forsaken, and left like a wilderness. " Desert parts,"
is the appropriate descriptive designation of a region, than
which perhaps none on earth — scarcely excepting China, in Mr
Buckingham's estimation — was ever more thickly studded
with cities, and of cities compactly built together, than which
perhaps none were ever more crowded with inhabitants.
" We all knew," says Mr Porter, " that we were now not
merely beyond the bounds of civilization, but also of habita
tion, and that this very city (Salcah) had at a comparatively
recent period been deserted by its inhabitants in consequence
of the attacks of the wild sons of the desert, who acknow
ledge no power but that of the sword. . . . The greater
part of the exterior walls (of the castle) is still in good
1 Burckhardt, p. 90, 91. ' Ibid. p. 97. " Ibid. p. 97.
* Ibid. p. 103. « Ibid, p 99.

DESOLATE CITIES. 135
repair — the outer wall of the moat, or counterscarp, is a
perfect circle, whose circumference I estimated at half a
mile. From the summit of this noble castle, I obtained an
extensive and interesting view, and was able to take in at
a glance the whole features of the surrounding country,
which lay spread out around me like a vast panorama. . , .
The whole country from the south-west is an elevated
undulating plain, dotted with many deserted towns and
occasional conical tells. Immediately beneath Sulkhad the
eastern ridge sinks down into a plain, in which are several
deserted villages, and the traces of fields and gardens.
Soath by west, nearly an hour distant, is a lofty tell with a
deserted town on its eastern slope. ... Due south there
is a slight depression in the plain, with a gentle swell on
each side, running as far as the eye can see in a straight
line. In it I noticed several ruined or deserted towns and
large villages. . . . On the plain extending from the south
to the east, I counted fourteen towns or large villages, none
of then more than twelve miles distant, and almost all of
them, o far as I could see with the aid of a telescope, still
habitate, like Sulkhad, but completely deserted. The
houses n some of them I could distinctly see standing per
fect as when recently finished; and these strange square
towers, o conspicuous in all the ancient villages of the Hau
ran, are ere too."1 — "Lists of 'more than a hundred ruined
cities an villages in these mountains alone I had tested and
found corect, though not complete."
" Of tie numerous towns on the eastern border of the
Lejah," -writes Mr Cyril Graham, " there is only one north
of Shuht which is inhabited. The general appearance of
them all : precisely the same. Every house is built of the
black baslt with which that country so abounds. Many
¦ Five Yes in Damascus by the Rev. J. L. Porter, vol. ii. p. 181-183.
» Ibid. voii. p. 206.

136 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
of the houses are in so perfect a state that they might be
inhabited again to-morrow." "We rode to Kureiyeh, the
ancient Kerioth, and thence started on our journey amongst
the ruined towns east of Salkhad. We went out a party of
fourteen, — the chief, eleven Druzes, my servant, and myself.
We came successively to many old towns — Hub, Um-er-
Ruman, a very fine old place, with a very handsome tower,
but without inscription ; and near here we were charged
by a large body of our enemies, the Arabs es Arhan ; but
they, not liking the appearance of our fire-arms, retreated.
We presently came upon that old road which leads across
the desert from Salcah to Bozrah on the Tigris ; and under
some low hills, called Tellul el Hosn, I found a town, wlich
probably formed a station on this road. I heartily wished
to follow it some way, but there were many obstacles vhich
could not be surmounted. ... Of the remaining ;owns
which I saw on this journey which were of particular
interest, I should mention 'Orman, which, from some Greek
inscriptions on the walls of a public building, is id«itified
with the ancient Philopoppolis (it was visited befoi only
by Burckhardt), and Malah, a very beautiful town.past of
'Orman. Both at 'Orman and Malah there are sejeral of
those remarkable square towers I have alluded p. At
Malah there are as many as five, and at 'Ormn four.
After spending five days in the desert in this jourjey from
Kureiyeh, I returned by Salkhad along the eastei side of
the mountains to near Seberet el Khudr, so as to|>omplete
my inspection of the eastern side of the Druz iountain.
Many very old places lay in my path, — Aqd, Kaus,
Kuwelzis, &c. The whole portion which I hadtravelled
south of Bozrah and east of Salkhad was ne ground.
Before turning away from Salcah, I should like,']continues
Mr Graham, " to make a few general remarks oiia country
once so thickly peopled, and now marked as a dffirt on our

DESOLATE CITIES. 137
maps. That the towns lying in this country, like all those
of Bashan, are of the highest antiquity, I think there cannot
be a doubt. These are the cities which the Israelites took
from Og.
" Suppose for a moment that no one had ever travelled
in the Haur&n ; on reading the different passages in the
Old Testament which refer to that country, should we not,
when we found the account of such prodigious numbers of
stone cities, expect to find at least some remnant of them
now ? And when we read in Deuteronomy of " threescore
walled towns, and un walled towns a great number," and see
how small a space Og's kingdom occupies on the map, we
almost feel tempted, as many have been, to think that some
mistake with regard to the numbers of these places has
crept in. But when we go to the very country, and find
one after another great stone cities, walled and unwalled,
with stone gates, and so crowded together that it becomes
almost a matter of wonder how all the people could have
lived in so small a space, — when we see houses built of such
huge and massive stones that no force which can be brought
against them in that country could ever batter them down,
— when we find rooms in these houses so large and lofty
that many of them would be considered fine rooms in a
palace in Europe, — and, lastly, when we find some of these
towns bearing the very names which cities in that very
country bore before the Israelites came out of Egypt, I
think we cannot help feeling the strongest conviction that
we have before us the cities of the Rephaim (giants), the
cities [in a later age of part] of the land of Moab. These
have become gradually deserted as the Arabs of the desert
increase in number, and now south of Salkhad not one of
these many towns is inhabited. It is worthy of notice how
many crosses are seen on the houses in these towns. Every
where in the Hauran you find crosses, but nowhere in such

138 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
numbers as in the towns I have described. These were
cities belonging to Aretas, king of Arabia ; here Paul first
preached," &C.1
A recent traveller, who partly traversed the western side
of the Hauran, thus records his testimony concerning the
desolated and deserted cities which he saw : " Nowa, the
ancient Neva, — like Sananein, and other towns and villages
in the road, is a heap of rums. Population seems to have
decreased from thousands to hundreds, and from liundreds to
decades: what were once cities of considerable magnitude
are now wretched villages: and large towns have not a
single tenant to perpetuate the memory of their name.
From Nowa to Feek the road crosses a vast plain destitute
of cultivation and inhabitants. Nothing is seen but the
ruin of tenantless villages and towns scattered in every
direction, with multitudes of hawks and herons occupying
the spots deserted by man."2
In prefacing his lists of names of places in the Hauran,
Dr Smith states that, " respecting the whole, it is necessary
to observe that the inhabitants so often move from village
to village, that the fact of a village having been inhabited
when we were there, is no evidence that it is so at the
present time." There are other cities besides the tenantless
places already specified that demand a passing notice, though
they retained a village population when last visited by any
European traveller.
Its remaining town walls, nearly four miles in circumfer
ence, which may be traced ah round the city and are in
many places perfect, and the loftiness of its pubhc edifices,
attest that Sholiba was formerly one of the chief cities of
these districts.3 Eight gates of the city, each formed of two
arches, a large edifice in the form of a crescent, with several
1 See below chap. vii. Moab.
2 Travels by C. B. Elliott, vol. ii. pp. 325, 327.
' Burckhardt, p. 70. Robinson.

RUINED FORTRESSES. 139
niches in the front; and another, of a square form, built of
massy stones, with a spacious gate, and a double range of
vaults, one above the other ; a theatre in good preservation,
now " the principal curiosity " of the city, enclosed by a
wall ten feet in thickness, with upper and lower chambers,
and ten rows of seats, of which the uppermost is sixty-four
paces in circuit; and the remains of an aqueduct — of which
some of the few arches left are upwards of forty feet in
height — that terminates in a spacious bath ; well-paved
streets, the chief of which is doubly lined with ruined
habitations ; and the doors of most of the houses formed of
a single slab of stone, with stone hinges, — indicate a walled
city with gates and bars not originally designed though
destined to be a Druse village in a country where, as now
recorded concerning it, " the tenure of property is so uncer
tain, that shops and bazars are not to be found." — Soueida
was formerly one of the largest cities in the Hauran ; the
circuit of its ruins is at least four miles ; among them is a
street running in a straight line, in which the houses on both
sides are still standing. " I was twelve minutes," says
Burckhardt, " in walking from one end to the other. A
large building in ruins, with many broken pillars, seems to
have been a church."
The city of Zaele, half a mile in circuit, is in summer a
much frequented watering-place of the Arabs. " The great
desert extends to the north-north-east and south-east of
Zaele ; to the distance of three days' journey eastward,
there is still a good arable soil, intersected with numerous
tels or hillocks, and covered with the ruins of so many
cities and villages, that, as I was informed," says Burck
hardt, " in whatever direction it is crossed, the traveller is
sure to pass, every day, five or six of these ruined places."1
" The great Syrian desert and its borders are not a bare
1 Burckhardt, p. 94.

1 40 THE LAND OF ISRAEL
wide waste of sand. Its surface consists generally of a
fine black soil, covered in winter with long lank grass and
herbs, and peopled with antelopes, wild asses, and boars."1
The multitude of the city shall be left; the forts and towers
sluxll be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of
flocks. Of Syria, in general, Volney states that " there are pro
digious quantities of ruins dispersed over the plains, and
even in the mountains, at this day deserted"2 " Above all
other countries in the world," says Mr Stanley, " Palestine
is a land of ruins (sic). It is not that the particular ruins
are on a scale equal to those of Greece or Italy, still less to
those of Egypt. But there is no country in which they
are so numerous, none in which they bear so large a propor
tion to the -villages and towns still in existence. In Judea
it is hardly an exaggeration to say, that whilst for miles
and miles there is no appearance of present life or habita
tion, except the occasional goat-herd on the hill-side, or
gathering of women at wells, there is hardly a hill-top of
the many within sight which is not covered by the vestiges
of some fortress or city of former ages. Sometimes they are
fragments of ancient walls, sometimes mere foundations and
piles of stone, but always enough to indicate signs of human
habitation and civilization. Such is the case in Western
Palestine [the decayed places of JudaK]. In Eastern Pales
tine, and still more if we include the Hauran and the
Lebanon, the same picture is continued, although under a
somewhat different aspect. Here the ancient cities remain,
in like manner deserted, ruined, but standing; not mere
masses and large heaps of stone, but towns and houses, in
amount and in a state of preservation which have no
parallel except in the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii,
1 Malte-Brune and Balbi's Geography, p. 640.
' Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 363.

RUINED FORTRESSES. 1 41
buried under the eruption of Vesuvius. Not even in Rome
or Athens, hardly in Egytian Thebes, can ancient buildings
be found in such magnitude and profusion as at Baalbec,
Jerash, and Palmyra. But the general fact of the ruins of
Palestine, whether erect or fallen, remains common to the
whole country," &C1
Words in any book on any subject cannot be more ex
plicit or express than those which, in the Book of the Lord,
connect the desolation or desertion of the cities of Israel with
the long-continued dispersion and blindness of the people
Israel. Many nations have taken to themselves the name
of Christian for many centuries, while the Jews,- — of
whom Jesus was, and of whom he said salvation is, — as
a people, still disown and disbelieve in Christ as the
Messiah ; till the cities of their own land are desolate with
out inhabitant, and the houses without man ; and the
desertion of the cities of Bashan, which, in the days of
Isaiah, as in those of Joshua, were cities of Israel, is in the
present day progressively advancing from year to year.
To him that hath an ear to hear, the time is still manifestly
future, for the time is not yet, of which it is written, " Thy
people shall be all righteous : they shall inherit the land for
ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands,
that I may be glorified." Then " they shall build the old
wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they
shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many gene
rations."2 These prophecies, and many more, as every
reader and believer of the sure word of prophecy knows,
are not to be cast back to the dark and troublous days of
Ezra, nor limited to any times that are past. They are
facts in the present day, which have for their witnesses
Volney and Stanley, as well as every other traveller who
has visited that land of ruins, or seen the forsaken cities
i Syria and Palestine, p. 118, 119. 2 Isaiah Ix. 21 ; Ixi. 4.

142 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
which once were Israel's. There are old wastes; there are
former desolations ; there are waste cities ; there are cities
without inhabitant, and houses without man; there are
heaps of ruins to be raised up again ; prostrate cities, with
their paved streets and solid foundations, lying as they
fell, to be built up again; there are partly ruined cities to
be repaired again ; and empty or forsaken cities, with every
house and street entire, waiting for the time when they
shall be filled with men.
" The palaces shall be forsaken; the multitude of the
city shall be left ; the forts and towers shall be for dens for
ever — until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high ....
and the work of righteousness shall be peace ; and the
effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever,"
fee.1 The fortress shall cease from Ephraim.2 Palestine,
on both sides of the Jordan, was anciently a land of walled
towns, fortresses, castles, and towers, which now, together
with unwalled towns of old, combine to render it a land of
ruins. But though the word was the word of the Lord,
the work was not the work of a day. Even after the
desolating wars of the Crusades, down to the fourteenth
century, Syria contained thirty fortresses.3 In unconscious
confirmation of the prophecy, Volney testifies that " every
step we meet with ruins of towers, dungeons, and castles,
with fosses — frequently inhabited by jackals, owls, and,
scorpions.'1 '4 When towers have fallen, the arches on which
they were built remain, and, like natural cavities in a rock,
they are now for dens. And where they still stand, as in
manyT deserted cities east of the Jordan, they are open to
wild beasts, and serve them for shade or for shelter, when
they have ceased to be the defences of habitations now for-
1 Isa. xxxii. 14-17. ' Isa. xvii. 3. > Abulfeda, Tab. Syria, p. 169.
* Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 336.

RUINED FORTRESSES. 143
saken by men. Kanouat, Oerman, Bethgamul, and many
other forsaken cities, have still their now useless towers.
Among other ruined castles the name of that of Baldwin
tells of its strength eighteen centuries after the days of
Isaiah, while its ruins show that it has ceased. The wall of
the castle of Salcah, nearly half a mile in circumference, is
flanked all round with towers and turrets. It long with
stood a hard pressed siege by the Sultan of Egypt in the four
teenth century. Stones of sixty and eighty-six pounds-weight
were then thrown against it from machines, one of which
was transported thither in separate parts on two hundred
camels. Parts of the wall are now fallen, and in many
places fill to half its depth the moat by which it was sur
rounded. The populous city of Bozrah, in the seventh
century, was secure at least from a surprise, by the solid
structure of its walls; and could then send forth from its
gates twelve thousand horse. These walls are now broken.
At the time of Burckhardt's visit in 1812, its castle was
garrisoned by six Arab soldiers,1 and has now ceased to be
a defence against the Bedouins, who are masters of the
plain of Bashan, and whose battle-fields are plains. The
castle of Adjloun, about four hundred paces in circuit, may
be almost said to be in ruins.2
On the west, as on the east of the Jordan, fortresses have
ceased from the land, and are now defenceless ruins, from the
desert of the Euphrates to the shores of the Mediterranean.
M. Van de Velde " spent fully two hours among the ruins "
of the fortress of Masada. " And such a fortress ! " he
exclaims; "provided not only with a palace and towers,
with rain-tanks and subterranean magazines, but even with
a layer of soil, on which, in case of need, a besieged force
might raise their own grain ! Masada's houses and palaces
lie prostrate ; the rain-tanks are destroyed, the fortified wall
> Burckhardt, p. 233. 2 Buckingham, p. 157.

144 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
is broken down  Masada has now remained for many
centuries waste and uninhabited."1 Athlite, on the coast,
is the castrum Pelegrinorum, or Castel Pelegrino, a strong
citadel in the days of the Crusades. Its remains still mani
fest its strength in ancient times. Though less lofty than
the walls once were, the east end and north-west corner of
the walls of a church, now form the most conspicuous object
in the centre of the principal ruins above which they tower.
The interior of the church is filled with ruins, miserable
huts, and heaps of dung. The scene all around is a mass of
ruins, intermixed with hovels covered with earth. The wall
which projects on the south-west point towards the sea, is
very firmly built of large hewn stones, and is nine feet wide ;
a tower at its termination had partly fallen in a storm two
days before that in which the daguerreotype view was taken,
and we were told that the opposite side fell two years
previously. Time is still continuing its ravages on the
ruins ; and the destructive hand of man has been also at
work. Between the point, where the shadow of the church,
as seen in the water, and the shore, a small rude quay has
been formed at the foot of the outer wall for shipping the
hewn stones of which it and the other walls are formed ;
and many were transported to Acre by Ibrahim Pasha, and
subsequently by its Turkish governor. Some remains of
two walls may be seen in the plate. But from remnants of
each in various places, the fortress appears to have been
surrounded by three strong walls besides the external wall.
The loftiest ruin is the fragment of an inner wall, nearly a
hundred feet in height. The fortress, like every other in
the land, has ceased : and though inferior in magnitude and
strength to others, its remains still testify that mighty
bulwarks have fallen before the word of the Lord.
The castle of Paneas was one of the strongest fortresses of
1 Syria and Palestine, vol. ii. p. 103-105.

RUINED FORTRESSES. 145
Syria in the time of the Crusades, when it repeatedly resisted
and repelled powerful armies. It was strong by nature as
by art — a choice station for a citadel on the oblong summit
of a hill. The traveller, as the writer can testify, now passes
unchallenged and undisturbed over its solitary but very
extensive ruins. They are utterly desolate and defenceless.
Every building is unroofed, and most of the walls are broken
down. The most entire are those on the highest point,
which are still large and strong, and firmly built of bevelled
stone. Hewn stones he in heaps in various places through
out the ruins, and are spread around the sides of the hilh
It was encompassed by a wall ten feet in thickness, flanked
with numerous towers, and fully a mile in circumference, or
twenty -five minutes as thus measured by Burckhardt. For
many ages after the prophecy it was not destined for dens,
for which it is well adapted now. There are many apart
ments and recesses in the castle. " At both the western
corners runs a succession of dark strongly built low apart
ments, like cells, vaulted, and with small narrow loop-holes,
as if for musketry. It must certainly," says Burckhardt,
" have been a very strong hold to those who possessed it."1
Thou hast brought his strongholds to ruin. " High on the
rocky slopes above the town (of Paneas) still lingers the
name of Hazor, in the earliest times the capital of Northern
Palestine. Hard by this height of Hazor is the castle of
Shubeibeh (Paneas), the largest of its kind in the East, and
equal in extent even to the pride of European castles at
Heidelberg."2 Of Tabaria, or the modern Tiberias, Burckhardt wrote,
" The town is surrounded towards the land by a thick and
well-built wall, about twenty feet in height, with a high
parapet and loop-holes. It surrounds the city on three
sides, and touches the water at its two extremities. The
1 Burckhardt's Syria, p. 37. ' Stanley, p. 389.
10

146 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
town-wall is flanked by twenty round towers standing at
unequal distances. Both towns and walls are built with
black stones of moderate size, and seem to be the work of
not very remote times; the whole being in a good state of
repair, the place may be considered as almost impregnable
to Syrian soldiers."1 In different ages, built and rebuilt as
many of the towns and fortresses of the land of Israel have
been, they have not only been successively destroyed by
foreign invaders and hostile armies, but, more immediately
and terribly, many of them have been repeatedly overthrown
by earthquakes. Again and again the cities and strongholds
of Palestine have been thus shattered or levelled, as if the
hand of the Lord had itself been put forth in the accomplish
ment of his word. Like Paneas, and many strongholds
besides, Tiberias pertained to Ephraim, from which the
fortresses were expressly to cease. In 1837, Tiberias,
together with its walls, was destroyed by an earthquake.
In the following year, " the prostrate walls of the town
presented little more than heaps of ruins." Some of the
wide breaches in the western wall have since been partly
filled with stones loosely put up, which the hand could
again lay in heaps upon the ground. And on the south,
instead of a barrier impregnable by Syrian soldiers, the only
pathway to the huts that have been built upon the ruins of
the city, is over the prostrate wall, trodden under foot by
men and beasts.
The castle and town of Safed were completely overthrown
in the same earthquake in which Tiberias fell The castle
equalled in strength and extent that of Paneas; and the
ruin is as entire. " It was anciently surrounded by stu
pendous works, moats, bulwarks, towers." In the beginning
of last century, as stated by Van Egmont and Heyman, the
thickness of the wall and of the corridor, or covered passages,
! Burckhardt's Syria, pp. 320, 321.

RUINED FORTRESSES. 147
which extended round them, was twenty paces. It was the
residence of a governor till levelled by the earthquake. It
is now utterly destroyed ; but its ruins would supply
materials for the construction of a town. — The spacious top
of Mount Tabor was fortified by Josephus. The remains of
a large fortress are yet seen amidst its thickets. " A thick
wall," as Burckhardt relates, " may be traced quite round
the summit ; on several parts of it are the remains of
bastions." Many arches are yet unbroken, covering vaulted
chambers, some of which are very large. This fortress,
besieged like all others in the land, could not resist the
power of the Romans ; but arched chambers of its towers,
level with the ground, or overgrown with wood, are still for
dens, where wild boars and other wild animals abound.
Not a man lives near it, though its fertile summit is covered
with foundations of walls, and heaps of hewn stones, where
foxes have their holes, and wild beasts their dens.
Whether on the tops of mountains or in the plains, in
inland regions or on the sea-shore, the fortresses of the
land are now strong in nothing but in illustration of the
word of the Lord of Hosts to whom power belongs. Foes
often severally possessed them of old ; and for ages they
were scenes of ceaseless encounters, and not unfrequently of
sieges for months or for years. Many a city were the
strongholds of Palestine erected to secure ; and many an
assailant did they defy. Each believer may now appropriate
them ; and what they were not in war they may prove in
argument, impregnable and unassailable in defence of that
word which now stamps them as its own, and which, through
the Spirit that laid on them their burdens which brought them
to ruin, is mighty to the pulling down of greater strongholds
than were they.
At the base of the mountains of Samaria " lie the huge
teUs (heaps) of Kaimun, el-Lejjun, and Tannuk, marking

148 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
the spots, where in times of old, stood the key-fortresses
of the mountains of Ephraim, and also of the plain of
Esdraelon."1 "I saw a huge tell, covered over with ruins,
and the fragment of an ancient aqueduct, that had been sup
ported on arches. I asked Abu Monsur, the name of the
tell," continues M. Van de Velde, " and the answer was,
' Haida Dothan,' (that is Dothan.) " " The decay of the
Jewish fortifications, and their being replaced by those of
the middle ages, which, in their turn, have been thrown
down, we find to have been the case almost all over Pales
tine."2 The fortress has ceased from Ephraim.
The daguerreotype may here supply, on this theme,
another and concluding illustration, — where art had once
its triumph in another way, and Herod in a single spot set
such a barrier to the ocean as can still withstand it, and
erected towers which have fallen before the word of Him
who set the sand on every shore to stay its proudest waves.
Buried as is the royal city of Ccssarea, enough of its
harbour alone yet remains to show how princely that city
was, when exalted unto heaven higher than was its
tributary Capernaum. The original construction of the
port was a vaunted triumph of ancient art, that did honour
to a king who bore the name of Great. Immense stones
above fifty feet long, eighteen broad, and nine deep —
some less but others larger — were laid down to the depth
of twenty fathoms, for the construction of a mole, whose
width above the water was two hundred feet, The
seaward half was denominated the first breaker of the
waves. On the other, towers were erected, more celebrated
than that of Strabo, which previously occupied the site of
Caesarea. Of these, the largest, a splendid work, bore the
name of the Tower of Drusus, in honour of that son-
in-law of Caesar. Though now there be no towers to
1 Van de Velde, vol. i. p. 352. = Ibid. 364, 367.

RUINED FORTRESSES. 149
defend the harbour, and no city to need their defence, and
the only export from the tenantless Caesarea be, like that
of Athlite, stones from its ruins, yet so solid was the
structure of the mole, that, after having been lashed for
eighteen hundred years by the tempestuous ocean, the line
of it still divides the smooth water from the broken waves,
which, beyond it, on both sides, are only stayed upon the
beach. But above the level of the water every structure
is either vanished or broken ; and the tumbled masses on
the remaining tower, which bounded the harbour on the
south, indicate its fall from the ruthless violence of man
or storms of war, rather than from those of the ocean.
The ruin, as in the plate, now stands as the only repre
sentative of the Tower of Drusus; but built as it partly
is, as a narrow inspection may show, on prostrate columns,
that may have changed their places from the portico of a
palace or a temple to the buried base of a tower, a later
construction than that by Herod is denoted, and a renewed
proof is thus given that tower after tower has there fallen,
while the hidden base of the mole beneath the waves has
remained comparatively entire. The tower exists not, to
stand another shock of war, though the break-water
remains to allay the fury of the waves. Caesarea is now
the abode of wild beasts alone. But though the truth be
clear to the eye, that, even as affecting the strongest
bulwarks, destruction has come upon destruction, till over
the forts and towers the word of the Lord is perfect
work, yet the same Divine testimony bears that the time
cometh when " violence shall no more be heard in thy
land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but
thou shalt call thy walls Salvation and thy gates Praise."1
The farther prospect which prophecy opens up, even from
ruined towers and fallen fortresses, and harbours, which
¦ Isa. Ix. 18.

150 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
like the cities may yet be repaired, is that of a time
when such defences shall not be needed, even as the fact is
clear that men have resorted to such bulwarks in vain.
Fortresses have ceased; but the word that foretold their
destruction does not fail. They are for dens, — -not for
ever, without a limit to the time — but until the Spirit
be poured upon us from on high, — then judgment shall
dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in
the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be
peace ; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and
assurance for ever.1 In the first verse of the same chapter
it is written of Him of whom all the prophets testified,
"Behold a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes
shall rule in judgment." Jesus was sent by Pilate to
Herod ; but it may be seen how the proudest tower of
that monarch has fallen before the word of the Lord by
his prophets, and like his city and his kingdom lay
within a higher jurisdiction than his own. And the utter
destruction of many strongholds is a confirmation of the
promise to which it points, " In that day shall this song
be sung in the land of Judah ; Salvation will God appoint
for tvalls and bulwarks.- — Trust ye in the Lord for ever ;
for i/n the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength : for he
bringeth down them that dwell on high ; the lofty city he
layeth it low ; he layeth it low even to the ground; he bringeth
it even to the dust.2
Such of old were the cities and the strongholds in the
land of Israel; and, according to the word that comprehen
sively and indiscriminately fell upon them all, — such are
they now. Their progressive desolation, perfected at last
to the prescribed degree, the author has traced at length in
other pages 8 — limiting these imperfect notices to existing
1 Isa. xxxii. 14-17. • Isa. xxvi. 1, 4, 5.
3 The Land of Israel, p. 164-384.

HAZOR. 151
facts ; of many of which, besides other testimonies, he can
now speak as an eye-witness. Cumulative as the evidence
is, it becomes the more complete, the more it is searched
into; and little else than summary as is the needful notice
of the promiscuous desolation that has come over the cities
of the land, the few whose burdens bear their names, as
significantly and emphatically show the effect of every vision.
Hazor shall be a dwelling for dragons, and a desola
tion for ever; there shall no man abide there, nor any
son of man dwell in it.1 In previous editions of this
treatise, the author could not adduce any illustration of this
prediction, after having long sought in vain for any recog
nition or identification of the city itself, either by historians
or travellers, except the vague, and therefore unsatisfactory
as indefinite notice by Burckhardt, who had heard of, but
had not seen, "the ruins of a city called Hazouri." Yet
forgotten and unknown for many ages as it had been, it
was once the capital of kingdoms. Its earliest history,
from the first conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, and its
latest, as desolate to this hour, are alike recorded in the
Book of the Lord. Joshua took Hazor, and smote the king
thereof with the sword; for Hazor beforetime ivas the head
of all those kingdoms 2 — of Canaan. But when the chil
dren of Israel again and again did evil in the sight of the
Lord, He sold them into the hand of Jabin, king of Canaan,
who reigned in Hazor, when the enemies of Israel had re
possessed their metropolis. Sisera was the captain of his
host. He had nine hundred chariots of iron; and twenty
years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel.3 Hazor
was one of the cities of the tribe of Naphtali. Separated
as it was, in its fate, from the other cities at the first —
burned and utterly destroyed by Joshua, while of the cities
1 Jer. xlix. 33. 2 Josh. xi. 10. 3 Judges iv. 2, 3.

152 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.

that stood still in their strength, Israel burned none of them,
save Hazor only 1 — it is also so singled out, by a special
judgment, from among many more, which pass unnamed
under the general sentence of desolation, .that its name, like
that of Sisera of old, may be taken up in a triumphal song,
such as, in prophetic truth, shall yet be raised over all the
enemies of Israel.
"At the end of an hour and a half," east by south from
Paneas, on the route to Damascus, says Burckhardt, "we
came to Ain-el-Hazouri, a spring, with the tomb of Sheikh
Othman el-Hazouri just over it; to the north of it one hour
are the ruins of a city called Hazouri. The mountain here
is overgrown with oaks, but contains good pasturage. I
was told that in the Wady Kastebe, near the castle, (of
Paneas,) there are oak-trees more than sixty feet high. One
hour more brought us to the village of Djoubela," 2&c.
Such is the passing and hearsay notice given by one of
the most renowned and intelligent of modern travellers, of
that city which was anciently the head of the kingdoms of
Canaan. The writer is not aware that it is even men
tioned by any other traveller since the days of Brocardus
(Burchardt), in the thirteenth century, who speaks of its
ruins, but did not visit them. It is a desolation. And
that predicted word has so faUen on it now, as it thus
seems to have lain on it long, that but for the prophecy
thereby confirmed, its ruins scarcely demand the notice of
the traveller, to turn him aside from his path though in
search of ruins, and though those that still bear its ancient
name are very near to the route, as much trodden as most
in the land, from Paneas to Damascus, by which many
European travellers have passed. Such is the unregarded
desolation now of the metropolis of the Canaanites, against
which, as against them, the word of the Lord had gone
1 Josh. xi. 13. " Burckhardt's Syria, p. 44.

HAZOR. 153
forth; and thus unknown it still might lie, for any other
interest it now possesses, did not prophecy alone recall it
from obhvion, to show what desolation the Lord hath
wrought upon a city first spoken of in Scripture as the
head of the kingdoms of Canaan.
The name Hazour is well known at Paneas. It desig
nates the ruins; Ain-Hazour, the fountain of Hazour;
and Djebel-Hazour, the hill of Hazor. The ruins are
not, as stated to Burckhardt, an hour's distance from the
spring; but comparatively near it, on the opposite side of
a grove of noble oaks, such as scarcely any spot in England
could show. The sheikh with whom he journeyed was on
his way to Damascus; and, perhaps, wished not to be stayed
on his journey by the idle curiosity of a traveller inquisitive
about ruins, who, he may have thought, would have grudged
an hour, but not, like himself, a few minutes, to look on
fallen Hazor. He was the sheikh of the village of Paneas,
within whose bounds the ruins lie ; but in the desolate
remains of Hazor he had nothing to show or boast of, in his
estimation, worthy of the delay of a quarter of an hour.
From that capital Jabin its king descended with his con
federates to the waters of Merom, Lake Houle, or the Lacus
Samachonitis, "and these kings pitched there together to
fight against Israel."1 Josephus in like manner fixes its
site, in stating that Jabin went forth from the city of Asor,
which is situated above the Lake Semechonitis.2 The tra
veller, on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus, ascends
from the waters of Merom to Paneas, and from thence ascends
to Ain Hazour, and he needs but to turn aside a little way
to see, when pointed out to him, the ruins that still bear the
name of Hazour. The name remains, but the city is no
1 Joshua xi. 5.
2 "Ovtos yap ef Acrtipov iro\eus op/ia/xevos: dvrv 8"virepiceiTai ttjs Xe/j.exwnT'^os
Kip-vns. Is (Jabinus) ex urbe Asoro ortus ; hsec vero sita est super Semechonitidem
lacum. Jos. Antiq. lib. v. c. v. § 1.

154 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
more, and literally, as the word of the Lord revealed the
existing fact, though long unknown in other lands, no man
abides there, nor does a son of man dwell in it. Its site is
nearly midway between one poor village and another, that
are about eight or nine miles apart. The fountain of Hazor
now waters only a tomb. The city that was the head of
kingdoms is a desolation; and now can only vie with the
most complete ruins. Habitations for men there are none ;
and no man there occupies the poorest hovel, such as often
rest on other ruins. Those of Hazor consist of the founda
tions of buildings, and heaps of stones spread over a consi
derable space, lying loosely together, and in some places
thrown up into long lines, or dykes, full of holes, into which
any reptiles may creep. Lizards may be seen every where,
in great numbers, throughout the land. And purposely
guarding against a leading question, and without speaking
of serpents, the writer asked an old man, who left his flock
at a short distance and came to him amidst the heaps,
whether he ever saw any lizards running into the holes.
He answered in the affirmative : and of his own accord
added, that there were many serpents also, of which he men
tioned three different kinds, of one of which the bite is
death. He affirmed that he had himself seen some large
serpents; and when asked if he had seen any as large as a
stick which the author had in his hand, he held up his own
wand, six feet in length, and said that he had seen some
larger than it. He persisted in the assertion that there
were many serpents that had their holes in the ruins ; but
when questioned, as a test of his veracity, about other
animals, he stated, with seeming candour, that he had never
seen any scorpions there. It is now obvious to any one who
beholds them, that the stones of Hazor now lie, as if placed
and fitted for being — what that city was to become — a
dwelling for serpents.

HAZOR. 155
iVo man shall abide there; nor any son of man dwell im
it. Not a human habitation is near it ; and situated as it
is on the lower skirts of Hermon, the Bedouins do not there
pitch their tents, as in the plains. No natural cause could
be assigned for the completion of this wondrous prediction.
The site was well fitted for the capital of Canaan ; and the
"host of Hazor," of which Sisera was the captain, has no
mean place in Scriptural history. In the approach to it
from Paneas, we repeatedly plucked, while seated on horse
back, the flowers of myrtles, which, in their great abundance,
perfumed the air; and woodbines, mint, thyme, hollies, and
oleanders added to its fragrance, or adorned the wilderness.
Near to the ruins, and not in the bottom of a valley but on
the top of a hill, are stately oaks that would add to the
grandeur of any park in England — four of which we
measured from eleven feet and a half to upwards of thirteen
feet in circumference — the branches of one of them extend
ing seventy-four feet from the opposite extremities. The
heights of Jebel Hazour are for the most part covered with
thorns, and trees or bushes of the quercus ilex (oak) inter
spersed with roses, many prickly plants, varieties of thistles,
one of them, together with a species of very high broom,
distinguished by its beautiful yellow flowers. These, with
some partial cultivation, show how plentifully industry might
there reap its reward, in the environs of a city now itself a
desolation. But while many citizens of modern towns
court in other lands the shade of humbler trees, and are often
crowded beneath them, there is not one inhabitant of that
city now to rest under the lofty and umbrageous oaks of
Hazor, or to drive a wolf from the fountain, or a serpent
from its dwelling. There are other cities in the land once
subject to that head of the kingdom, that still have men to
dwell in them, the city that went out by a thousand may
yet have a hundred left, and that which went out by a hun-

156 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
dred may count ten. Paneas, often taken and often de
molished, has yet at least its twenty houses and its hundred
inhabitants ; and a large village still subsists on the nearest
border of the marshy and pestiferous plain of Houle. But
the doomed capital of Canaan, though rebuilt by Solomon,
with its fountain still flowing pure as ever, its shady oaks,
its rich and partly cultivated soil, and its pure air perfumed
with the scent of Lebanon, is a desolation, a dwelling of
serpents, and not of a single human being; no man abides
there; neither does a son of man dwell in it.
" The name of the city of Jabin, Hazor, still lingers in
the slopes of Hermon." " High on the rocky slopes above
the town (Ccesarea Philippi, or Paneas), lingers the name
of Hazor, the capital of Northern Palestine. A few rude
stone blocks on a rocky eminence mark the probable site of
the capital of Jabin, and close beside it still remains a deep
circular grove of ilexes, — perhaps the best likeness which
now exists of the ancient groves, so long identified with the
Canaanitish worship of Astarte."1
Bethel, too, forms a theme, as it also had a distinguished
place, among the cities of Israel. Though it was called
Bethel, or the house of God, by the pilgrim father of the
tribes of Israel, and though to him Jehovah said, I am the
God of Bethel, yet that city became a chief seat of idolatry
under the king of Israel. Jeroboam made two calves of
gold, and said, Behold thy gods, 0 Israel ; and lie set up the
one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan. He raised an
altar, and placed in Bethel priests of the high places, and
sacrificed unto the calves that he had made. Bethel became
a Beth-aven, or house of idols. But the word of the Lord
went forth against it. — I will visit the altars of Bethel: and
the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the ground.
1 " Stanley's Sinai and Palestine," p. 383, 389.— There are other rains in Palestine
which bear the name of Hazor ; but the site of Hazor above described alone corres
ponds with that of Hazor, according to Joshua and Josephus.

CAPERNAUM. 157
And I will smite the winter-house with the summer-house ;
and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses
shall have an end, saith the Lord.1 Seek ye me, and ye
shall live : but seek not Bethel. — Bethel shall come to nought.2
Long unknown, and if sought for, sought in vain, Bethel, to
which idolatrous Israelites resorted, has of late years been
identified with the ruins of Beitin. They He in heaps. The
great houses have an end. The ruined walls of a Greek
church stand " within the foundations of a much larger and
earlier edifice built of large stones, part of which have been
used for erecting the later structure. The broken walls of
several other churches are also to be distinguished." The
rest of the ruins are undistinguishable heaps. There were
altars at Bethel, not only in Israelitish but in Christian
times, as they are still to be seen in other ruined churches
in the land. But the thorn and the thistle have come up
on their altars, as on those of Beth-aven, where no summer-
house or winter-house, or any other remains, and the travel
ler " can find nothing to take away but a stone," where
houses of ivory, that betokened pride, have perished, and
thistles flourish amidst the ruins of Bethel, which has come
to nought. " The foundations of houses, loose building
stones, and fragments of walls, are to be seen in abundance ;
the traces also of Christian churches." 3 " Beth-el, ' the
house of God,' has become literally Beth-aven, ' the house of
nought.'"4 " Jesus upbraided the cities wherein most of his mighty
works were done, because they repented not : Woe unto thee
1 Amos iii. 14, 15. 2 Amos v. 4, 5. " Van de Velde, vol. ii. p. 283.
4 Stanley, p. 220. — In one of those sepulchres, says Mr Stanley, "lay side by side
the bones of the two prophets — the aged prophet of Bethel, and his brother and
victim, the 'man of God from Judah,' and they were left to repose. From that
time (?) the desolation foretold by Amos and Hosea has never been disturbed ; and
Beth-el, ' the house of God, ' has become literally Beth-aven, ' the house of nought. ' "
In Bethel there were Christian churches ; and yet the prophecy is literally true at
this day : Because they have changed the ordinances, and broken the everlasting
covenant, therefore hath the curse devoured the land, &c.

158 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
Chorazin ! woe unto thee Bethsaida ! for if the mighty
works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and
Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and
ashes. — And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto
heaven shalt be brought down to hell."1 Capernaum was on
the sea-coast, or on the shore of the lake of Tiberias, in the
border of Zabulun and Nephthalim. Exalted as it was into
heaven, there is not now a city, nor village, nor ruined
town which now bears its name ; and hence its site has not,
with absolute certainty, been ascertained. For centuries
past it has generally been identified with the ruins of Tell-
hum, which lie on the sea-coast or shore, near to the northern
extremity of the lake. In the land itself they are still said
to be the ruins of Capernaum, though bearing another name.
They form no inconsiderable field of ruins, at least a mile
and a half in circumference. There is not a single dwelling
or inhabitant on the desolate and deserted spot. Founda
tions of buildings, fallen walls, and heaps of stones, now
cover the space where once stood a town. Its ancient houses
are now strewed in promiscuous ruin upon the ground. The
walls of a small ruined building are alone erect ; but they
pertained not, as they now stand, to the ancient city, for
they have been raised from older ruins, as columns and
pilasters imbedded in their structure, plainly show. There
is not a house that has not been brought down to hades, as
the original bears, or to utter destruction. All have ceased
to exist. Not far from the only unfallen ruin are the
prostrate ruins of an edifice, which Dr Robinson well
describes, and of which he states that, "for expense of
labour and ornament, it surpasses anything we had yet
seen in Palestine. The extent of the foundations of this
structure is no longer definitely to be made out. We
measured one hundred and five feet along the northern wall,
1 Matt. xi. 20-23.

CAPERNAUM. 159
and eight feet along the western, — perhaps this was their
whole length. Within the space thus enclosed, and just
around, are strewed, in utter confusion, numerous columns
of compact limestone, with beautiful Corinthian capitals,
sculptured entablatures, ornamental friezes, and the like.
The pedestals of the columns are still in their place, though
somewhat overturned and removed. The columns are large,
but of regular length. Here we found for the first time,
the singularity of double columns ; that is, two attached
shafts, with capitals and base, cut from the same solid block
— several blocks of stone are nine feet long, by half that
width, and of considerable thickness, on one side of which
are sculptured panels with ornamental work, now defaced.
The whole edifice must have been of an elegant structure —
the confusion is too great and hopeless to admit of any
certainty as to the character of the building."1 Such now
is the long-reputed site of Capernaum, — and doubtless of a
city in which Jesus preached and did many mighty works,
— and such, so far as can be discerned now, are the prostrate
ruins of its noblest edifice. — But the fact stated by Jose
phus that in his day a fountain called Capharnaoum (in
some MSS. Ka-n-apvaoy/j., Kaparnaoum) watered the plain of
Gennesareth, seems to justify the opinion of Baronius, and
others, that the town had hence its name, and was situated
there. The ancient names both of the fountain and of the
city, so far as can with certainty be known, have perished,
and Capernaum, under its own name, has been sought for
in vain, as if it had gone down to hades. The copious
fountain of Ain-el-Tin, beside the ruined Khan Minyeh, and
a low mound with ruins in the vicinity, have been con
jectured with seeming probability to be the fountain and the
site of Capernaum. If such it be, other memorials of the
lost city may be discovered amidst the adjoining heights, or
1 Robinson and Smith, vol. iii. pp. 298, 299.

160 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
the surrounding thickets, that to the passers-by have often
hid the fountain itself from view ; and clearer proof may
thereby be given that Capernaum has been thrust down
from a station well fitted for a paradise. Whether it stood
in the one place or the other, Capernaum has fallen as low
as any proud city can he.
While at Tell-Hum we asked an Arab soldier, who
accompanied us from Tiberias, if there were similar ruins,
or any others, in the neighbourhood, and he at once men
tioned Tell, on the Jordan, and Korazi. We then went to
a Bedouin, whom we saw at a short distance, and put to
him the same question. He immediately answered, "At
Ain Korazi," and pointed towards it in the same direction.
The one said it was an hour distant, the other " an hour
and a half." On reaching the ruins, three Zingaris, or
Gipsies, whose low tents were at a short distance, came
down with lebban, or sour milk, for sale. When questioned
as to the name of the ruins in the midst of which we were,
they answered with one voice, before the word was uttered
in their hearing, Korazi; and when interrogated anew, they
repeated it emphatically, with visible expressions of surprise
at our seeming doubts. There seems no reason for ques
tioning that Korazi is the Chorazin of Scripture, in which it
is not said to stand on the shore of the lake of Tiberias, as
Capernaum and Bethsaida are. We reached it in fifty-five
minutes from the chief ruin of TeU-Hum, from three to four
miles distant. It lies almost directly to the west of the
point where the Jordan flows into the lake. It retains the
name; and is known by it still among the inhabitants of
the country around, and as we repeatedly inquired, especi
ally at Safet, by no other. The name, as pronounced, was
there written in Arabic, in the author's note-book, by an
intelligent native of the country, Korazi. It was doubtless,
he said, the Chorazin of Scripture.

CHORAZIN. 1 6 1
Korazee, of which not a house now stands, consists of fallen
walls lying in heaps, of no defined form, intermixed with lines
of ruined buildings, and some squares whose form is still entire,
filled with ruins. The remains of huts which have been
built in the midst of previous ruins, and formed out of them,
disfigure in many places the structure of the original build
ings, so as to render it untraceable. As in Teh-Hum, several
pedestals of columns retain their position, but the shafts are
levelled with the ground and intermingled with the fallen
dwellings. Many of the stones, either fixed in the remnants
of the walls or fallen, are from three to five feet long ; and
others longer. In general, like those of Tell-Hum, they
are only roughly cut. The most noticeable objects in pros
trate Chorazin are the remains of a building formed of large
hewn stones, with many lying in masses ; — another ruin,
the walls of which, still standing, built of hewn stone
roughly cut and partly corroded, are well coated in the in
side with plaster, which still partly adheres to them without ;
— two tops of niches, of the shell pattern, very entire, and
beautifully cut, finely arched, and figured on the edges ; —
and, also prostrate on the ground, two well cut and orna
mented upper lintels, which once covered the door-ways, six
and eight feet wide, which seem to show that houses which
were not lowly, have been thrust clown to the dust, — ¦
'and under which may have passed some of the men that
brought the word of woe from the lips of Jesus on impenitent
Chorazin, now without a house or an inhabitant though
Tyre and Sidon have their dwellers still.
It is a desolate place, as it has a cheerless look. No
plaster now covers its black stones as they he upon the
ground. A small field of tobacco, amidst the ruins, was the
only sign of industry about it : and, though in a hilly
region, a few poor tents were the only dwellings near it.
Its ruins are at least a mile in circumference, possibly more :
11

162 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
for covered as they are with thistles, rank weeds, and a
few wild figs — a token of times long past — its site, at a
short distance, is scarcely distinguishable from its desolate
vicinity. Bethsaida of Galilee, that stood like Capernaum on the
shore, may yet be discovered, if its ruins have not perished,
and its name be not lost. Bethsaida, on the eastern bank
of Jordan, where some of Christ's miracles were wrought,
has been known ere now to have extensive ruins at el Tell
— but tents are the chief dwellings of those who now pas
ture their flocks around it.
On the west borders of the lake of Tiberias in the land
of Galilee, the cities in which Jesus did mighty works, and
yet they repented not, are no more. And the only village
that retains an inhabitant, — though it has not escaped the
curse which the last word of the Old Testament dropped
upon the land, if it would not hear the Messenger of the
Lord, — is that of Magdala, which gave her surname to a
great sinner, who became a great penitent and loved the
Saviour much ; and who, having washed his feet with her
tears and wiped them with the hair of her head, has given
that name to many an asylum throughout the world ;
while Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum which was
exalted unto heaven in its pride, have, as cities, long
passed into utter ruin and oblivion. Mighty works of
Jesus were done in them : and his word, as mighty, rests
upon them still. They have been made to hear it ; though
they would not listen in faith to the gracious words that
proceeded out of his mouth, nor regard his upbraiding
because of their impenitence. But they are their own
witnesses of their woe, as He denounced it ; and they show
that his words, however disregarded, do not pass away.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 163
SECTION III.
DESOLATION OF THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
And your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.
Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth
desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land: even then shall the
land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths, etc.1 A single reference
to the Mosaic law respecting the Sabbatical year, renders
the full import of this prediction perfectly intelligible and
obvious. " But in the seventh year shaU be a Sabbath of
rest unto the land ; thou shalt neither sow thy field nor
prune thy vineyard." And the land of Judea hath
even thus enjoyed its Sabbaths so long as it hath lain
desolate. In that country where every spot was culti
vated hke a garden by its patrimonial possessor, where
every httle hill rejoiced in its abundance, where every
steep acclivity was terraced by the labour of man, and
where the very rocks were covered with thick mould, and
rendered fertile; even in that self-same land, with a tem
perature the same 2 and with a soil unchanged save only by
neglect, a dire contrast is now and has for a lengthened
period of time been displayed by fields untilled and unsown,
and by waste and desolated plains. Never since the ex
patriated descendants of Abraham were driven from its
borders, has the land of Canaan been so " plenteous in
goods," or so abundant in population as once it was; never,
as it did for ages unto them, has it vindicated to any other
people a right to its possession, or its own title of the land
of promise; it has rested from century to century; and while
that marked, and stricken, and scattered race, who possess
' Lev. xxvi. 33, 34.
2 See Brewster's Philosophical Journal, No. xvi. p. 227.

1 64 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
the recorded promise of the God of Israel as their charter to
its final and everlasting possession, still " be in the land of
their enemies, so long their land lieth desolate." There
may thus almost be said to be the semblance of a sympa
thetic feeling between this bereaved country and banished
people, as if the land of Israel felt the miseries of its absent
children, awaited their return, and responded to the un
dying love they bear it, by the refusal to yield to other
possessors the rich harvest of those fruits, with which, in
the days of their allegiance to the Most High, it abund
antly blessed them. And striking and peculiar, without
the shadow of even a semblance upon earth, as is this
accordance between the fate of Judea and of the Jews, it
assimilates as closely, (and, may we not add, as miracu
lously?) to those predictions respecting both, which Moses
uttered and recorded ere the tribes of Israel had ever set a
foot in Canaan. The land shall be left of them, and shall
enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them.1
To the desolate state of Judea, compared with what it
was, every traveller bears witness. The prophetic malediction
was addressed to the mountains and the hills, to the rivers
and to the valleys; and the beauty of them all has been
blighted. Where the inhabitants once dwelt in peace, each
under his own vine, and under his own fig-tree, the tyranny
of the Turks, and the perpetual incursions of the Arabs, the
last of a long list of oppressors, have spread one wide field
of almost unmingled desolation. The plain of Esdraelon,
naturally most fertile, its soil consisting of " fine rich black
mould," 2 bounded by Carmel, Gilboa, Little Hermon,
Mount Tabor, and the hills of Nazareth, and so extensive
as to cover about three hundred square miles, is a solitude,8
almost entirely deserted.4 South of Hebron, through hills
1 Lev. xxvi. 43. 2 General Straton's MS. Travels.
3 Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 497. Maundrell'3 Travels, p. 95.
4 Burckhardt 's Travels in Syria, pp. 334, 342.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 1 6 0
and valleys of Judah, and the extensive plain of Beersheba,
a day's journey may be passed without seeing a cultivated
field, except perhaps a spot scratched by the wretched
plough of the Bedouins. The country is continually over
run with rebel tribes; the Arabs pasture their cattle upon
the spontaneous produce of the rich plains with which it
abounds.1 Every ancient landmark is removed. " The art
of cultivation," says Volney, " is in the most deplorable
state, and the countryman must sow with the musket in
his hand; and no more is sown than is barely necessary for
subsistence." " Every day I found fields abandoned by the
plough."2 In describing his journey through Galilee, Dr
Clarke remarks, that the earth was covered with such a
variety of thistles, that a complete collection of them would
be a valuable acquisition to botany.3 Six new species of
that plant, so significant of natural fertility and existing
desolation, were discovered by himself in a scanty selection.
It is needless to multiply quotations to prove the desolation
of a country which the Turks have possessed, and which the
Arabs have plundered for ages. But evidence may here be
adduced from the Official Report of a Commissioner of the
British Government on the Commercial Statistics of Syria,
which was presented to both Houses of Parhament by com
mand of Her Majesty (Lond. 1840). "The agricultural
produce of Syria is far less than might have been expected
from the extensive tracts of fertile lands, and the favourable
character of the climate. In the districts where hands are
found to cultivate the fields, production is large, and the
return for capital is considerable ; but the want of popula
tion for the purposes of cultivation is deplorable. Regions
of the highest fertility remain fallow, and the traveller passes
over contiguous leagues of the richest soil, which is wholly
1 Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 484, 491.
2 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 413. Volney 's Ruins, c. xi. p. 7.
» Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 451.

166 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
unproductive to man."1 Regions of the highest fertility lie
fallow, or, in other words, the land rests and enjoys its Sab
baths, and lieth desolate without its ancient inhabitants,
who are still scattered throughout the world in the lands of
their enemies. The land mourns and is laid waste, and each
stranger from a far land now sees what the prophet saw in
vision — 2" beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness}
While eye-witnesses in modern times have thus borne
ample, uniform, and decisive testimony to the general desola
tion of Judea, yet such is the natural fertility of the land,
that a temporary respite from predatory assaults, even under
the penalty of grievous exactions and oppressive bondage,
leads, on the part of the miserable peasantry, to a more
extended though not improved cultivation of the lands which
environ their miserable villages ; and, as described by differ
ent travellers at different times, the same spot may assume
a somewhat varied aspect. But the general desolation
abides unchanged ; every prophetic characteristic remains :
and each place, when named, preserves its peculiar prophetic
features. The cultivation is everywhere wretched. And
though an extensive range of ripened grain may in some
places present to view, as often witnessed by the writer, a
seemingly rich prospect, which, on glancing over its golden
surface at a distance, the yellow ears overtopping the weeds,
gives promise of a rich harvest ; yet, in the plains of Judea,
the shocks, as in our less fertile soil and far colder clime,
fall not heavy into the hands of the reaper. For on closer
inspection the ranker weeds are but ill concealed ; the grain
is often reduced to less than half of what it seemed; and
not unfrequently, whenever the cropped ears of the thin
barley had been removed, a field of thistles appeared in
their stead, covering the ground so closely that they formed
the most abundant and seemed the only crop.
1 Dr Bowring's Report on Syria, p. 9. 2 Jer. iv. 26.

DESOLATION OF- THE LAND. 167
Of the mountains of Judea it may be said, that they
have been always waste ; and they specially have been a
derision. At first sight they seem to merit it. They are
bleak and bare. Their aspect, as they rise naked from the
plain, is that of dreary desolation, if not of irreclaimable
barrenness. The marvel is, that they should ever have
formed a large portion of a glorious land, or that those hills
should have rejoiced on every or on any side, on which a
solemn stillness and gloomy sadness now rest. The Chris
tian or the pilgrim Jew may well ask himself, in doubt,
Can these be the mountains of Israel? And the sceptic
may deceitfully think to justify himself in the averment,
apparently warranted by pointing to the desolate hills of
Judea, if such was the seat of the glory of Solomon, surely
the record of that glory is a fable. Assuredly the land has
another and opposite aspect and character now from that
which it bore, when it was a good land, a land of wheat,
and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates ; a
land of oil-olive, and honey ; a land wherein Israel did
eat bread without scarceness and lacked not anything,
Deut. viii. 7-9. The contrast is so great and dire, that
some visible demonstration may be needful to sustain a
faltering faith, and refute an apparently rational incredulity.
But the unquestioned and unquestionable fact is, as pre
dicted, that the mountains of Israel are waste and desolate.
And the more nearly they are seen, the more manifest is
the proof, and the more astonishing is the fact, that so
marvellous a desolation has come over them. Approaching
their base the prospect becomes more saddening ; and, look
ing from beneath, nothing in many places but the stony
fronts of the empty terraces, successively receding and
ascending, is to be seen, desolation having trodden on
every step. And the frowning mountains look down on
those who pass beneath, as if they angrily responded to the

168 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
reproaches which have been cast upon them, and uttered
forth the judgments which they bear. Still nothing can
be more palpably manifest, than that the mountains have
been laid desolate, and that the time was when art, and
climate, and soil combined their utmost powers to adorn
and enrich them as a garden which the Lord had blessed.
And with a glance the wonder ceases, how they were of old
renowned for beauty and fertility ; and the more just asto
nishment cannot be repressed, how such extensive regions,
terraced all over, and ever ready for renewed cultivation,
could have lain desolate for so many generations, or how,
were the restraining cause removed, they could remain un
productive for a single year. Ascending on the way from
Gaza to Jerusalem, between two hills, so as to pass by the
lowest level, the writer counted on one of them sixty-seven
successive terraces, perfectly distinct, and in many places
complete. The whole scene around, in an extensive view,
gave similar demonstration of ancient glory and existing
desolation, the extreme contrast rendering each the more
astonishing. Hill after hill was lined throughout, from the
base to the summit, with terraces fading only in the dis
tance, generally uncovered now but by weeds and creeping
thorns, which rise not enough to hide the stony fronts which
of old were cut from the rock or built by man, to clothe
the mountains with vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates,
and olives, and other fruits, of which, but in isolated
spots often hid from the general view, not a vestige remains.
" The tangled and featureless hills of the lowlands of
Scotland and North Wales," says Mr Stanley, " are perhaps
the nearest likeness accessible to Englishmen, of the general
landscape of Palestine south of the- plain of Esdraelon.
Rounded hills .... their sides formed into concentric rings
of rock, which must have served in ancient times as supports
to the terraces, of which there are still traces to their very

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 169
summits; valleys, or rather the meetings of these gray
slopes with the beds of water-courses at their feet ; long
sheets of bare rock, laid like flagstones, side by side, along
the soil ; these are the chief features of the greater part of
the scenery of the historical parts of Palestine. . . . These
rounded hills, occasionally stretching into long undulating
ranges, are for the most part bare of wood." 1
I will give it into the hands of the strangers for a
prey, and to the wicked of ihe earth for a spoil. — The rob
bers shall enter into ib and defile it} Instead of abiding
under a settled and enlightened government, Judea has
been the scene of frequent invasions, "which have intro
duced a succession of foreign nations (despeuples Strangers)"3
" When the Ottomans took Syria from the Mamelouks, they
considered it as the spoil of a vanquished enemy. Accord
ing to this law, the hfe and property of the vanquished
belong to the conqueror. The government is far from dis
approving of a sj^stem of robbery and plunder which it finds
so profitable." 4
Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have
trodden my portion under foot} The ravages committed
even by hosts of enemies are in general only temporary; or
if an invader settle in a conquered country, on becoming
the possessor, he cultivates and defends it. And it is the
proper office of government to render life and property
secure. In neither case has it fared thus with Judea. But
besides successive invasions by foreign nations, and the
systematic spoliation exercised by a despotic government,
other causes have conspired to perpetuate its desolation, and
to render abortive the substance that is im, it. Among these
has chiefly to be numbered, its being literally trodden under
foot by many pastors. Volney devotes a chapter, fifty pages
1 Stanley, p. 137. 2 Ezek. vii. 21, 22. " Volney's Travels, vol. i. p. 356.
* Volney's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 370, 331. " Jer. xii. 10.

1 70 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
in length, to a description, as he entitles it, " of the pastoral
or wandering tribes of Syria," chiefly of the Bedouin Arabs,
by whom, especiaUy, Syria is incessantly traversed. " The
pachahcs of Aleppo and Damascus may be computed to con
tain about thirty thousand wandering Turkmen (Turkomans).
All then- property consists in cattle." In the same pachahcs,
the number of the Curds " exceeds twenty thousand tents
and huts," or an equal number of armed men. " The Curds
are almost everywhere looked upon as robbers. Like the
Turkmen, these Curds are pastors and wanderers.1 A third
wandering people in Syria are the Bedouin Arabs." 2 " It
often happens that even individuals, turned robbers in order
to withdraw themselves from the laws or from tyranny, unite
and form a little camp, which maintain themselves by arms,
and increasing, become new hordes and new tribes. We may
pronounce, that in cultivable countries the wandering life
originates in the injustice or want of policy of the govern
ment ; and that the sedentary and the cultivating state is
that to which mankind is most naturally inclined."3 " It
is evident that agriculture must be very precarious in such
a country, and that, under a government like that of the
Turks, it is safer to lead a wandering life, than to choose a
settled habitation, and rely for subsistence on agriculture." 4
" The Turkmen, the Curds, and the Bedouins, have no fixed
habitations, but keep perpetually wandering with their
tents and herds, in limited districts, of which they look
upon themselves as the proprietors. The Arabs spread over
the whole frontier of Syria, and even the plains of Pales
tine." 6 — Thus, contrary to their natural inchnation, the
peasants, often forced to abandon a settled life, and pastoral
tribes in great numbers, or many, and without fixed habita
tions, divide the country, as it were by mutual consent, and
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 370-375. 2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 377.
3 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 383. * Ibid. p. 387. 6 Ibid. pp. 367, 368.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 171
apportion it in limited districts among themselves by an
assumed right of property, and the Arabs, subdivided also
into different tribes, spread over the plains of Palestine,
" wandering perpetually," as if on very purpose to tread it
down. — What could be more unlikely or unnatural in such
a land ! yet what more strikingly and strictly true ! or how
else could the effect of the vision have been seen ! " Many
pastors have destroyed my vineyard ; they have trodden my
portion under foot." Volney's testimony might here suffice,
but a single illustration from a recent traveller in Bashan
may here be subjoined, where many might be added. As
seen and described by Mr Porter, at Kanawat in Jebel
Hauran, " the whole hill-sides around seemed suddenly filled
with life, and the glens and vales resounded with the cry of
the shepherds, and the bleatings of their vast flocks as they
led them off to pasture. — The shepherds had none of that
peaceful and placid aspect which is generally connected in
the mind with pastoral life and habits, they were all wild
and savage-looking, especially the Arabs. The equipment
of these men was in general very formidable. In addition
to the long gun, most of them carried a hght ornamented
battle-axe, while in the belt were pistols and daggers." 1
Ye shall be as a garden that hath no water.2 How long
shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither,
for the wickedness of them that dwell therein, ? 3 — " In aU
hot countries, wherever there is water, vegetation may be
perpetually maintained and made to produce an uninter
rupted succession of fruits to flowers, and flowers to fruit."
" The remains of cisterns are to be found (throughout Judea),
in which they collected the rain-water ; and traces of the
canals by which those waters were distributed on the fields.
—These labours necessarily created a prodigious fertility
1 Porter's Five Tears in Damascus, vol. ii. p. 100.
2 Isa. i. 30. 3 Jer. xii. 4. 4 Volney's Travels, vol. u. p. 359.

172 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
under an ardent sun, where a little water was the only
requisite to revive the vegetable world."1 Such labours,
with very slight exceptions, are now unknown. Judea is as
a garden that hath no water, and the herbs of every field
wither. " We see there none of that gay carpeting of grass
and flowers which decorate the meadows of Normandy and
Flanders, nor those clumps of beautiful trees which give
such richness and animation to the landscapes of Burgundy
and Brittany. — The land of Syria has almost always a dusty
appearance." 2 Had not these countries been ravaged by
the hand of man, they might perhaps at this day have been
shaded with forests. That its productions do not correspond
with its natural advantages, is less owing to its physical
than political state."3
In a dry season, or even soon after copious rains have
ceased, the unshaded and unwatered ground is speedily
scorched by the heat; in early summer, the herbs soon
wither, and the grass, wherever it grows, is dry. Through
out the land, grass or hay is never cut, that food for cattle
may be stored, and fresh verdure clothe the ground; but
the herbs of every field wither, and hence, from the accom
plishment of this word, the dusty appearance of the land
of Syria, by which the sceptic characterises it, and, as he
weU may, sets up in contrast the gay carpeting of Nor
mandy. South of Hebron we passed, for a day's journey,
through withered herbs, chiefly a species of wild barley,
which covered the ground like a parched and stunted crop.
As in other places, we passed for many a mile along the
rich valley of the Jordan — which might well vie in its
produce with tropical climes — through withered thistles and
other herbs as dry,— though not far from its banks that are
fringed with verdant trees. " In returning from the Kalaat
1 Malte-Brun's Geography, vol. ii. pp. 150, 151.
* Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 359. s Ibid. pp. 359, 360.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 173
Haman," says Burckhardt, " I was several times reprimanded
by my guide, for not taking proper care of the tobacco that
fell from my pipe. The whole of ihe mountain, is thickly
covered with dry grass, which readily takes fire, and the
slightest breath of air instantly spreads the conflagration far
over the country, to the great risk of the peasant's harvest."
— " The Arabs who inhabit the valley of the Jordan, inva
riably put to death any person who is known to have been
even the innocent cause of firing the grass. One evening,
while at Tabaria, I saw a large fire on the opposite side of
the lake, which spread with great velocity for two days, tih
its progress was checked by the wady Feik."1 Contiguous
leagues of the richest soil, lying fallow in regions of the
highest fertility, though wholly unproductive to man, as
recorded in the Parliamentary Report, bear abundant proof,
that the land is as a garden that hath no water, that the
land mourns, and the herbs of every field do wither, for the
wickedness of them that dwell therein.
Sharon is like a wilderness; and Bashan and Carmel
shake off their fruits.2 No precise iUustration of these
predictions was given in several previous editions of this
treatise; but an extract from the work of a more recent
traveller may show how the celebrated plain of Sharon not
only partakes of the general desolation, as predicted, but
how it also bears witness to the word that has fallen upon
itself. " The plain of Sharon," says Mr Robinson, " cele
brated in Scripture for its fertility, and the beautiful flowers
that grow spontaneously from the soil, stretches along the
coast, from Gaza on the south to Mount Carmel in the
north, being bounded towards the east by the hills of Judea
and Samaria. The soil is composed of very fine sand,3 which,
1 Burckhardt, pp. 331, 332. 2 Isaiah xxxiii. 9.
3 In some places along the coast the sand from the sea-shore ha3 partially spread
over the borders of the plain and mingled with the soil. But like other plains of
Palestine, that of Sharon consists of rich as well as deep alluvial soil.

174 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
though mixed with gravel, appears extremely fertile, and
yet it is but partially cultivated, and still less inhabited.
On either side of the road ruined and abandoned villages
present themselves to the view of the disappointed traveller,
impressing him with a species of melancholy which he is
at a loss to account for, seeing no just cause for the existence
of such a state of things in a land ' so plenteous in goods,'
and so abundant in population as once it was. If he should
attribute it, as most likely he will, to the misrule of those
that govern, he may, after mature reflection, ask himself
the question: The judgments pronounced against the land,
have they yet received their full completion? And are not
its present rulers the visible instruments of those judgments?
' Your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it
is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.'"1 Having since
passed through Sharon from end to end, we may affirm,
from personal observation, that Sharon is a wilderness.
With very partial exceptions it is now abandoned to the
Bedouins, who in the present day pitch their tents near to
the sea-shore, as well as on the borders of the desert. In
an extensive view over the plain from elevated ground
beside the vihage of Mukhalid, not a village nor habitation
was to be seen, as far as the eye can reach, and before
arriving there from the north, not an inhabited vihage had
we passed or seen, for the distance, along the coast, of six
hours and a-half, or about twenty miles, though the ruined
capital of Herod lay in our path; and the -nearest in any
direction, we were told, is ten miles distant. But true it is
of Sharon, as of other plains, that, while strangers have
devoured it, and the wicked of the earth have made of it
a prey and a spoil, many pastors or herdsmen tread it
under foot, and have made the pleasant portion of the
Lord a desolate wilderness. We there saw nine or ten
1 Travels in Syria, by G. Robinson, Esq. vol. i. pp. 25, 26.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 175
flocks of cattle and sheep, some of which were large, spread
over the nearest borders of the plain. The habitations of the
solitary village are wretched hovels, and the cattle pertaining
to it, far too few to depasture the adjacent plain, where
the flocks of the wandering Arabs freely roam. But deserted
and desolate as it lies, the wilderness retains not a little
of the beauty of Sharon, ere, unsheltered as it is, it is scorched
by the summer sun, its grass withered and its flowers faded.
The ground is in many places covered with beautiful flowers.
About midway between Mukhalid and Jaffa, the borders of a
stream (the Phaalek) were extremely rich, after the earlier
rain, in wild spontaneous produce ; and vigorous plants
were matted together in impenetrable closeness and the
richest luxuriance. Yet even there desolation is still ad
vancing in unarrested progress; and one of its causes, not
overlooked in prophecy, may be witnessed in its defacing
and destructive effects, where the traveller seems to be
leaving a desolated plain for a rich orchard, or a shady
grove, or — what all the land shall yet be — a garden like that
of Eden.1 But on a closer inspection several of the trees
were withering away, but not from age. They had not
been scathed from the top by lightning; but, with less in
stantaneous but not less destructive efficacy, they had been
burned at the root by Bedouins. The lowest part of the
trunks, half through or more, had been turned into ashes,
and the trees were left standing to wither and die, tih the
hand could pull them down, or a blast lay them on the
ground, when their withered branches would be fitted for
the fires of the Bedouins, with the trunks, perhaps, of other
trees for their hearths. In some instances, the soil had been
partly scraped out beneath, to form hollows for the fire, as
seen by the uncovered and burned roots. While desolation
thus continues to spread over Sharon and other plains —
1 Ezek. xxxvi. 35.

176 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
where all manner of fruit-trees of old adorned and enriched
the land — the time is long past in which one generation
had to tell another of such judgments ere they came; but
how true as to the past, with such direful causes in opera
tion still, is the word of the Lord, whether figuratively or
literally, — a nation is come up upon my land — he hath
laid my vine waste, and barked my fig-tree: he hath made
it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are
made white. — The vine is dried up, and the fig-tree lan-
guisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and
the apple tree, even all the trees of the field are withered:
because joy is withered away from the sons of men.1 —
Numberless are the trees that have thus been withered,
till over extensive plains there is no fruit to be plucked from
a tree, and Bedouins have often far to wander ere they
pitch their tents near any trees that remain, not for fruit
to eat, but for branches to burn. Sharon is like a wilder
ness; And Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits. "The
oppressions of the government, on the one side, and those of
the Bedouins, on the other, have reduced the Fellah of the
Haouran (Bashan) to a state little better than that of the
wandering Arab. Few individuals, either among the Druses
or Christians, die in the same village in which they were
born. Families are continually moving from one place to
another; in the first year of their new settlement, the
sheikh acts with moderation towards them; but his vexa
tions becoming in a few years insupportable, they fly to
some other place; but they soon find that the same system
prevails over the whole country. — This continued wandering
is one of the principal reasons why no village in the Haouran
has either orchards or fruit-trees, or gardens for the growth
of vegetables. ' Shall we sow for strangers,' was the answer
1 Joel i. 6, 7, 12.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 1 77
of a Fellah, to whom I once spoke on the subject, and who
by the word strangers meant both the succeeding inhabit
ants, and the Arabs, who visit the Haouran in the spring
and summer."1 " Of the vineyards, for which Bozrah was
celebrated, and which are commemorated by Greek medals,
KOAflNIA BOCTPHO, not a vestige remains. There is scarcely
a tree in the neighbourhood of the town; and the twelve or
fifteen families who now (1812) inhabit it cultivate nothing
but wheat, barley, horse-beans, and a little dhourra. A
number of fine rose-trees grow wild among the ruins of the
town, and were just beginning to open their buds."2
Where wheat and barley lately grew, and celebrated vine
yards anciently flourished for ages, and fine rose-trees shoot
up wild as in a wilderness, among the ruins of the city that
was for ages the capital of the Haouran, no natural cause
exists to prevent the growth of fruit-trees, or diminish the
renown of vineyards as of old. But the word is that of the
God of nature, Bashan shall shake off its fruits. Yet He is
also the God of hope, to them that believe his word. And
while the fruitless Bashan is a witness to sceptics of its truth,
they who are not such may see in the roses that bloom over
the ruins of Bozrah, a token of the coming time — as a pro
phetic emblem of the fact, that the desert shall blossom as
the rose — when another word shall be fulfilled, and Israel
shall feed on Bashan.
Carmel, as well as Bashan, has heard the word of the
Lord. It was renowned, even among the mountains of
Israel, for its excellency, as denoted by its name, a fruitful
field. Such was its fruitfulness, and so close the thickets
on its top, that, as most forcibly indicating the impossibility
of the escape of any from the all-searching eye and righteous
judgments of the hving God, it is said, "though they dig
into heU, thence shall my hand take them; though they
* Burckhardt's Syria, p. 299. 2 Ibid. p. 236.
12

178 THE LAND OF ISRAEL
chmb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down; and
though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will
search them out thence," &c. — Amos ix. 2, 3. " The top
and sides of Carmel," says Lord Lindsay, " are covered with
shrubs and flowers, but quite bare of trees: a few olives
flourish at its foot, and on the lowest slopes, as if trying to
get up and invahdate the prophecy. The 'excellency of
Carmel' is indeed departed."1 "The view from here (the
summit of Carmel) is very grand, but somewhat saddening,
from the lonehness and want of cultivation that everywhere
meet the eye. ' The excellency of Carmel is ' indeed ' de
parted' — wide tracts of land, unchequered by a village; at
the base of the mountain a few bald corn-fields, and some
ohve and sycamore trees, compose the view."2 The land
has been smitten tih Sharon is a wilderness, and Carmel is
bare. From its summit and its sides, it has shaken off its
fruit, as the land shook off its people. As long as they be
in their enemies' land, so long does Carmel, as a portion of
their own, lie desolate. But if the time be not distant now
— as we think that there are many signs to show that it is
not — when ungodliness shall be turned away from Jacob;
and the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there
shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be
found, and the Lord will pardon those whom He will reserve
— then the excellency of Carmel shah return, and fruit-trees
may begin to creep up the hiU, not to invalidate, but, in
another manner and in other days, to substantiate prophecy,
for, in those days, and in that time, Israel, come again
to his habitation, shall feed on Carmel and Bashan}
The lambs feed after their manner, and the waste places
of the fat ones shall strangers eat. Josephus describes
Galilee, of which he was the governor, as " full of planta-
1 Lord Lindsay's Travels, vol. ii. p. 78.
2 The Crescent and the Cross, vol. ii. p. 119.
3 Rom. xi. 26. Jer. 1. 19, 20.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 179
tions of trees of all sorts, the soil universally rich and
fruitful, and all, without the exception of a single part,
cultivated by the inhabitants. Moreover," he adds, " the
cities lie here very thick, and there are very many villages,
which are so full of people by the richness of their soil, that
the very least of them contained above fifteen thousand
inhabitants."1 Such was Galilee, at the commencement of
the Christian era, several centuries after the prophecy was
delivered ; but now, " the plain of Esdraelon, and ah the
other parts of Galilee which afford pasture, are occupied by
Arab tribes, around whose brown tents the sheep and lambs
gambol to the sound of the reed, which at night-fall calls
them home."2 The wide undulations of the plain of Sharon
" are sprinkled with Bedouin tents, and vast flocks of
sheep." 3 The calf feeds and lies down amidst the ruins of
the cities, and consumes, without hindrance, the branches of
the trees ; and however changed may be the condition of
the inhabitants, the lambs feed after their manner, and,
while the land mourns, and the merry -hearted sigh, they
gambol to the sound of the reed. — There shall the calf feed,
and tlvere shall he lie down and consume ihe branches
thereof. When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken
off; the women come and set them on fire : for it is a
people of no understanding} The precise and complete
contrast between the ancient and existing state of Palestine,
as separately described by Jewish and Roman historians and
by modern travellers, is so strikingly exemplified in their
opposite descriptions, that in reference to whatever consti
tuted the beauty and the glory of the country, or the happi
ness of the people, an entire change is manifest, even in
minute circumstances. The universal richness and fruitful-
1 Josephus' Wars, book iii. chap. iii. § 2.
2 Schulze, quoted by Malte-Brun, vol. ii. p. 148.
3 Stanley, p. 256. * Isakh xxvii. 11.

180 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
ness of the soil of Galilee, together with its being " full of
plantations of all sorte of trees," are represented by Josephus
as " inviting the most slothful to take pains in its cultiva
tion." And the other provinces of the Holy Land are also
described by him as having " abundance of trees, full of
autumnal fruit, both that which grows wild and that which
is the effect of cultivation."1 Tacitus relates, that, besides
ah the fruits of Italy, the palm and balsam-tree flourished in
the fertile soil of Judea. And he records the great careful
ness with which, when the circulation of the juices seemed
to call for it, they gently made an incision in the branches
of the balsam, with a shell or pointed stone, not venturing
to apply a knife.2 No sign of such art or care is now to be
seen throughout the land. The balsam-tree has disappeared
where it long flourished ; and hardier plants have perished
from other causes than the want of due care in their cultiva
tion. And instead of relating how the growth of a delicate
tree is promoted, and the medicinal liquor, at the same time,
extracted from its branches, by a nicety or perfectness of
art worthy of the notice of a Tacitus, a different task has
fallen to the lot of the traveller from a far land, who
describes the customs of those who now dwell where such
arts were practised. " The olive-trees (near Arimathea) are
daily perishing through age, the ravages of contending
factions, and even from secret mischief. The Mamelouks
having cut down all the ohve-trees, for the pleasure they
take in destroying, or to make fires, Yaffa has lost its
greatest convenience." 3 Instead of " abundance of trees
being still the effect of cultivation," such, on the other hand,
has been the effect of these ravages, that many places in
Palestine are now " absolutely destitute of fuel." Yet in this
devastation, and in all its progress, may be read the literal
1 Josephus' Wars, book iii. chap. iii. sect. 4.
2 Taciti Hist. lib. v. cap. vi.
3 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 332, 333.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 181
fulfilment of the prophecy, which not only described the
desolate cities of Judea as a pasture of flocks, and as places
for the calf to feed and lie down, and consume the branches
thereof; but which, with equal truth, also declared, when
the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off; the
women come and set them on fire :
For it is a people of no understanding. " The most-
simple arts are in a state of barbarism. The sciences are
totally unknown.1
While such, in literal confirmation of the prophecy, is
the testimony of Volney, Burckhardt as unconsciously and
incidentally remarks, that such an undertaking as that of
clearing the rubbish which prevents water from flowing into
an ancient cistern, in order to render it useful to themselves,
is " an undertaking far beyond the views of the wandering
Arabs." The manner in which they destroy a whole tree
that the withered branches may be broken off and set on
fire, has been already noticed. And reckless as they are of
all but their immediate wants, many a goodly tree has thus
fallen, that the withered boughs might, night after night,
supply fuel for their fires, till no fruit or shelter be found on
the desolated spot ; and where such a practice prevails, the
bare desert is extended over other plains than that of
Sharon. But the Bedouins who kindle their fires at the
roots of the finest trees, are not the only inhabitants who
_ give this predicted proof, that the inhabitants of the land are
a people of no understanding. Near to the vihage of San-
dianeh, on the south-east base of the range of Carmel,
where, from the abundance of wood, the pruning-knife would
supply fuel for a far larger population, one of the finest
oaks, ten feet in circumference, had been burnt at the root,
around which lay some of the branches withering into
firewood. Close by the sources of the Jordan, as they
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 442.

182 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
gush copiously from the ground, amidst all but impenetrable
thickets of brambles, and other thorny plants, which a
little art would convert into heaps of brushwood, the writer
measured a magnificent oak, upwards of fifteen feet in
circumference, which was burnt close to the ground to the
depth of three feet and a half, or nearly from side to side;
and hence, though containing solid wood enough to floor a
mansion, was fast withering away, that its branches might
be broken off to form fires for worse than Goths who had
no sense to convert the noble tree to any better use, nor
ingenuity to form an axe to fell it, nor understanding or
taste to spare the finest oak that shaded the fountain of
Jordan; while in strange contrast, they let alone the briers
that flourish luxuriantly on the site of Dan, and that were
to come up upon the cities of Israel In the north of Syria
we saw thousands of pines that had been burnt at the root,
whose large and once lofty stems, that would well have
formed masts for many navies, were rotting on the ground,
after the branches had been broken off. Causes are thus
visible at this day, which, though originating in ignorance,
as well as in the ravages of contending factions and secret
mischief — solve the mystery of bare and desolated plains,
where even fruit-trees were proverbial for their abundance.
Judea, in the days of Josephus, had abundance of trees, and
was full of autumnal fruit. But now, with very limited
exceptions, its hills are bare; and branches are broken off
where trees are not suffered to grow to any height. On
his first visit to Jerusalem, the author, seeing several
women carrying on their heads loads of branches into that
city — where Solomon made cedars like the sycamores in
the valley for abundance — was informed, on questioning his
friend Mr Nicolayson, that such, except for ovens, was the
only fuel. On his second visit, on the way from Jerusalem
to Hebron, he met two women with loads of firewood burnt

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 183
at the ends and withered, who were fohowed by two men
with four asses similarly laden; and he passed, in some
places, many bushes of the evergreen oak, several of the
largest of which, the earliest prey, had been burnt at the
root, and the wood carried away; and the region that, with
partial exceptions, was stripped of its covering, seemed
to be spreading farther and farther from Jerusalem, as
from other villages in the land not yet desolated by the
Bedouins. Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and
briers, &c. Mohammedan destroyers of Syria, to whom it
was unlawful to drink " the fruit of the vine," caused the
vines to be rooted up, and way was thus made for thorns
and briers to replace them. Terraced hills that were pre
viously covered with the shadows of the vine, and dropped
down new wine, have now these base substitutes as their
only clothing, scarcely covering their nakedness. And the
time is come, and long has been, that every place where
there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings,
it is for briers and thorns. " The earth," says Volney,
"produces only briers and wormwood."1 A thorny shrub
(merar) abounds throughout the desolated hills and plains
of Palestine. Some of the former are so closely beset, in
many places, with thorns, that they can only be ascended
with great difficulty; and in many places, especially in the
richest watered spots, a profusion of matted thorny plants
present an impenetrable barrier : and briers sometimes
cannot be counted, where each of a thousand vines had once
its price. " The whole district of Tiberias," well adapted
for the cultivation of the vine, and embracing some of the
most fertile regions of Syria, is, in the words of Burckhardt,
"covered with the thorny shrub merar."2
Your highivays shall be desolate.3 The highways lie
1 Kuins, p. 9. 2 Burckhardt's Syria, p. 333. 3 Levit. xxvi. 22.

184 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
waste ; the wayfaring man ceaseth.1 So great must have
been the intercourse, in ancient times, between the populous
and numerous cities of Judea, and so much must that inter
course have been increased by the frequent and regular
journeyings, from every quarter, of multitudes going up to
Jerusalem to worship, in observance of the rites, and in
obedience to the precepts of their law, that scarcely any
country ever possessed such means of crowded highways, or
any similar reason for abounding so much in wayfaring men.
In the days of Isaiah, who uttered the latest of these pre
dictions, " the land was full of horses, neither was there
any end of their chariots." And there not only subsist to
this day in the land of Judea, numerous remains of paved
ways formed by the Romans at a much later period, and
"others evidently not Roman;"2 but among the precious
hterary remains of antiquity which have come down to our
times, three Roman itineraries are to be numbered, that can
here be confidently appealed to. From these, and from the
testimony of Arrian and Diodorus Siculus, as well as of
Josephus and Eusebius, it appears, as Reland has clearly
shown, that in Palestine, long after it came under the power
of the Romans, and after it was greatly debased from its
ancient glory, there were forty-two different highways, (viae
publicae), all being distinctly specified, which intersected it
in various directions.3 There were, besides, Roman roads
from Antioch on the north, from Ctesiphon upon the
Euphrates, on the east, and from Akaba on the Red Sea, on
the south, to Jerusalem. Yet the prophecy is literally true.
" In the interior part of the country there are neither great
roads, nor canals, nor even bridges over the greatest part of
the rivers and torrents, however necessary they may be in
winter. Between town and town there are neither posts
' Isaiah xxxiii. 8. ' General Straton's MS.
3 Relandi Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata, torn. i. lib. ii, cap. iii.
iv. v. pp. 405, 425.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 185
nor pubhc conveyances. Nobody travels alone, from the
insecurity- of the roads. One must wait for several travellers
who are going to the same place, or take advantage of the
passage of some great man who assumes the office of pro
tector, but is more frequently the oppressor of the caravan.
The roads in the mountains are extremely bad ; and the
inhabitants are so far from levelling them, that they endea
vour to make them more rugged, in order, as they say, to
cure the Turks of their desire to introduce their cavalry.
It is remarkable that there is not a waggon or a cart in all
Syria."1 " There are," continues Volney, " no inns any
where. The lodgings in the khans (or places of reception
for travellers) are cells where you find nothing but bare
walls, dust, and sometimes scorpions. The keeper of the
khan gives the traveller the key and a mat, and he provides
himself the rest. He must therefore carry with him his
bed, his kitchen utensils, and even his provisions ; for fre
quently not even bread is to be found in the villages."2
" There are no carriages in the country," says another
traveller, " under any denomination." 3 " Among the hills
of Palestine," according to a third witness, "the road is
impassable ; and the traveUer finds himself among a set of
infamous and ignorant thieves, who would cut his throat for
a farthing, and rob him of his money for the mere pleasure
of doing it."4 " GeneraUy speaking," says Dr Bowring, in
the Parliamentary Report, "the roads in Syria are in a
deplorable condition; in the rainy season, indeed, travelling
is almost impossible. I understand that roads are scarcely,
if ever, repaired. Wheel-carriages, of course, cannot be
employed." 6 " Roads for wheeled carriages," says Mr
Stanley, "are now unknown in any part of Palestine."6
Every traveller can bear witness to the same fact. In a
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 417, 419. 2 Ibid. pp. 417-419.
3 Wilson's Travels, p. 100. 4 Richardson's Travels, vol. ii. p. 225.
' Report of Syria, p. 46. 6 Stanley, p. 134.

1S6 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
country where there is a total want of wheel-carriages of
every description, the highways, however excellent and
numerous they once might have been, must lie waste; and
where such dangers have to be encountered at every step,
and such privations at every stage, it is not now to be won
dered that the way-faring man ceaseth. But let the dis
ciples of Volney, and others besides them, tell by what
dictates of human wisdom the whole of his description of
these existing facts was summed up, in a brief sentence, by
Moses and Isaiah; by the former, thirty- three, and, by the
latter, twenty-five centuries past.
2" will send wild beasts among you which shall rob you
of your children and destroy your cattle!1 I will make
thee waste, — and I will send upon you evil beasts, &c.2
Palestine, to this day, is overrun by wild beasts. Hyenas,
lynxes, wild boars, bears, foxes, wolves, and jackals abound
both in the mountains and plains. After sunset the Bedouin
fires, especially in the south, where flocks abound, are seen
blazing at various distances over the face of the country, in
order to save the cattle, gathered together, from being
devoured by the wild beasts. Sleeping in a tent at Nabulus,
the author was wakened by the howhngs of wild beasts, and
the responding and mingled barking of dogs. On the sea
shore, at the foot of Carmel, two lynxes were seen late at
night at the door of an adjoining tent. And though
detached from the other mountains of Judea, and situated
on the sea-side, Carmel is still, as it has long been, " a habi
tation of wild beasts."3 "There are panthers, hyenas, and
wild boars on the mountain."4 The writer was there
informed by Lord Rokeby that one of his servants had seen
many hyenas at Jenin, of which he counted sixteen ; and
another stated that the number was immense. And, at the
1 Levit. xxvi. 22. 2 Ezek. v. 14, 17.
3 Mariti's Travels, vol. ii. p. 140.
4 The Crescent and the Cross, vol. ii. p. 122.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 187
same time, Lord Claude Hamilton stated that, on the plain
of Jericho and the banks of the Jordan, he had seen wild
boars and innumerable traces of them. Even in the day
time, the wolf, the fox, the wild boar, the jackal, and the
hyena, are occasionally seen (as may here be personally testi
fied,) by the passing traveller. As Mr Buckingham was
traveUing on the east of the Jordan, near to the ruined
town of Fahaez, two large boars, seemingly ferocious, and
wild as any he had seen, rushed forth from the surrounding
woody thickets ; and near to Zey, another ruined town, over
grown with trees, a place in which there was abundance of
pines, was, he was assured, a favourite haunt of wild boars,
which he could easily credit, " as there were a number of
places then visible in which they had very recently muzzled
up the fresh earth in search of roots as food."1 The woods
that fringe the Jordan are the resort of wild boars. " In
the wooded parts of Mount Tabor are wild boars and ounces."2
The Lord hath not yet returned to visit the vineyard which
his own right hand did plant ; and of the land of Judea,
which he gave to the seed of Abraham by an everlasting
covenant, it may hteraUy be said, The boar out of the wood
doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.3
But looking beyond the time of these grievous desolations,
the promise stands sure, " I will make with them a covenant
of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the
land : and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep
in the woods."4 But to this day the prophetic denunciation
retains its undiminished as unrepealed power.
Thou shalt carry much seed into ihe field, and shalt
gather but little in : for the locust shall consume it — all
thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume.
That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust
1 Buckingham's Travels among the Arab Tribes, pp. 64, 121, 122.
3 Burckhardt, p. 335. 3 Psalm lxxx. 13. 4 Ezek. xxxiv. 25.

188 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
eaten ; and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-
worm eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left
luath the caterpillar1 eaten} " It was," says Burckhardt
at Naeme, east of the lake of Tiberias, in the plains of
Bashan, " that I saw for the first time, a swarm of locusts ;
they so completely covered the surface of the ground, that
my horse kiUed numbers of them at every step, whilst I had
the greatest difficulty in keeping from my face those which
rose up and flew about." He describes one species, the
flying locust, that feeds only upon the leaves of trees and
vegetables, and the wild herbs of the desert, sparing the
wheat and barley : and another species, the devouring
locust, " which devour whatever vegetation they meet with,
and are the terror of the husbandman." He was told that
the offspring of the former produced in Syria partake of the
voracity of the latter, and like them prey upon the crops of
grain.3 What the one leaves the other eats: and both the
leaves of the trees of the field and the fruits of the land are
thus consumed by the locusts. In the mountains of Gilead,
the writer (in 1844) saw the plants on the ground covered
with locusts ; and in the plain, in the way to Damascus, so
closely did they cover them, that as those who accompanied
him passed through them in a line, a cloud of locusts arose
along it, and diverging for a httle from the path, he was
soon forced trT^resume it, as the locusts rose so thickly around
him that it was impossible to defend his face as they flew
to and fro, when raised from the ground which they liter
ally covered. In the foUowing year, "the want of rain
rendered the Hauran a desert ; and the locusts overspread
the land like a cloud, eating and devouring everything
before them."4
1 " Chasil, alteram locusti genus," another species of locust. Arius Montanus.
2 Deut. xxviii. 38, 42. Joel i. 4. 3 Burckhardt's Syria, p. 238.
4 Letter from the Rev. Mr Graham, Damascus. Missionary Record of the Free
Church of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 258.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 189
The spoilers are come upon all high places through the
wilderness. The robbers shall enter into it, &c. The land
of Israel has not only been given into the hands of strangers
for a prey, and unto the wicked of the earth for a spoil, as
foreign nations have successively subjugated and despoiled
it ; but it has also been the prey of bordering marauders,
to whose assaults it has for ages been exposed. "These
precautions, on the part of travellers, are above all necessary
in the countries exposed to the Arabs, such as Palestine and
the whole frontier of the desert." 1 " The Arabs are plun
derers of the cultivated lands, and robbers on the highroads.
— On the slightest alarm the Arabs cut down their (the
peasants') harvests, seize their flocks, &c. The peasants with
good cause call them thieves. The Arab makes his incur
sions against hostile tribes, or seeks plunder in the country
or on the highways. He became a robber from greediness,
and such is in fact his preset character. A plunderer
rather than a warrior, the Arab attacks only to despoil."2
Such is the systematic spoliation and robbery to which the
inhabitants of Palestine have been subjected for ages. Mr
Stanley's testimony may be here added : " In Greece and
Italy and Spain, it is the mountainous tract which is beset
with banditti — the level country which is safe. In Pales
tine, on the contrary, the mountain tracts are comparatively
secure, though infested by villages of hereditary ruffians
here and there ; but the plains, with hardly an exception,
are more or less dangerous. . . . The Bedouin tribes are
the corsairs of the wilderness. Far up the plains of Philistia
and Sharon come the Arabs of the Tih ; deep into the centre
of Palestine, into the plain of Esdraelon, especially when the
harvest has left the fields clear for pasturage, come the Arabs
of the Hauran and of Gilead. But now, like the sands of
their own deserts which engulph the monuments of Egypt,
; Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 417. 2 Ibid. chap, xxiii.

190 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
no longer defended by a watchful and living population,
they have broken in upon the country far and near ; and in
the total absence of solitary dwelling-places — in the gather
ing together of all the settled inhabitants into villages, and
in the walls which, as at Jerusalem, enclose the cities round,
with locked gates and guarded towers — we see the effect of
the constant terror which they inspire." 1
The inhabitants of Jerusalem, and of the land of Israel
shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water
with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from
all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that
dwell therein. " In the great cities " (in Syria, none of
which are in the Holy Land) " the people have much of that
dissipated and careless air which they usually have with us,
because there, as well as here," says Volney, alluding to
France, " inured to suffering from habit, and devoid of reflec
tion from ignorance, they enjoy a kind of security. Having
nothing to lose, they are in no dread of being plundered.
The merchant, on the contrary, lives in a state of perpetual
alarm, under the double apprehension of acquiring no more,
and losing what he possesses. He trembles lest he should
attract the attention of rapacious authority, which would
consider an air of satisfaction as a proof of opulence and the
signal for extortion. The same dread prevails throughout
the villages, where every peasant is afraid of exciting the
envy of his equals, and the avarice of the Aga and his sol
diers. In such a country, where the subject is perpetually
watched by a despoiling government, he must assume a
serious countenance for the same reason that he wears
ragged clothes;"2 or, as the description might appropriately
have been concluded, in the very words of the prophet,
" because of the violence of them that dweU therein."
They shall be ashamed of your revenues. " From the
1 Stanley, pp. 135, 136. « Volney's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 477, 478.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 191
state of the contributions of each pachalic, it appears that
the annual sum paid by Syria into the Kasna, or treasury
of the Sultan, amounts to 2345 purses; viz.
For Aleppo  800 purses.
Tripoli  750
Damascus  45
Acre  750
Palestine  —

2345 purses;
which are equal to 2,931,250 livres, or £122,135 sterling."
After the specification of some incidental sources of revenue,
it is added, " we cannot be far from the truth, if we com
pute the total of the Sultan's revenue from Syria to be
7,500,000 livres,"1 (£312,500 sterling,; or less than the
third part of one million sterling, and less than a seventh
part of what it yielded, in tribute, unto Egypt, long after
the prophecies were sealed. This is the whole amount that
a government which has reached the acme of despotism, and
which accounts pillage a right and ah property its own, can
extort from impoverished Syria. But. insignificant as this
sum is, as the revenues of those extensive territories which
included in ancient times several opulent and powerful
states, the greater part must be deducted from it, before
estimating the pitiful pittance, which, under the name of
revenue, its oppressive masters can now drain from the land
of Israel. A single glance at the preceding statement
affords the obvious means of distinguishing the comparative
desolation and poverty of the different provinces of Syria.
And the least unproductive of these in revenue, the pacha
hcs of Aleppo and Tripoli, and a considerable portion of
what now forms the pachalic of Acre, were not included
within the boundaries of ancient Judea. Palestine, con-
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 460.

192 THE LAND OF ISRAEL
taining the ancient territory of Philistia, and part of Judea,
was then gifted in whole, by the Sultan, to two individuals.
The very extensive pachahc of Damascus, so unproductive
of revenue, includes Jerusalem, and a great proportion of
ancient Judea ; so that of it, even with greater propriety
than of the rest, it may be said, they shall be ashamed of
your revenues. Under the Egyptian government of Mehemet
Ah, the revenues of Syria, though increased, came far short
of the expenditure. " It cannot be doubted," says Dr Bow-
ring, " that the possession of Syria is very onerous, in a
pecuniary point of view, to the Pacha. It is the generally
received opinion that the 35,000 purses (£175,000 ster
ling) which are paid in tribute to the Porte, are (were)
usually paid by Egypt. Thus an enormous amount of the
surplus revenues of the Viceroy's territories in Africa are
swallowed up by his Asiatic possessions. Large amounts
are imported into Syria, and from Egypt."1
I will bring your sanctuaries into desolation. I will
destroy the sanctuaries of Israel. I will destroy your high
places. The holy places shall be defiled. The testimony
of the sceptical Gibbon may here be adduced in literal illus
tration of both these predictions, " After the final destruction
of the stately temple of the Jewish nation by the arms of
Titus and Hadrian, a ploughshare was drawn over the con
secrated ground, as a sign of perpetual interdiction. Sion
was deserted, and the vacant space of the lower city was
filled with the public and private edifices of the iElian
colony, which spread over the adjacent hill of Calvary. The
holy places were polluted with the monuments of idolatry ;
and either by design or accident, a chapel was dedicated to
Venus, on the spot which had been sanctified by the death
and resurrection of Christ."2 Omar, on the first conquest
of Jerusalem by the Mohammedans, erected a mosque on the
1 Parliamentary Report, p. 25. 2 Gibbon's Hist. vol. iv. p. 100, c. 23.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 193
site of the temple of Solomon : and jealous as the God of
Israel is, that his glory be not given to another, the un
seemly, and violent, and sometimes bloody contentions
among professing Christians — that to this day can only be
suppressed by the thongs of the police of the Moslem go
vernor of Jerusalem — in the chief of their holy days, and
in the church of the holy sepulchre around the reputed
tomb of the Author of the faith they dishonour, — bear not
a feebler testimony, in the present day, than the preceding
fact has borne for ages to the truth of this prediction. The
frenzied zeal of crusading Christians could not long rescue
the holy sepulchre from the heathen who defiled it, though,
with that intent, Europe then poured like a torrent upon
Asia. But in the land called holy, other sanctuaries than
the temple of Jerusalem have been brought into desolation:
and the holy places have been polluted with other things
than the monuments of idolatry, or religious rites akin to
pagan orgies, but disgraceful to the Christian name. I will
bring the worst of the heathen and they shall possess their
houses : I will also make the pomp of the strong to cease ;
and their holy places shall be defiled.1 The high places of
Israel have long been destroyed. Heathens have possessed
the houses of the land, and Mohammedans still hold as their
own most of those that remain. The pomp of the strong
has ceased; the forts and towers are for dens : but the most
magnificent ruins are those of temples. Pagan sanctuaries
that succeeded the high-places of Israel, and churches with
out number, that also succeeded the synagogues of the land,
have alike been brought to desolation. Tadmor, (Palmyra,)
built by Solomon, has its ruined temples, to which in modern
times it owes its renown. That of Baalbec is a still more
splendid ruin ; and the sun, to whose idolatrous worship it
was erected, ripens the wild plants that have come up on its
1 Ezek. vii. 24.
13

194 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
broken images, and cover its buried altars. These " two
renowned remains of antiquity," that once towered in gran
deur to the honour of Baal, are, in their desolation, witnesses
for the living God, Geraza, too, has both its ruined temples
and churches. Thistles in that land have come over many
other altars than those of BetheL One upwards of ten
feet high was measured by the writer, beside a fallen altar
in a ruined church at Gerash, where Christian emblems
are conjoined with the pagan tokens of empty niches in
broken walls ; and another altar lies in the untrodden
street. The altars of Samaria have been cast down like
its other stones into the valley, and lie there, as may be
seen, where the beasts of the field do eat. Those of Caesarea
Philippi lie indiscriminately among its ruins, and there does
the calf feed, and there does he lie down, and consume
tlie branches that shadow them. — Though he crossed not
the Jordan, nor traversed the land, Maundrell relates, in his
journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, that " perhaps not fewer
than a hundred ruined churches came in our way."1 Many
a desolate sanctuary is now a lair for beasts : and many holy
places are in the strictest sense literally defiled to this day,
even where villages still exist, and heathens, and others not
better than they, possess houses where cities stood. The
cathedral of Tartous, or Orthosia,— a hundred and thirty
feet long, ninety-three broad, and sixty-one high — the most
entire in all the land, with its walls, columns, arches, aisles,
and roof unbroken, is still, as we saw it, what it was a hun
dred and sixty years ago when visited by Maundrell, as since
by others, " a stall for cattle." 2 The cathedral of Caesarea
is as open to wild beasts and as fitted for their dens as any of
its towers — and its large vault is occupied by myriads of
fleas. The walls of the principal ruin of Athhte, once those
1 Maundrell's Travels, p. 65.
2 Ibid. p. 25. Pococke, Buckingham.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 195
of a large church, enclose hovels and heaps of dung. The
niches in the walls of the cathedral of Tyre, not empty now
as seen by former travellers, seem to be hid from view by
an immense dunghill, accumulated, in continued defilement
of one of the most celebrated of the holy places in the land ;
while, in striking contrast, according to another prophetic
word, fishers, at a few yards' distance, spread their nets, and
are still spreading them, over the ruins of Old Tyre buried
in the midst of the sea, on a place bare like the top of a rock,
and clean as the sand that is washed by the ocean. The
high-places are desolate. The sanctuaries are destroyed.
The altars are laid waste. The idols are broken and have
ceased. And the holy places are defiled.
Instead of viewing separately each special prediction, the
prophecies respecting the desolation of the land of Judea are
so abundant, that several may be grouped together ; and
their meaning is so clear that any explanatory remarks
would be superfluous. Nor is the evidence of their complete
fulfilment indistinct, or difficult to be found ; for Volney
illustrates six predictions in a single sentence, to which he
subjoins a reflection, not less confirmatory than the whole,
of prophetic inspiration.
" I will destroy your high places, — and bring your
sanctuaries into desolation.1 The palaces shall be for
saken.2 I will destroy the remnant of the sea-coast.3 I
will make your cities waste. The multitude of the city shall
be left, the habitation forsaken, &c. The land shall be utterly
spoiled} I will make the land more desolate than the wil
derness. " The temples are thrown down — the palaces de
molished — the ports filled up — the towns destroyed — and
the earth, stripped of inhabitants, seems a dreary burying-
place." 5
1 Lev. xxvi. 30, 81. * Isaiah xxxii. 14. 3 Ezek. xxv. 16.
A Isaiah xxiv. 3. * Volney's Ruins, chap. xi. p. 8.

196" THE LAND OF ISRAEL
Such is one sentence of a book which was written to dis
prove and to deride revelation, a,nd which, not less perhaps
than any other, has caused or confirmed the scepticism of
innumerable thousands. And having tendered this testi
mony, Volney, taking God's name in vain, thus exclaims, in
confirmation of his word, " Good God ! from whence proceed
such melancholy revolutions? For what cause is the for
tune of these countries so strikingly changed ? Why are
so many cities destroyed ? Why is not that ancient popula
tion reproduced and perpetuated ? — I wandered over the
country ; I traversed the provinces ; I enumerated the king
doms of Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria.
This Syria, said I to myself, now almost depopulated, then
contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded with
towns, villages, and hamlets. What are become of so many
productions of the hands of man? What are become of
those ages of abundance and of life?" fcc.1 Seeking to be
wise, men become fools, when they trust to their own vain
imaginations, and will not look to that word of God, which
is as able to confound the wise, as to give understanding to
the simple. These words, from the lips of a great advocate
of infidelity, proclaim the certainty of the truth which he
was too blind or bigoted to see. For not more unintention
ally or unconsciously do many illiterate Arab pastors, or
herdsmen, verify one prediction, while they literally tread
Palestine under foot, than Volney the academician, himself
verifies another, while, speaking in his own name, and the
spokesman also of others, he thus confirms the unerring
truth of God's holy word, by what he said, as well as by
describing what he saw. The generation to come of your
children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger
THAT SHALL COME FROM A FAR LAND, shall SAY, when they
see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the
1 Volney's Ruins, chap. xi. p. 8.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 197
Lord hath laid upon it, — Wherefore hath the Lord done thus
unto the land ? what meaneth the heat of this great anger ?1
It is no "secret malediction," spoken of by Volney,
which God has pronounced against Judea. It is the curse
of a broken covenant that rests upon the land — the conse
quences of the iniquities of the people, not of those only
who have been plucked from off it, and scattered throughout
the world, but of those also that dwell therein. The ruins
of empires originated not from the regard which mortals
paid to revealed religion, but from causes diametrically
the reverse. Neither Jews nor Christians who possessed
a revelation, were the desolators ; under them Judea
flourished. The destruction of Jerusalem, and of the
cities of Palestine, was the work of the Romans, who were
pagan idolaters ; and the devastation, in more recent ages,
was perpetuated by the Saracens and Turks, behevers in
the impostor Mohammed, and the desolations were wrought
by the enemies of the Mosaic and Christian dispensations.
The desolations are not of divine appointment, but only
as they have fohowed the violations of the laws of God,
or have arisen from thence. The virtual renunciation of a
holy faith brought on destruction. And none other curses
have come upon the land than those that are written
in the book The character and condition of the people
are not less definitely marked, than the features of the
land that has been smitten with a curse because of their
iniquities. And when the unbeliever asks, wherefore
hath the Lord done this unto the land, the same word
which foretold that the question would be put, supplies an
answer and assigns the cause. Then men shall say, Be
cause they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God, of
their fathers, &c.2
The land is defiled under the inhabitants thereof;
1 Deut. xxix. 22-24. ' Deut. xxix. 25.

198 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordi
nance, broken the everlasting covenant : therefore hath the
curse devoured the land,1 &c. These expressive words,
while they declare the cause of the judgments and deso
lations, denote also the great depravity of those who were
to inhabit the land of Judea during the time of its
desolation, and while its ancient inhabitants were to be
" scattered abroad." And although the ignorance of those
who dwell therein may be pitied, their degeneracy will not
be denied. The ferocity of the Turks, the predatory habits
of the Arabs, the abject state of the few poor Jews who
are suffered to dwell in the land of their fathers, the base
superstitions of the different Christian sects, — the frequent
contentions that subsist among such a mingled and diver
sified people, and the gross ignorance and great depravity
that prevail throughout the whole, have all sadly changed and
stained the moral aspect of that country, which from sacred
remembrances is denominated the Holy Land, — have con
verted that region, where alone in ah the world, and during
many ages, the only living and true God was worshipped,
and where alone the pattern of perfect virtue was ever
exhibited to human view or in the human form, into one of
the most degraded countries of the globe, and, in appropriate
terms, may well be said to have defiled the land. And it
has been defiled throughout many an age. The Father of
mercies afflicteth not willingly, nor grieveth the children of
men. Sin is ever the precursor of the actual judgments of
Heaven. It was on account of their idolatry and wicked
ness that the ten tribes were earliest plucked from off the
land of Israel. The blood of Jesus, according to their
prayer, and the fuh measure of their iniquity, according to
their doings, were upon the Jews and upon their children.
Before they were extirpated from that land which their
L Isaiah xxiv. 5, 6.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 199
iniquities had defiled, it was drenched with the blood of
more than a million of their race. Judea afterwards had a
partial and temporary respite from desolation, when
Christian churches were established there. But in that
land, the nursery of Christianity, the seeds of its corruption,
or perversion, began soon to appear. The moral power of
rehgion decayed, its simplicity was abandoned, and the
nominal disciples of a pure faith "broke the everlasting
covenant." 1 The doctrine of Mohammed, — the Koran or the
sword, — was the scourge and the cure of apostacy ; but all
the native impurities of the Mohammedan creed succeeded to
a grossly corrupted form of Christianity. Since that period,
hordes of Saracens, Egyptians, Fatimites, Tartars, Mame
lukes, Turks, (a combination of names of unmatched
barbarism, at least in modern times,) have, for the
space of twelve hundred years, defiled the land of the
children of Israel with iniquity and with blood. And
in very truth the prophecy savours not in the least of
hyperbole, — the worst of the heathen shall possess their
houses. And the holy places shall be defiled. But the
defilement of the land, no less than that of the holy places,
is not yet cleansed away. And Judea is still defiled to this
hour, not only by oppressive rulers, but by an unprincipled
and a lawless people. "The barbarism of Syria," says
Volney, "is complete."2 "I have often reflected," says
Burckhardt, in describing the dishonest conduct of a Greek
priest in the Hauran, (but in words that admit of too
general an application,) " that if the English penal laws
were suddenly promulgated in this country, there is scarcely
any man in business, or who has money dealings with
others, who would not be liable to transportation before the
end of the first six months."3 "Under the name of
1 Isaiah xxiv. 5. * Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 442.
3 Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, p. 89.

200 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
Christianity, every degrading superstition and profane rite,
equahy remote from the enlightened tenets of the gospel
and the dignity of human nature, are professed and
tolerated. The pure gospel of Christ, everywhere the
herald of civilization and of science, is almost as httle
known in the Holy Land as in California or New
Holland. A series of legendary traditions, mingled with
remains of Judaism, and the wretched phantasies of
illiterate ascetics, may now and then exhibit a glim
mering of heavenly light ; but if we seek for the effects
of Christianity in the land of Canaan, we must look for
that period, when the desert shall blossom as the rose,
and the wilderness become a fruitful field." 1 Maundrell
specially remarks, concerning the hundred churches which
he and those who accompanied him saw, that " though their
other parts were totally demolished, yet the east end we
always found standing and tolerably entire." 2 These very
walls and any others of churches that still stand, sometimes
solitary amidst fallen cities, are ah witnesses, by the niches,
like those of heathen temples, which they hold up to view,
that the curse has not fallen causeless ; but that the predicted
cause of the desolating judgments is as clear, as are the
niches — or other Christian emblems (falsely so called) — in
the walls, or the words of the text ; and may be as plainly
seen as are the altars that lie among the ruins. The land
is defiled under the inhabitants thereof, because they have
transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken tlie
everlasting covenant: therefore hath the curse devoured the
land, and
They that dwell therein are desolate. " The government
of the Turks in Syria is a pure military despotism, that is,
the bulk of the inhabitants are subject to the caprices of a
faction of armed men, who dispose of everything according
1 Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 405. 2 Maundrell's Travels, p. 65.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 201
to their interest and fancy." In each government the pacha
is an absolute despot. In the villages, the inhabitants,
limited to the mere necessaries of life, have no arts but those
without which they cannot subsist." " There is no safety
without the towns, nor security within their precincts." 1
And Few men left. While their character is thus depraved
and their condition miserable, their number is also small
indeed, as the inhabitants of so extensive and fertile a region.
After estimating the number of inhabitants in Syria, in
general, Volney remarks : " So feeble a population in so
excellent a country may well excite our astonishment, but
this wih be increased, if we compare the present number of
inhabitants with that of ancient times. We are informed
by the philosophical geographer, Strabo, that the territories
of Yamnia and Yoppa, in Palestine alone, were formerly so
populous as to bring forty thousand armed men into the
field. At present they could scarcely furnish three thousand.
From the accounts we have of Judea, in the time of Titus,
which are to be esteemed tolerably accurate, that country
must have contained four millions of inhabitants. If we go
still farther back into antiquity, we shall find the same
populousness among the Philistines, the Phoenicians, and in
the kingdoms of Samaria and Damascus."2 Thus, on a
comparison of the ancient and the existing population, that
country does not now contain above a tenth part of the
number of inhabitants, which it plentifully supported ex
clusively from their industry and from the rich resources
of its own luxuriant soil, for many successive centuries ;
and how couldj it possibly have been imagined that this
identical land would ever yield so scanty a subsistence to
the desolate dwellers therein, and that there would be so
few men left ?
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 370, 376, 380. ' Ibid. vol. ii. p. 366.

202 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
" The land is defiled under the inhabitants thereof,
because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordi
nance, broken the everlasting covenant, therefore hath the
curse devoured the land, and they that dwell therein are
desolate, and few men left!" The testimony of a single
witness, in few words, supplies at once an adequate illustra
tion of all these prophecies. "The vast plains," says Mr
Warburton, " that he between the mountains and the sea,
are very partially cultivated ; but luxuriant patches of corn,
and the rich grass that grew wild, proved how readily it
could bring forth abundance ; and that it was the inhabi
tants, and not the soil, that lay under the curse. Once,
twenty milhons of people, it is said, dwelt in plenty and
prosperity, where now some 1,800,000 find a scanty suste
nance. The more I see of Turkish rule, the more admirably
does that rule appear adapted to accomplish a denouncing
prophecy ! " x
The mirth of the tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them that
rejoice endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth.2 Instrumental
music was common among the Jews. The tabret, and the
harp, the cymbal, the psaltery, and the viol, and other
instruments of music, are often mentioned as in familiar
use among the Israelites, and regularly formed a great part
of the service of the temple. At the period when the pre
diction was delivered, the harp, the viol, and the tabret, and
pipe, and wine were in their feasts ; and even though the
Jews have long ceased to be a nation, the use of these
instruments has not ceased from among them. But in the
once happy land of Judea, the voice of mirthful music is
at rest. In a general description of the state of the arts
and sciences in Syria, including the whole of the Holy Land,
Volney remarks, that adepts in music are very rarely to be
met with. " They have no music but vocal ; for they
1 The Crescent and the Cross, vol. ii. pp. 132, 133. 2 Isaiah xxiv. 3. ,

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 203
neither know nor esteem instrumental ; and they are in
the right, for such instruments as they have, not excepting
their flutes, are detestable." 1 The mirth of the tabrets
ceaseth, the joy of the harp ceaseth.
But this is not the sole instance in which the melancholy
features of that desolate country seem to be transferred to
the minds of its inhabitants. And the plaintive language
of the prophet (the significancy of which might well have
admitted of some slight modification, if one jot or tittle
could pass away tih all be fulfihed) is true to the very
letter, when set side by side, unaided by one syllable of
comment, with the words of a bold and avowed unbeliever.
All the merry-hearted do sigh; — they shall not drink wine
with a song ; — all joy is darkened, the mirth of the land
is gone} "Their performance" (singing) "is accompanied
with sighs and gestures. They may be said to excel most
in the melancholy strain. To behold an Arab with his
head inclined, his hand applied to his ear, his eyebrows knit,
his eyes languishing ; to hear his plaintive tones, his sighs
and sobs, it is almost impossible to refrain from tears." 3 If
any further illustration of the prediction be requisite, the
same ill-fated narrator of facts exhibits anew the visions of
the prophet. From his description (chap, xl.) of the manner
and character of the inhabitants of Syria, it is obvious that
melancholy is a predominating feature. " Instead of that
open and cheerful countenance, which we either naturally
possess or assume, their behaviour is serious, austere, and
melancholy. They rarely laugh ; and the gaiety of the
French appears to them a fit of delirium. When they
speak, it is with deliberation, without gesture, and without
passion ; they listen without interrupting you ; they are
silent for whole days together : and by no means pique
' Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 439.
2 Isaiah xxiv. 7, 9. 3 Volney's Travels, pp. 439, 440.

204 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
themselves on supporting conversation. ContinuaUy seated,
they pass whole days musing, with their legs crossed, their
pipes in their mouths, and almost without changing their
attitude. The Orientals, in general, have a grave and phleg
matic exterior ; a staid and almost listless deportment ;
and a serious, nay, even sad and melancholy countenance."1
Having thus explicitly stated the fact, Volney, by many
arguments, equahy judicious and just, most successfully com
bats the idea that the climate and soil are the radical cause
of so striking a phenomenon ; and after assigning a multi
plicity of facts from ancient history, which completely dis
prove the efficacy of such causes, he instances that of the
Jews, " who, limited to a httle state, never ceased to
struggle for a thousand years against the most powerful
empires.2 If the men of these nations were inert," he adds,
" what is activity ? If they were active, where then is the
influence of climate ? Why, in the same countries, where so
much energy was displayed in former times, do we at pre
sent find such profound indolence?" And having thus
relieved the advocate for the inspiration of the Scriptures
from the necessity of proving that the contrast in the manner
and character of the present and of the ancient inhabitants
of Syria is (even now, when the change is become matter of
history and observation, and when the circumstances respect
ing it are known,) incapable of solution from any natural
causes, such as by some conceivable possibility might have
been foreseen, he proceeds to point out those real, efficacious,
and efficient causes, viz. the mode of government, and the
state of religion and of the laws, the nature of which no
human sagacity could possibly have descried, and which
came not into existence or operation in the manner in which
they have so long continued, for many ages subsequent to
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 461, 476.
" Ibid. vol. ii. p. 464.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 205
the period when their fuh and permanent effect was laid
open to the fuh view of the prophets of Israel. The fact,
thus clearly predicted and proved, is not only astonishing as
referable to the inhabitants of Judea, and as exhibiting a
contrast, than which nothing, of a similar kind, can be more
complete ; but it is so very contradictory to the habits of
men and customs of nations, that it is totaUy inexplicable
how, by any human means, such a fact, even singly, could
ever have been foretold. From the congregated groups of
savages, cheered by their simple instruments of music, exult
ing in their war-songs, and reveUing in their mirth, to the
more elegant assemblages of polished society, hstening with
delight to the triumphs of music ; from the huts of the
whderness to the courts of Asia and of Europe ; and from
the wUds of America, the jungles of India, and even the
deserts of central Africa, to the meadows of England, the
plains of France, or the valleys of Ital}' ; the experience of
mankind in every clime, — except partially where the blast
ing influence of the crescent is felt, — proclaims as untrue to
nature the predicted fact, which actually has been perma
nently characteristic of the inhabitants of the once happy
land of Israel. The fact perhaps would have been but
slowly credited, and the synonymous terms of the ample de
scription and of the repeated prophecies might have been
reckoned the fiction of a biassed judgment, had a Christian,
instead of Volney, been the witness.
They shall not drink wine with a song. Strong drink
shall be bitter to them that drink it.1 The more closely
that the author of the Muins of Empires traces the causes
in which the desolation of these regions, and the calamities
of the inhabitants, originate, he supplies more abundant
data for a demonstration that the prophecies respecting
them cannot but be Divine. " One of the chief sources,"
1 Isaiah xxiv. 9.

206 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
continues Volney, " of gaiety with us, is the social inter
course of the table, and the use of wine. The Orientals
(Syrians) are almost strangers to this double enjoyment.
Good cheer would infallibly expose them to extortion, and
wine to corporal punishment, from the zeal of the police
in enforcing the precepts of the Koran. It is with great
reluctance the Mohammedans tolerate the Christians the
use of a liquor they envy them."1 To this statement may
be subjoined the more direct but equally unapplied, testi
mony of recent travellers. " The wines of Jerusalem," says
Mr Joliffe, " are most execrable. In a country where every
species of vinous liquor is strictly prohibited by the concur
rent authorities of law and gospel, a single fountain may
be considered of infinitely greater value than many wine
presses."2 Mr Wilson relates, that the wine drunk in Jeru
salem is probably the very worst to be met with in any
country.3 While the intolerance and despotism of the
Turks, and the rapacity and wildness of the Arabs, have
blighted the produce of Judea, and render abortive ah the
influence of climate, and all the fertility of that land of
vines, the unnatural prohibition of the use of wine, and the
rigour with which that prohibition is enforced, have pecu
liarly operated against the cultivation of the vine, and
turned the treading of the wine-press into an odious and
unprofitable task. Yet in a country where the vine grows
spontaneously, and which was celebrated for the excellence
of its wines,4 nothing less than the operation of causes unna
tural and extreme as these, could have verified the language
of prophecy. But in this instance, as truly as in every
other, a recapitulation of the prophecies is the best sum
mary of the facts. And, by only changing the future into
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 480.
2 Joliffe's Letters from Palestine, vol. i. p. 184.
¦ Wilson's Travels, p. 130.
4 Relandi PaUestina, pp. 381, 792.

DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 207
the present and the past, after an interval of two thousand
five hundred years, no eye-witness, writing on the spot,
could delineate a more accurate representation of the exist
ing state of Judea, than in the very words of Isaiah, in
which, as in those of other prophets, the various and desul
tory observations of travellers are concentrated into a de
scription equally perspicuous and true.
" Many days and years shaU ye be troubled ; — for the
vintage shall fail, the gathering shaU not come. — They shall
lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful
vine. Upon the land of my people shaU come up thorns
and briers ; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous
city ; because the palaces shaU be forsaken ; the multitude
of the city shaU be left ; the forts and towers shah be for
dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks.1 — The
highways lie waste ; the way-faring man ceaseth. — The
earth (land) mourneth and languisheth ; — Sharon is like a
wilderness ; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits.2
The land shah be utterly emptied and utterly spoiled. — The
earth mourneth and fadeth away — it is defiled under the
inhabitants thereof, because they have transgressed the l'-vs,
changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore hath the curse devoured the land, and they that
dwell therein are desolate, — and few men left. — The vine
languisheth, ah the merry-hearted do sigh. — The mirth of
the tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them that rejoice endeth, the
joy of the harp ceaseth. They shall not drink wine with a
song ; strong drink shall be bitter to them that drink it.
The city of confusion is broken down ; — all joy is darkened ;
the mirth of the land is gone."3
' Isaiah xxxii. 10, 12-14. ' Isaiah xxxiii. 8, 9. ' Isaiah xxiv. 3-11.

208 THE LAND OF ISRAEL

SECTION IV.
THE PREDICTED DEOKEE 01 DESOLATION.
To the picture of common and general desolation, that no
distinguishing feature might be left untouched or untraced
by his pench, the prophet adds: — When thus it shall be in
the midst of the land among the people, there shall be as the
shaking of an olive-tree, and as the gleaning of grapes
when the vintage is done.1 The glory of Jacob shall be
made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.
And it shall be as when the harvest-man gathereth the corn,
and reapeth the ears with his arm; and it shall be as he
that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet gleaning-
grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive-tree, two
or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or
five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the Lord
God of Israel. — In that day shcdl his strong cities be as a
forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch which thet
LEFT, BECAUSE OF THE CHILDREN OF Israel.2 When Isaiah
saw the glory, as he heard the voice, of the Lord of Hosts,
and prophesied, according to his word, of the deep blindness
that was to fall on his people Israel, the prophet's question,
Lord, how long? was thus answered— not by any of the
adoring seraphim but by the Lord himself, to whom it was
addressed after a ministering angel had laid upon the pro
phet's hps a live coal from off the altar — Until the cities be
wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man,
and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord have re
moved men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the
midst of the land. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it
shaU return and shall be eaten (shall undergo a repeated
' Isaiah xxiv. 13. 2 Isaiah xvii. 4-6, 9.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 209
devastation) : as a teil-tree, and as an oak, whose substance
is in them when they cast their leaves : so the holy seed shall
be the substance thereof.1
There is thus a promised and predicted limit, in degree
as in duration, to the desolation of the land, as there is to
the judgments on the people. It is written that the Lord
wiU remember both. As of the one it is said, " I wiU make
a fuU end of aU the nations whither I have scattered thee,
yet will I not make a fuh end of thee ; but I wiU correct
thee in measure," &c. " I wih not utterly destroy the
house of Jacob, saith the Lord."2 And even so, the Lord
hath not given up his pleasant portion to unmeasured and
unlimited desolation. For though the fruitful field be a
wUderness, thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shah be
desolate ; yet will I not make a full end.3 As a final ques
tion then, not less definite than any of the rest, it may be
asked and ascertained, Is the substance yet in the land? Is
there still a gleaning of the glory of Israel ? And desolate
as the land is — with many a fruitful place like an actual
wilderness — is there yet in it a tenth ?
The substance, in one word, is in it, as in a teil-tree and
an oak when they cast their leaves. As other prophecies
similarly bear, an oak whose leaf fadeth, and a garden that
hath no water, are fitting similitudes of that land which was
ihe glory of all lands. Though the cities be waste, and
the land be desolate,- it is not from the poverty of the soil
that the fields are abandoned by the plough, nor from any
diminution of its ancient and natural fertility that the land
has rested for so many generations. Judea was not forced
only by artificial means, or from local and temporary causes,
into a luxuriant cultivation, such as a barren country might
have been, concerning which it would not have needed a
prophet to tell, that if once devastated and abandoned it
1 Isaiah vi. 11-13. 2 Jer. xxx. 11. Amos ix. 8. 3 Jer. iv. 26, 27.
14

210 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
would ultimately and permanently revert into its original
sterility. Palestine at aU times held a far different rank
among the richest countries of the world ; and it was not a
bleak and sterile portion of the earth, nor a land which
even many ages of desolation and neglect could impoverish,
that God gave, in possession and by covenant, to the seed
of Abraham. No longer cultivated as a garden, but left
like a wilderness, Judea is indeed greatly changed from
what it was ; ah that human ingenuity and labour did
devise, erect, or cultivate, men have laid waste, and desolate;
the " plenteous goods," with which it was enriched, adorned,
and blessed, have faUen hke seared and withered leaves,
when their greenness is gone ; and stripped of its " ancient
splendour," it is left as an oak whose leaf fadeth. But its
inherent sources of fertility are not dried up ; the natural
richness of the soil is unblighted ; the substance is in it
strong as that of the teil-tree or the solid oak, which retain
their substance, when they cast their leaves. And as the
leafless oak waits throughout winter for the genial warmth
of returning spring, to be clothed with renewed foliage, so
the once glorious land of Judea is yet full of latent vigour,
or of vegetable power strong as ever, ready to shoot forth,
even " better than at their beginnings," whenever the sun of
heaven shall shine on it again, and the " holy seed" be pre
pared for being finally " the substance thereof." The sub
stance that is in it, which alone has here to be proved, is,
in few words, thus described by an enemy : " The land in
the plains is fat and loamy, and exhibits every sign of the
greatest fecundity. . . . Were nature assisted by art, the
fruits of the most distant countries might be produced
within the distance of twenty leagues." 1 " Galilee," says
Malte-Brun, "would be a paradise, were it inhabited by an
industrious people, under an enlightened government. Vine-
1 Volney's Travels, vol. i. pp. 308, 317.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 211
stocks are to be seen here a foot and a half in diameter." 1
" The rocky soil of the ' hill country,' which extends beyond
Hebron on the south to some distance north of Jerusalem,
is," says Dr Olin, "very susceptible of being restored to
profitable cultivation. The innumerable remains of terraces
and cisterns, and the ruins of large towns and villages
thickly scattered over this romantic region, would clearly
demonstrate, even if both sacred and profane history were
silent on the subject, that it had been densely peopled and
highly cultivated. By far the largest portion of this moun
tain tract is susceptible of being fully restored to its ancient
fertility. Anciently these hihs were covered with orchards
of fruit-trees and vineyards ; and the world does not, pro
bably, produce finer grapes, figs, and olives, than are annually
gathered about Hebron and Bethlehem. One acre of the
flinty surface of the Mount of Olives, carefully tended in
olive-trees, would yield more, through the exchanges of com
merce, toward her main subsistence, than a much larger tract
of the richest Ohio bottoms tilled with corn. ... I can see
no reason why the replanting of the fruit-trees and vineyards
of the land of Judah might not enable it to support as large
a population as it did in the days of Herod, or of David."2
The regions also on the east of Jordan are not less fertile
naturally ; and now that they have been traversed by
modern traveUers, they are no longer to be ranked as a
desert, as if incapable of cultivation. For clearly as crowded
ruins betoken a once densely populated country, the fact is
as clear that the substance is in it for the ample sustenance
of as many as ever dwelt within its bounds, and that its
most desolated and depopulated regions are but like the
leafless oak, as hard and sound in its substance as ever.
" The peasants of the Haouran," says Burckhardt, " are
1 Schulze, in Pallas, cited by Malte-Brun, Geogr. vol. ii. p. 148.
' Dr Olin's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 430, 431.

212 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
extremely shy in speaking of the produce of their land, from
an apprehension that the stranger's inquiries may lead to
new extortions. I have reason to believe, however, that in
middling years wheat yields twenty-five fold ; in some parts
of the Haouran this year (1812) the barley has yielded
fifty-fold, and even in some instances eighty. A sheikh
assured me — that from twenty mouds of wheat seed he once
obtained thirty ghararas,1 or one hundred and twenty fold.
Where abundance of water can be conducted into the fields
from neighbouring springs, the soil is again sown after the
grain harvest, with vegetables, lentils, pease, sesamums, &c."2
" At El Torra, as in so many other places of the Haouran,
I saw the most luxuriant wild herbage, through which my
horse with difficulty made his way; artificial meadows could
hardly be finer than these desert fields ; and it is this which
renders the Haouran so favourite an abode of the Bedouin.
The peasants of Syria are ignorant of the advantage of feed
ing their cattle with hay, they suffer the superfluous grass to
wither away," &c.3 Thus the substance which is in it is
the very cause why many pastors have trodden, and still
tread, the land under foot, from its eastern to its western
borders. And such is the harmony between seemingly dis
cordant and diversified prophecies, that because of the igno
rance of them that dwell therein, the herbs of every field
wither, and the grass withers away, as declared by the
prophet, and described by a most observant and inteUigent
traveller, who never once alludes to any prediction ; but
who thus shows how these things are accordant with the
fact, that desert fields have yet their substance in them,
while, all uncultivated as they are, they stih afford a pas
ture for flocks, not to be surpassed by the finest artificial
meadows. 1 Three rotola and a half make a moud, and eighty mouds a gharara. A rotola is
equal to about five and a half pounds English.
2 Burckhardt, pp. 296, 297. 3 Ibid. p. 246.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 213
But that the land, with its substance still in it, is like a
garden, though without water, and an oak without its
leaves, may be further seen in the " fat and loamy soil of
the plains," of which Volney testifies, and in its depth also,
as in various places we measured it, — where it was cut into
by rivers or streamlets, or torrents from the mountains, —
eight or ten or twenty feet, and yet no subsoil was disclosed
to view; — and more obviously still by the gleanings that
are left, which show what a smitten land stiU bears. It
has now its real as weU as prophetic symbols, in ears such
as those which an ungleaned field of old retained in the best
of Israel's past days, when the crop had been cut down and
carried away; — in the solitary clusters, or the single grapes
which were found in a vineyard when the vintage was
past ; and in the outermost branches of a shaken olive
with some of its berries left, — as weU as in the hardy
oak whose substance is in it, though its leaves be
faded, or in an unwatered garden that is a garden still.
The figures of Scripture are not, hke many in other books,
only or chiefly, if at all, for embeUishment ; nor have they
there a place that imagination may disport itself with them.
But as they elsewhere give to abstract truths a palpable
form, they here Ulustrate the doings, as they are the words,
of the Lord, and present a combination of expressive simili
tudes which render it hard to wrest Scripture here, as they
visibly exhibit the truths which they reveal. Intelligible
as they are, their precise meaning and fixed significancy
may be read in other words of holy writ.
" I command thee to do this thing," said the Lord, by
his servant Moses, to the people of Israel. " When thou
cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a
sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it : it
shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the
widow, that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the

214 THE LAND OF ISRAEL,
work of thine hands. When thou beatest thine olive-tree,
thou shalt not go over the boughs again ; — when thou
gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean
it afterward ; it shaU be for the stranger," fee.1 " When
ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not whohy
reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the
gleanings of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy
•vineyard, neither shalt thou gather any grapes of thy vine
yard ; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger."2
"And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt
not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when
thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy
harvest : thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the
stranger : I am the Lord your God." 3
Such was the law, as that of a God of mercy, in Israel ;
and such are the express things, each of which was to be
the measure, as the similitudes, of the judgments that were
to come upon the land — a reaped but ungleaned field, of
which the corners were not to be wholly reaped, nor a clean
riddance to be made of them, and from which a forgotten
sheaf was not to be fetched again ; a beaten olive-tree, of
which the boughs were not to be gone over again ; — and,
when the vintage was past, an ungleaned vineyTard, of which
every grape was not to be gathered, but some to be left for
the poor and the stranger — as Israel's people long have
been, and as the gleanings of Israel's land — though long
possessed by the worst of the heathen, and reaped by the
wicked of the earth — was to be left for them.
These predictions imply, as otherwise declared without a
metaphor, that a small remnant would be left, and that the
Lord would not make a full end ; that though the land of
Israel should become poor like a field that- had been reaped,
an ohve that had been shaken, and a vineyard when the
1 Deut. xxiv. 19-21. ° Lev. xix. 9, 10. " Lev. xxiii. 22.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 215
vintage was past, yet some ears, or single sheafs would be
left ; a few olives still hanging on a beaten bough ; some
grapes, or clusters that once left were not to be gathered,
such as grew in the land that was the vineyard of the Lord.
And is there yet such a gleaning left of the glory of Israel ?
There is. And there could not be any simfles more natural,
or expressive, or descriptive of the fact.
Nabulus, or Neapolis, is identified with the ancient
Sychem or Sychar. There Abraham was first stayed in his
pUgrimage; there he first received the promise of the land
unto his seed ; there Jesus, on his way from Judea to
Galilee, tarried two days, at the entreaty of its Samaritan
inhabitants, many of whom believed on him, though he
wrought no miracles among them ; and there — as if a word
had dropped down on it from the side of Mount Gerizim, at
the foot of which it lies, when Joshua read the blessings in
the hearing of assembled Israel spread over the valley — the
same Divine word that has given its free licence to the
curse over all the land, has arrested desolation in its pro
gress ere it reached a full end; for there may be seen, as it
were, a sheaf which none have fetched from the field that
has been reaped, a berry left on the beaten olive, and a
cluster of grapes in a gathered vineyard. " It is luxuriously
embosomed," as justly described by Dr Clarke, " in the
most delightful and fragrant bowers, half-concealed by rich
gardens and by stately trees, collected into groves all around
the bold and beautiful valley in which it stands."1 " Here,"
says Dr Robinson, " a scene of luxuriant and almost un
paralleled verdure burst upon our view. The whole valley
was filled with gardens of vegetables and orchards of all
kinds of fruits, watered by several fountains, which burst
forth in various parts, and flow westwards in refreshing
streams."2 "We had often read of the verdure and beauty
1 Clarke, ii. 400, vol. iii. p. 95. 2 Vol. iii. p. 95.

216 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
of this scene, but it far surpassed our expectations. The
town with its cupolas and minarets is literally embosomed
in trees."1 On the sloping sides of Gerizim as they begin to
rise from the plain, on the south-west side of the town, culti
vated terraces in close and regular succession are covered
with fruit-trees, chiefly the ohve. Along the bottom of the
mountain and the vahey at its base, the foliage is close and
luxuriant, the gardens are watered by artificial channels, as
weh as by the flowing streams, and the trees, some of which
are very large, were, as we saw them, loaded with fruit.
Pomegranates, olives, figs, apricots, chesnuts, and mulberries
abound. Orange-trees, vines, almond-trees, and palms also
combine to show in a single spot, with many cultivated
fields in the vicinity, how rich are the gleanings of that
glorious land, in which Israel lacked not any thing. Yet,
with all its richness, Nabulus is but as the corner of a field,
which has not been wholly reaped. The Samaritans, as
Jesus was told by a woman of Sychar, said that men ought
to worship in that mountain, on the top of which stood
their temple, now level -with the extensive ruins of the
city. The greater part of the mountain, which was terraced
to its summit, is bare. Over a large portion of its now
naked sides, where not precipitous, the soil is rich and
sufficiently abundant for the growth of trees to clothe it,
even where, as seen from beneath, the fronts of the terraces
present nothing but an aspect of sterility. The hills beside
Gerizim, when seen from its higher elevation, present to
view terraces that run along their sides, and are intersected
at right angles by divisions or waUs, that seem to have
been the boundaries of vineyards, and thus indicate a corre
sponding fruitfulness in ancient times, that has not been
spared like the valley beneath.
The plain of Sharon, though a wide-spread wilderness,
'- Narrative by Bonar and M'Cheyne.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 217
has yet some corners that have not been reaped — some
gleanings that are left. The environs of Jaffa are covered
with rich and beautiful gardens and orchards, chiefly filled
with orange-trees, loaded, as we saw them, with their green
and golden fruit. There are many palms, fig-trees, and
sycamores : and the water-melons of Jaffa are plentiful, and
not to be surpassed, as they are celebrated, for their
exceUence. The gardens and groves extend over several
square miles. Beyond them and the circumjacent cultivated
lands, the ground, though untilled, is no less fertUe
naturaUy, and is diversified on the south with little hihs
that once rejoiced on every side; and in many places the
uncultivated wastes, rich in nature's unaided lovehness, are
besprinkled or bespread with flowers, such as no care can
rear in less genial climes. Towards the northern borders
of the same plain, though Carmel has cast off its fruit, yet,
a few miles south of its eastern extremity — between the
desolated plains of Sharon and Esdraelon — the vicinity of
Sandianeh, in woody richness and beauty, would be a lovely
scene in any land. Before reaching, from the south, that
hitherto scarcely visited corner, we entered the altered
scenery, as the hihy ground, clothed with wood, borders the
naked plain of Sharon. Undulating hihs of varied form
and elevation, together with their intervening valleys, are
decked with fresh and vigorous evergreen oaks, that are
either closely crowded, more thinly ranged by nature's
hand, or sparsely scattered where seats of nobles might
proudly stand, were not wUd prowling Bedouins to be seen.
— The bare and marshy plain of Houle has still its corners,
of which a full riddance has not yet been made, — on one
extremity cultivated fields, protected by the guards at
Jacob's bridge, and on the other, noble oaks and other trees
that shade and surround the ragged path or desolate highway
for several miles, from the lower sources of the Jordan, at

218 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
Tel-el-Kady, the site of Dan, to the higher at Paneas, as
these present their respective claims to be the birth-place
of that famous stream. At either place, there is no sign
to show that the Jordan, though rising amidst ruins, flows
now through so desolate a vaUey as that which bears its
name. " The garden of Geddin, situated on the borders of
Mount Sharon, and protected by its chief, extends several
miles in a spacious valley, abounding with excellent fruits,
such as olives, almonds, peaches, apricots, and figs. A
number of streams that faU from the mountains, traverse
it, and water the cotton plants that thrive well in this
fertile soil."1 " The scenery in the plain of Zabulon is, to
the full, as delightful as in the rich vale upon the south of
the Crimea; — it reminds the traveller of the finest parts of
Kent and Surrey. The soU, although stony, is exceedingly
rich, but now entirely neglected. But the delightful vale
of Zabulon appears everywhere covered with spontaneous
vegetation, flourishing in the wildest exuberance."2 Along
the mountains of Gilead, " the land, possessing extraordinary
riches, abounds with the most beautiful prospects, is clothed
with rich forests, varied with verdant slopes; and extensive
plains of a fine red soil are now covered with thistles, as
the best proof of its fertility."8 The beautiful scenery in
Mount Gilead and Adjlun (Ajalon) has also been described
by Irby and Mangles, Mr Robinson, and more recently by
Lord Lindsay, who justly remarks, that " it can scarcely be
surpassed in beauty" — " every minute introduces you to
some new scene of loveliness ;" — " but a painter alone could
give an idea of these scenes of beauty and grandeur."4
After crossing the Jordan, and passing through immense
fields of thistles, and some patches of cultivated ground, we
ascended Mount GUead by the Wady Hamour. The lower
1 Mariti's Travels, ii. 151. 2 Clarke, ii. p. 400.
3 Buckingham's Travels, p. 325.
* Lord Lindsay's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 102, 107.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 219
part of the valley was besprinkled with trees, which in
creased in number and size as we advanced. Before reach
ing a higher elevation ohves chiefly abounded. Many of
them were large and beautiful, though their cultivation was
whoUy neglected ; one beside our path was fourteen feet in
circumference. Oaks, graduahy succeeding to the olive with
which they were partially intermingled, soon thickened into
a dense wood ; and we passed for five hours through a fine
forest of varieties of oaks, of which the evergreen was by
far the most frequent. Pines took their place on the higher
ascents, and also crowned the wooded circumjacent hills.
Along the banks of the stream oleanders in full bloom rose
to the height of twenty or thirty feet ; and they clothed so
closely a level space on the sides of a smaU wady on an
opposite hiU, that their rich flowers appeared like a purple
carpet fringed with green. The denseness of the wood at
times shut out every view save that of our immediate path ;
but in every open space or glade, the ground was wildly
beautified by the close flowers of immense fields of thistles
of varied hues, as rank as they were luxuriant, many of
which we estimated at eight feet high. The pendulous ivy
often hung and gently waved from the outer branches of
high trees. Laurels were innumerable and large. The wild
almond-tree, honeysuckle, and myrtle paid their tribute of
fragrance and beauty to the sweetness and loveliness of the
woodland scene. After ascending to the top of the vahey,
in crossing the adjoining heights, stiU more lovely prospects
opened to our view through the hihs of Gilead and Adjelun.
From a smaU space cleared of wood, where we pitched our
tent for the night, the mountains around were seen in ivood-
land beauty not to be surpassed, some of them wholly in
vested in the green verdure of the trees, so that a sohtary
bare spot, however smaU, was looked for in vain.
Were it not for the locusts that had come hke a cloud

220 THE LAND OF ISRAEL
to do their appointed work, and for endless fields of rankest
thistles that betoken desolation as weU .as fertility, where,
as of old, aU manner of fruits might as luxuriantly grow; —
were it not for the fire, as related by Lord Lindsay, a wit
ness of its effects, that in the vicinity has " burnt a whole
mountain side," where " many trees had perished in the
conflagration, and some were standing half alive, half dead,
whhe others had quite escaped"- — and thus threatened to
make a full riddance of that corner of the land, as has
been made, from such and other causes, of far more exten
sive regions ; — were it not that, where ohves grow, the
labour of the olive fails, and that the laurels, whose flourish
ing in all their freshness would symbolise unfaded renown,
were, with few exceptions, barked and blasted, so that they
may not there be seen in such profusion by any stranger
from a far land again ; — were it not that this very region is
as lonely as it is lovely, aU but tenantless and forsaken, and
so few men left, that in a long day's journey we passed but
a single viUage, and met no travehers in the mountains of
Israel, which no man passeth through, and where the way
faring man ceaseth : — were it not for them that dwell
therein, smaU as their number is, the rude inhabitants of
that solitary viUage, — in a site fitted for princely mansions,
and not for miserable hovels — who refused us mUk, or any
other food for money, and would not suffer us to put up our
tent for a night on a desolate spot near their dwellings, and
also for a camp of miserable wanderers whom we met in
their migrations, with their wives, and children, and scanty
flocks, in another woodland of Gilead; — and, still more, were
it not that, instead of a flourishing city in a delightsome
land, situated as in ancient days beside the source of the
Amour, a copious fountain of the purest water flowing from
a rock, we saw nothing but some foundations of ruins, which,
if not sought for, might not have been seer, that ?*v» s^ll

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 221
recognised as Oom el-Jelaad, but now as utterly desolate as
if, like Gilead of old, it had been threshed anew with thresh
ing instruments of iron ; — were it not for such signs and
tokens of predicted judgments, these hiUs are so fuU of
beauty that, instead of a corner of a field in a desolate land
which thus far only has remained unscathed, they look as if
no curse had ever come near them, and as if they stood in a
land still blessed of the Lord. And yet these beauteous
hiUs, bordering both, lie between the desolate valley of the
Jordan, and the naked plains of the Hauran, as if forming
to each field a corner of which, forsaken as it is, and long
forgotten as it has been, a full riddance has not been made ;
and GUead, the land of balm, looks as if it were Gilead stiU.
Where the works of man have perished, natural beauties
survive. Enough is left there to show that Israel's was —
and may be again — a goodly heritage; and desolate as it
hes, the gleanings might suffice to close the lips of talkers
tiU they can teU of as lovely hills in populous regions as
those of forsaken GUead : and when confronted merely with
its natural growth, or wild produce, neither sown nor planted
by the hand of man, sceptics might blush for their blasphe
mies against Immanuel's land, and see here not only visible
proofs of Scriptural inspiration, but also substantial reasons
for believing predictions yet unaccomplished, even as behold
ing how — were the time but only come — Israel shall be
satisfied in Gilead.
In the prophetical as in the historical Scriptures, GUead
is repeatedly associated with Bashan. Not in Gilead only
might Israel, or any other people — did not the promises
which are only theirs forbid that the land should be else
than desolate so long as they are in their enemies' land —
be satisfied, but in Bashan and in Ephraim too, as the same
good word of hope does bear, for a time, when ungodliness
shaU be turned from Jacob. "And I wiU bring Israel

222 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
again to his habitation, and he shah feed on Carmel and
Bashan, and his soul shaU be satisfied upon Mount Ephraim
and GUead. In those days, and at that time, saith Jehovah,
the iniquity of Israel shaU be sought for, and there shaU be
none : and the sins of Judah, and they shaU not be found :
for I wiU pardon them whom I reserve."
" Bathanyeh is situated on the northern slope of the
Jebel Hauran. The soil in this region is of unrivalled
fertility, and the wheat is celebrated as the finest in Syria.
The fields were already green with the new crop, which was
springing up with a luxuriance seldom seen in other parts
of Syria." r " The ancient towers of Kunawat (Kenath) oc
cupy a commanding position on the summit of the rocky
cliff overhanging the ravine; and from beside them," says
Mr Porter, " my eye wandered over one of the most beauti
ful and interesting panoramas I ever beheld in Syria. . . .
Here there are hiU and vale, graceful wooded slopes, and
wild secluded glens, frowning cliffs with battlemented sum
mits, moss-grown ruins, and groups of tapering columns,
springing up from the dense foliage of the evergreen oaks
of Bashan. The fresh foliage hides all defects, and enhances
the beauty of the noble portico and massive wall ; while
the luxuriant creepers twine round the pihars, and wreath
themselves as garlands among the volutes of the capitals."2
" This portion of Bashan is especially beautiful. One after
another, the nearer green valleys opened before me," says
Mr Graham, " as I crossed the mountain-chain ; and here
began the forest of oaks which are so often referred to in
the sacred writings, but which now exist only in a smaU
portion of Bashan. All the western side of the mountains,
from near Kunawat southwards, is covered with those beauti
ful trees; but nowhere else in all the Hauran are they found.
They may indeed weU be caUed ' the beauty of Bashan.'
1 Porter's Five Tears in Damascus, vol. ii. p. 52. 2 Ibid. pp. 98, 99.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 223
The oak is an evergreen. The country all about Nazareth
is now famous for its oaks ; yet I saw none so fine as those
on the Druz mountains. Hebran, a town situated on high
ground, within an hour of the highest peak of the Hauran,
I next visited. This peak is called el-Kuleib, and is said
to be about 6000 feet above the level of the sea. From
the plain near Bozrah it looks very high, and is a most
important point for taking bearings. It is a mountain of
great beauty, cone-shaped like the summit of Etna, and
covered with a forest of oaks to its very top. This is pos
sibly the hill spoken of by David, ' God's high hill, even the
hih of Bashan.' "
Other fields have their corners that have not been cut
down — as gleanings besides are stiU spread over the land.
Nabulus is near to the ancient capital of Ephraim. The
hills of Samaria are less bleak and bare than those of Judea ;
and throughout the land, where they stiU are to be found,
many villages have yet their fig-trees, olives, and pome
granates, as weU as their cultivated fields around them.
Two or three may here be noticed in lieu of reiterated
descriptions. " The vaUey of El-Deir, near Souf, is," as
described by Burckhardt, " a most romantic spot. The nar
row plain was sown with wheat and barley. Large oaks
and walnut-trees overshadow the stream."1 The gardens
of the large vihage of Anepta, in the hiU-country of Samaria,
fenced, like many others, with the prickly pear, plentifully
bears figs, pomegranates, almonds, and vines. A grove of
fine olives spreads over the vaUey, one of which was four
teen feet in circumference; and, as we passed, cattle were
treading out the corn in a large thrashing-floor, which lay
in heaps around it. Situated on the summit of a lofty hill,
Safed, of which the inhabitants were buried in the ruins,
that, like those of the castle, were levelled with the ground
1 Burckhardt, p. 265.

224 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
by the earthquake in 1834, not only gives evidence how
soon the waUs of a fallen city of Israel may be raised from
its ruins, as if buUt of stone newly hewn from the quarry;
but it also shows, instead of naked plains as now, what fruits
the hills of Israel, at their greatest height, can bear. On
the elevated region on which it stands there are several
projecting or mountain-tops, which give rise to a succession
of steep intermediate valleys, on the sides of two or three
of which, and anciently round the summit of one, with the
castle in the centre, the city was built. Vines whoUy cover
the terraced sides of the hUl below the castle ; and as these
were seen by us at midsummer from the opposite height,
one line of pomegranates rose above another, the bright red
flowers of which seemed to rest on the verdant foliage of the
vines, intermingled with the deep green of the fig-tree, and
the sUvery leaves of the olive which flickered in the scented
air. Over the cultivated terraces, the stones that present
an aspect of sterility in neglected hills, were altogether hid
from view ; and the steep slope was then one mass of ver
dure, as the vines were spread over the ground, or hung
over the terraces beneath, or rose over them above ; and
other fruits flourished as luxuriantly, with soil and sun to
nourish and ripen them aU. By such a gleaning grape on
a mountain top, not only may the faithfulness of the word
be seen, as it remains, but it shows what a vintage is past,
how the paths of the Lord dropped down fatness of old on
his chosen people in his chosen land, and the hiUs were
covered with the shadow of the vine, and how when He
shall turn his feet to these long desolations, — it shall come
to pass in that day, that ihe mountains shall drop down
new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk} when swords,
now so readily drawn, shaU be beaten into ploughshares, and
spears, that now bristle throughout the land, shaU be beaten
1 Joel iii. 18.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 225
into pruning hooks, and Jew and Gentile cease to trust in
bulwarks that earthquakes can throwdown.- — Amidst youno-er
and lesser, but still large, trees, an olive decaying with age
stUl lingers in the vale of Safed, — as on the uppermost
branch of a shaken tree — to show like others what berries
that tree did bear, as there they hang. Though its place
be high on a mountain, the circumference of its trunk (22
feet 3 inches) exceeds that of the seemingly co-eval olive,
which is vauntingly shown as the largest at Tivoli, in one
of the finest olive groves of Italy at the foot of the Sabine
hills, but which is not half the dimensions of some of the
other olive-gleanings, after the harvest, in Israel's desolate
and neglected land. And yet, derided as it has been, it
wants not other witnesses throughout its bounds ; for from
the heights of Lebanon to the plain of Philistia, and from
the desolate shores of Canaan to the now fruitless Bashan,
such gleanings are seen beside the path of the traveller, as
may put to shame the vintage of other lands. Of these a
note may here be given, by merely stating the circumfer
ence of some of the largest trees, as we measured them in
passing. About eight miles south from Sidon, near a small stream
covered with oleander, there stood by the wayside a syca
more-tree, much decayed with age, and wasted away in the
centre — thirty feet in circumference. Another sycamore,
stUl flourishing, upwards of twenty-eight feet, also stands
alone, in a desolated plain, nearly midway between Migdol
and Ashdod. At the former vUlage, amidst many fine olives,
we measured four, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-two, and twenty-
six and a half feet in circuit. In the vahey of Dibbin, in
GUead, are ohve-trees from thirteen to seventeen feet ; and
others of equal size still flourish, amidst rank thorns, in a
grove of fine olives, where none are left to gather their fruit,
in their own village of El-Gitta. Close by Jerusalem, the
15

226 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
largest olive in the vaUey of Jehosaphat is eight yards in
girth, and one in that of Hinnom is ten. One, at least, in
Shechem is nine in girth ; around the roots, about half a
foot from the ground, it is twelve yards. The above mea
surements are those of the trunks of the trees, some of which,
like that in Tivoli, are much decayed. Near to Beshirrai,
in Lebanon, at the height of about three thousand feet,
where many terraces are clothed with vines as richly as at
Safed, are chesnut trees upwards of twenty-two feet in cir
cuit. At the foot of that " goodly mountain," a tree at the
corner of two streets near the bazaars of Damascus, vies in
circumference with that of the largest of the cedars of
Lebanon, two of which are about thirteen yards in cir
cumference at an elevation so high that if ever reached
by mountain tops in our cold clime, where it would border
the region of perpetual snow, scarcely a blade could
grow. That land once flowed with milk and honey, and was
designated as a land of honey, as well as of oil-olive. And
here, too, there is still something left. Bee -hives, laid
horizontally, and formed of large jars of pottery, pUed up
in successive rows, are frequent throughout many of the
remaining vUlages. In the vicinity of Sandianeh, we
counted in passing, not the whole number, but a hundred
hives at the village of Kannia, and at Caffrin a hundred
and thirty. In three arched recesses in the waU of a large
square building at Solomon's pools, were two hundred hives.
The bees were as active, as the lambs are as sportive as ever,
in a land where many men are idle, and joy has withered
from among them. Honey did not exceed a fifth part of
the English price ; at Jaffa, oranges were but a twentieth;
and throughout the land other fruits were proportionally
cheap. Other Ulustrations may here be given from Beyrout and

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 227
Hebron, as from Sychar or Nabulus, how cities of Israel were
anciently environed — the gleanings of the past and earnests
of the future.
" Beyrout has a fine appearance, the rising ground behind
being studded with vUlas, and completely clothed with
verdant gardens and mulberry-trees."1 The view (see plate)
taken in early spring, before the vines had put forth their
leaves, shows their naked stocks, with the supporters pre
pared for bearing heavy clusters of grapes, where in due
season nothing can be seen but rich fruit and verdant foliage.
Irrigated, like those of Sychar, the environs of Beyrout are
as a watered spot in an unwatered garden. A fine large
olive grove, which might be the boast of any land, spreads
along its plain. Defended by the Lebanon from the incur
sions of the wandering Arabs, the vUlas are safe beyond the
walls ; and each man, more than in other parts of that
troubled land, can stiU sit in safety under his own vine, and
under his own fig-tree, though in ages past that to-wn too
has often been a spoil and a prey, and more recently was
battered by British cannon. Far within the bounds of the
ancient kingdom of Solomon as it lies, some vestige of that
glory, which has indeed waxed thin, may there be seen.
And whether the traveller first enters the Holy Land there
or at Jaffa, he touches an ungleaned field which once through
out was a land of vines and oU-ohve, of pomegranates, and
figs, and whose emblem was the palm.
On the opposite extremity of the land, on the south,
beyond which there is neither town nor village, Hebron
yields another illustration, while, situated between them far
from either, the hill of Samaria, its city gone, may yet give
evidence of rural beauty.
Hebron, less rich and picturesque than some other places
in the land, is associated with themes of peculiar interest.
' Narrative, p. 238.

228 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
There Abraham pitched his tent, and dwelt in the plain of
Mamre, which is Hebron. There he buUt an altar unto the
Lord ; and there the Lord appeared unto him, and communed
with the father of the faithful.1 There Sarah died, and
hence the cave of Machpelah before Mamre became the
burying-place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — whose God is
not the God of the dead, but of the living.2 There Jacob
dwelt when he sent Joseph out of the vale of Hebron to his
other sons, who fed their flocks in Shechem.3 There David
reigned seven years before he sat on the throne of Zion.4
Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt;6 and
has long outlasted that ruined city, in which God set afire.
And whUe the Pharaohs have been dragged from their
tombs, and the temples of Egypt have been deserted, and
the sanctuaries of Israel are defiled and desolate, that buUd-
ing which encloses the cave in which the first fathers of the
Israelitish race were buried, is entire, and guarded with
religious care. According to Jewish and Arab tradition and
belief — far more worthy of trust than Greek and Roman
legends, often discordant alike with Scripture and with
reason — the bodies of the patriarchs were laid where the
mosque of Hebron, originally built by Solomon, now stands.
The massy and peculiar structure of part of the buUding, —
in an inner wall of which the writer in passing measured a
single stone twenty -four feet in length, — seems to denote its
Hebrew origin, long antecedent to the days of the Saracens.
As seen in the centre of the plate, it has escaped destruction,
and is undefaced by decay, while thousands of edifices else
have fallen, and, so far as its original structure yet remains,
not one of equal antiquity now stands on the west of the
Jordan. While it recalls ancient days, it speaks also of the
resurrection of the dead, of the time of the adoption of the
1 Gen. xiii. 18; xviii. 1, 33. 2 Gen. xxiii. 2, 18-20. 3 Gen. xxxvii. 14.
4 2 Sam. ii. 11. » Num. xiii. 22.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 229
body from the power of the grave, the time when the elect
of God from the east and from the west, from the north and
from the south, shaU sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, in the kingdom of God, when the cave of Machpelah
shall give up its dead. Hebron, a city of refuge in Israel,
has hitherto escaped more than other cities, and has here its
gleanings to present as witnesses. Among many lesser trees
in the adjoining plain, one caUed "Abraham's oak" spreads
its branches over a space two hundred and fifty feet in cir
cumference. Many fine olive-trees skirt the town, and are
spread around it, (see plate.) Rich vineyards, intermixed
with many fig-trees and pomegranates, clothe the vaUey,
and partiaUy the terraced sides of the circumjacent hiUs.
Thirty-three centuries and a half have passed away since
men were sent by Moses, ere the Israelites entered it, to see
the land, and to bear ihe fruit of it. They came to Hebron
and to the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a
branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between
two upon a staff, and they brought of the pomegranates and
of the figs. Nearly eighteen hundred years ago, the last
tribe of Israel was rooted out of Judea; and even at this
distant age, in the desolate land of an expatriated people,
Hebron in rich abundance has its vines, and pomegranates,
and figs, such as vindicate their fame in the most ancient
times; and at the time the writer was first in the land,
some Jews of Hebron, who dared not pass the threshold of
the mosque over the tomb of Abraham, cut down a branch
with one cluster of grapes — about a yard in length, though
unripe and scarcely fully grown, (June 17, 1839,) and pre
sented it to Sir Moses Montefiore, then on a second visit to
the land of his fathers, not without the hope in his heart
that the time of Israel's return was nigh. Such gleanings,
which, amidst such desolation, might tend to strengthen the
wish and confirm the hope, are not to be gathered by the

230 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
strangers, who have laid it desolate to the degree prescribed
to them by Him who brake up for the sea his decreed
place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt
tiiou come but no farther: and here shall thy proud waves
be stayed. But the connection of these with other predic
tions may be reserved for other pages, as pertaining to
another theme.
If aught stUl more definite be sought to show that the
word is the Lord's and that his hand is in the work, as He
hath the times and the seasons in his own power, the testi
mony may be taken of a Commissioner of the British
government, who was sent forth to Syria for the promotion
of commerce and not for the illustration of prophecy, and
of a British consul long resident in the land, who was
astonished to hear his own testimony thus applied in illus
tration of a predicted fact, and in settling the last question
that has here to be resolved.
Is there yet in, it a tenth? The first paragraph in the
first document affixed to the Report on the Statistics of
Syria, laid before Parliament, runs thus : " Population.
Syria is a country whose population bears no proportion to
its superficies, and the inhabitants may be considered, on
the most moderate calculation, as reduced to a tithe of
what the soU could abundantly maintain under a wiser
system of administration."1 In the body of the Report,
respecting the productive powers of northern Syria, it is
stated, that " the country is capable of producing tenfold
the present produce."2 The degree of the depopulation
seems thus to be commensurate with that of the desolation,
as thus authoritatively ascertained, for " commercial" pur
poses and prospects, and both, as Mr Consul Moore personaUy
informed the author, before being aware of another use of
the testimony, — were the closest to the truth that they
1 Page 111. 2 Page 90.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 231
could make them. In many previous editions, it was stated,
before the British government sent forth a commission to
make such inquiries : " It is impossible to ascertain the
precise proportion. The words of Pierre Bello, quoted by
Malte-Brun,1 though the same in substance with the testi
mony of others, here afford the closest commentary. ' A
tract from which a hundred individuals draw a scanty sub
sistence formerly maintained thousands.'" But this is closer
and more precise. And, as already quoted, it has also been
recorded, without any allusion to the predictions, " Popula
tion seems to have decreased from thousands to hundreds,
and from hundreds to decades; what were cities of con
siderable magnitude, are now wretched villages; and large
towns have not a single tenant to perpetuate the memory
of their name." — " The population of the country is reduced
to a tithe of what the soil could abundantly maintain" — " the
country is capable of producing tenfold the present produce."
" The countless ruins of Palestine," we quote here the words
of Mr Stanley, " of whatever date they may be, tell us at a
glance that we must not judge the resources of the ancient
land by its present depressed and desolate state. They show
us not only that ' Syria might support tenfold its present
population, and bring forth tenfold its present produce,' but
that it actually did so. And this brings us to the question
which Eastern travellers so often ask, and are asked on their
return, ' Can these stony hills, these deserted valleys, be
indeed the Land of Promise, the land flowing with milk
and honey!' "2 This brings us, he might have said, to the
answer to another question, Lord, how long ? how long
was Israel's blindness to continue, as Isaiah asked the
Lord of hosts (Jehovah Saboath, Jehovah Jesus.) Surely it
was the Lord in his glory who said — that, ere that glory
should arise in Israel, the cities should be wfisted without
1 Geog. voL ii. p. 151. 2 Sinai and Palestine, p. 120.

232 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
inhabitant, and the houses without man — and the land be
utterly desolate — and added, Yet in it shall be a tenth,
fee.1 Surely it was none but He that formeth the mountains
and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his
thought, that maketh ihe morning darkness, and treadeth
upon the high places of the earth, The Lord, the Lord God
of hosts is his name, who thus saith;2 The city that went
out by a thousand sliall leave an hundred, and that which
went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of
Israel.3 Surely that is the word of the Lord in which it is
written- — though other judgments were still to follow — in
that day, when only gleaning grapes were to be left in the
land, shall his strong cities be as a forsaken bough, and an
uppermost branch which they left because of the children
of Israel: and there shall be desolation. Surely the God
of Israel is the Lord; and surely, the Lord of all the earth
shall He be called.
These are not chance words. It was not by chance that
after so long a time these things may now at last be seen
in Israel's Land, which thus respond to the word of Israel's
Lord. And it is not to " chance" that the full completion
of Jehovah's response to the prophet's interrogation is com
mitted. After long desolations there is yet in it a tenth;
and that is now seen and confessed to be a truth which
was given for a sign.
While gleanings are thus strewed over Israel's land, from
Lebanon to Philistia and from Bashan to the sea, they show
how rich was the field that has been reaped, how great is
the desolation that has been wrought; and how, while each
vision is seen in its effect' and each figure in its accordant
facts, — the whole land is so depicted and described in its
varied features, that he who has eyes to see may see, and
he who has ears to hear may hear, that Israel's land is the
1 Isaiah vi. 13. 2 Amos iv. 13. ' Amos v. 3.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 233
witness of Israel's God; and that as his judgments are true,
so his promises shaU not fail.
A glorious land, without its cultivators ; a goodly in
heritance without its heirs ; Jacob's heritage waste, and
Jacob's chUdren wanderers among the nations, tUl joy is
withered from the sons of men in their withered land,
which, delightsome as it was, now mourns unto the Lord
because of its desolation, and has become as a garden
without water, an oak without leaves, an olive that has
been shaken, and a vineyard when the vintage is past, a
fruitful field, when the harvest is over, like unto a desolate
wUderness: — but stiU a garden once worthy of the Lord,
and caUed his own, not altogether empty, but run to
waste, its substance in it as a garden stiU, unweeded and
unwatered, covered with briers, and thorns, and thistles,
such as neglected gardens grow, with herbage luxuriant as
the richest meadows, traversed by the wUd boar of the
forest, and the wild beasts of the field, a borderless pasture
of wandering flocks ; — an oak, or a teil-tree, whose wood
is the hardiest, whose roots are as deep, and whose trunk
and branches are as strong as ever, however leafless it be
for a season; — an olive beaten once, but not gone over
again, and stiU bearing some lingering berries on its else
forsaken boughs; — a vineyard, when the vintage is past,
but to which no man has come back to fetch again the
clusters or grapes that were forgotten; — and a fruitful
field when the harvest is over, and the harvest shouting
has ceased, but yet the reaped field as of Israel's land, — ¦
here, a left sheaf, and there an uncut corner, and everywhere
ungathered ears, enough to fill the gleaner's lap, as it was
by God's own law in times long past, when the poor and
the stranger were not forgotten of the Lord — so that, were
the gleaners come, it would be as he that gathereth ears in
the valley of Rephaim, while yet the tithe in Israel's land

234 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
is left for Jacob's chUdren: Such is now the goodly land
which the God of the whole earth espied for Abraham, and
by these similitudes it is set in view. Such as it was to
be it has become, while bereft for many generations of the
people, whom, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm,
the Lord did take from Egyptian bondage, and plant, as
his own vine, within it. Without looking here at other
signs which are set for determining the time for the destined
gleaners to come — the destined restorers to restore — while
these facts are so positive and plain, and these judgments
defined as they reach their measured bounds, who, in the
exercise of that reason which God has given him, discarding
an incredulity alike unjustifiable and ungodly, may not in
these days, when such things are seen, be himself a witness
of the truth of the words immediately annexed to these
predictions, — at that day shall a man look to his Maker,
and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel!1
For others there is another time, and another word —
Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see: but
thet shall see, and be ashamed for their envy at the
people.2 That a land with such gleanings left, and such substance
in it, should be so desolate, may weU astonish those who
dwell therein, and also every stranger from a far land
who visits it. Visited as of late years it has been by
many, speculations are now rife, and attempts have been
made, for its improvement and renewed cultivation. " Both
for agriculture and manufactures," according to an eye
witness, as reported to the British government, " Syria has
great capabilities. Were fiscal exactions checked and
regulated, could labour pursue its peaceful vocations, were
the aptitudes which the country and its inhabitants pre
sent, for the development of industry, called into play, the
1 Isaiah xvii. 7. 2 Isaiah xxvi. 11.

PREDICTED DEGREE OF DESOLATION. 235
whole face of the land would soon be changed."1 The
same Report bears, that a "forced cultivation" had been
tried. "Last year (1837) Ibrahim Pasha forced an in
creased cultivation throughout Syria, and the inhabitants
of the different towns were obliged to take upon themselves
the agricultural charge of every spot of land susceptible of
improvement. He himself set the example, and embarked
a large sum in such enterprises. The officers of the army,
down to the majors, were forced also to adventure in similar
undertakings. The result was, however, extremely un
fortunate from the want of the usual periodical rains
which caused the failing of the crops generally in Syria,
and in most cases a total loss of capital ensued."2 " I will
make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: and'
your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall
not yield her increase, &c. — I will scatter you among the
heathen — and your land shall be desolate. — Then shall tlie
land enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye
be im your enemies' land, even then shall the land rest. —
Your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it,
&c.3 In speaking of this abortive attempt to force the reculti-
vation of the land as an Ulustration of these predictions, to
an intelligent Arabic of the Greek church, who had been
previously converted from infidelity after reading thrice
the Arab edition of this treatise, he said to the writer, that
he knew it well, for he himself had lost much money in the
ruinous enterprise. As long as they (the Jews) be in their
enemies' land, their land lieth desolate.
But the same sure word hath declared, that " the great
capabilities of Syria for agriculture" shall not for ever be
dormant and inert, "for the whole face of the land," — in
the same words as those of Dr Bowring, but in another
1 Parliamentary Report, p. 29. 2 Ibid. pp. 9, 19.
' Lev. xxvi. 19, 20, 32-34.

236 THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
book than that which was thus laid by sovereign authority
before earthly legislators, — shaU yet be changed, though
by other men and other means, and that, too, " soon" or
speedily when the time is come, and when the work
according to His word shaU be hastened. Israel shall
blossom and bud, and fill the face of the land with fruit.
Although aU the power and aU the expenditure of one of
the greatest of modern despots — a fierce lord into whose
hands Egypt was given, whose rod over it that smote whole
Palestina has been broken — were exercised and spent in
vain ; yet wherever any spot has been fixed on as the re
sidence, and seized as the property, either of a Turkish Aga
or of an Arab Sheikh, it enjoys his protection, is made to
administer to his wants or to his luxury, and the exuber
ance and beauty of the land of Canaan soon re-appear. But
such spots are, in the words of an eye-witness, only " mere
sprinklings"1 in the midst of extensive desolation. And
how could it ever have been foreseen, that the same cause,
viz. the residence of despotic spoliators, was to operate in so
strange a manner, as to spread a wide wasting desolation
over the face of the country, and to be, at the same time,
the very means of preserving the thin gleaning of its ancient
glory? or that a few berries on the outmost bough would
be saved by the same hand that was to shake the olive ?
Spots cultivated even by the Bedouins, show fields of barley
in the midst of plains of thorns or thistles.
Without entering in these pages on the field, now nar
rowing fast, of unfulfilled predictions, as inapplicable to our
present theme, though not of itself unimportant or forbidden,
- — justice would not here be done to the evidence which
prophecy presents in its accomplishment, were we altogether
to overlook predicted events, associated, as to time, with
the predicted degree of the depopulation and desolation of
1 General Straton's MS. Travels.

THE REMNANT OF SYRIA. 237
Israel's land — which such explicit testimonies thus accredit
as realized. The vision of the prophet itself here speaks,
and may well disavow a needless interpretation.
The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the king
dom from Damascus, and the remnant of Stria : they
shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the Lord
of hosts. And in that day it shall come to pass, the glory
of Jacob shall be made thin— yet gleaning grapes shall be
left in it,1 &c.
The remnant of Syria, — spared tiU then, — was to become
like the glory of Israel when thinned to its gleanings. What
that remnant of Syria was, may be clearly seen. " The
country of Kesrouan, in Lebanon," says Burckhardt, as he
visited and described it in 1810, "is full of villages and
convents. There is hardly any place in Syria less fit for
culture — yet it has become the most populous part of the
country. The satisfaction of inhabiting the neighbourhood
of places of sanctity, of having church bells, &c. are the
chief attractions that have peopled Kesrouan with Cathohc
Christians."2 In the Parliamentary Report, published in
1843, Dr Bowring states, that " the inhabitants of Lebanon
are an active and industrious race, who turn to good account
such parts of their soU as are suited to agricultural produc
tion. — In many parts of the mountain range the land is laid
out in terraces, much resembling the almost horticultural
cultivation of Tuscany and Lucca. — Large quantities of mul
berry-trees grow at various elevations. There is also an
abundance of olive-trees, some vineyard grounds, much
wheat and maize, and many gardens filled with vegetables.
There is no part of Syria in which there is so obvious an
activity — none in which the inhabitants appear so prosper
ous or so happy."3 Lebanon for many ages maintained its
independence, and was ruled by its own chiefs. But, within
1 Isa. xvii. 3-6. • Burckhardt, p. 182. ' Page 8.

238 THE REMNANT OF STRIA.
a short space, it has since been desolated by civil wars. Its
inhabitants have been disarmed, armed, and disarmed again.
The weapons put in their hands for expeUing Mehemet Ali
from Egypt, were used for their mutual destruction. In an
official communication from the British ambassador at Con
stantinople to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, it is recorded,
under date, "May 17, 1845, The last advices from Syria,
dated the 4th inst., present a most melancholy picture of the
state of affairs in Mount Lebanon. The flames of civil war
had burst out afresh ; crimes of the deepest dye had been
committed with impunity; conflicts between armed bodies
of men had taken place with considerable loss of life; mur
der, pillage, and conflagration, were raging in several parts
of the mountain," &c} In his next letter, the civU warfare
in Lebanon was described as " increasing both in extent and
violence." The Consul-General of Syria thus wrote to Sir
Stratford Canning, May 1 7, 1 847, " towards sunset the 1 6th,
I saw the smoke, the sure sign of a coUision, rising from
the vUlage of Abaidie, and soon afterwards a larger quantity
from the lower part of the vahey. The next morning a
number of houses and smaU viUages were seen burning on
the mountain-side close to Beyrout. The Druses burnt the
chief vUlage of the Meten and the old castle of the Maronite
Emirs there. The sight of eighteen burning villages and
hamlets, or houses, created a great sensation in Beyrout." ''
In the Times of June 25, of the same year, it is recorded at
the close of a leading article, that " a Tartar brought intel
ligence from Beyrout of the 24th ult. Tranquillity was not
yet restored in the mountains ; fresh engagements had taken
place between the Maronites and the Druses. The Smyrna
journals of the 9th inst. bring news from Beyrout of the 3d
inst. The Maronites, though at first victorious, had ultimately
1 Sir Stratford Canning to the Earl of Aherdeen. Par. Papers. Correspondence
relative to Syria, Part i. p. 106.
2 Correspondence relative to Syria, Part ii. pp. 164, 165.

THE PLAIN OF AVEN. 239
succumbed. The number of the villages burned exceeded a
hundred, two-thirds of which belonged to the Christians; and
seventeen of their convents had been reduced to ashes."
On the western side of the Anti-Lebanon, the appearance
of burning vUlages in the mountain was like that of a grand
illumination, as stated in a letter to the author from the
Rev. Mr Graham of Damascus. In another dated from that
city 10th September 1845, which he received from Mr
Consul Wood, a most inteUigent and watchful observer of
what passed in Syria, he says, " You wiU have heard through
the channel of the newspapers1 the late scenes in Lebanon,
— and you are perhaps struck with the fact, that in spite of
the united efforts to cause Lebanon to prosper and flourish,
its last flowers are fast withering away." Such testimonies
show how soon, in the appointed time, the remnant of Syria
may be as the glory of Jacob, as it is made thin.
I will cut off the inhabitant from the plain of Aven,
literaUy, as in the margin, Bikath-aven.2 "Nothing can be
more striking," says Burckhardt, as he wrote in 1810, "than
a comparison of the fertile but uncultivated districts of
Bekaa and Baalbec, with the rocky mountains, in the
opposite direction, where, notwithstanding that nature seems
to afford nothing for the sustenance of the inhabitants,
1 Of these, some farther extracts may be given: — "Beyrout, May 17, 1845. — A
civil war, and one of extermination, reigns at this moment in the mountains, between
the Druses and the Christians; and during the last fifteen days the horrors we have
seen perpetrated are dreadful. On every side the sounds of battle are heard, and
nothing is seen but fire and flames, — houses, villages, churches, and convents, heing
reciprocally a prey to the flames. At the moment I write, we have before us the
appalling spectacle of no less than eleven villages, and a number of Maronite churches
and convents in flames. "— (From the Malta Times.) " The news from this country
is dreadful — it sickens the heart. Besides the accounts given in the Levant papers—
which of course must palliate the events as much as possible — we have seen letters
from Beyrout which give a horrible account of Syria in general, and of Lebanon in
particular. For fifteen days previously, wholesale murder, burning, and every pos
sible crime was committed. The greater part of the villages and towns in the high
lands are in ashes." — (The Impartial of Smyrna.) " Christian, Druse, and mixed
villages are all burnt." — Times, June 5, 1845.
2 Amos i. 5.

240 LEBANON.
numerous viUages flourish."1 The Bekaa is the plain
between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and is doubtless the
same as Bikath-Aven- — the plain of idols, situated as one
of the greatest of idolatrous temples there was, — and lying
as it does between Damascus and Beth-eden, in Lebanon,
with both which names and places it is associated in the
prophetic record. Long one of the most populous as fertUe
regions of Asia, for the possession of which the kings of
Syria and of Egypt often contended in wars in which thou
sands fell, the inhabitants have been cut off from its unculti
vated wastes — now as deserted and desolate as Esdraelon
and Sharon, even where vihages were thickly clustered on
the " rocky mountains " which enclose it. In passing across
it, in about three hours, from the ruins of Baalbec to
Lebanon, we saw not a village in the plain, and did not
meet a man. It was a plain of idols, as one of the most
magnificent temples ever buUt by man was situated in it,
and still bears in its stupendous ruin, the name of the chief
of the heathen gods — Baal-bec; and fertUe as any region of
Syria, it is " an uncultivated district," from which its once
teeming population has been swept, and is now, as bearing
one of the noblest of ruins, visited by strangers who cannot
inspect its ruins without trampling under foot the broken
idols in their ruined temple.
Lebanon was celebrated for the extent of its forests, and
especially for the size and exceUency of its cedars. It
abounded also in the pine, the cypress, the vine, &c. Its
forest was a Scriptural figure of tlie glory of Assyria and of
Egypt ; and its faU too was a figure of theirs. The high
ones of stature shall be liewn down. Lebanon sliall fall
by a mighty one.2 To itself the prophecy exclusively
applies, Lebanon is ashamed, and withered away. — Open
thy doors, 0 Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.
¦ Burckhardt's Syria, p. 20. 2 Isaiah x. 33, 34.

LEBANON. 241
Howl, fir-tree; for the cedar is faUen, because the mighty-
are spoUed.1 In describing Egypt's faU, it is said, Thou
shalt be brought down with the trees of Eden, unto the
nether parts of the earth.2 The forest of the vintage is
come down — but stiU, as in other things, a gleaning re
mains, even of the glory of the forest of Lebanon. Where
anciently it stood, the region, for many mUes around, is
bleak, desolate, and bare, as if not a single tree of renown
had ever there adorned the wUderness. But seen at a dis
tance, in descending from the loftiest heights of Lebanon,
there is one covered spot — as if by a left sheaf in a shorn
field — in which a few cedars worthy of Lebanon are seen, of
which the writer may now testify, having rested during a
Sabbath under their shade.
Of Lebanon, Volney says, " Towards Lebanon the moun
tains are lofty, but they are covered in many places with
as much earth as fits them for cultivation by industry and
labour. There, amidst the crags of the rocks, may be seen
the no very magnificent remains of the boasted cedars."3
In a note, he adds, that " there are but four or five of
these trees which deserve any notice." The dark speck,
where the forest of Lebanon spread widely on every side,
is now indeed so smaU a gleaning of its ancient glory, that,
in the words of the prophet, thus tauntingly confirmed by
the sceptic, Lebanon is ashamed. But the magnitude of
the few old cedars that yet remain may shame the goodliest
trees of " Provence and Normandy," as much as their gay
carpeting shows that Israel's land now blushes in its
withered herbs. Eight cedars4 — the smaUest of which all
the forests of France would, if they could, boast of as their
1 Zech. xi. 1, 2. • Ezek. xxxi. 18. 3 Travels, vol. i. p. 292.
4 Two are 38 feet in circumference. The rest which we measured are 33J feet,
31 feet 10 inches, 29 feet, 28.^, 27j, and 22 feet, round the trunks, the least of these
being thus upwards of seven yards, and the largest nearly thirteen yards in girth.
Some of these have been stated by others as larger, and are so nearer to the root.
They are as lofty as they are large. 16

242 SAMARIA.
" king" — are magnificent remains, that show what a goodly
mountain Lebanon was, and how withering is that word
which has left them alone, with smaUer trees on a knoU or
httle hih. And fallen as the forest is, as fell the proud
Assyrian whom it typified in his pride, what was true of
him is true of it ; and the scoff of the sceptics at its four or
five trees that deserve any notice, may show how he could
not here write a note of a few words, or state a minute
fact, without giving a literal interpretation to an apparently
symbolical prediction. The rest of the trees of his forest >
shall be few that a child may write them. Assyria and
Egypt have been brought down, with the trees of Eden. —
But, though the proofs of inspiration be complete, ihe end
is not yet. Lebanon may now be ashamed beside GUead.
But of both it is written, when civil wars and all others
shaU be no more, " I will bnng them into the land of
Gilead and Lebanon, and place shall not be found for
them."1 And when all figures of judgments shall have
passed away, and Israel shaU be the Lord's inheritance,
the Egyptians shall seme with ihe Assyrians.2

SECTION V.

SAMABIA AND JERUSALEM.

The separate capitals of Israel and of Judah have their
assigned burdens resting on them, to which they bear
witness, as do Bethel, Hazor, and Chorazin to theirs.
Among such a multiplicity of prophecies, where the
prediction and the fulfilment of each is a miracle, it is
almost impossible to select any as more wonderful than the
rest. But those concerning Samaria are not the least
remarkable. That city was, for a long period, the capital
> Zech. x. 10. - Isa. xix. 23-25.

SAMARIA. 243
of the ten tribes of Israel. Herod the Great enlarged and
adorned it, and, in honour of Augustus Caesar, gave it the
name of Sebaste. There are many ancient medals which
were struck there.1 It was the seat of a bishopric, as the
subscription of some of its bishops to the acts of ancient
councUs attests. Its history is thus brought down to a
period unquestionably far remote from the time of the
prediction; and the narrative of a traveUer, which alludes
not to the prophecy, and which has even been unnoticed
by commentators, shows its complete fulfilment. Besides
other passages which speak of its extinction as a city, the
word of the Lord which Micah saw concerning Samaria, is —
" / will make Samaria as an heap of the field,, and as
plantings of a vineyard : and I will pour down the stones
thereof into the valley; and I will discover the foundations
thereof."2 And "this great city is now wholly converted
into gardens ; and all the tokens that remain to testify that
there ever has been such a place, are only on the north
side, a large square piazza encompassed with pillars, and
on the east some poor remains of a great church."3 Such
was the first notice of that ancient capital given by Maun-
dreU in 1696, and it is confirmed by Mr Buckingham in
1816: " The relative distance, local position, and unaltered
name of Sebaste, leave no doubt as to the identity of its
site ; and," he adds, " its local features are equally seen in
the threat of Micah."
Such was the brief notice of the ancient capital of Israel,
contained in many editions of this treatise. But having
visited the interesting spot, the author cannot forbear from
glancing at the prophetic history of Samaria, and also
1 Calmet's Dictionary. Relandi Palsastina, p. 981. 2 Micah i. 6.
3 Maundrell's Travels, p. 78. Buckingham's Travels, pp. 511, 512: It has also
been described in similar terms by other travellers. She stones are poured down
into the valley, the foundations discovered, and there is now only to be seen " the
hill where once stood Samaria." Nabulus has been mistaken by one traveller for
the ancient Samaria.

244 SAMARIA.
pointing more minutely to its local features as they are
indeed clearly seen in the threatenings of the prophets. A
daguerreotype view may now set ite cityless hiU before the
eye of the reader.
In the origin of ite history, the hiU of Samaria was
bought of Shemer, by Omri king of Israel, who buUt on it
a city, which, after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill,
he called Samaria.1 Few seats of royalty can rival its
princely site. In regard at least to its capabUities for
strength or beauty, separately, far more conjointly, it could
scarcely be surpassed. Its local position is most peculiar.
Of a finely varied and oblong form, the isolated hiU of
Samaria, with a flattened summit, seems as if it had been
raised by nature at" " the head of the fat vaUey," to be at
once a stronghold and royal seat. And judgment-stricken
as it is, none can stand on the uncovered foundations of the
vanished city, and look, from among its solitary columns,
on the gleanings of its ancient glory aU around, without
beholding, as it were, in the mind's or the memory's eye,
the once glorious beauty of the city and the scene, ere ever
the flower that bloomed there in aU its gorgeous beauty
had faded, or " the crown of pride" that was seated there
had been trampled under foot. On one side, beyond the
narrow intervening vale, where native loveliness in wild
luxuriance lingers still, the terraced hUls which bound the
head of the vaUey, rise gently from the plain, as if spread
forth to view in ah their natural richness, and must once
have formed a noble portion of the scene of "glorious
beauty," which the hanging gardens of Babylon could have
but faintly imitated. And on the other, the valley, varied
in its features, but unvaried in natural fertility, spreads
forth into a wide expanse, as if unfolding the ancient glory
of Israel, while as yet there was no leanness there.
1 1 Kings xvi. 24.

SAMARIA. 245
But Samaria was as noted for its wickedness as for its
beauty ; and therefore it is marked aU over with judgments.
Omri, the king of Israel, and founder of Samaria, wrought
evil in the eyes of the Lord; and did worse than all that
were before him. But Ahab, his son, and other successors
in his stead, exceeded him in iniquity. Samaria became
the seat of idolatry and wickedness; and the word of the
Lord went forth against it.
The- head of Ephraim is Samaria} Woe to the crown
of pride, to ihe drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious
beauty is as a fading flower, which are on the head of the
fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine; Behold the
Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which, as a tempest of
hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters
overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand.
The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be
trodden under feet : and the glorious beauty which is on
the head cf the fat valley shall be a fading flower, and as
the hasty fruit before the summer; which, when he that
looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth
it up} I will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of
Israel.3 I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make
a wall, that she shall not find her paths. None shall deliver
her out of mine hand. I will also cause all her mirth to
cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and
all her solemn feasts. And I will destroy her vines and
her fig-trees, whereof she hath said, These are my rewards
that my lovers have given me: and I will malce them a
forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them} The pride
of Israel doth testify to his face : therefore shall Israel and
Ephraim fall in their iniquity} They have deeply cor
rupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah: therefore he
1 Isa. vii. 9. 2 Isa. xxviii. 1-4. 3 Hos. i. 4.
* Hos. ii. 6, 10-12. * Hos. v. 5.

246 SAMARIA.
will remember their iniquity, lie will visit their sins. — As
for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird.1 The
inhabitants of Samaria shall mourn over it — for the glory
thereof, because it is departed from it. As for Samaria,
her king is cut off as the foam upon tlve water.2 Samaria
shall become desolate: for she hath rebelled against her God}
Tlie word of the Lord that came to Micah concerning Sa
maria — -What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not
Samaria? — Therefore I will make Sama,ria as an heap of
the field, and as plantings of a vineyard. And I will
pour down the stones thereof into the valley; and I will
discover the foundations thereof. For the statutes of Omri
are kept, and all the vjorks of ihe house of Ahab, and ye
walk in their counsels; that I should make thee a desola
tion} Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust vn,
the mountain of Samaria, which are named chief of the
nations — that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves
upon their couches — that chant to the sound of the viol —
that drink wine in bowls — but they are not grieved for ihe
affliction of Joseph: therefore now shall they go captive with
the first that go captive}
The ten tribes, whose capital was Samaria, were the first
to go captive. The king of Assyria came up throughout all
the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three
years ; and he took Samaria, and carried Israel away into
Assyria.6 And the glory of Ephraim flew away like a bird.
But the predicted doom of the land of Israel, and of the
city of Samaria, was not to be taken away tUl the captivity
of Israel should also cease. Rebuilt and destroyed anew, it
has ever met its yet irrevocable fate. After the expulsion
of the Israelites, its new inhabitants, brought by the king
of Assyria from Babylon, Cuthah and Hamath, &c. were
1 Hos. ix. 9, 11. * Hos. x. 5, 7. 3 Hos. xiii. 16.
4 Micah i. 5, 6 ; vi. 16. s Amos vi. 1-7. ' 2 Kings xvii. 5, 6.

SAMARIA. 247
called by its name. But it had yet to be cast down and to
be laid desolate. And the Samaritans, little more than a
century before the Christian era, having, by inflicting in
juries on a colony of the Jews, provoked the wrath of
Hyrcanus, the ethnarch and high-priest of Judea, he be
sieged Samaria, and encompassed it with a ditch and double
wall, eighty furlongs, or ten mile's in length. His sons
Antigonus and Aristobulus were set over the siege. Suffer
ing the greatest privations, and reduced to extreme distress,
the Samaritans invoked the aid of Antiochus Cyzicenes,
who reigned at Damascus over Coele-Syria and Phoenicia.
Antiochus was defeated, and all his aid was in vain, though
he ravaged the land of Israel and Judea. Samaria was
again invested. Her way was hedged up, walled with a
wall she could not find her path. And the glorious beaidy
was as a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the
summer, which, when he that lookeih upon it seeth, while it
is yet in his hand he eateth it. After a year's siege, it was
no sooner in the hand of Hyrcanus, than he destroyed it.
Having taken Samaria, he demolished it utterly, tiU he left
not any vestige of a city.1 Though rebuUt by Gabinius,
proconsul of Syria, and afterwards enlarged and adorned by
Herod the Great, neither consul nor king could avert its
fate. And now, no city there, "the hill on which stood
Samaria" is alone to be seen, bearing in its "features" the
threatenings of the prophets.
Behold the Lord hath a mighty and strong arm, which,
as a destroying storm, — shall cast down' to the earth with
the hand.— Samaria has been cast down to the earth.
The crown of pride has been trodden under foot. Not a
single portion of a wall of any ancient edifice is standing.
There are only the remains of a comparatively modern
church. Samaria is no more. It extended over the whole
1 Joseph. Ant. xiii. c. x. 2, 3.

248 SAMARIA.
summit, and partly the sides of the hiU — as still seen in its
columns that yet stand, some of which are near to the
vUlage, others, whether standing or broken, in various
places, while a colonnade stUl stands, as there also its monu
ment, on the western extremity the most remote from the
viUage, as faintly seen in the plate. But where it stood in
its glory, the ruined city has not been suffered to lie.
i" will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as
plantings of a vineyard. Stones abound in the moun
tainous regions of Israel ; and it is evident, that in their
terraced vineyards the stones have been gathered out of the
level spaces, which are occupied only by the soil, and when
freed from them were fitted for planting. In some fields in
the valleys, the stones have been gathered up, and have
been cast into heaps, which thus form literaUy " heaps of
the field." The author, on being asked, whUe first approach
ing Samaria, what he understood by heaps of the field,
unhesitatingly answered, as thus explained, such heaps '.as
had been passed the preceding day.1 Samaria, it is recorded,
was utterly demolished, immediately after it was taken by
Aristobulus, and must then have formed a great mass of
ruins. From these it was raised again by Gabinius and by
Herod the Great, who enlarged and adorned it, to render it
worthy of its new name, which he gave to Augustus, who
had given him a kingdom. But again it has been cast
down, and more lowly than before. It is even reduced to
be as an heap of the field. The stones which yet he on its
surface, bereaved of the glory that might seem to hover
around a ruin, however defaced, have been gathered singly,
and cast into heaps, as if they were heaps of a field, and not
the remains of a capital. The ground has been cleared of
them to form the gardens or patches of cultivated ground
possessed by the inhabitants of the wretched viUage which
1 Narrative by Bonar and M'Cheyne, p. 293.

SAMARIA. 249
stands on the extremity of the site of the ancient city. The
stones, as if in a field or vineyard, have manifestly been
gathered up in heaps, to prepare the ground for being sown
or planted. Quadrangular lines of columns, in an open
space on the north side of the hiU, towards its base, marking
the site of some public buUding, likely the forum as con
jectured by Count Portalis, now stand in a field which was
covered when we saw it with a crop of ripe barley, that was
overtopped in various places with sixteen heaps of stones
within the space enclosed by the ancient colonnade; and
thus as literally heaps of the field, they have also taken the
predicted form of the stricken and departed city, and are
useful in iUustration of the word of the Lord, though they
cannot show with certainty what building was there thronged
with those who looked to other laws more than to the
decalogue, and were lovers of pleasure more than lovers of
God. Of all the glory of the royal city of Samaria, nothing
greater remains than an heap of the field. But only a very
smaU portion of it now rests where ite crown of pride rose
high ; for it is farther said,
I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, &c.
The road which ascends the hiU of Samaria is enclosed on
both sides by stones, so rudely piled up, that they may be
said to be heaped rather than to be buUt. Yet aU the way
they testify that the stones which once formed Samaria
have been cast down. They have evidently pertained to
ancient buddings, for broken capitals, and pedestals, and
other fragments of columns and of hewn stones, may be
seen lying confusedly together. And not there only, but
aU along the sloping sides of the hiU, from its summit to
ite base, lie many stones, of various forms, and fragments
of columns, whose form or massiveness has stayed their
course, manifestly showing that they have been cast down,
and could not of themselves have fallen where they lie.

250 SAMARIA.
The progress of the stones of Samaria, when cast down by
the hand, or poured down into tlie valley, may be traced
the whole way, from the site of the city on the top of the
hiU to the very bottom of the vahey, where chiefly they
abound, either partially strewed over it, (see plate,) or
gathered into heaps among the trees, that the beasts of the
field may the more freely eat.
I will discover the foundations thereof. In various
places along the summit of the hUl, monolithe- columns, the
ornaments of ancient buildings, and colonnades, now stand
alone without princely edifices, or any other, to adorn. The
site of the ancient city — except on the small point where
the poor viUage of Sabustieh, with scarcely two hundred
inhabitants, stiU stands— is as destitute of houses as if no
capital had ever been there, and no city had ever covered it.
The crown of pride has been wholly cast down. The very
ruins, unlike those of other cities, he not where they feU, to
keep the foundations from view. These are indeed discovered
and laid bare. The hewn stones, that once or oftener were
erected into the city of Samaria or Sebaste, have been cast
down to the ground, and have been thrown into heaps, or,
in far larger quantities, have been poured down into the
valley. The proud metropolis, though that of Israel, where
false gods were worshipped, has whoUy disappeared: and the
hiU is now seen without its- city, of which scarcely a vestige,
except some of the columns that adorned it in the days of
Herod, remains where it stood. Without the wreck of a
ruin, or any stones to cover them, foundations alone re
main. Some of these are stiU discernible on the west of
the vihage. But on the author's second visit, immediately
after the ingathering of the harvest, they were covered with
heaps of unthrashed barley, beside a thrashing-floor, like
to which Samaria has been. The foundations are now so
level with the ground, that they would scarcely disfigure it.

SAMARIA. 251
The foundations of waUs are traceable, where overgrown
with grass for the beasts of the field to eat. And in some
instances, aU uncovered, they are plainly seen, as low as
when they first were laid, in the long parallel lines of the
then future but now fallen and vanished edifices, in which
unholy men of Israel kept the statutes of Omri, and broke
the commandments of their God ; chanted to the sound of
the viol, whUe they would not listen to the voice of the
prophets ; and were at ease in Zion, whUe they would not
mourn for the afflictions of Joseph ; and trusted in the
mountain of Samaria, while those very judgments were
sounding in their ears, which that mountain itself has not
heard in vain.
" Old Samaria covered this hill, and stretched down round
its skirts. The great Baal temple, and the palaces of his
priests, and of Ahab and Jezebel, and the graves of Ash-
taroth, then crowned the hUl, and adorned its slopes, &c.
.... Now, how changed and stiU it lies ! Where the
priests trod the marble pavements of the Temple of the Sun,
the night-hawk broods over her eggs among the stones. The
yellow nettle grows, almost like a shrub, where garlands for
the sacrifice were gathered, and the white convolvulus and
dog-rose run riot over the foundation-stones of the ancient
palaces."1 While Miss Martineau writes thus, Lord Lindsay
says, " I have seldom been so forcibly struck with the ful
filment of prophecy, as when walking over the hiU of
Samaria."2 "I thought," says M. Van de Velde, "of the
prophecies spoken against Samaria. Their fulfilment I had
this day had before my eyes. Samaria, a huge heap of stones !
her foundations discovered, her stones thrown down into the
vaUey! Her streets ploughed up, and covered with corn
fields and olive-gardens!"3
1 Eastern Life, vol. iii. pp. 203, 204. 2 Travels, p. 255.
3 Syria and Palestine, vol. i. p. 383. (

252 SAMARIA.
In those days of Baalim, wherein Israel burned incense
to them, and decked herself with jewels, and went after her
lovers, and forgat the Lord, the citizens of her adopted and
illegitimate capital, the kine of Bashan, that dwelt in the
mountain of Samaria, oppressed the poor, and crushed the
needy, and said unto their masters, Bring, and let us drink,
The drunkards of Ephraim erred through wine, and through
strong drink were out of the way; they erred in vision,
and stumbled in judgment, and wrought woe to Israel. " I
wiU cause aU her mirth to cease, her feast-days, her new-
moons, and her sabbaths, and aU her solemn feasts. I wUl
destroy her vines and her fig-trees ; — and I will make them
a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them."1 And
now, while Samaria is desolate, and the days of her iniquity
have been visited upon her, the beasts of the field browse
among the trees in the bottom of the vaUey and hills; and
on the grassy mounds, — rising one above another, that girt
the lower part of the hUl of Samaria, and abound also on
those that adjoin it, retaining the form of terraced vineyards,
— the beasts of the field now pasture where the vines
circled, as in ringlets, the head of the fat vahey on which
Samaria was a crown of pride; and so utterly are her vine
yards destroyed, that it was only after much searching that
a leaf of a wild vine could be found.
But Samaria has to assume an altered and a smiling
aspect, when she shaU see her native children return to her
again. " Behold, I wiU aUure her," saith the Lord, " and
bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto
her, and I wiU give her her vineyards from thence, and the
vaUey of Achor for a door of hope: and she shah sing there,
as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came
up out of the land of Egypt. I wiU betroth thee unto me
for ever — in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-
1 Hosea ii. 11, 12.

JERUSALEM. 253
kindness, and in mercies, — and in faithfulness.1 Thou shalt
yet plant vines upon the mountains of Sa/maria, 0 virgin of
Israel: the planters shall plant, and shall eat them as common
things. For there shall be a day that the watchmen upon
the mount Ephraim shall cry, Arise ye, and let us go up to
Zion unto the Lord our God.2 The house of Jacob shall
possess the fields of Samaria."3 And, while the crown of
pride has been trodden under the feet of men and of beasts,
in that day shaU the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory,
and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people,4
the remnant of Israel.
But the predicted fate of Jerusalem has been more con
spicuously displayed, and more fully illustrated, than that of
the capital of the ten tribes of Israel. It formed the theme
of prophecy from the death-bed of Jacob, — and as the seat
of the government of the children of Judah, the sceptre de
parted not from it till the Messiah appeared, on the expira
tion of seventeen hundred years after the death of the
Patriarch, and till the period of its desolation, prophesied of
by Daniel, had arrived. A destiny diametrically opposite
to the former, then awaited it, even for a longer duration;
and ere its greatness was gone, even at the very time when
it was crowded with Jews, from aU quarters, resorting to
the feast, and when it was inhabited by a numerous popu
lation dwelling in security and peace, its doom was de
nounced, — that it was to be trodden down of the Gentiles, till
the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled. The times of
the Gentiles are not yet fulfilled, and Jerusalem is stUl
trodden down of the GentUes. The Jews have often at
tempted to recover it; no distance of space or of time can
separate it from their affections; they perform their devo
tions with their faces towards it, as if it were the object of
> Hosea ii. 14, 15, 19. 2 Jer. xxxi. 5, 6. 3 Obad. 19. 4 Isa. xxviii. 5.

254 JERUSALEM.
their worship as weU as of their love; and although their
desire to return be so strong, fixed, and indelible, that every
Jew, in every generation, counts himself an exile; yet they
have never been able to rebuild their temple, nor to recover
Jerusalem from the hands of the GentUes. But greater
power than that of a proscribed and exiled race has been
added to their own, in attempting to frustrate the counsel
that professed to be of God. Julian, the emperor of the
Romans, not only permitted, but invited the Jews to rebuUd
Jerusalem and their temple; and promised to re-establish
them in their paternal city. By that single act, more than
by ah his writings, he might have destroyed the credibility
of the gospel, and restored his beloved but deserted paganism.
The zeal of the Jews was equal to his own; and the work
was begun by laying again the foundations of the temple.
In the space of three days, Titus had formerly encompassed
that city with a wall when it was crowded with his enemies ;
and, instead of being obstructed, that great work, when it
was confirmatory of an express prediction of Jesus, was
completed with an astonishing celerity ; — and what could
hinder the emperor of Rome from building a temple at Jeru
salem, when every Jew was zealous for the work ? Nothing
appeared against it but a single sentence uttered, some cen
turies before, by one who had been crucified. If that word
had been of man, would all the power of the monarch of the
world have been thwarted in opposing it? And why did not
Julian, with all his inveterate enmity and laborious opposi
tion to Christianity, execute a work so easy and desirable ?
A heathen historian relates, that fearful balls of fire, bursting
from the earth, sometimes burned the workmen, rendered
the place inaccessible, and caused them to desist from the
undertaking.1 The same narrative is attested by others.
1 "Imperii sui memoriam magnitudine operum gestiens propagare, ambitiosum
quondam apud Hierosolymam templum, quod, post multa et interneciva certamina,
obsidente Vespasiano, posteaque Tito, eagre est expugnatum, instaurare sumptibus

JERUSALEM. 255
Chrysostom, who was a living witness, appealed to the
existing state of the foundations, and to the universal testi
mony which was given of the fact. The historical evidence
was too strong even for the scepticism of Gibbon altogether
to gainsay ; a,nd brought him to the acknowledgment that
such authority must astonish an incredulous mind. Even
independently of the miraculous interposition, the fulfilment
is the same. The attempt was made avowedly, and it was
abandoned. It was never accomplished ; and the prophecy
stands fulfilled. But, even if the attempt of Julian had
never been made, the truth of the prophecy itself is unassail
able. The Jews have never been reinstated in Judea.
Jerusalem has ever been trodden down of the Gentiles. The
edict of Adrian was renewed by the successors of Julian ; and
no Jews could approach unto Jerusalem but by bribery or
by stealth. For many ages it was a spot unlawful for them
to touch. In the Crusades, all the power of. Europe was
employed to rescue Jerusalem from the heathen, but equaUy
in vain. It has been trodden down for nearly eighteen
centuries by its successive masters ; by Romans, Grecians,
Persians, Saracens, Mamelukes, Turks, Christians; and again
by the worst of rulers, the Arabs and the Turks. And
could anything be more improbable to have happened, or
more impossible to have been foreseen by man, than that any
people should be banished from their own capital and
country, and remain expeUed and expatriated for nearly
eighteen hundred years ? Did the same fate ever befaU any
cogitabat immodicis; negotiumque maturandum Alypio dederat Antiochensi, qui
olim Britannias curaverat pro praefectis. Cum itaque rei eidem instaret Alypius,
juvaretque provinciffi rector, metuendi globi flammarum, prope fundamenta, crebis
assultibus erumpentes, fecere locum exustis aliquoties operantibus inaccessum ;
hocque modo, elemento destinatius repellente, cessavit inceptum." (Ammian. Mar-
cell, lib. xxii. cap. i. sect. 2, 3. Grot, de Ver. &c. Eufini Hist. Eccles. lib. i. c.
xxxvii. Soorat. lib. ii. c. xvii. Theodoret. lib. iii. c. xvii. Sozomen. lib. v. c. xxi.
Cassidior. Hist. Tripart. lib. vi. c. xliii. Nicephor. Callis. lib. x. c. xxxii. Greg.
Nazianz. in Julian. Orat. ii. Chrysostom. de L. Bab. Mart, et contra Judffios, iii.
p. 491. Lind. — Vide Am. Mar. torn. iii. p. 2.)

256 JERUSALEM.
nation, though no prophecy existed respecting it ? Is there
any doctrine in Scripture so hard to be believed as was this
single fact at the period of its prediction ? And even with
the example of the Jews before us, is it likely, or is it
credible, or who can foretel, that the present inhabitants of
any country upon earth shaU be banished into aU nations,
— retain their distinctive character, — meet with an unparal
leled fate, — continue a people, — without a government and
without a country, — and remain for an indefinite period,
exceeding seventeen hundred years, till the fulfilment of a
prescribed event to be accomphshed after so many genera
tions ? Must not the knowledge of such truths be derived
from that prescience alone which scans alike the wiU and
the ways of mortals, the actions of future nations, and the
history of the latest generations ?
Jerusalem was the city which the Lord did choose to
place his name there. He loved the gates of Zion more
than aU the dwellings of Jacob. But while the land has
been denied, and the people have been scattered abroad,
these gates have long faUen, and Zion has often been filled
with judgment. The tomb of David stands without the
wall of the present city; but the palaces of Jerusalem have
disappeared from Mount Zion. Not a vestige of its bulwarks
that long withstood Roman hosts remains ; and the city of
David that stood on Zion, has wholly vanished, as if that
site of Israelitish royalty, like Samaria the other, had never
been reclaimed from the plough. Only a small portion of
the mount is now enclosed within the waUs of the modern
Jerusalem ; and Mount Zion may now be seen, as each suc
cessive traveller can testify, as the prophet saw it in vision,
ploughed as a field, (see frontispiece.) In other places
throughout the land, grain is sown around closer and larger
olives than those of Zion as it is among them, whUe many
open spaces or fields are there given up entirely to the

JERUSALEM. 257
plough. " At the time I visited this sacred ground," says
Dr Richardson, " one part of it supported a crop of barley,
another was undergoing the labour of the plough, and the
soil turned up consisted of stone and lime mixed with earth,
such as is usually met with in the foundations of ruined
cities. It is nearly a mile in circumference. We have here
another remarkable instance of the special fulfilment of pro
phecy ; therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a
field."1 Zion testifies against her children. On his first
visit to Zion, the writer of these pages, together with his
friends, gathered some ears of barley from a field that had
been ploughed and reaped : but, on the last, we saw the
plough, as in any other field, actually cleaving the soil of
Zion. And the mountain of the house as the high places of a
forest.2 Jerusalem lay in heaps, after it was besieged, taken,
and destroyed by the Chaldeans, and also by the Romans.
To this day the mosque of Omar may be seen, as in the
plate, as the crescent of Mohammed towers over it, where the
nobler temple of Solomon stood in its glory. The mountain
of the house, with its trees around it, may still be said to be
" as the high places of a forest," devoted as it is, as were
they, to the cause of false religion, and not to the worship of
the Holy One of Israel. But the words of truth immedi
ately subjoined to these denunciations of the prophet, teU of
other times than these in which many a crescent, as now,
glitters over it, in token that Jerusalem is stiU trodden
down of the Gentiles. But in the last days it shall come to
pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be
established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be
exalted above the hills ; and people shall flow unto it. And
many nations shall come and say, Come and let us go up
1 Richardson's Travels, p. 349. Mic. iii. 12.
2 Jer. xxvi. 18. 17

258 JERUSALEM.
to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of ihe God of
Jacob, &C.1
Though a ploughshare did pass over the consecrated
ground, as a sign of perpetual interdiction, Zion shall be
redeemed with judgment, and they that return of her
with righteousness.2 The Lord is jealous for Zion: and
will return unto it. There is a coming year of recompenses
for the controversy of Zion.3 " Thou, 0 Lord, shalt arise
and have mercy upon Zion : for the time to favour her, yea,
the set time, is come. For thy servants take pleasure in
her stones, and favour the dust thereof. So the heathen
shall fear the name of the Lord, and aU the kings of the
earth thy glory. When the Lord shall build up Zion, he
shaU appear in his glory. He wiU regard the prayer of
the destitute, and not despise their prayer. This shall be
written for the generation to come; and the people which
shall be created shaU praise the Lord," Ps. cii. 13, &c.
The place of the sanctuary of the Lord shall yet be beauti
fied. Jerusalem, not Rome, shaU be " the eternal city."
For thus it is written, "The sons of them that afflicted
thee shall come bending unto thee : and aU they that
despised thee shaU bow themselves down at the soles of thy
feet; and they shall caU thee the city of the Lord, the
Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast
been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through
thee; I wiU make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of
many generations. — I, the Lord, will hasten it in his time."
Isa. Ix. 14, &c.
But the prophecies are not confined to the land of Judea;
they are equahy unlimited in their range over space as over
time. After a lapse of many ages, the countries around
Judea are now beginning to be known. And each succeed
ing traveller, in the communication of new discoveries
1 Mic. iv. 1, 2. Isa. ii. 2, 3. 2 Isa. i. 27. " Isa. xxxiv. 8.

JERUSALEM. 259
concerning them, is gradually unfolding the very description
which the prophets gave of their poverty and desolation,
at the time of their great prosperity and luxuriance. The
countries of the Ammonites, of the Moabites, of the Edom-
ites, or inhabitants of Idumea, and of the PhUistines, all
bordered with Judea, and each is the theme of prophecy.
The relative positions of them aU are distinctly defined in
Scripture, and have been clearly ascertained. And the
territories of the ancient enemies of the Jews, long overrun
by the enemies of Christianity, present many a proof of the
inspiration of the Jewish Scriptures, and of the truth of the
Christian rehgion.

260 ammon.

CHAPTER VI.
AMMON.
The country anciently peopled by the Ammonites, is
situated to the east of the Jordan. It is naturally one
of the most fertile provinces of Syria, and it was for
many ages one of the most populous. The Ammonites
often invaded the land of Israel: and at one period, united
with the Moabites, they retained possession of a great part
of it, and grievously oppressed the Israelites for the space
of eighteen years. Jephthah repulsed them, and took
twenty of their cities ; but they continued afterwards to
harass the borders of Israel, and their capital was besieged
by the forces of David, and their country rendered tributary.
They regained and long maintained their independence, till
Jotham, the king of Judah, subdued them, and exacted
from them an annual tribute of a hundred talents, and
thirty thousand quarters of wheat and barley; yet they
soon contested again with their ancient enemies, and exulted
in the miseries that befell them, when Nebuchadnezzar took
Jerusalem, and carried its inhabitants into captivity. In
after- times, though successively oppressed by the Chaldeans,
(when some of the earliest prophecies respecting it were
fulfilled,) and by the Egyptians and Syrians, Ammon was a
highly productive and populous country, when the Romans
became masters of all the provinces of Syria ; and its capital
was included among the ten alhed cities, which gave name
to the celebrated Decapolis. When first invaded by the

AMMON. 261
Saracens, (a.d. 632,) "this country (including Moab) was
enriched by the various benefits of trade ;" and Ammon, to
which the Greeks and Romans gave the name of Phila
delphia, was included among the populous cities which, as
recorded by Gibbon, "were secure at least from a surprise
by the solid structure of their waUs."1 The fact of its
natural fertUity is corroborated by every traveller who has
visited it. And " it is evident," says Burckhardt, " that
the whole country must have been extremely well cultivated,
in order to have afforded subsistence to the inhabitants of
so many towns,"2 as are now visible only in their ruins.
WhUe the fruitfulness of the land of Ammon, and the high
degree of prosperity and power in which it subsisted, long
prior and long subsequent to the date of the predictions,
are indisputably established by historical evidence, and by
existing proofs, the researches of recent travehers (who were
actuated by the mere desire of exploring these regions and
1 Gibbon's Hist. vol. ix. u. 51, p. 383.
2 Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, p. 357.
Having frequent occasion, in the subsequent pages, to refer to the authority of the
celebrated and lamented traveller, J. Lewis Burckhardt, the following ample testi
monies to his talents, perseverance, and veracity will show with what perfect con
fidence his statements may be relied on, especially as the subject of the fulfilment of
prophecy, being never once alluded to in all his writings, seems to have been wholly
foreign to his view, as well as to theirs who, without partiality, have thus appre
ciated his labours. "He was a traveller of no ordinary description, a gentleman
by birth , and a scholar by education ; he added to the ordinary acquirements of a
traveller, accomplishments which fitted him for any society. His description of
the countries through which he passed, his narrative of incidents, his transactions
with the natives, are all placed before us with equal clearness and simplicity. In
every page they will find that ardour of research, that patience of investigation,
that passionate pursuit after truth, for which he was eminently distinguished." —
(Quarterly Review, vol. xxii. p. 437.) "He appears, from his books and letters,
to have been a modest, laborious, learned, and sensible man, exempt from pre
judice, unattached to systems; detailing what he saw plainly and correctly, and of
very prudent and discreet conduct." — (Edinburgh Review, Number lxvii. p. 109.)
The following extract from General Straton's manuscript Travels was written at
Cairo, and is the more valuable, as containing the result of personal knuwledge
and observation : — " Burckhardt speaks Arabic perfectly, has adopted the costume,
and goes to the religious places of worship; has been at Mecca; in short, follows
in everything the Turkish manners and customs, and he is not to be distinguished
from a Mussulman. With what advantage must he travel! He is by "birth a
Swiss, but having been educated in England, speaks our language perfectly. "

262 AMMON.
obtaining geographical information) have made known its
present aspect ; and testimony the most clear, unexception
able, and conclusive, has been borne to the state of dire
desolation to which it is, and has long been reduced.
That the prophecies concerning the desolation of Ammon
reach to the latter days, is manifest in the denunciation, that
Ammon shall be a perpetual desolation. " Rabbah of the
Ammonites shall be a desolate heap — then shaU Israel be
heir unto them that were his heirs, saith the Lord. — I wih
bring again the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith
the Lord."1 Thus in express connection with terrible
things in righteousness and the blessedness and glory that
shall foUow, Ammon has a place. In one of the last verses
of the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, in the vision
of the new earth as weU as of the new heavens, it is
written, " I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you
these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring
of David, and the bright and morning star."2 Of Him
Isaiah testifies, " And there shall come forth a rod out of
the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shaU grow out of his roots.
¦ — He shaU smite the earth with the rod of his mouth.
— The earth shah be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea. — He shaU set up an ensign
for the nations, and shaU assemble the outcasts of Israel,
and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four
corners of the earth. — They shaU lay their hands upon
Edom and Moab, and the children of Ammon shall obey
them."3 It was prophesied concerning Ammon, " Son of man, set
thy face against the Ammonites, and prophesy against
them. I wUl make Rabbah a stable for camels, and the
Ammonites a couching-place for flocks. Behold, I will
stretch out mine hand upon thee, and will deliver thee
1 Jer. xlix. 2, 6. ' Rev. xxii. 16. 3 Isa. xi. 1, 4, 9-14.

AMMON. 263
for a spoU to the heathen ; and I wUl cut thee off from the
people, and I wiU cause thee to perish out of the countries:
I wUl destroy thee. The Ammonites shaU not be remem
bered among the nations. Rabbah (the chief city) of the
Ammonites shall be a desolate heap. Ammon shaU be a
perpetual desolation."1
Ammon was to be delivered for a spoil to the heathen,
to be destroyed, and to be a perpetual desolation. " AU
this country, formerly so populous and flourishing, is now
changed into a vast desert."2 Ruins are seen in every
direction. The country, long subjected to the Saracens, is
now wholly possessed and pastured by the Bedouins. The
extortions of the Turks, and the depredations of the Arabs,
kept it in perpetual desolation and made it a spoil to the
heathen. " The far greater part of the country is unin
habited, being abandoned to the wandering Arabs, and
the towns and villages are in a state of total ruin,"8 "At
every step are to be found the vestiges of ancient cities,
the remains of many temples, public edifices, and Greek
churches."4 The cities are desolate. " Many of the ruins
present no objects of any interest. They consist of a few
waUs of dwelling-houses, heaps of stones, the foundations
of some pubhc edifices, and a few cisterns fiUed up ; there
is nothing entire, but it appears that the mode of build
ing was very sohd, aU the remains being formed of large
stones. — In the vicinity of Ammon there is a fertUe plain
interspersed with low hills, which for the greater part are
covered with ruins."5
WhUe the country is thus despoUed and desolate, there
are valleys and tracts throughout it, which "are covered
with a fine coat of verdant pasture, and are places of resort
'- Ezek. xxv. 2, 5, 7, 10 ; xxi. 32. Jer. xlix. 2. Zeph. ii. 9.
2 Seetzen's Travels, p. 34. 3 Ibid. p. 37.
* Burckhardt's Travels in Nubia, introd. pp. 37, 38, 44.
« Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, pp. 355, 357, 364.

264 AMMON.
to the Bedouins, where they pasture their camels and tneir
sheep."1 " The whole way we traversed," says Seetzen,
" we saw villages in ruins, and met numbers of Arabs with
their camels," &c. Mr Buckingham describes a building
among the ruins of Ammon, " the masonry of which was
evidently constructed of materials gathered from the ruins
of other and older buildings on the spot. On entering it
at the south end," he adds, " we came to an open square
court, with arched recesses on each side, the sides nearly
facing the cardinal points. The recesses in the northern
and southern waU were originaUy open passages, and had
arched door-ways facing each other ; but the first of
these was found wholly closed up, and the last was par
tially filled up, leaving only a narrow passage, just sufficient
for the entrance of one man, and of the goats, which the
Arab keepers drive in here occasionaUy for shelter during
the night." He relates that he lay down among flocks
of sheep and goats, close beside the ruins of Ammon ; and
particularly remarks that, during the night, he was almost
entirely prevented from sleeping by the bleating of flocks.2
So literaUy true is it, although Seetzen, and Burckhardt,
and Buckingham, who relate the facts, make no reference or
aUusion whatever to any of the prophecies, and travelled
for a different object than the elucidation of the Scriptures,
that the chief city of the Ammonites is a stable for camels,
and a couching-place for flocks.
The Ammonites shall not be remembered among the
nations. WhUe the Jews, who were long their hereditary
enemies, continue as distinct a people as ever, though
dispersed among all nations, no trace of the Ammonites
remains, none are now designated by their name, nor do
any claim descent from them. They did exist, however,
1 Buckingham's Travels in Palestine, &c. p. 329.
2 Buckingham's Travels among the Arab Tribes, under the title of Ruins of
Ammon, pp. 72, 73, &c.

AMMON. 265
long after the time when the eventual annihilation of their
race was foretold, for they retained their name, and con
tinued a great multitude until the second century of the
Christian era.1 Yet they are cut off from the people.
Ammon has perished out of the countries; it is destroyed.
No people is attached to ite soil; none regard it as their
country and adopt its name; and the Ammonites are not
remembered among the nations.
Rabbah (Rabbah-Ammon, the chief city of Ammon,) shall
be a desolate heap. Situated as it was, on each side of the
borders of a plentiful stream, — encircled by a fruitful region,
— strong by nature and fortified by art, nothing could have
justified the suspicion, or warranted the conjecture, in the
mind of an uninspired mortal, that the royal city of Ammon,
whatever disasters might possibly befaU it in the fate of war
or change of masters, would ever undergo so total a trans
mutation as to become a desolate heap. But although,
in addition to such tokens of its continuance as a city, more
than a thousand years had given uninterrupted experience
of its stability, ere the prophets of Israel denounced its fate ;
yet a period of equal length has now marked it out, as it
exists to this day, a desolate heap, a perpetual or permanent
desolation. Its ancient name is stiU preserved by the Arabs ;
and its site is now " covered with the ruins of private build
ings, nothing of them remaining except the foundations and
some of the door-posts. — The buUdings, exposed to the at
mosphere, are aU in decay,"2 so that they may be said
hteraUy to form a desolate heap. The public edifices,
which once strengthened or adorned the city, after a long
resistance to decay, are now also desolate ; and the remains
of the most entire among them, subjected as they are to the
abuse and spoliation of the wild Arabs, can be adapted to
1 Justin Martyr, p. 392, edit. Thirl.
2 Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, pp. 359, 360.

266 AMMON.
no better object than a stable for camels. Yet these
broken walls and ruined palaces, which attest the ancient
splendour of Ammon, can now, by means of a single act of
reflection, or simple process of reason, be made subservient
to a far nobler purpose than the most magnificent edifices
on earth can be, when they are contemplated as monuments
on which the historic and prophetic truth of Scripture is
blended in one bright inscription. A minute detaU of them
may not therefore be uninteresting.
Seetzen, whose indefatigable ardour led him, in defiance
of danger, the first to explore the countries which lie east of
the Jordan, and east and south of the Dead Sea, or the ter
ritories of Ammon, Moab, and Edom, justly characterizes
Ammon as " once the residence of many kings, — an ancient
town which flourished long before the Greeks and Romans,
and even before the Hebrews,"1 and he chiefly enumerates
those remains of ancient greatness and splendour which are
most distinguishable amidst its ruins. " Although this town
has been destroyed and deserted for many ages, I still found
there some remarkable ruins, which attest its ancient splen
dour. Such as, 1st, A square building, very highly orna
mented, which has been perhaps a mausoleum. 2d, The
ruins of a large palace. 3d, A magnificent amphitheatre of
immense size, and weU preserved, with a peristyle of Cor
inthian piUars without pedestals. 4th, A temple with a
great number of columns. 5 th, The ruins of a large church,
perhaps the see of a bishop in the time of the Greek em
perors. 6 th, The remains of a temple with columns set in
a circular form, and which are of an extraordinary size.
7th, The remains of the ancient waU, with many other edi
fices."2 Burckhardt, who afterwards visited the spot, de-
1 A brief Account of the Countries adjoining the Lake of Tiberias, the Jordan, and
the Dead Sea, by M. Seetzen, Conseille d' Ambassade de S. M. l'Empereur de Russe,
pp. 35, 36.
2 Seetzen's Travels, pp. 35, 36.

AMMON. 267
scribes it with great minuteness. He gives a plan of the
ruins; and particularly noted the ruins of many temples, of
a spacious church, a curved waU, a high arched bridge, the
banks and bed of the river stUl partiaUy paved; a large
theatre, which has forty rows of seats, vaults on both its
wings, and a colonnade in front, which must have had at
least fifty columns ; the castle, a very extensive building, the
waUs of which are thick, and denote a remote antiquity;
many cisterns and vaults; and a plain covered with the
decayed ruins of private buildings;1 — monuments of ancient
splendour amidst a desolate heap.
More recent travehers, with this treatise in their hands,
or with the fuU knowledge of these prophecies, have visited
Ammon; and the testimony to the predicted facts, first un
consciously given, has been repeated and corroborated by
those who have personally testified, as they consciously wit
nessed, the fulfilment of the prophecies.
Great was our own regret at the frustration of the fond
hope, after aU seemed secure for realizing it, of daguerreo-
typing what the prophets told of Ammon, and what Lord
Claud Hamilton, Lord Lindsay, and other witnesses saw,
as they at once read these prophecies and witnessed their
accomphshment. By the former the writer was earnestly
urged, while at Jerusalem in 1839, to accompany him and
Mr Littleton on their tour east of the Jordan ; and such was
then the facility of visiting the land when it Imd a ruler,
that he offered, in great kindness and strong temptation, to
go to Moab as well as Ammon, wherever he wished. A
sense of duty, limited to a single object, forbade what was
then as easy as desirable. But, on his second visit, when
aU government over these regions, but that of the Bedouins,
had ceased, it was impossible, in the summer of 1844, to
reach it, though only a day's journey from Gerash, or, after
1 Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, p. 358, &c.

268 AMMON.
repeated attempts, in any other direction. For at that very
time two hostile tribes were fiercely contending for the pos
session of the ruins of Ammon, which was itself the scene of
bloody conflict, as if these wild sons of Ishmael, who be
lieved not in Scripture, had been emulously striving to the
death which of them should be instrumental in the accom
plishment of the words of a prophet of Israel, in having the
ancient capital of the Ammonites, long Israel's enemies, as
a stable for their camels, and a couching-place for their
flocks. On recrossing the Jordan, a troop of spearmen
passed us in aU haste to that scene of combat, and were
joined by some of our Bedouins, who themselves had for
merly been driven from the immediate vicinity of Ammon,
and whose possession it had been, though they could no
longer conduct a traveller to its ruins. In that land of per
petual contests, where war no less than robbery is a trade,
such seeming rivalry for the actual accomplishing of a pre
dicted word, may not cease among these believers in a false
prophet, tiU the words which have gone forth against Ammon
and other lands, as given to such possessors, reach their
period of completion in the accomplishment of other predic
tions in which such wild warriors and long established deso-
laters have another part and another destiny, ere blessings
at last rest on Ishmael's seed. " Rebuke the company of
spearmen — scatter thou the people that delight in war.
Princes shaU come out of Egypt; and Ethiopia shall soon
stretch out her hand unto God. Sing unto the Lord ye
kingdoms of the earth ; — lo He doth send forth his voice,
and that a mighty voice. Ascribe ye strength unto God:
his exceUency is over Israel, and his strength is in the
clouds."1 His strength is in the clouds; but his judgments
are yet upon the earth. And without a daguerreotype
view, — the evidence itself is photographic, and the proof is
> Psalm Ixviii. 30-34.

AMMON. 269
manifest, how Ammon to this day bears witness, as only
at length it has thus been heard to testify, that power
belongs unto the Lord. That hostile metropolis teUs that
its own words of judgment have fallen on it in truth
as strict as that of those which, as the Scriptural record
bears, went forth against David, and feU on him when
he was driven from his throne, because of a deed that was
done at Ammon ; and deeds of darkness met their righteous
retributive judgments in what was done in the light of the
sun. " The wonderful fulfilment of the prophecies," Lord Claud
Hamilton observes, " is an interesting subject of observation
in this country. The Ammonites shaU not be remembered
among the nations. Rabbah of the Ammonites shaU be a
desolate heap. Ammon shaU be a perpetual desolation. I
wiU make Rabbah of the Ammonites a stable for camels,
and a couching-place for flocks." He stated to the writer,
on again meeting him at Carmel, as he had recorded in his
journal, from which these words are transcribed, that while
he was "traversing the ruins of the city, the number of
goats and sheep which were driven in among them, was
exceedingly annoying, hcnvever remarkable as fulfilling the
prophecies." They interrupted or prevented some of his
measurements. " We passed many ruined sites," says Lord Lindsay, " and
the whole country has once been very populous, but during
the whole day's ride, thirty-five miles at least (from Jerash
to Ammon,) we did not see a single vUlage; the whole
country is one vast pasturage, overspread with the flocks
and herds of the Bedouins. The dreariness of its (Amnion's)
present aspect, is quite indescribable, — it looks like the
abode of death, — the vaUey stinks with dead camels, one of
which was roUing in the stream; and though we saw none
among the ruins, they were ahmk*&e;fy*eovered in every

270 AMMON.
direction with their dung. That morning's ride would have
convinced a sceptic ; How runs the prophecy? ' I will make
Rabbah a stable for camels,' " &C.1 " We found the prin
cipal ruins much more extensive and interesting than we
expected, — not certainly in such good preservation as those
of Jerash, but designed on a much larger scale. — Bones and
skulls of camels were mouldering in the area of the theatre,
and in the vaulted galleries of this immense structure.—
Ammon is now quite deserted, except by the Bedouins, who
water their flocks at its little river, &c. — We met sheep and
goats by thousands, and camels by hundreds, coming down
to drink, all in beautiful condition."2
"To the southward of the Zerka," says Mr Robinson,
" commences the country anciently inhabited by the people
called Ammonites, a country in those days as remarkable
for its rich productions, as for the number and strength of
the cities that covered its surface. The space intervening
between the river and the western hUls is entirely covered
with the remains of private buildings, — now only used for
stables for camels and sheep ; there is not a single inhabitant
remaining, thus realizing the prophecy concerning this de
voted city," &c.3
The " royal city" of the Ammonites withstood a hard-
pressed siege, in the days of David king of Israel, who him
self fought against it, and finaUy took it. And under the
name of Philadelphia, after an interval of upwards of six
teen hundred years, it was a strong and populous city when
the Saracens invaded the Eastern empire.
Its Acropolis, long its chief stronghold, is still conspicuous
among its ruins. It stands, as described by Lord Claud
HamUton, " on an isolated hiU to the north of the town.
Its waUs are high, very weU buUt, and in many parts in
1 Lord Lindsay's Travels, vol. ii. p. 75. 2 Ibid. p. 117.
3 Travels, vol. ii. p. 175.

AMMON. 271
good preservation; but within, the ruins, rubbish, and herb
age, have grown nearly to their leveL The chief of these
ruins are those of a temple, which was once adorned with a
portico and peristyle of grand Corinthian columns, all now
prostrate; but their massive remains, immense capitals, and
large pediments, attest their former magnificence. Of one
of the most perfect of these, the shaft alone, without pedi
ment or capital, is thirty-three feet in length, and four feet
and a half in diameter." But the Acropolis, no less than
the city, presents its iUustrations of the word of the Lord.
" There is a small stone buUding quite entire, now used as a
shelter for flocks, of which there are many. And without
the walls, as otherwise within them, nothing remains but
scattered materials of former habitations, now partiaUy con
cealed by the flowers and grass.
" Leaving the Acropolis, we descended, and crossing the
stream, on the northern bank of which, among other
remains, are those of an Ionic colonnade, we proceeded to
the farthest ruins. The most remote of these is a smaU
theatre,, evidently intended for scenic representations, as the
space behind the proscenium was enclosed, and formed part
of the building. Three passages remained as perfect as
when they were formed, and they opened upon the stage
by three arches. There were likewise side entrances, and
communicating passages weU adapted for theatrical pur
poses. The proscenium was very handsomely ornamented;
above the three arches ran a rich frieze of Corinthian
decorations most beautifully carved, and perfectly uninjured;
above were three niches for statues; the seats were on both
sides perfect, but the centre forming the stage has been
thrown down. There were three entrances by handsome
arches, which brought the spectators to a broad landing-
place, half-way up the rows of seats, and two smaUer
arches, which probably served for entrances to the seats of

272 AMMON.
honour, which here, as at Pompeii, were close to the stage.
The theatre is remarkably well built, and is composed of
very handsome stone ; from without there are three entrances
to the scenes, and four niches for statues, two between the
doors, and two flanking them.
" The great theatre, near the other, is a grand edifice :
it is scooped out of the side of the hiU, being partly com
posed of the living rock, but chiefly of masonry. This
theatre must have been intended for games and other
exercises in the open air, as, instead of the enclosed
passages and covered chambers behind the stage, there is
only an open colonnade of handsome Corinthian columns,
which extends from one extreme to the other of the rows
of seats. Within the colonnade is an extensive arena of
a horse-shoe form, 128 feet from seat to seat. Forty -three
rows of seats extend to a great height, and are separated
into three tiers by broad landing-places ; seven radii of
smaller steps admitted the spectators to their several seats,
and each tier has several recesses. The second tier has
doors communicating to a high arched passage, which runs
round the theatre, and opens upon a side staircase, by which
means the crowd could be divided ; back staircases also
mount from these passages to the upper tier, so as to enable
the more humble spectators to gain and leave their seats
without incommoding their richer neighbours below. In
the centre of the uppermost bench is excavated a square
chamber, with a beautifuUy carved cornice, having an
elegant niche of the shell pattern on each side. There is,
as usual in aU ancient theatres, an arch entering upon the
arena on each side where the seats terminate, reaching the
proscenium. " Of the other principal ruins a more slight notice may
be given. A grand building, once apparently of an octa
gonal form, has still four of its sides perfect, which con-

AMMON. 273
tain a grand alcove, and three lesser recesses. A colonnade
of large Corinthian pillars was once ranged within it, but
what purpose it served, there are no means of ascertaining.
Heaps of ruins lie around it in bewUdering confusion.
Near to it are large houses, divided into many apartments,
and a more modern church in good preservation; but all
are alike deserted, though little labour would restore some
of these buddings, not to their pristine glory, but to useful
dweUings. And passing from these, other ruins are nume
rous but uninteresting. But the remains yet standing of
one grand temple are sufficient to exhibit its former magni
ficence, surrounded as it was by lofty columns, some of
which are still entire. A noble alcove, richly wrought,
containing niches, and supported by pilasters, is yet perfect,
a beautiful specimen of the riches of ornament, and fine
finish of the corners. And near to the ruinous town is a
little fane, square without but circular within, both sides
being most richly decorated with frieze corners and pilasters
of the Corinthian order. Four niches within are equaUy
elaborately carved. It is divided into square apartments,
each containing a variety of rich and elegant ornaments;
and an open arch, which forms the entrance, has the most
beautifuUy carved ceiling which I ever saw."1
Such is now the once royal city of Ammon. Numerous
ruins, and heaps in bewildering confusion, show how it has
become a desolate heap. But this is not now its only
feature. Some buildings in good preservation, and others
still perfect, whatever purposes they may have been con
structed to serve, fulfil now the purpose which, long before
their erection, the prophet assigned them. Arches, of old
trodden by the lovers of pleasure, of high or of low degree,
unbroken by time which has laid the gay flutterers in the
dust, are now promiscuously crowded by beasts ; and where
- Lord Claud Hamilton's Journal.
18

274 AMMON.
nobles were before kept from contact with their feUows, the
pilgrim traveUer in a desolate land now has cause to com
plain of the annoyance of flocks. It was not for them that
arches, sculptured with exquisite art, and almost unrivalled
beauty, were erected ; nor to shelter them that waUs, which,
uninjured, have endured for ages, were buUt ; nor did
stables for camels, and couching-places for flocks, enter
into the design of the architects of the palaces, theatres, or
temples of Ammon, nor of the sculptors of their beautifuUy
carved cornices and ceilings, and grand columns and alcoves.
But He who saw the end from the beginning, declared it,
ere ever one of these edifices of Grecian architecture was
constructed, or the foundation of any of them was laid, or
the plan of any of them was thought of, the appointed
doom, and destiny, and use to which they have been
brought, were delineated by the prophets; and as Ammon
was taken by David, so also, in a higher sense, it is now
held captive by the word of the Lord, and awaits the time
when the chUdren of Israel shaU be restored, and the Lord,
in the latter days, shall bring again the captivity of
Ammon.
" East of Assalt," including Ammon, are thirty ruined or
deserted places, of which the names are given in Dr Smith's
Arabic Lists, only two being marked as having any inhabi
tants (in 1834); one of which, el-Fuhais, we were informed,
was also since deserted.

MO AIL 275

CHAPTER VII.

MOAB.

The prophecies concerning Moab are more numerous and
not less remarkable than those concerning Ammon. Those
of them which met their completion in ancient times, and
which related to particular events in the history of the
Moabites, and to the result of their conflict with the Jews,
or with the neighbouring states, however necessary they
may have been at the time for strengthening the faith or
supporting the courage of the chUdren of Israel, need not now
be adduced in evidence of inspiration; for there are abundant
predictions which refer so clearly to decisive and unques
tionable facts, that there is scarcely a single feature peculiar
to the land of Moab, as it now exists, which was not marked
by the prophets in their delineation of the low estate to
which, from the height of its wickedness and haughtiness, it
was finally to be brought down.
That the prophecies concerning the land and the cities
of Moab, as weU as of Israel and Ammon, reach, ere their
completion, to the latter days, is not merely implied but
expressed in the sure word of prophecy itself. The long
record of judgments against Moab (Jerem. xlviu. 1-47) thus
concludes, " Yet wiU I bring again the captivity of Moab
in the latter days, saith Jehovah," &c. When he, who is
the root of David and the bright and morning star, shall
set up an ensign for the nations, and shaU assemble the
outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of
Judah from the four corners of the earth, as they have

276 MOAB.
never yet been gathered, " they shall lay their hand upon
Edom and Moab, and the chUdren of Ammon shall obey
them."1 In the burden of Moab, recorded by Isaiah, it is
also written, " Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be
thou a covert to them from the face of the spoUer: for the
extortioner is at an end, the spoUer ceaseth, the oppressors
are consumed out of the land. And in mercy shall the
throne be established ; and he shaU sit upon it in truth in
the tabernacle of David, judging, and seeking judgment,
and hasting righteousness. We have heard of the pride of
Moab, &c."2 It is written again of a time which a dark,
and sinful, and troubled world has never yet seen, " He wUl
destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over
aU people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. — In
this mountain shaU the hand of the Lord rest, and Moab
shall be trodden down under him, even as straw is trodden
down for the dunghill."3 "As I live, saith the Lord of
hosts, Moab shall be .... a perpetual desolation: the residue
of my people shaU spoil them, and the remnant of my
people shall possess them. This shall they have for their
pride. — He wiU famish all the gods of the earth; and men
shaU worship him, every one from his place, even all the
isles of the heathen." 4
" The burden of Moab. Because in the night Ar of Moab
is laid waste, and brought to silence. — Kir of Moab is laid
waste. — Moab shaU howl over Nebo, and over Medeba.
— And Heshbon shall cry, and Elealeh. — The waters of
Nimrim shall be desolate: for the hay is withered away,
the grass faUeth, there is no green thing. —For it shall be,
that, as a wandering bird cast out of the nest, so the
daughters of Moab shaU be at the fords of Arnon. — We
have heard of the pride of Moab; he is very proud: even
of his haughtiness, and his pride, and his wrath; but his
, ' Isa. xi. 14. 2 Isa. xvi. 4-6. 3 Isa. xxv. 7-10. * Zephan. ii. 9-11.

MOAB. 277
lies shah not be so. Therefore shaU Moab howl for Moab,
every one shaU howl: for the foundations of Kir-hareseth
shall ye mourn; surely they are stricken. For the fields
of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah : the lords of
the heathen have broken down the principal plants thereof ;
they are come even unto Jazer, they wandered through the
wilderness: her branches are stretched out, they are gone
over the sea. Therefore I will bewail with the weeping of
Jazer the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my
tears, 0 Heshbon, and Elealeh : for the shouting for thy
summer fruits, and for thy harvest, is faUen. And gladness
is taken away, and joy out of the plentiful field; and in
the vineyards there shaU be no singing, neither shall there
be shouting: the treaders shaU tread out no wine in their
presses ; I have made their vintage-shouting to cease."1
" Against Moab, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of
Israel, Woe unto Nebo! for it is spoiled; Kiriathaim is
confounded and taken; Misgab is confounded and dismayed.
There shaU be no more praise of Moab. — And the spoiler
shaU come upon every city, and no city shall escape: the
valley also shaU perish, and the plain shah be destroyed, as
the Lord hath spoken. Give wings unto Moab, that it
may flee and get away; for the cities thereof shall be deso
late, without any to dweU therein. — Moab hath been at
ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and
hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath
he gone into captivity. — Behold, the days come, saith the
Lord, that I wUl send unto him wanderers that shall cause
him to wander. — How is the strong staff broken, and the
beautiful rod! Thou daughter that dost inhabit Dibon,
come down from thy glory, and sit in thirst; for the spoUer
of Moab shall come upon thee, and he shaU destroy thy
strongholds. — Moab is confounded ; for it is broken down.
1 Isa. xv. 1, 2, 4, 6; xvi. 2, 6-10.

278 MOAB.
— Moab is spoiled. And judgment is come upon the plain
country ; upon Holon, and upon Jahazah, and upon
Mephaath, and upon Dibon, and upon Nebo, and upon
Beth-diblathaim ; and upon Kiriathaim, and upon Beth
gamul, and upon Bethmeon, and upon Kerioth, and upon
Bozrah, and upon aU the cities of the land of Moab, far or
near. The horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm is broken,
saith the Lord. — 0 ye that dweU in Moab, leave the cities
and dweU in the rock, and be like the dove that maketh
her nest in the sides of the hole's mouth. We have heard
the pride of Moab, (he is exceeding proud,) his loftiness,
and his arrogancy, and his pride, and the haughtiness of his
heart. — 0 vine of Sibmah, I wiU weep for thee with the
weeping of Jazer: — the spoUer is faUen upon thy summer
fruits and upon thy vintage. And joy and gladness is
taken from the plentiful field, and from the land of Moab;
and I have caused wine to fail from the wine-presses: none
shaU tread with shouting; their shouting shall be no shout
ing. From the cry of Heshbon even unto Elealeh, and
even unto Jahaz, have they uttered their voice, from Zoar
even unto Horonaim; — the waters also of Nimrim shaU be
desolate. — I have broken Moab. They shaU howl, How is
it broken down! — And Moab shaU be destroyed from being
a people, because he hath magnified himself against the
Lord."1 "The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they shaU be
for flocks, which shaU lie down, and none shaU make them
afraid." 2 Moab shall be a perpetual desolation. 3
The land of Moab lay to the east and south-east of
Judea, and bordered on the east, north-east, and partly on
the south of the Dead Sea. Its early history is nearly
analogous to that of Ammon. There are manifest and
abundant vestiges of its ancient greatness. " The whole of
1 Jer. xlviii. 1, 2, 8, 9, 11, 12, 17, 18, 20-25, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 42.
2 Isa. xvii. 2. 3 Zeph. ii. 8-10.

MOAB. 279
the plains are covered with the sites of towns, on every
eminence or spot convenient for the construction of one.
And as the land is capable of rich cultivation, there can be
no doubt that the country, now so deserted, once presented
a continued picture of plenty and fertility."1 The form of
fields is still visible : and there are the remains of Roman
highways, which in some places are completely paved, and
on which there are milestones of the times of Trajan,
Marcus Aurelius, and Severus, with the number of the miles
legible upon them. Wherever any spot is cultivated the
corn is luxuriant ; and the riches of the soU cannot perhaps
be more clearly illustrated than by the fact, that one grain
of Heshbon wheat exceeds in dimensions two of the ordi
nary sort, and more than double the number of grains grow
on the stalk. The frequency, and almost, in many instances,
the close vicinity of the sites of the ancient towns, " prove
that the population of the country was formerly propor
tioned to its natural fertility.''2 Such evidence may surely
suffice to prove, that the country was well cultivated and
peopled at a period so long posterior to the date of the pre
dictions, that no cause less than supernatural could have
existed at the time when they were dehvered, which could
have authorized the assertion, with the least probabUity or
apparent possibihty of its truth, that Moab would ever have
been reduced to that state of great and permanent desola
tion in which it has continued for so many ages, and which
vindicates and ratifies to this hour the truth of the Scrip
tural prophecies.
The cities of Moab were to be desolate without any to
dwell therein; and the cities of Moab are desolate without
inhabitant. Their place, together with the adjoining part
of Idumea, is characterised, in the map of Volney's Travels,
by the ruins of towns. His information respecting these
' Captains Irhy and Mangles's Travels, p. 378. 2 lb. pp. 377, 378, 456, 460.

280 MOAB.
ruins was derived from some of the wandering Arabs; and
its accuracy has been fully corroborated by the testimony of
different European travehers of high respectability and un
doubted veracity, who have since visited this devastated
region. The whole country abounds with ruins. And
Burckhardt, who encountered many difficulties in so desolate
and dangerous a land, thus records the brief history of a
few of them : " The ruins of Eleale, Heshbon, Meon,
Medaba, Dibon, Aroer, still subsist to illustrate the history
of the Beni Israel."1 And it might, with equal truth, have
been added, that they stiU subsist to confirm the inspiration
of the Jewish Scriptures, or to prove that the seers of Israel
were the prophets of God, for the desolation of each of these
very cities was the theme of a prediction. Everything worthy
of observation respecting them has been detailed, not only in
Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, but also by Seetzen, and, more
recently, by Captains Irby and Mangles, who, along with Mr
Bankes and Mr Legh, visited this deserted district. The pre
dicted judgment has faUen with such truth upon these cities,
and upon aU the cities of the land of Moab, and they are
so utterly broken down, that even the prying curiosity of
such indefatigable traveUers could discover, among a multi
plicity of ruins, only a few remains so entire as to be
worthy of particular notice. The subjoined description is
drawn from their united testimony. — Among the ruins of
El Aal (Eleale) are a number of large cisterns, fragments of
buildings, and foundations of houses. At Heshban (Hesh
bon) are the ruins of a large ancient town, together with
the remains of a temple, and some edifices. A few broken
shafts of columns are stiU standing; and there are a number
of deep wells cut in the rock.2 The ruins of Medaba are
about two mUes in circumference. There are many remains
1 Burckhardt's Travels in Nubia, Introduction, p. 38.
" Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, p. 365.

MOAB. 281
of the walls of private houses constructed with blocks of
silex, but not a single edifice is standing. The chief object
of interest is an immense tank or cistern of hewn stones,
" which, as there is no stream at Madeba," Burckhardt
remarks, " might still be of use to the Bedouins, were the
surrounding ground cleared of the rubbish to allow the
water to flow into it ; but such an undertaking is far be
yond the views of the wandering Arab." There is also the
foundation of a temple buUt with large stones, and appa
rently of great antiquity, with two columns near it.1 The
ruins of Diban (Dibon), situated in the midst of a fine
plain, are of considerable extent, but present nothing of
interest.2 The neighbouring hot weUs, and the simUarity
of the name, identify the ruins of Myoun with Meon, or
Beth-meon of Scripture.3 Of this ancient city, as weU as of
Araayr (Aroar), nothing is now remarkable but what is
common to them with ah the cities of Moab — their entire
desolation. The extent of the ruins of Rabba (Rabbath-
Moab), formerly the residence of the kings of Moab, suffi
ciently proves its ancient importance, though no other object
can be particularized among the ruins, except the remains
of a palace or temple, some of the walls of which are stUl
standing ; a gate belonging to another building ; and an
isolated altar. There are many remains of private build
ings, but none entire. There being no springs on the spot,
the town had two birkets, the largest of which is cut en
tirely out of the rocky ground, together with many cisterns.4
In a single day's journey, in passing through the land of
Moab, Burckhardt mentions or describes the foUowing ruined
places that lay either in his route or its vicinity: El Ryhha,
1 Burckhardt's Travels, p. 366. Seetzen's Travels, p. 37. Captains Irby and
Mangles's Travels, p. 471.
2 Captains Irby and Mangles's Travels, p. 462. Seetzen's Travels, p. 38.
3 Burckhardt's Travels, p. 365. Irby and Mangles's Travels, p. 464.
* Seetzen's Travels, p. 39. Burckhardt's Travels, p. 377.

282 MOAB.
Shakour, Meghanny, Mekabbelz, Kherbet Tabouk, Om
Aamoud, Szyr, Fokhara, Meraszas, Merdj Ekke, Naour, El
Aal (Eleale), Hesban, Myoun, the ancient Baal Meon,
Djeloul, El Samek, El Mesouh, Om el Aamed, El Kefeyrat,
Madeba, the ancient Medaba, El Teym, perhaps the Kerja-
thaim of the Scripture.1
Mount Nebo was " completely barren " where Burckhardt
passed over it, and the site of the ancient city had not then
been ascertained.2 But of that city, as of the mountain, it
may now be said, Nebo is spoiled. It has its name with
others in Dr Smith's Arabic Lists. In that of places " south
of Assalt," are the names of forty-seven " ruined or deserted
places," among which are numbered Heshbon, el-Al, Neba,
Madeba, Main, Arair, and Dibon.3
While the ruins of aU these cities stUl retain their ancient
names, and are the most conspicuous amidst the wide scene
of general desolation, and whUe each of them was in like
manner particularized in the visions of the prophet, they
thus formed but a small number of the cities of Moab ; and
the rest are also, in similar verification of the prophecies,
desolate, without any to dwell therein. Not one of the
ancient cities of Moab now exists, as tenanted by man.
Kerek, which neither bears any resemblance in name to any
of the cities of Moab which are mentioned as existing in the
time of the Israelites, nor possesses any monuments which
denote a very remote antiquity, is the only nominal town
in the whole country ; and, in the words of Seetzen, who
visited it, " in its present ruined state, it can only be called
a hamlet; and the houses have only one floor."4 But the
most populous and fertUe province in Europe (especially any
situated in the interior of a country like Moab) is not
covered so thickly with towns as Moab is plentiful in ruins,
1 Burckhardt, p. 363-367. • Ibid. p. 370.
3 Second Appendix, pp. 169, 170.
4 Burckhardt's Travels, p. 338. Seetzen's Travels, p. 39.

MOAB. 283
deserted and desolate though now it be. Burckhardt
enumerates about fifty ruined sites within its boundaries,
many of them extensive. In general they are a broken down
and undistinguishable mass of ruin ; and some of them have
not been closely inspected. But, in some instances, there
are the remains of temples, sepulchral monuments, the ruins
of edifices constructed of very large stones, in one of which
buddings, " some of the stones are twenty feet in length,
and so broad that one constitutes the thickness of the waU;"
traces of hanging gardens ; entire columns lying on the
ground, three feet in diameter, and fragments of smaUer
columns ; and many cisterns cut out of the rock. When the
towns of Moab existed in their prime, and were at ease, —
when arrogance, and haughtiness, and pride prevaUed
amongst them, the desolation and total desertion and aban
donment of them aU must have utterly surpassed aU human
conception. And that such numerous cities, which sub
sisted for many ages — which were diversified in their sites,
some of them being buUt on eminences, and naturally strong,
others on plains, and surrounded by the richest soil, — some
situated in vaUeys by the side of a plentiful stream, and
others where art supplied the deficiencies of nature, and
where immense cisterns were excavated out of the rock, —
and which exhibit in their ruins many monuments of
ancient prosperity, and many remains easUy convertible into
present use, — should have aU met the same indiscriminate
fate, and be aU desolate without any to dwell therein, notwith
standing aU these ancient assurances of their permanent
durability, and these existing facilities and inducements for
being the habitations of men, — is a matter of just wonder in
the present day, — and had any other people but wandering
Arabs been the possessors of Moab, the fact would either
have been totaUy impossible, or unaccountable. Trying as
this test of the truth of prophecy is, that is the word of

284 MOAB.
God, and not of erring man, which can so weU and so
triumphantly abide it. They shall cry of Moab, how is it
broken down!
But besides the cities of the land of Moab, strictly so
caUed, others, mentioned by name as then pertaining to it,
are included in the prophecy of Jeremiah against Moab.
Moab, ere the days of that prophet, had magnified himself
against the people of the Lord of hosts, and against their
border. Judgments denounced against the cities of Israel
were not repealed, but rather repeated, when any of these
were numbered among the cities of Moab. When Israel
had become a derision unto Moab, and he was exceeding
proud, in the same judgment-roU written by the prophet of
the Holy One of Israel, the names of Beth-gamul, Kerioth,
Bozrah, &c, cities of Bashan, are catalogued together
with Dibon, Aroer, Heshbon, Eleale, &c. "And judg
ment is come upon the plain country. Upon Dibon, and
upon Nebo, and upon Beth-diblathaim, and upon Kiriathaim,
and upon Beth-gamul, and upon Beth-meon, and upon
Kiriathaim, and upon Kerioth, and upon Bozrah, and upon
all the cities of the land of Moab, far and near."
After the ten tribes had been led captive into Assyria,
cities of Gilead and Bashan had become, ere the days of
Jeremiah, cities of Moab. At an earlier period, Gilead and
Bashan are joined together with Carmel and Sharon, in the
prophecies of Isaiah, as alike pertaining to the inheritance
of Israel. Before Israel's blindness should cease, the cities
were to be desolate without inhabitant, and the houses
without man. In a vision of what the vineyard of the
Lord, the house of Israel, would become, Isaiah thus testi
fies : " In mine ears said the Lord of hosts, Of a truth
many houses shaU be desolate, even great and fair (goodly),
without inhabitant." There were cities that were to be
forsaken, as weU as cities that were to be destroyed. WhUe

MOAB. 285
Ammon is a desolate heap, and the cities of Moab Proper
are in utter ruin, a different testimony is given concerning
cities of Bashan, though they equaUy bear witness to the
truth that they, too, are without any to dwell therein.
Mr Cyril Graham, who was the first to visit it, thus
describes Beth-gamul. In approaching it, he says, " I had
before me an enormous city, standing alone in the desert.
It had been seen from the castle of Bozrah, but had never
before been visited. It is called by the Arabs Um el Jem&l,
which suggests the Beth-gamul of Scripture, the Hebrew
name meaning the ' House of Camels/ and the Arabic word,
by a transmutation which is very common, the ' Mother of
Camels/ The ruins in this desert abound with the prefix
Um, ' mother,' whUe in the mountains of the Hauran we find
frequently Abu, ' father.' There are other reasons, besides
the mere coincidence in name, for placing the ancient Beth
gamul in this part. It wiU be found, in referring to Jere
miah, that Beth-gamul, Bozrah, and Kerioth are mentioned
together. Bozrah and Kerioth are weU known. They he
within two hours of each other ; and by far the largest city
near them is Um el JemaL
" This is perhaps among the most perfect of the old cities
which I saw. It is surrounded by a high waU, forming a
rectangle, which seems to enclose more space than the
modern Jerusalem. The streets are many of them paved ;
and I saw here, what I do not think I saw anywhere else,
open spaces within the city, such as we should call squares.
There are some very large public buildings ; but though I
dUigently sought for inscriptions, I only found three. One
of them is in old Greek letters, on a large tower, which I
fancy was a prison, and perhaps, in later ages, a convent, as
there are many red crosses upon it. Some of the houses
were very large, consisting usuaUy of three rooms on the
ground-floor, and two on the first storey ; the stairs being

286 MOAB.
formed of large stones built into the house-waUs, and
leading up outside. The doors were as usual of stone,
sometimes folding-doors, and some of them highly orna
mented. " On reaching this city (as, indeed, was my practice every
where), I left my Arabs at one particular spot, in charge of
the dromedaries, and posted a few as sentinels on the towers
to watch the approach of any foe ; and then, taking my rifle
with me, I wandered about 'quite alone in the old streets of
the town, entered one by one the old houses, went up stairs,
visited the rooms, and, in short, made a careful examination
of the whole place ; but so perfect was every street, every
house, every room, that I almost fancied I was in a dream,
wandering alone in this city of the dead, seeing aU perfect,
yet not hearing a sound.
" I don't wish," Mr Graham adds, " to moralize too much ;
but one cannot help reflecting on a people once so great and
so powerful, who, living in these houses of stone within their
waUed cities, must have thought themselves invincible; who
had their palaces and their sculptures, and who, no doubt,
claimed to be the great nation, as aU Eastern nations have
done ; and that this people should have so passed away, that
for so many centuries the country they inhabited has been
reckoned as a desert, untU some traveUer from a distant land,
curious to explore these regions, finds those old towns stand
ing alone, and telling of a race long gone by, whose history
is unknown, and whose very name is matter of dispute. Yet
this very state of things is predicted by Jeremiah. Con
cerning this v very country he says these words, 'For the
cities thereof shaU be desolate, without any to dweU there
in ' (Jer. xlvUi. 9) ; and the people (Moab) ' shah be de
stroyed from being a people, because he hath magnified
himself against the Lord' (xlviii 42). . . . Here I think
there can be no ambiguity. Visit these ancient cities,

MOAB. 287
and turn to that ancient Book — no further comment is
necessary. " In Um el Jemal, there is a fine arch, like the triumphal
arches in Roman cities, and under it lies a mutilated inscrip
tion in Latin. No doubt this city, from its size and the
richness of the soU about it, must have been a most impor
tant place under the Roman rule, as in times before that.
There are enormous reservoirs here, but, like those in aU the
other towns about there, quite dry. The tombs are outside
the waUs of the city, so that here, as at Palmyra, they
practised extramural burial."
" South of Bozrah is some of the richest land in this part
of the East. The first town I came to, on the edge of a
wadi, called Wadi-el-Bolm, is known only by the general
name of ed-Deir. On very many of the houses were simple
crosses cut in the dark stone. In aU these towns I found
square towers. The next place of importance was Um-es
Semak, a much larger town. Next came Um es-Shab, then
Deir el-Kafflr, close to which runs the old Roman road from
Bozrah to Ammon. In an hour more, Um el Jemdl. . . .
After leaving Um el Jemdl el Kiber (as this town is called),
I came to Um el-Jemal er Zeghir, and then visited the
towns Subhah, Subbeigeh, Um es-Seneneh, Um el Koteim,
Kuresin, and others, and then returned to Bozrah. I give
no account of aU these places," adds Mr Graham, " as they
are very simUar one to another, and I have already enlarged
so much on Um el Jemdl."
The vast plain southward of Busrah, as seen and de
scribed by Mr Porter, was " dotted thickly with deserted
cities and villages. That broad black belt in front, with the
massive towers and battlements rising up in the midst of it,
intermixed with tapering column and minaret, is Busrah.
Jemurrin, Keires (Kir-heres ?), Burd, Ghusam, and a host of
others, are seen on each side ; whUe on the summit of yon

288 MOAB.
graceful hiU on the eastern horizon is the ancient castle of
Sulkhad, and there, in the intervening valley, are the wide
spread remains of Kureiyah."1
" I gazed long inward upon the ruins of this great and
ancient city (Busrah), and outward on the rich but de
serted plain. My companions had taken shelter from a
shower behind the wall, and now there was not a human
being— there was not a living thing — there was not a sign
of life within the range of vision. The whole country
around was waste, desolate, and forsaken. . . . Busrah, situ
ated in a plain of unrivaUed fertUity, with springs of water,
its strong fortress, and its battlemented walls — why should
Busrah lie desolate and forsaken? This surely was no city
to grow up in a day, and fade in a night ! This surely was
not a city that depended on the uncertain channel of com
merce to waft towards it prosperity ! Are not the abund
ance of its waters, and the richness of its soil, and the wide
extent of its plain, sufficient guarantees against decay and
ruin ? But a greater than human agency has been here at
work. The curse of an angry God for the sin of a rebellious
people has fearfully descended upon this land. Thus spake
the prophet more than two thousand years ago : ' The
spoiler shall come upon every city, and no city shah escape;
the valley also shall perish, and the plain shaU be destroyed,
as the Lord hath spoken. Give wings unto Moab, that it
may flee and get away ; for the cities thereof shall be deso
late, without any to dwell therein. . . . Moab is confounded,
for it is broken down ; howl and cry ; teU ye it in Arnon,
that Moab is spoUed, and judgment is come upon the plain
country. . . . upon Kiriathaim, and upon Beth-gamul, and
upon Beth-meon, and upon Kerioth, and upon Bozrah, and
upon aU the cities of the land of Moab far and near/ The
words of the prophet are now fulfilled to the letter."2
' Vol. ii. p. 140. 2 Porter, vol. ii. pp. 155-157.

MOAB. 289
The spoiler shall come upon every city, and no city shall
escape ; the valley also shall perish, and the plain shall be
destroyed, as Jehovah hath spoken ; and judgment is come
upon the plain country, &c. Moab has often been a
field of contest between the Arabs and the Turks ; and
although the former have retained possession of it, both
have mutually reduced it to desolation. The different tribes
of Arabs who traverse it, not only bear a permanent and
habitual hostility to Christians and to Turks, but one tribe
is often at variance and at war with another ; and the
regular cultivation of the soU, or the improvement of those
natural advantages of which the country is so full, is a
matter either never thought of, or that cannot be reahzed.
Property is there the creature of power and not of law; and
possession forms no security where plunder is the preferable
right. Hence the extensive plains, where they are not
partially covered with wood, present a barren aspect, which
is only relieved at intervals by a few clusters of wUd fig-
trees, that show how the richest gifts of nature degenerate
when unaided by the industry of man. And instead of the
profusion which the plains must have exhibited in every
quarter, nothing but " patches of the best soU in the terri
tory are now cultivated by the Arabs;" and these only
" whenever they have the prospect of being able to secure
the harvest against the incursions of enemies."1 The Arab
herds now roam at freedom over the valleys and the plains ;
and "the many vestiges of ancient field-enclosures"2 form
not any obstruction; they wander undisturbed around the
tents of their masters, over the face of the country; and
while the valley is perished, and the plain destroyed, the
cities also of Aroer are forsaken ; they are fo-rfloclcs which
lie down, and none make them afraid. " Every year, in
fact, is narrowing the borders of the settled inhabitants;
1 Burckhardt's TraveLs in Syria, p. 369. s Ibid. p. 365.
19

290 MOAB.
and unless a new system of government is ere long adopted,
the whole country east of the Jordan must be abandoned
by those who cultivate the soU. Nowhere on the earth is
there such a melancholy example of the fatal effects of
tyranny, rapacity, and misrule, as that here exhibited.
Fields, vineyards, pastures, villages, cities, all alike deserted;
and the few inhabitants that remain behind the barrier of
rocks and mountains drag out a miserable existence, op
pressed by the robbers of the desert on the one hand, and
the stiU more formidable robbers of the government on the
other. The Druses form the only exception to this ; their
courage, their union, and their position, concentrated in the
strongholds of the mountains, enable them to brave, when
occasion demands it, both Turks and Bedawin."1
The shouting for thy summer fruits and for thy har
vest is fallen. The spoiler is fallen upon thy summer
fruits and upon thy vintage. The Arabs of the Belka
cultivate patches of the best soil in the territory " whenever
they have a prospect of being able to secure the harvest
against the incursions of enemies."2 "In May, the whole
of the Haouran is covered with swarms of wanderers from
the desert, who remain there tUl after September: these are
at present almost exclusively the tribe of the Mneze. For
merly, the Haouran was often visited by the Sherarat, by
the Shammor, and by the Dhofir."3 — " The words of the
Lord by the prophet Jeremiah are now literally fulfilled:
The spoiler is faUen upon thy summer fruits and upon thy
vintage, &e. It is worthy of remark, as a striking fulfil
ment of this prophecy, that the figs and grapes that still
grow in the orchards and vineyards around Sulkhad are
every year rifled by the bands of Bedawin. It was these
acts of robbery, more than dread of personal violence, that
caused Sulkhad and other places near it to be deserted by
1 Porter's Damascus, vol. ii. p. 187. 2 Burckhardt, p. 369. 3 Ibid. p. 308.

MOAB. 291
their inhabitants. Not unfrequently the grain crops of the
people of Busrah are completely eaten up by the passing
flocks of the Arabs. How wonderfully minute were the
predictions of the prophet : ' The spoiler is faUen upon thy
summer fruits and upon thy vintage!' "x
The strong contrast between the ancient and the actual state
of Moab is exemplified in the condition of the inhabitants
as weU as of the land; and the coincidence between the predic
tion and the fact is as striking in the one case as in the other.
The days come, saith the Lord, that I will send unto
him (Moab) wanderers that shall cause him to wander,
and shall empty his vessels. The Bedouin (wandering)
Arabs are now the chief and almost the only inhabitants of
a country once studded with cities. Traversing the country,
and fixing their tents for a short time in one place, and then
decamping to another, depasturing every part successively,
and despoiling the whole land of its natural produce, they
are wanderers who have come up against it, and who
keep it in a state of perpetual desolation. They lead a
wandering life ; and the only regularity they know or prac
tise, is to act upon a systematic scheme of spoliation. They
prevent any from forming a fixed settlement who are inclined
to attempt it ; for although the fruitfulness of the soU would
abundantly repay the labour of settlers, and render migration
wholly unnecessary, even if the population were increased
more than tenfold ; yet the Bedouins forcibly deprive them
of the means of subsistence, compel them to search for it
elsewhere, and, in the words of the prediction, literally
cause them to wander. " It may be remarked generaUy of
the Bedouins," says Burckhardt, in describing their extor
tions in this very country, " that wherever they are the
masters of the cultivators, the latter are soon reduced to
beggary by their unceasing demands."2 "The oppressions
' Porter, vol. ii. p. 198, note. 2 Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, p. 381.

292 MOAB.
of the government on the one side, and those of the
Bedouins on the other, have reduced the fellah (cultivator)
of the Haouran to a state little better than that of the
wandering Arab. Few individuals, either among the Druses
or Christians, die in the same viUage in which they were
born."1
0 ye that dwell in Moab, leave the cities and dwell in
the rock, and be like the dove that maketh her nest in the
sides of the hole's mouth. For the fields of Heshbon
languish, and the vine of Sibmah : the lords of the heathen
have broken down the principal plants thereof — and glad
ness is taken away, and joy out of the plentiful field; and
in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither shall
there be shouting; the treaders shall tread out no wine in
their presses ; I have made their vintage shouting to cease.
0 vine of Sibmah, the spoiler is come upon thy summer
fruits, and upon thy vintage. I have caused wine to fail
from the wine-presses : none shaU tread with shouting ;
then- shouting shall be no shouting. "This continued
wandering is one of the principal reasons why no village in
the Haouran has either orchards, or fruit-trees, or gardens
for the growth of vegetables. ' ShaU we sow for strangers?'
was the answer of a fellah, to whom I once spoke on the
subject, and who by the word strangers meant both the
succeeding inhabitants, and the Arabs who visit the Haouran
in the spring and summer."2 "A large part of the fruit
and vegetables consumed in the Haouran is brought from
Damascus."3 " From Keres to Ayoun the ground is covered
with walls, which probably once enclosed orchards as well as
cultivated fields."4 "We learn from Arab historians that
the country around Sulkhad was once rich in vines, (Abulfed.
p. 105); and travehers of the present day can see how
admirably adapted are the gentle slopes of the mountains,
i Burckhardt, p. 299. 2 Ibid. p. 299] 3 Ibid. p. 296. ¦> Ibid. p. 297.

MOAB. 293
and the sunny plains along their base, for the growth of
the vine and the fig. AU the declivities that are too steep
for plain cultivation, are regularly terraced. The stones
that thickly covered the soil in some places have been care
fully coUected into heaps, and built up in the fences of the
fields and vineyards. Fields, vineyards, pastures, viUages,
cities, aU alike deserted ; and the few inhabitants that
remain behind the barrier of rocks and mountains, drag
out a miserable existence," 1 &c. In a general description of
the condition of the inhabitants of that extensive desert
which now occupies the place of these ancient flourishing
states, Volney, in plain but unmeant iUustration of this pre
diction, remarks, that " the wretched peasants live in per
petual dread of losing the fruit of their labours ; and no
sooner have they gathered in their harvest, than they hasten
to secrete it in private places, and retire among the rocks
which border on the Dead Sea."2 Towards the opposite
extremity of the land of Moab, and at a little distance from
its borders, Seetzen relates that there are many families
living in caverns ; and he actuaUy designates them " the
inhabitants of the rocks."3 And at the distance of a few
miles from the ruined site of Heshbon, "there are many
artificial caves in a large range of perpendicular cliffs, in
some of which are chambers and small sleeping apartments." 4
WhUe cities are desolate without any to dweU therein,
rocks are tenanted. But whether flocks He down in the
former, without any to make them afraid, — or whether men
are to be found dwelling in the latter, and are like the dove
that maketh her nest in ihe sides of the hole's mouth, —
the wonderful transition, in either case, and the close ac
cordance, in both, of the fact to the prediction, assuredly
1 Porter, vol. ii. p. 187.
2 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 344.
3 Seetzen's Travels, p. 26. See Monthly Review, vol. lxxi. p. 405.
4 Captains Irby and Mangles's Travels, p. 473.

294 MOAB.
mark it, in characters that may be visible to the purblind
mind, as the word of that God before whom the darkness
of futurity is as light, and without whom a sparrow cannot
faU unto the ground.1
And although chargeable with the impropriety of being
somewhat out of place, it may not be here altogether im
proper to remark, that, demonstrative as aU these clear pre
dictions and coincident facts are of the inspiration of the
Scriptures, it cannot but be gratifying to every lover of his
kind, when he contemplates that desolation, caused by many
sins and fraught with many miseries, which the wickedness
of man has wrought, and which the prescience of God re
vealed, to know that aU these prophecies, whUe they mingle
the voice of waUing with that of denunciation, are the word
of that God, who, although he suffers not iniquity to pass
unpunished, overrules evil for good, and makes the wrath
of man to praise him, and who in the midst of judgment
can remember mercy. And reasoning merely from the
"uniform experience" (to borrow a term, and draw an
argument from Hume) of the truth of the prophecies already
fulfihed, the unprejudiced mind wiU at once perceive the
1 Another prediction respecting the dwellers in Moab ought not perhaps to be
passed over in silence, although the terms in which it is expressed are not so clear
and unambiguous as those to which the observations in the text are confined, and
although it may have met its primary fulfilment in a much earlier age. Tet it is
so intelligible, that the fact to which it bears an unstrained application, may be
left as its sole and adequate exposition : and the continued truth of the prophecy
greatly strengthens, instead of weakening the evidence of its inspiration. And how
is Moab broken down and spoiled, when, in lieu of the arrogancy and exceeding
pride and haughtiness of its ancient inhabitants, the following description is cha
racteristic of the wanderers who now possess it ! " In the valley of Wale," which is
situate in the immediate vicinity of the river Arnon, into which the Wale flows,
Burckhardt observed "a large party of Arabs Shererat encamped — Bedouins of the
Arabian desert, who resort hither in summer for pasturage." Being oppressed and
hemmed in by other Arab tribes, " they wander about in misery, have very few
horses, and are not able to feed any flocks of sheep, or goats. . . . The tents are
very miserable; both men and women go almost naked, the former being only
covered round the waist, and the women wearing nothing but a loose shirt hanging
in rags about them." Moab shall be a derision. As a wandering bird cast out oj
the nest, so the daughters of Moab shall be at the fords of Aenon. (Burckhardt's
Travels, pp. 370, 371. Jer. xlviii. 39. Isaiah xvi. 2.)

MOAB. 295
full force of the truth derived from experience,1 and ac
knowledge that it would be a rejection of the authority of
reason as weU as of revelation, to mistrust the truth of that
prophetic affirmation of resuscitating and redeeming import,
respecting Ammon and Moab, which is the last of the series,
and which alone now waits futurity to stamp it with the
brilliant and crowning seal of ite testimony. Yet will I
bring again the captivity of Moab in ihe latter days, saith
ihe Lord.2 I will bring again the captivity of the children
of Ammon, saith the Lord.3 The remnant of my people
shall possess them} They shall build ihe old wastes, they
shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair
the waste cities; tlie desolations of many generations}
In the sure word of prophecy, other preparations of the
way of the people of the Lord were chronicled of old than
that of the casting up of highways.6 Arabs and Turks
have in ages past been woes to other lands than Syria. In
the things noted in the Scripture of truth, in which that
which shall befaU his people in the latter days was told to
Daniel, it is recorded of the last hostile power (the Turkish)
which was to possess the glorious land, and to overthrow
many, But these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom,
and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon}
Turks dwell in houses ; but Bedouins only in tents ; and it
is because Moab has escaped out of the hands of the Turks,
and is given up exclusively to the Bedouin, that no man
dwells in houses and in cities which are stUl entire. These
cities were Israel's ; and, according to the testimony, shall
be Israel's again. With the fall of that power which possesses
the glorious land, is expressly, at that time, associated the
1 " Being determined by custom to transfer the past to the future in all our in
ferences ; where the past has been entirely regular and uniform, we expect the event
with the greatest assurance, and leave no room for any contrary supposition."
(Hume's Essay on Probability, vol. ii. p. 61.)
2 Jer. xlviii. 47. 3 Jer. xlix. 6. * Zeph. ii. 9.
6 Isa. Ixi. 4 ; lviii. 12. Ezek. xxxvi. 33, 36. « Isa. Ixii. 10. ' Dan. xi. 41.

296 MOAB.
standing up of the great prince which standeth for ihe
children of thy people} In like manner, the sixth vial was
poured " upon the great river Euphrates ; and the water
thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of, or from,
the east might be prepared."2 That vial closes with the
gathering together of the kings of the earth, and of the
whole world, to a place called, in the Hebrew tongue,
Armageddon. The next and last vial opens with the pro
clamation, It is done. To these testimonies which have
their place in the prophetic history^ of the kingdoms of the
world, we advert here, not merely that it may be seen how
the final testimony concerning Moab links itself in with
many others, and the perpetual or long-continued desolation
of that land shaU terminate for ever in the completion of
the promises for which the forsaken cities wait to be fined
with men ; but also to show that, though the time is not
yet, there are facts, which now have come to light in these
latter days, alike unparaUeled respecting these deserted
cities, and also the people to whom of old the Lord did
give them, which none but He who hath declared the end
from the beginning, could have foreseen and foretold. Long
before Judah was dispersed among the nations, Israel was out
cast. The " lost tribes " of Israel is the name by which they
have long been called since they were led captive into Assyria,
and have never yet returned from the east the way they
went. Till within less than half a century ago, the forsaken
cities of Bashan were not known to exist, and many of them
have very recently been visited for the first time. Newly,
also, has the fact been known that in the distant east, the
heads of vUlages of the Affghans have the title of Melkim,
or kings, whUe new proofs, on careful research, have been
adduced of their Israehtish origin. These disconnected facts
and simultaneous discoveries, concerning outcast Israel and
1 Dan. xii. 1. 2 Rev. xvi. 12.

MOAB. 297
their existing cities, from which they were led away cap
tive two thousand six hundred years ago, could have no
mutual relation now but in the word of Jehovah, with
whom a thousand years past are but as yesterday. The
drying up of the great river Euphrates, that the way of the
kings from the sunrising might be prepared, is at once the
word of the Ruler among the nations, and of the God of
Jacob. And there are other words of his, that wait but
for his time to bring back his people to their cities and
their houses again : " Is Ephraim my dear son ? is he a
pleasant chUd ? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly
remember him still ; therefore my bowels are troubled for
him : I wiU surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.
Set thee up way-marks, make thee high heaps : set thine
heart toward the highway, even the way which thou wentest :
turn again, 0 virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities.
— How shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? how shaU I deliver
thee, Israel ? how shaU I make thee as Admah ? how shaU
I set thee as Zeboim ? Mine heart is" turned within me,
my repentings are kindled together. I wiU not return to
destroy Ephraim. — They shaU tremble as a dove out of the
land of Assyria ; and I wiU place them in their houses, saith
Jehovah."1 ' Jer. xxxi. 20, 21. Hos. xi. 8. 9, 11.

298 IDUMEA.

CHAPTER VIII.
IDUMEA OR EDOM.
A heavier doom was denounced against the land of Edom,
or Idumea : and the testimony of an infidel was the first to
show how it has been realised. That testimony, as forming
an exposition of itself, may, in a primary view of them, be
subjoined to the prophecies, and must have its due influence
on every unbiassed mind.
" Concerning Edom, thus saith the Lord of hosts, is wis
dom no more in Teman? is counsel perished from the prudent?
Is their wisdom vanished? — I wih bring the calamity of Esau
upon him, the time that I wiU visit him. If grape-gatherers
come to thee, would they not leave some gleaning-grapes ?
if thieves by night, they will destroy till they have enough.
But I have made Esau bare, I have uncovered his secret
places, and he shall not be able to hide himself. — Behold,
they whose judgment was not to drink of the cup have
assuredly drunken; and art thou he that shaU altogether go
unpunished ? thou shalt not go unpunished, but thou shalt
surely drink of it. For I have sworn by myself, saith the
Lord, that Bozrah (the strong or fortified city) shaU become
a desolation, a reproach, a waste, and a curse ; and aU the
cities thereof shah be perpetual wastes. — Lo, I wiU make
thee small among the heathen, and despised among men.
Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine
heart, 0 thou that dweUest in the clefts of the rock (Heb.
Selah, or Petra), that holdest the height of the hill : though
thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I wUl
bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord. Also Edom

IDUMEA. 299
shah be a desolation ; every one that goeth by it shaU be
astonished, and shaU hiss at aU the plagues thereof. As in
the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighbour
cities thereof, saith the Lord, no man shall abide there, nei
ther shaU a son of man dweU in it.1 Thus saith the Lord
God, I will stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut
off man and beast from it ; and I wiU make it desolate from
Teman.2 The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son
of man, set thy face against Mount Seir, and prophesy against
it, and say unto it, Thus saith the Lord God; I wiU stretch
out my hand against thee, and I wiU make thee most deso
late. I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate.3
Thus wUl I make Mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from
it him that passeth out, and him that returneth.4 I wiU
make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not
return.5 When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee
desolate. — Thou shalt be desolate, 0 Mount Seir, and ah
Idumea, even aU of it ; and they shall know that I am the
Lord.6 Edom shaU be a desolate wilderness.7 For three
transgressions of Edom, and for four, I wiU not turn away
the punishment thereof.8 Thus saith the Lord concerning
Edom, — I have made thee smaU among the heathen, thou
art greatly despised. The pride of thine heart hath deceived
thee, thou that dweUest in the clefts of the rock, whose
habitation is high ; — that saith in his heart, Who shaU bring
me down to the ground. Though thou exalt thyself as the
eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence
wUl I bring thee down, saith Jehovah. How are the things
of Esau searched out ! how are his hidden things sought up !
ShaU I not destroy the wise men out of Edom, and under
standing out of the Mount of Esau? . . . For the day of
the Lord is near upon all the heathen. . . . But upon
' Jer. xlix. 7-10, 12, 13, 15-18. 2 Ezek. xxv. 13.
3 Ezek. xxxv. 1-4. 4 Ezek.xxxv. 7. " Ezek. xxxv. 9.
« Ezek. xxxv. 14, 15. r Joel iii. 19. 5 Amos i. 11.

300 IDUMEA.
Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shaU be holiness;
and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions — and
there shaU not be any remaining of the house of Esau. . . .
And saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to judge the
Mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord's.1 I
laid the mountains of Esau and his heritage waste for the
dragons of the wUderness. Whereas Edom saith, We are im
poverished, but we will return and buUd the desolate places ;
thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shah build, but I wiU throw
down ; and they shaU caU them, The border of wickedness."2
Idumea was situated to the south of the land of Moab;
it bordered on the east with Arabia Petraea, under which
name it was included in the latter part of its history, and it
extended southward to the eastern gulf of the Red Sea. A
single extract from the Travels of Volney will be found to be
equally illustrative of the prophecy and of the fact. " This
country has not been visited by any traveller, but it well
merits such an attention ; for from the report of the Arabs
of Bakir, and the inhabitants of Gaza, who frequently go to
Maan and Karak, on the road of the pilgrims, there are to
the south-east of the lake Asphaltites (Dead Sea), within
three days' journey, upwards of thirty ruined towns abso
lutely deserted. Several of them have large edifices, with
columns that may have belonged to ancient temples, or at
least to Greek churches. The Arabs sometimes make use
of them to fold their cattle in ; but in general avoid them on
account of the enormous scorpions with which they swarm.
We cannot be surprised at these traces of ancient population,
when we recoUect that this was the country of the Naba-
theans, the most powerful of the Arabs, and of the Idumeans,
who, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, were almost
as numerous as the Jews, as appears from Josephus, who
informs us, that on the first rumour of the march of Titus
> Obad. 1, 6, 8, 15, 17-21. 2 Malachi i. 3, 4.

IDUMEA. 301
against Jerusalem, thirty (twenty) thousand Idumeans in
stantly assembled, and threw themselves into that city for
its defence. It appears that besides the advantages of being
under a tolerably good government, these districts enjoyed
a considerable share of the commerce of Arabia and India,
which increased their industry and population. We know
that as far back as the time of Solomon, the cities of Astioum
Gaber (Esion Gaber) and Ailah (Eloth) were highly frequented
marts. These towns were situated on the adjacent gulf of
the Red Sea, where we still find the latter yet retaining its
name, and perhaps the former in that of El Akaba, or the
end (of the sea). These two places are in the hands of the
Bedouins, who, being destitute of a navy and commerce, do
not inhabit them. But the pUgrims report that there is at
El Akaba a wretched fort. The Idumeans, from whom the
Jews took only their ports at intervals, must have found in
them a great source of wealth and population. It even
appears that the Idumeans rivaUed the Tyrians, who also
possessed a town, the name of which is unknown, on the
coast of Hedjaz, in the desert of Tih, and the city of Faran,
and, without doubt, El-Tor, which served it by way of port.
From this plaee, the caravans might reach Palestine and
Judea in eight or ten days. This route, which is longer
than that from Suez to Cairo, is infinitely shorter than that
from Aleppo to Bassorah."1 Evidence, which must have been
undesigned, and which cannot be suspected of partiality, is thus
borne to the truth of the most wonderful prophecies. That
the Idumeans were a populous and powerful nation long pos
terior to the delivery of the prophecies ; that they possessed
a tolerably good government (even in the estimation of
Volney) ; that Idumea contained many cities ; that these
cities are now absolutely deserted, and that their ruins
swarm with enormous scorpions; that it was a commercial
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 34-1-346.

302 IDUMEA.
nation, and possessed highly frequented marts; that it formed
a thoroughfare in ancient times, but yet that it had not then
been visited by any traveUer; are facts all recorded, or proved
to a wish, by this able but unconscious commentator.
Idumea was a kingdom previous to Israel, having been
governed first by dukes and princes, afterwards by eight
successive kings, and again by dukes, before there reigned
any king over the chUdren of Israel.1 Its fertility and
cultivation in the earliest times, are implied not only in the
blessings of Esau, whose dwelling was to be the fatness of
the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above,2 but also in
the condition proposed by Moses to the Edomites, when he
solicited a passage for the Israelites through their borders,
" that they would not pass through the fields or through
the vineyards." The Idumeans were, without doubt, both
an opulent and a powerful people. They often contended
with the Israelites, and entered into a league with their
other enemies against them. In the reign of David they
were indeed subdued and greatly oppressed, and many of
them were dispersed throughout the neighbouring countries,
particularly Phoenicia and Egypt. But during the decline
of the kingdom of Judah, and for many years previous to
its extinction, they encroached upon the territories of the
Jews, and extended their dominion over the south-western
part of Judea. Though no excellence whatever be now
attached to its name, which exists only in past history,
Idumea, including perhaps Judea, as Reland has shown, was
then not without the praise of the first of Roman poets.
Primus Idumsas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas.
Virg. Georg. iii. 12.
And of Lucan, (Pharsal. iii. 216.)
Arhustis palmarum dives Idume.
But Idumea, as a kingdom, can lay claim to a higher
1 Gen. xxxvi. 13-43. 2 Gen. xxvii. 39.

IDUMEA. 303
renown than either the abundance of its flocks, or the
exceUence of its palm-trees. The celebrated city of Petra,
(so named by the Greeks, and so worthy of its name, on
account both of its rocky situation and vicinity) was situated
within the patrimonial territory of the Edomites. There is
distinct and positive evidence that it was a city of Edom,1
and the metropolis of the Nabatheans,2 whom Strabo ex
pressly identifies with the Idumeans — possessors of the
same country, and subject to the same laws.3 "Petra," to
use the words of Dr Vincent, by whom the state of its
ancient commerce was described before its ruins were dis
covered, " is the capital of Edom or Seir, the Idumea or
Arabia Petraea of the Greeks, the Nabatea, considered both
by geographers, historians, and poets, as the source of all
the precious commodities of the east/'4 " The caravans, in
all ages, from Minea, in the interior of Arabia, and from
Gerrha on the Gulf of Persia, from Hadramaut on the
ocean, and some even from Sabea or Yemen, appear to have
pointed to Petra as a common centre ; and from Petra the
trade seems again to have branched out into every direction,
to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, through Arsinoe, Gaza, Tyre,
Jerusalem, Damascus, and a variety of subordinate routes
that all terminated on the Mediterranean. There is every
proof that is requisite, to show that the Tyrians and Sido-
nians were the first merchants who introduced the produce
of India to aU the nations which encircled the Mediterranean ;
so there is the strongest evidence to prove that the Tyrians
obtained aU their commodities from Arabia. But if Arabia
1 Petra being afterwards more particularly noticed, some quotations from ancient
authors respecting it may here be subjoined.
Uerpa n-oXis ev yi) ESoi^ njs Apafiia-;. Eusebii Onomast. " Petra civitas Arabiee
in terra Edom." Hieron. torn. iii. p. 59. Vide Relandi Palsestina, torn. i.
p. 70.
2 M^rpoTToAis Se tuv NajSaratwi' e.cmv i) Ilerpa KaAou/teinj. Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 779, edit.
Paris, 1620, ed. Falc. p. 1106.
3 NajSaToiot Se curuv 61 ISovjxauH. Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 760, edit. Falcon, p. 1081.
* Vincent's Commerce of the Ancients, vol. ii. p. 263.

304 IDUMEA.
was the centre of this commerce, Petra1 was the point to
which aU the Arabians tended from the three sides of their
vast peninsula."2 "The name of this capital, in ah the
various languages in which it occurs, implies a rock, and
as such it is described in the Scriptures, in Strabo, and Al-
Edrissi."3 About 800 years before Christ, Amaziah, the king of
Judea, took Selah (or Petra, both names alike signifying a
rock) after having slain 10,000 Edomites.4 Five hundred
years thereafter, it withstood the repeated assaults of Deme
trius, who marched suddenly against it to take it by sur
prise : and he who afterwards entered Babylon, retreated
from before the capital of Edom.5 Petra, subsequently to
its subjugation by the Nabathean Arabs, was termed the
capital of Arabia, or more properly of Arabia Petrasa : and
a race of kings who reigned there under the names of
Obodas and Aretas, were each successively designated "the
king of Arabia." Three hundred years after the last of the
prophets, and nearly a century before the Christian era,
Alexander Janneus, king of Judea, having taken several
cities of the Idumeans and neighbouring nations, was de
feated by Obodas, lost his army, and scarcely escaped with
his life. Aretas, the successor of Obodas, who next reigned
at Petra, "a person very illustrious" (ettiSo^os) discomfited
and slew Antiochus Dionysius, king of Syria ; and Ccelesyria
was added to his dominions. When Hyrcanus, the son of
Alexander, was dispossessed of his kingdom by his elder
brother Aristobulus, Antipater, an Idumean of great wealth,
the father of Herod the Great, urged him to flee for aid to
" the king of Arabia," and conducted him to " Petra, where
1 Agatharchides Huds. p. 57. Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. vi. cap. xxviii. quoted by
Vincent, ibid. p. 262.
2 Ibid. pp. 260-262.
3 Vincent's Commerce of the Ancients, vol. ii. p. 264.
J 2 Kings xiv. 7. » Diod. Sic. torn. viii. p. 416. Prideaux.

IDUMEA. 305
the palace of Aretas was."1 On the promised restoration by
Antipater, as soon as he should be repossessed of his king
dom, of the twelve cities and territory which his father had
taken2 from the Arabs or Nabatheans, Aretas, at the head
of 50,000 men, horse and foot, marched against Aristobulus,
conquered him in battle, and, advancing with aU his army,
entered Jerusalem, and having united the forces of the Jews
with his own, pressed vigorously the siege of the temple —
which was only raised by the advance of the Romans
to the aid of Aristobulus.3 At a period posterior as weU
as prior to the commencement of the Christian era, there.
always reigned at Petra, as Strabo relates, a king of the
royal lineage, with whom a prince or procurator, denominated
his brother, was associated in the government.4 In the
beginning of the second century, Petra, though its independ
ence was lost, was stiU the capital of a Roman province, or
the reputed metropolis of Arabia ; and, as its coins attested,
the Emperor Adrian added his name to that of the city : 6 it
long continued to be the capital of the third Palestine —
Palestina tertia sive salutaris ; and, as such, was also the
metropolitan see of fifteen bishoprics pertaining to that pro
vince.6 The ancient state of Idumea cannot in the present day
be so clearly ascertained from the records respecting it, which
can be gleaned from history, whether sacred or profane, as
by the wonderful and imperishable remains of its capital
city, and by " the traces of many towns and vUlages," which
indisputably show that " it must once have been thickly
1 Ely ILerpav ottov JSaoxXeia rjv tov Apera. Joseph. Ant. lib. xiv. u. 1. sect. 4.
2 Viz. Medaba, Naballo, Livias, Tharabasa, Agalla, Athone, Zoara, Oronae,
Marissa, Rydda, Lyssa, and Oryba. Ibid.
3 Joseph. Ant. c. ii. sect. 1, ed. Falc. p. 1107.
? Strabo, p. 779.
5 Petra est Arabia? metropolis, quo spectant nummi, in quibus AAPIANH HETPA
MHTPOUOAIC legitur, &c. Vide Relandi Palest, torn. ii. p. 931.
• Ibid. torn. i. p. 315, &c. 20

306 IDUMEA.
inhabited."1 Not merely can it admit of no dispute, that
the cities of Idumea subsisted in a very different state from
that absolute desolation which, long prior to the period of
its reality, was represented in the prophetic vision; but
there are prophecies regarding it, especiaUy those in the
thirty-fourth chapter of Isaiah, that have yet a prospective
view, and which refer to the time when " the children of
Israel shaU possess their possessions," or to " the year of
recompences for the controversy of Zion." But, difficult as
it has hitherto been to ascertain those existing facts, and
precise circumstances, which form the strongest features of
ite desolate aspect, (and that ought to be the subject of
scientific as well as of religious inquiry) enough has been
discovered to show that the sentence against it, though ful
fihed by the agency of nature and of man, is precisely such
as was first recorded in the words of the prophets.
Edom shall be a desolation. Judea, Ammon, and Moab,
exhibit so abundantly the remains of an exuberant fertility,
and the means of reviving it, that the wonder arises in the
reflecting mind, how the barbarity of man could have so
effectually counteracted, for so many generations, the
prodigality of nature. But such is Edom's desolation,
that the first sentiment of astonishment on the contem
plation of it, is, how a wide extended region, now diversi
fied by the strongest features of desert wildness, could ever
have been adorned with cities, or tenanted for ages by a
powerful and opulent people. Its present aspect would
belie its ancient history, were not that history corroborated
by " the many vestiges of former cultivation," by the remains
of waUs and paved roads, and by the ruins of cities still
existing in this ruined country.
The total cessation of its commerce ; the artificial irriga
tion of its vaUeys wholly neglected ; the destruction of all
1 Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, p. 436.

IDOMEA. 307
the cities, and the continued spoliation of the country by
the Arabs; the permanent exposure, for ages, of the soil
unsheltered by its ancient groves, and unprotected by any
covering from the scorching rays of the sun : are causes
which may have aU combined their baneful operation in
rendering Edom most desolate, the desolation of desolations.
Volney's account is sufficiently descriptive of the desolation
which now reigns over Idumea; and the information which
Seetzen derived at Jerusalem respecting it, is of similar
import. He was told " that at the distance of two days'
journey and a half from Hebron, he would find con
siderable ruins of the ancient city of Abde, and that for
all the rest of the journey he would see no place of habi
tation : he would meet only with a few tribes of wandering
Arabs."1 From the borders of Edom, Captains Irby and
Mangles beheld a boundless extent of desert view, which
they had hardly ever seen equaUed for singularity and
grandeur. And the following extract, descriptive of what
Burckhardt actuaUy witnessed, cannot be more graphicaUy
abbreviated than in the words of the prophet. — " It might
with truth," says Burckhardt, " be called Petraea, not only
on accouut of its rocky mountains, but also of the elevated
plain already described,2 which is so much covered with
stones, especiaUy flints, that it may with great propriety
be caUed a stony desert, although susceptible of culture ; in
many places it is overgrown with wild herbs, and must
once have been thickly inhabited; for the traces of many
towns and villages are met with on both sides of the Hadj
road, between Moan and Akaba, as well as between Moan
and the plains of the Hauran, in which direction are also
many springs. At present aU this country is a desert, and
Maan (Teman)3 is the only inhabited place in it.4 I will
1 Seetzen's Travels, p. 46.
2 Sheera (Seir) the territory of the Edomites, pp. 410, 435.
« See map prefixed to Burckhardt's Travels. * Burckhardt's Travels, p. 436.

308 IDUMEA.
stretch out mine hand against thee, 0 Mount Seir, and I
will make thee most desolate. I will stretch out my hand
upon Edom, — and I will make it desolate from Teman,
<&c. But I have made Esau bare. Edom shall be a deso
late wilderness.
" The ascent (of Mount Hor), for a considerable distance
up the side of the mountain, is not very steep ; and we saw
many ruined terraces, the evidences and remains of a
flourishing agriculture, which, in the prosperous days of
Edom and Petra, clothed many of these now sterile moun
tains with fertility and beauty. . . . The splendid ruins and
monuments of Petra, however, are alone sufficient to demon
strate the wealth and civilization of the kingdom of which
it was the metropolis. Fields of wheat and some agricul
tural viUages stiU exist in the eastern portion of Edom; but,
with very slight exceptions, the country is blighted with
cheerless desolation and hopeless sterility. The hill-sides
and mountains, once covered with earth and clothed with
vineyards, are now bare rocks. The soil, no longer sup
ported by terraces and sheltered by trees, has been swept
away by the rains. The various contrivances for irrigation,
which even now might restore fertility to many considerable
tracts, have all disappeared. Sand from the desert, and the
debris of the soft rock of which the mountains are composed,
cover the vaUeys that formerly smUed with plenty. The
rays of a burning sun have imparted to the whole region a
dark and gloomy hue, which harmonizes weU with the
melancholy detaU of its desolations."1
Of the remains of ancient cities stiU exposed to view
in different places throughout Idumea, Burckhardt describes
" the ruins of a large town, of . which nothing remains
but broken waUs and heaps of stones ; the ruins of several
viUages in its vicinity;2 the ruins of an ancient city
1 Olin's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 15, 55. 2 Burckhardt's Traveln, p. 418.

IDUMEA. 309
consisting of large heaps of hewn blocks of silicious stone ;
the extensive ruins of Gherandel, Arindela, an ancient
town of Palsestina Tertia."1 " The following ruined
places are situated in Djebal Shera (Mount Seir) to the
south and south-west of Wady Mousa ; Kalaat, Djerba,
Basta, Eyl, Ferdakh, Anyk, Bir el Beytar, Shemakh, and
Syk. Of the towns laid down in D'AnvUle's map, Thoana
excepted, no traces remain."2 Laborde passed the ruins of
Elana, a town in Wady (vahey) Pambouchebe, of another
in Wady Sabra, where there are the ruins of a theatre and
several temples — and of Ameime, where there are the
remains of numerous cisterns excavated from the rock, into
which the water flowed by an aqueduct nine miles in length.
i~ will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate. 0
Mount Seir, I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy
cities shall not return.
Malachi, the last of the prophets, who wrote two hundred
years after Ezekiel, and above three hundred after Isaiah,
speaks of the heritage of Esau as laid waste for the
dragons of the wilderness. But he adds, Whereas Edom
saith, we are impoverished, but we will return and build
the desolate places ; thus saith the Lord, They shall
build, but I will throw down. In recording the invasion
of Demetrius, about three hundred years before the Christian
era, into the land of Edom, Diodorus describes the country
as desert, and the inhabitants as living without houses ;
nor does he mention any city in that region but Petra
alone. Yet the names of some of the cities of Arabia
Petraea, enumerated by Josephus, as existing at the time
when the Romans invaded Palestine — the names of eighteen
cities of Palestina Tertia, of which Petra was the capital,
and the metropohtan see, in the times of the Lower Empire
— and the towns laid down in D'AnvUle's map, together with
» Burckhardt's Travels, p. 441. > Ibid. pp. 443, 444.

310 IDUMEA.
the subsisting ruins of towns in Edom, specified by Burck
hardt, and also by Laborde — give proof that Edom, after
having been impoverished, did return and build the desolate
places ; even as " the ruined towns and places," stiU visible
and named, show that though the desolate places were built
again, according to the prophecy, they have, as likewise
foretold, been thrown down, and are " ruined places" lying
in utter desolation.
While the cities of Idumea, in general, are thus most
desolate, and whUe, so far as yet known, the ruins them
selves are as indiscriminate as they are undefined in the
prediction, (there being nothing discoverable, as there was
nothing foretold, but their excessive desolation, and that
they shall not return,) there is one striking exception to
this promiscuous desolation, which is alike singled out by
the inspired prophet, and by the scientific traveller.
Burckhardt gives a description, of no ordinary interest, of
the site of an ancient city which he visited, the ruins of
which not only attest its ancient splendour, but they "are
entitled to rank among the most curious remains of ancient
art." Though the city be desolate, the monuments of its
opulence and power are durable. These — as described by
Burckhardt in his passing visit, — are, a channel on each
side of the river, for conveying the water to the city;
numerous tombs; above two hundred and fifty sepulchres or
excavations ; many mausoleums, one in particular of colossal
dimensions, in perfect preservation, and a work of immense
labour, containing a chamber sixteen paces square, and
above twenty-five in height, with a colonnade in front
thirty-five feet high, crowned with a pediment highly orna
mented, &c. ; two large truncated pyramids, and a theatre
with ah ite benches, capable of containing about three thou
sand spectators, all cut out of the rock. In some places
these sepulchres are excavated one over the other, and the

IDUMEA. 311
side of the mountain is so perpendicular that it seems
impossible to approach the uppermost, no path whatever
being visible. " The ground is covered with heaps of hewn
stones, foundations of buUdings, fragments of columns and
vestiges of paved streets, aU clearly indicating that a large
city once existed here. On the left bank of the river is a
rising ground, extending westward for nearly three quarters
of a mile, entirely covered with similar remains. On the
right bank where the ground is more elevated, ruins of the
same description are to be seen. There are also the remains
of a palace and of several temples. In the eastern cliff
there are upwards of fifty separate sepulchres close to each
other."1 These are not the symbols of a feeble race, nor of
a people that were to perish utterly. But a judgment was
denounced against the strongholds of Edom. The prophetic
threatening has not proved an empty boast, and it could not
have been the word of an uninspired mortal. I will maize
tliee small among tlie heathen. Thy terribleness hath de
ceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, 0 thou that dweU
est in the clefts of tlie rock (Selah, or Petra), that holdest the
height of tlie hill: tliough thou shouldest make thy nest as
high as ihe eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith
the Lord. Also Edom sliall be a desolation.
These descriptions, given by the prophet and by the ob
server, are so analogous, and the precise locality of the scene,
from its peculiar and characteristic features, so identified, —
and yet the application of the prophecy to the fact so re
mote from the thoughts or view of Burckhardt, as to be
altogether overlooked, — that his single delineation of the
ruins of the chief (and assuredly the strongest and best
fortified) city of Edom was deemed in the first edition of
this treatise, and in the terms of the preceding paragraph,
an illustration of the prophecy, alike adequate and legiti-
' Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, pp. 422-432.

312 IDUMEA.
mate. And though deprecating any aUusion whatever of a
personal nature, and earnest only for the elucidation of the
truth, the author yet trusts that he may here be permitted
to disclaim the credit of having been the first to assign to
the prediction its wonderful and appropriate fulfilment; and
it is with no slight gratification that he is now enabled to
¦adduce higher evidence than any opinion of his own, and to
state, that the self-same prophecy has been applied by others
— with the Bible in their hands, and with the very scene
before them — to the self-same spot. Yet it may be added,
that this coincident application of the prophecy, without any
coUusion, and without the possibility at the time of any in
terchange of sentiment, affords, at least, a strong presump
tive evidence of the accuracy of the application, and of the
truth of the prophecy ; and it may weU lead to some reflec
tion in the mind of any reader, if scepticism has not barred
every avenue against conviction.
On entering the pass which conducts to the theatre of
Petra, Captains Irby and Mangles remark: — "The ruins of
the city here burst on the view in their full grandeur, shut
in on the opposite side by barren craggy precipices from
which numerous ravines and vaUeys branch out in aU direc
tions; the sides of the mountains covered with an endless
variety of excavated tombs and private dweUings, (0 thou
that dweUest in the clefts of the rock, &c. — Jer. xlix. 1 6,)
presented altogether the most singular scene we ever beheld."
In stUl farther confirmation of the identity of the site,
and the accuracy of the application, it may be repeated, in
the words of Dr Vincent, that " the name of this capital, in
aU the various languages in which it occurs, implies a rock;
and as such it is described in the Scriptures, in Strabo, and
Al Edrissi."1 And in a note he enumerates among the
various names having all the same signification — Selah, a
1 Commerce of the Ancients, vol. ii. p. 264.

IDUMEA. 313
rock, (the very word here used in the original,) Petra, a
rock, (the Greek name, which has precisely the same signi
fication,) and The Rock, pre-eminently — expressly referring
to this passage of Scripture.1 Petraea, according to Bochart,
no mean authority, was so called from its metropolis Petra,
of which the Hebrew name was Selah, and the Arabic,
Hagar ; Selah being the very same among the Hebrews, and
Hagar among the Arabians, as Petra among the Greeks;
this name was given to the city because rocky mountains
overhung it — of which the Arabian geographer states
that houses are there excavated in the rock} This tes
timony, however high the authority, is yet enhanced by
the fact, that it was given long before the ruins of
Petra were discovered, or the prediction applied to the
fact. Captains Irby and Mangles, having, together with Mr
Bankes and Mr Legh, spent two days in dUigently examin
ing them, give a more particular detaU of the ruins of
Petra than Burckhardt's account supplied; and the more
fuU the description, the more precise and wonderful does
the prophecy appear. Near to the place where they
entered Wady Mousa, " the high land was covered upon
both its sides, and on ite summits, with lines and solid
masses of dry waU. The former appeared to be traces of
ancient cultivation, the sohd ruins seemed to be only the
remains of towers for watching in harvest and vintage
time. The whole neighbourhood of the spot bears simUar
traces of former industry; aU which seem to indicate the
1 See Blaney, in loco.
2 Cum Petraea dieatur— a metropoli Petra, cujus Hebrseum nomen Selah. 2 Kings
xiv. 7, et Isa. xvi. 1, et Arabicum Hagar, Oeograph. Nub. Clim. iii. part 5.
Hebrseis autem Selah et Arabibus Hagar id ipsum sunt quod Graecis Petra ; atque
hoc nomen urbi inditum, quia illi imminent saxosi montes, de quibus ita Qeogra-
phus Arabs— Hagar est arx pulchre sita inter montes— suntque ibi damns excise in
petra. Hos montes Arabica voce Agar, id est, Petram, appellat Paulus, Gal. iv.
25, tanquara urbi cognomines. Bochart Phaleg. lib. iv. c. xxvii. c. 275, 276.
Edit. Lugd. Bat. 1712.

314 IDUMEA.
vicinity of a great metropolis."1 A narrow and circuitous
defile, surrounded on each side by precipitous or perpendicu
lar rocks, and forming "a sort of subterranean passage,"
opens ou the east the way to the ruins of Petra. The
rocks, or rather hills, then diverge on either side, and leave
an oblong space, where once stood the metropolis of Edom,
deceived by its terribleness, where now lies a waste of
ruins, encircled by rocks or cliffs, which still show how the
pride and labour of art tried there to vie with the sublimity
of nature. Along the borders of these cliffs, detached
masses of rock, numerous and lofty, have been wrought
into sepulchres, the interior of which is excavated into
chambers, while the exterior has been cut from the hve
rock into the forms of towers, with pUasters, and successive
bands of frieze and entablature, wings, recesses, figures of
animals, and columns.
" Tombs present themselves, not only in every avenue to
the city, and upon every precipice that surrounds it, but
even intermixed almost promiscuously with its public and
domestic edifices; the natural features of the defile grew
more and more imposing at every step, and the excavations
and sculpture more frequent on both sides, tiU it presented
at last a continued street of tombs." The base of the cliffs
wrought out into aU the symmetry and regularity of art,
with colonnades and pedestals, and ranges of corridors
adhering to the perpendicular surface; flights of steps
chiseUed out of the rock; many grottos, "which are cer
tainly not sepulchral;" some excavated residences of large
dimensions, in one of which is a single chamber, sixty feet
in length, and of a breadth proportioned; other dwellings
of inferior note, particularly abundant in one defile leading
to the city, the steep sides of which contain a sort of
excavated suburb, accessible by flights of steps ; niches,
1 Captains Irby and Mangles's Travels, p. 402.

IDUMEA. 315
sometimes thirty feet in excavated height, with altars for
votive offerings, or with pyramids, columns, or obelisks;
some smaU pyramids hewn out of the rock on the summit
of the heights ; horizontal grooves for the conveyance of
water, cut in the face of the rock, and even across the
architectural fronts of some of the excavations ; and, in
short, " the rocks hoUowed out into innumerable chambers
of different dimensions, whose entrances are variously, richly,
and often fantastically decorated with every imaginable
order of architecture f1 — all united not only form one of
the most singular scenes that the eye of man ever looked
upon, or the imagination painted — a group of wonders
perhaps unparalleled in their kind — but also give indubitable
proof, both that in the land of Edom there was a city
where human ingenuity, and energy, and power must have
been exerted for many ages, and to so great a degree, as to
have well entitled it to be noted for its strength or terrible
ness, and that the description given of it by the prophets
of Israel was as strictly literal as the prediction respecting
it is true. " The barren state of the country, together
with the desolate condition of the city, without a single
human being hving near it, seem," in the words of those
who were spectators of the scene, "strongly to verify the
judgment denounced against it." 2 0 thou that dweUest in
the clefts of the rock, &c. Also Edom shall be a desola
tion, &c.
" The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that
dweUest in the clefts of the rock (Heb. Selah, or Petra),
whose habitation is high. — Though thou exalt thyself as
the eagle, thence wiU I bring thee down, saith the Lord."
" Petra," says Miss Martineau, " might be said to begin
from that first excavation. For nearly an hour longer we
1 Captains Irby and Mangles's Travels, pp. 407-437. Macmichael'a Journey,
pp. 228, 229.
2 Irby and Mangles's Travels, p. 439.

316 IDUMEA.
were descending the pass, seeing first, hints at facades, and
then, more and more holes clearly artificial. . . . The rocks
became more and more wild and stupendous, whUe,
wherever they presented a face, there were pediments and
pUasters, and ranges of doorways, and little flights of steps
scattered over the slopes. A pair of eagles sprang out and
sailed over head, scared by the noise of the strangers. . . .
Down we went, and still down, among new wonders, long
after I had begun to feel that this far transcended ah I
had ever imagined. . . . On the left were yet more portals
in the precipice, so high that it was inconceivable how they
were ever reached. The longer we stayed, and the more
mountain temples we climbed to, the more I felt that the
inhabitants, among their other pecuharities, must have been
winged."1 The description given by Volney, and depending for its
accuracy on the authority of Arabs, formed tiU recently the
only account of the modern state of Idumea; and though
the testimony was recorded in a manner and came through
a channel the most unsuspected possible, yet the evidence
was not sufficiently direct or discriminating to mark, as
Volney had otherwise done, the exact, prophetic, and
characteristic features of the scene. The interesting details,
from personal observation, communicated by Burckhardt,
and subsequently by Captains Irby and Mangles, rescued
the subject from obscurity, and brought to light the re
markable fact of the ruins of " a city" surrounded with
rocks, in the midst of the desert.
When, in the streets of Jerusalem, the people shouted
hosannahs to the Son of David, and while some of the
Pharisees among the people said unto him, Master, rebuke
thy disciples, he answered and said unto them, I tell you that,
if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately
1 Martineau's Eastern Life, vol. ii. pp. 319. 320.

IDUMEA. 317
cry out. And in an infidel age, while manjr modern cities
and nations disowned the authority of the God of Israel
and disbelieved his word, those of ancient times stood forth
anew before the world, like witnesses arisen from the dead,
to show the authority, the power, and the truth of his
word over them, and to raise a warning and instructive
voice to the cities of the nations, lest they too should become
the monuments of the wrath which they have defied. And
when men would not hear of hosannahs to the Son of
David, or of divine honours to the name of Christ, deserts
immediately spake and rocks cried out, and, responding to
the voice of the prophets, testified of those who testified of
Jesus. The capital of Edom, as well as the capital of
other ancient kingdoms, was heard of again; and its rocks
now send forth a voice that may weU reach unto the ends
of the earth.
It entered not into the thoughts of the writer, and far
surpassed his hopes, when first led to look into the prophe
cies concerning Edom, from the statement of an Arab report
recorded by Volney, that in so short a time the fulfilment
of these prophecies might be set before the eyes of men,
even without their having to " come and see." And after
having adduced new evidence in successive editions of this
treatise from striking facts, clearly iUustrative of the pre
dictions relative to Edom, and to its once terrible metropolis,
an appeal may now be made to the sight as well as to the
understanding of men. For whUe the sixth edition of this
treatise was passing through the press, the author timely
received from Paris (and would that that city would give heed
to the truth, which it thus farther affords the means of con
firming !) the first six livraisons of a work entitled, Voyage
de V Arable Petre par Mess. Leon de Laborde et Linant,
then in the course of publication, which contains, in the
numbers first published, seventeen splendid engravings of

318 IDUMEA.
the ruins of Petra alone, in which, by merely affixing a
text, the beauties of art become immediately subservient to
the interests of religion. To these, others have been added,
and the splendid work has been completed. Where, very
recently, it was difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain a
single fact, and where only indirect evidence could be
obtained, men may now, as it were, look upon the ruins of
the chief city of Edom, of which +he very existence was
till lately altogether unknown. A better idea may be
formed of the site of Petra from the plan of it by Count
Laborde, than by any additional verbal description. All
the plates attest its vast magnificence, and the almost
incredible and inconceivable labour, continued as it must
have been from age to age, prior to the days of Moses and
later than the Christian era, by which so great a multiplicity
of dwellings and mausoleums were excavated from the rock.
And Truth speaks out, not from the lips of a lying spirit
evoked by the fancy of a sceptical philosopher, but from the
face of the live rock, which exhibits the excavations in the
clefts, singularly characteristic of the scene, and declares by
the order of architecture, as if still told by every stroke of
the chisel, that the citizens of Petra did build after the era
of the prophets; while the fragments of ruins, of Grecian
and Roman architecture, as weU as of more ancient date,
which are strewed over the ground, and cover the valley
which was the site of the city, and which is surrounded by
precipitous hiUs and excavated rocks, show that these
buildings, whose doom was pronounced before their erec
tion, have, according to the same sure word, been thrown
down.
The explicit testimony of Laborde here enhances the
value of his precious engravings. It is, he states, " from
the summit of El Nakb, that one can judge of the general
aspect of the country, of the melancholy and dismal charac-

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IDUMEA. 319
ter of which it is difficult to convey an idea with the pencU
alone. But the prophetic description surpasses that of the
pen or pencil of man, however gifted the painter, or how
ever graphic the delineation. For he immediately adds,
'" Many prophets have announced the misery of Idumea,
but the strong language of Ezekiel can alone come up to
the height., or reach the acme, of this great desolation."1
Moreover the word of ihe Lord came unto me, saying,
Son of man, set thy face against Mount Seir, and prophesy
against it, and say unto it, Thus saith the Lord God :
Behold, 0 Mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will make
thee most desolate. I will lay thy cities waste, and when
the whole earth rejoiceth I will make thee desolate. I will
malce Mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him
that passeth out and him that returneth. I will make thee
perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return, and
ye shall know that I am the Lord.2
One engraving, the view of an isolated column, is pecu
liarly striking, as indirectly exemplifying the unique charac
ter of the scenery, by which, at a glance, Petra is identified.
The design of the picture is to represent an isolated column.
But the back-ground exhibits to view " a part of the vaUey
of Moses" (Ouadi Mousa), some of those high rocks in the
more distant perspective, which are pierced with many
excavations (perces de miUiers excavations). Other plates
present to view the magnificence of Petra. There is one
tomb, of which a view is given, which is particularly deserv
ing of notice, as there is engraven on it a Latin inscription,
with a name of a magistrate, Quintus Praetextus Florentinus,
who died in that city, being governor of that part of Arabia
1 On peut juger ainsi di leur elevation et de l'aspect general du pays, dont le
triste et lugubre caractere est difficile a transporter avec l'aide seule du crayon.
Plusieur3 prophetes avaient annonc^ le malheur de l'ldumee; mais la forte parole
d'Ezechiel peut seule s'elever a la hauteur de cette grande desolation. — Voyage,
p. 61.
! Ezek. xxxv.

320 IDUMEA.
Petraea. " It behoved to be," it is said, " about the time of
Adrian or Antoninus Pius," or at a period unquestionably
several centuries posterior to the latest of the predictions.
Elaborate descriptions of splendid scenes by the pen of
travellers, are, as Laborde remarks, sometimes charged with
being exaggerated. But the views which he gives of the
Khasne of Petra, show that the verbal description might be
highly wrought, and yet come short of the truth; even as
he and others remark, that the pencil itself can convey only
an inadequate representation of " the magnificent edifice,"
which, to this day, is only slightly defaced.
The previous testimonies to recently ascertained facts, suf
ficient to constitute conclusive evidence, have been retained
as in preceding editions ; for iUustrations of literal prophecies
from literal facts, wherever these are undoubtedly established
and rightly applied, admit not of change, like imaginative
expositions. When a Scriptural command, in reference to
a prophetic vision, was disregarded, and men would not
wait for it, while it tarried till the appointed time, when,
as made plain upon tables, it should speak and not lie, a
symbolical significancy could alone be attached in ancient
times to the judgments on Edom and the proudest of its
cities, when Aretas reigned in his "palace at Petra," or
when that city was the capital of a Roman province, or a
metropolitan see in Christian times. Jerome, for example,
could not see this vision as the prophet saw it, whUe the
inhabitants of Edom, as he testifies, continued to dwell in
excavated habitations, or in the cliffs of the rocks. It was
too early then for the expositor to see those things which
the prophets had written, and, not reading these predictions
UteraUy, Christian writers readily interpreted them after
the manner of the Jewish, substituting the enemies of the
church for the enemies of Israel, as symbolised by Edom or
the Edomites. Judgments indeed fell — or began to fall —

IDUMEA. 321
on Edom in times anterior to that era ; others rest upon it
stiU, as it now speaks for itself; and it has yet to bear
witness to other prophecies. The distinction has to be
drawn not only between figurative and literal predictions,
of which the latter have been trenching greatly on the
former as men would construe them, — but also between
accomplished and unaccomplished prophecies; that the for
mer be not made to occupy the place of the latter, as men,
we are free to confess, are yet prone to err. But this truth
may here be plain, that as in fact Edom was confederate in
ancient days with Ammon and Moab against Israel, so, in
fact also, their capital cities as well as their territories, now
themselves own their fealty, and yield their united homage
to the word of the Lord of hosts, the Holy One of Israel.
Though the attempt did fail to reach the chief cities of
Ammon and Moab, that the light of the sun reflected from
their ruins might be made to vindicate the oracles of its
Creator, and their exclusive right to be their own inter
preters of his word to them — some of the wonders of Petra,
that have not been overcharged, may here be seen as they
are set forth by the daguerreotype, which, for truth's sake,
may claim its right to supersede the labours of the pen and
the pencil, however elaborate or exceUent they be.
The only building " which has resisted the ravages of
time," is marked in the plan of Laborde, Serail Pharaon,
(or palace of Pharaoh,) which he designates " ruined temple."
He thus describes it : — " Situated to the west of the city, on
the banks of the river, it towers over the innumerable debris,
or wrecks of buildings, which cover the soil, and yet presents,
though in ruins, a beautiful mass, and beautiful details of
architecture. The cornice which surmounts the temple, is
in a pure and elegant style." " The arch of triumph," says
Dr Robinson, " seems to have formed the approach to the
palace or pUe of buUding beyond, which the Arabs caU
21

322 IDUMEA.
Kusr Far' on, ' Pharaoh's Castle,' the distribution of the
interior (of which) into several chambers and stories,
seems to show conclusively, that it was not a temple."1
The same building (see plate) is described by Lord Claud
HamUton. " A square palace, near to the triumphal
arch, is the only edifice of masonry standing. I entered
it and examined the interior. The wooden joints stiU
remain in the walls, apparently strong and sound. The
ground is strewed with portions of the roof, hewn stones,
and portions of the cornice, amongst which, numbers
of thistles, prickly plants and nettles grow. At first,
I was not certain about the nettles ; but, wishing to
ascertain their identity, I put my hand to them, and
though they had not the force of English nettles, yet
they gave a pungent feeling, which, if the plant were
stronger, would amount to a sting. They had exactly the
leaf; but it was late in the season, so that want of moisture
had probably weakened them. Thus there were nettles in
the only palace that the proud city of Petra contains erect.
Thorns come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in
the fortresses thereof." The testimony of the Rev. R.
Woolmer Coiy of Pembroke CoUege, Cambridge, as adduced
in many former editions, was communicated to the author
by his brother, to whom, after visiting Petra, he thus
wrote, " The common English black thorn and bramble are
very common in Petra; and a plant more prickly than
either, and also regular, old, stinging nettles." "Both in
the interior of the palace" and in what must have been its
adjoining enclosures, according to the more recent testimony
of Dr WUson, there are many bushes and shrubs growing,
such as we should expect to find in any simUar body of
ruins, as brooms, thistles, nettles, thorns, and others of a
like sort. It is impossible to look at them in the place in
1 Vol. ii. p. 524.

IDUMEA. 323
which they are found, without recalhng to mind the lan
guage of the prophet, Thorns shall come up in her palaces,
nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof," &c. The
writer may here add, that on first entering the ruined
edifice through a narrow opening in the wall, he uncon
sciously put his foot among some rank nettles, in full
vigour in early summer, the stinging properties of which,
satisfied with the sense of sight, he had no need or inclina
tion to try. Such is now, as seen in the plate, the last
erect structure of this proud capital of Idumea. Its other
walls, as seen in the view taken by Laborde, are shattered,
and partly faUen, to the base. The lower part of a column
in front is nineteen feet in circumference, equal to those of
the grand temple of Baalbec. The thickness of the waU of
the palace is upwards of eight feet. Part of a fahen
column is about five feet in diameter. But not one now
stands to decorate the ruin.
The gateway, or " triumphal arch," near it, has a frag
ment left, which, though it be not a noble ruin, so stands
alone, like the broken edifice to which, by a paved way, it
led, that though no longer a memorial of some long-forgotten
victory of the once terrible Edomites, has enough left to
be a monument of their metropolis, and of the triumph,
that shall never be forgotten of the word of the Lord over
that capital of the enemies of Israel, aU prostrate around it.
Hemmed in by precipitous cliffs and rocky hiUs, at least
two miles in circumference, at the elevation of more than
two thousand feet above the great valley of the Araba, in
Mount Seir, the city buUt by " the people of the Lord's
curse," has now no power but to testify, like other cities of
that land, that his threatening to throw down, however
often it was rebuilt, is perfect work. Such indiscriminate
and indefinable ruins resemble those of many other cities,
even of Judah and of Israel, as of Ammon and of Moab,

324 IDUMEA.
and of far mightier cities than these, however proud, that
extended without obstruction over a far wider space: but
as the prophet, in uttering forth the words of the God of
truth against Edom, spake of those who, deceived in their
terribleness and the pride of their hearts, dwelt in the clefts
of the rock, or of Selah, and made their nests as high as the
eagle, it is not in the bottom of a valley, however high
the elevation of its site, that the full completion of such
judgments are to be found. And more than the " desolate
heap" of the capital of Moab, or the stables and couching-
places of Ammon, the cliffs that environ the old metropolis
of Edom, — not more clearly demonstrative of Scriptural
inspiration, though reduced more humiliatingly to a '' court
for owls," — have, on their discovery, awakened a higher
interest, and command a greater astonishment, than the
wide-spread ruins of any city of a plain. Its possessors,
long after the irresistible word of the hving God had gone
forth against it, might, not without seeming cause, exult in
the pride of their hearts; and they have left works for the
wonder of the world, though in vain as to their own glory
or the endurance of their city or their race, they made their
own nests as high as the eagle, or hewed themselves sepul
chres out of the rocks.
The first glance at the indiscriminate ruins of the rock-
girt city, low as they can he, may — because of the circum
scribed space they occupy, which is apparently diminished by
the height of the precipitous cliffs — have lowered the high
expectations of some stranger from a far land; but the more
closely and the more fully that the environing rocks and
ravines are examined, the more does wonder rise at the
ancient grandeur and existing desolation of that " renowned
emporium of commerce," all bare and empty now, in which
nothing of its departed glory remains that ruthless spoliators
or wild beasts could destroy or devour, and not a bone is

IDUMEA. 325
to be found in its sepulchres, reputed or real, wnUe oleanders
blossom like flowerets round a rifled tomb, and briers, and
thorns, and thistles take their appointed place in the palaces
and fortresses thereof.
But as a question has been raised whether any of these
excavations were dwellings, and as it has been stated, after
a disturbed visit of a single day, that they exhibit no trace
of having been constructed for habitations, though at the
same time it be confessed that, at a later period, they may
not improbably have been thus used, there may be here
a caU for clear and conclusive evidence, that at least some
of them were dwellings in the clefts of the rock. Those
travellers, we apprehend, who, without disturbance, have
most leisurely and fully examined these excavations, render
their express testimony, on full conviction, that in ancient
times many of them were obviously dweUings. Captains
Irby and Mangles state, that " there are grottos in great
number, which are certainly not sepulchral." They describe
the sides of the mountain as " covered with an endless
variety of excavated tombs and private dweUings, present
ing altogether the most singular scene they ever beheld."1
Lord Claud Hamilton as unhesitatingly states, that " many
of these excavations have been intended for the living, as
they contain several apartments." " Days and weeks," says
Lord Lindsay, " might be spent here if every excavation
were visited. We left the valley after revisiting the Kasne,
and exploring several of the excavated dweUings; for it is
clear, I think, both from the language of Scripture, and
the appearance of the caves themselves, that the majority,
if not all of them, were the abodes of the living, not of the
dead. Such is Petra. Thy terribleness hath deceived thee
— 0 thou that dweUest in the clefts of the rock."
1 Irby and Mangles, p. 129.

326 IDUMEA.
That the houses of Petra were excavated in the rock is
expressly related by the geographer, Edrisi ; and Jerome,
in the fifth century, also testifies that the inhabitants
of Edom, from Petra to the borders of Judea, dwelt in
caves. Count Portahs, formerly Prussian Charge d'Affaires at
Constantinople, and afterwards a member of the Prussian
government — than whom a more acute and inteUigent
observer has not visited Petra — kindly favoured the author
with the foUowing extract from his Journal, on this point
to which he gave special attention: "It is probable that,
in a climate so warm as that of Arabia Petrea, and in a
country whose rocks were so marveUously adapted for
artificial excavations, and which contained so many natural
ones besides — the first inhabitants would have preferred
caverns — cool and dry — to houses such as we now inhabit;
and it was not tiU a later period, and when Petra had
become a flourishing city, that the houses of hewn stones —
the remains of which are seen in the central vahey of this
strange city — were constructed. These new buUdings,
however, did not cause the abandonment of the ancient
usages. The windows which are frequently seen in the
strange edifices, cut out of the lateral waUs of the sike,
and of the vaUey into which it opens, show that these
constructions were, in part at least, if not aU, dweUings and
not tombs. I am indeed inclined to believe, that those of
the excavations which served for the sepulture of the dead,
were devoted to this purpose at a later period, and that this
change took place at the time when Petra was a Roman
colony. Besides the windows which we noticed in several
of these edifices, we saw here and there holes in the rocks
above the entrance of the ceUs, which holes were evidently
intended for the insertion of joists belonging to , a part of
the edifice now ruined, and constructed in front of the

IDUMEA. 327
excavations. Thus the excavations were only a part of the
houses of the old Nabathean city, and served as sleeping
places and dwelling chambers for the famUy, while in front
of these cool retreats were raised reception chambers, such
as the Orientals at the present day caU le salamlik. Most
of the large excavations show evident traces of constructions
in front of the waU of rock from which they are hewn ;
and as, besides, these interior facades contain often win
dows, it is difficult to conceive how many travellers who
have successively visited Petra, have seen in it nothing but
tombs." Dr Wilson, in his able and learned work on the Lands
of the Bible, states that there is a great multitude of ex
cavations on both sides of the defile by which the brook of
Wadi Musa makes ite escape through the rocks. Along
the adjoining cliffs are many excavations connected with
two terraces, and rising one above another, but much
broken and injured, in the staircases leading to them. We
spent more than a couple of hours in exploring them; for
though they were not very remarkable in point of art,
being of the most simple construction, many of them un
equivocally appeared to us to have been the abodes of the
hving, and not of the dead. In these excavations we
sometimes found apartments and recesses which did not at
aU appear fitted for the reception of coffins or sarcophagi,
but obviously intended for family convenience. Some of
them have windows as weU as doors. In front of two or
three of them are receptacles for water. They are approach
able by a common way, exactly such as the wants of living
inhabitants would suggest," fee.1
Some notes taken by the writer of these pages on the spot
may, in more minute detail, be subjoined in confirmation of
the fact, that other excavations in Petra bear unequivocal
i Vol. i. p. 312.

328 IDUMEA.
proofs that they were constructed for habitations, and were
actually dwellings in the rock.
On the opposite side of the valley, near the great tomb,
with three rows of columns (as marked in Laborde's chart,)
of part of which, with the adjoining structure, a daguerreo
type view is given, — one excavation, about fifteen feet
square, and sixteen high, so far as not filled up with rubbish,
which keeps the rocky floor from view, had but one small
recess, (one foot four inches by one foot ten,) and had mani
festly been divided into two apartments in depth, the upper
lighted by a window and supported by beams, the open
resting-places of which are seen on the opposite sides;
another chamber beside it is about thirteen feet square,
without any inner recess, about the same height, and a very
high door-way, as if for hght, but no window. At the dis
tance of half a mile from the " Great Tomb," along the same
cliff to the north, where tombs are marked in the plan, there
are a number of apartments nearly contiguous, aU of which,
so soon as entered, seemed manifestly designed for the living
and not for the dead. There, on the north-east side of the
vaUey, one excavation is thirty-nine feet by thirty-eight, in
which there are no inner excavations, and the only recess is
a smaU cubical one of seven feet. The door is about ten
feet high, and nearly seven broad, with a window on each
side, and three windows above, exactly in the same manner
as if formed for an upper storey, the central one being larger
than those on the sides. The whole apartment is well
lighted ; and on its base the central part is lower than the
sides, which form, as it were, a raised seat or divan, on the
end, and on both sides. The central part forms an area
twenty-eight feet and a-half by twenty-two ; the elevation
forms three sides of a parallelogram, regularly cut and raised
at least two feet eight inches above the floor, with a step, or
rather seat, a few inches lower, cut all around. The whole

IDUMEA. 329
is finished with perfect regularity. The excavation has in
comparably more the appearance of a dwelling than of a
tomb. Beside it, is another apartment, simUarly formed and
benched, without any cavities, twenty-three feet by twenty-
two, having a side chamber with a window. In both, there
are openings for bars to the doors. Close by is a circular
excavation seemingly an oven.1 On the same ledge of rock
a third chamber, with two openings or windows, is about
nineteen feet square ; and a fourth, at the foot of a connect
ing staircase, twenty feet and a half by seventeen feet four
inches. (Others are close around.) In none of these are
there any recesses for the dead, as in those that ultimately
at least may have been used for tombs. Beyond this cluster
of apartments, which would have formed no mean suite of
chambers for a prince of Edom, is a chamber, with two
windows, sixteen feet nine inches by fifteen and a half, of
precisely similar construction, with a lower place in the
centre, and an upper along three of the sides, with a step or
seat between them ; and so well adapted are they for the
purpose for which the writer doubted not, as he saw them,
that they were designed, that while he took these notes
upon the spot, (as literally transcribed for the printer,) one
Arab, who had aided him in the measurements, sat down
upon the seat, whUe another, who brought in a lizard about
a foot long, seemingly fatigued with his search after animals
of any sort, stretched himself at fuU length on the bare arid
uncushioned divan, whUe the writer stood in the servant's
place, with a measuring-line and a note-book in his hand.
Two openings, or windows, as weU as the door, lighted the
apartment, in which there is not the slightest appearance of
any excavation for a corpse. The place, like many others,
was manifestly designed for the living, not for the dead, as
1 In the opposite cliff, near other dwellings, Irby and Mangles noted " particularly
an oven."

330 IDUMEA.
much as the oven beside them. Exactly simUar in every
respect, though smaUer, is a contiguous apartment.
While noting these dwellings, now bare as the rock,
wholly deserted by man, but open to owls, it may do more
than mark the locahty to other travehers, to say that there
on a higher ascent stands a chair of stone cut from the rock,
in an open excavated space, with a block projecting from the
centre, the pedestal it may have been- — as the grooved
space behind seems to indicate, — of one of the gods of
Edom, who was not hkely exalted there to preside over
tombs, though his own seat, if such it was, be now as
empty as are both the dwellings and the tombs of his wor
shippers. In a cliff on the opposite end of the city, between the
theatre and the Kasne, the writer measured several exca
vations varying from fourteen to twenty-one feet square,
though sometimes oblong, in only one of which was there
any recess, and that too, like many others in different places,
of rude and seemingly later construction. In one the only
niche was three feet four inches by two feet, and only fifteen
inches in depth, and could never have been designed for
a tomb. Outside another, which is twenty feet square,
seats along the waU, on both sides of the door, were not
constructed for the dead. The excavation with four win
dows, as .seen in the daguerreotype plate, is thirty-three feet
long, nearly twenty-one wide, and twenty-five feet high,
above the rubbish with which the floor is covered. At one
end there is a separate chamber, with a long inner door, and
a window, and a smaUer chamber in the opposite end, above
which is another with an inner door, and a window, as seen
in the plate. Where all is empty and bare, every needful
indication exists, that aU these, and doubtless innumerable
more, were dwellings in the clefts of the rock.
But though proofs were multiplied indefinitely, that

IDUMEA. 331
excavated dweUings in the face of the cliffs were aU empty
now, the evidence would not thereby be exhausted. It is
written, " Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the
pride of thine heart, 0 thou that dweUest in the clefts of
the rock, that holdest the height of the hill, though thou
shouldst make thy nest as high as ihe eagle, I will bring
thee down from thence, saith the Lord. Also Edom shaU
be a desolation, every one that goeth by it shaU be asto
nished." The El-Deir (see plate) is excavated from one of
the highest peaks of the hUls that environ Petra, and is
nearly on a level with the top of Mount Hor surmounted
by Aaron's tomb, over against it. Cut out of the rock
which flanks it on both sides and in front, it is stiU entire,
an astonishing excavation. It speaks for itself as to its
form and its beauty, which is stUl inferior to that of the
Kasne. Its length across the front is 152 feet, its height
about equal ; and its lower columns, as they spring from
the wall, are about twelve feet in semi-circumference. Its
magnitude may thus be estimated, to convey an idea of
which the artist has introduced three figures, of six feet in
proportionate height. It seems to have been a temple,
when Edom had its gods. But there, and in the now
" savage scenery around," as Lord Lindsay terms it, a testi
mony may be raised, for the God of gods, who laid the
foundation of the everlasting mountains, and who said of
Edom, though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as tlie
eagle, I wUl bring thee down from thence. There once
stood more than that temple of rock, on the heights of
these cliffs of Selah. The temple stands, but the worship
pers and aU their destructible works are gone.
Fronting that height of the hill out of which this marvel
lous structure was wrought, is an open area two hundred
and sixty feet broad, on which are foundations of walls,
hewn stones, and fragments of pottery, a large circular line,

332 IDUMEA.
which cannot show of what it is the vestige, while the
opposite peak is encircled with foundations of a waU, and
covered with faUen ruins of ancient buUdings, where all is
now utterly destroyed, and the fine mosaic of old, seemingly
once a tesselated pavement, is reduced, in large quantities,
into the very diminutive and weU formed squares, of which
it was originally constructed. Within that height or peak,
once buUt aU over, reaching nearly to its surface is an ex
cavation, upwards of ten yards in length, and nearly the
same width. Every ledge of rock seems there to have been
occupied by man ; and faUen _ masonry fronts excavated
dwelhngs. The result of Count Portalis's observations was thus re
corded in his Journal : — " The route which conducts to the
Deir, is a road carefuUy cut out in the rock; this road had
evidently a double object, for besides that it was a means
of communication between the lower city and the sort of
acropolis on which the Deir stands, it served to conduct the
rain-water into the numerous cisterns which are found from
place to place. The purpose to collect the rain-water is
clearly shown by the artificial channels intended to concen
trate it towards one point, and canals cut in the fissures of
the rock With a soU of rocks which art had transformed
into innumerable channels and reservoirs, with numerous
and carefully constructed cisterns which are met with at
every step, one may conceive how Petra could formerly have
contained and supplied with water a numerous population.
There must have been abundance of water in this vast
reservoir of rocks, towards which there opened all the gorges
and gigantic fissures of this circle of natural walls. The
ground around the Deir, and that of the detached hill which
surmounts it, is covered with fragments of pottery and the
debris of masonry, and the rocks near it are filled with
excavations of all forms and sizes, and with staircases con-

IDUMEA. 333
ducting to them. May not this have been the acropolis, the
almost inaccessible place of refuge of the Nabathean city ?
Behind the Deir a narrow and impassable gorge penetrates
into the rock. In it is an aqueduct partly cut in the rock
— partly constructed of masonry. We can scarcely suppose
that this arid, elevated, and isolated rock contained a
spring; but probably if this aqueduct was traced, it would
lead to vast cisterns or tanks for the supply of this portion
of the city, which I am inclined to regard as the acropolis of
Petra." Identical with this was our own opinion formed on the
spot. There can here be no question as to the date of these
constructions, that can have anything to do with that of the
inspiration of this prophetic record. Though thou shouldst
make thy nest as high as the eagle, is the form of this de
nunciation against Edom. They who dwelt in the clefts of
the rock, or of Selah or (Petra) and held the height of the
hiU, did build their nest as high as the eagle, as the eagles
around stiU fly out of their undeserted nests to testify ; and
the Lord has executed his word, and brought those down,
who could not have buUt their nests higher than they did.
An aged anchorite, for many a year past, has been the self-
constituted guardian of the tomb of Aaron, and has there
taken up his abode. But no man remains where many
dwelt, to keep watch or ward over the deserted temples of
the gods of Edom, whether in the bottom of the vahey or
on the height of the hiU. The nests which men did build
in Selah are all pulled down. Their dwellings in the rock
are consigned to other occupants, and even where they be
came tombs, these are aU empty and bare, and the dead
have not been suffered to repose in them.
" It was immediately clear to me," says Miss Martineau,
"that httle is remaining also of the rock-abodes, in com
parison with what once existed. I think that travehers

334 IDUMEA.
have not only much underrated the number of rock-dwellers,
but faUed to perceive that what remains are the mere debris
of what the precipices once presented to view. An observant
eye may detect remnants of stucco ornaments very high up
many rocks, and in great numbers. Again, many of the
excavations are so difficult to reach, and some are such mere
walls or surfaces, that it appears as if the whole front of
the rock, to a considerable depth, had faUen. . . . Again,
the conduits, cisterns, and flights of steps scattered over the
rocks and among the precipices, indicate a larger number of
rock-dwellings than remain now, very great as that num
ber is.
•'' And how very great it is ! I began with a notion that
I should like to count them, having read that they were
about two hundred. With this two hundred running in my
head (as one never gets over believing what one reads), I
continued for some days to think of these rock abodes as
computable by hundreds, tih I was startled by hearing one
of the gentlemen wonder how many thousands there were,
as he pointed up two or three ravines, counting the holes in
a single rock face, and reminded me how smaU a proportion
these bore to the whole. I was indeed astonished. I
could not admit the fuh extent of the marvel at the moment;
but I soon saw that he was right. . . . Dr Robinson's
conclusion that these excavations were aU tombs, except the
few which might have been temples, appeared to us on the
spot very extraordinary. Elsewhere rock-tombs are, or have
been, sealed up; contain, or have contained, dead bodies;
and may be counted by dozens to a large city, each con
taining many bodies. Here they are standing wide open;
no dead body (except of a modern Arab or two) has ever
been found in them; and they exceed any number of houses
that the city can ever have contained. ... The scrip
tural expressions relating to such a district as this, speak of

IDUMEA. 335
habitations as weU as sepulchres. Isaiah speaks of one ' that
graveth an habitation for himself in a rock' (Isa. xxii. 16);
and Jeremiah exclaims, ' 0 thou that dweUest in the clefts
of the rock/ Obadiah, again, declares his message to be
' concerning Edom,' when he says, 'thou who dweUest in
the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high,' &c. ' There
shaU not be any remaining of the house of Esau/ the prophet
goes on to say; and mournful indeed is the vacuity now.
Every deserted place is mournful enough ; but nowhere else
is there desolation like that of Petra, where these rock door
ways stand wide, still fit for the habitation of a multitude,
but aU empty and silent, except for the multiplied echo
of the cry of the eagle, or the bleat of the kid. No; these
excavations never were all tombs. In the morning the
sons of Esau came out, and at night the yeUow fires lighted
up from within, tier above tier, the face of the precipice." 1
At the entrance to the pass, " the excavations again begin
to abound; and for about a mUe we had aU about us white
rocks, squared into towers, hoUowed into vaults, and cut out
into abodes and baths consisting of many chambers, and
adorned with pediments, &c." 2
Lord Claud HamUton, who, together with Lord Rokeby
and Mr Littleton, visited Petra in 1839, thus bears witness
to the predicted desolation which has come on Edom and its
capital. After quoting some of these prophecies, he adds,
" Nothing can exceed the desolation of its present condition,
although the signs of its former wealth and power are so
durable as to have remained many centuries after it was
deserted, and they look as if as many more may pass over
them without working any visible change. The commence
ment of the prophecy has been most wonderfully fulfilled,
for although it was beyond the foresight of man to imagine
that so wealthy and powerful a city should be deserted and
1 Martinea,u's Eastern Life, vol. iii. pp. 2, 5. 2 Ibid. p. 14.

336 IDUMEA.
desolate, yet all human works and habitations are subject to
a like fate, — but the words, ' I wiU make thee smaU among
the heathen,' have been actuaUy accomplished to such a
degree that the very site of Petra has for centuries been
unknown. That a great city should be thus swept from
the memory of man, and blotted out, for a long season, from
the knowledge of the world, is a most striking manifesta
tion of the truth of the prophetic record, and utterly ex
ceeded aU human foresight and sagacity. But every step
in this country exhibits some wonderful fulfilment of the
doom which was pronounced whUe it was flowing with
riches and teeming with inhabitants; every specific misfor
tune has overtaken this devoted kingdom, and yet there are
innumerable remains of what it once was."
A few extracts from Lord Claud Hamilton's graphic
description of Petra will be interesting to the reader : —
"FoUowing a path which wound amongst undulating
hills and rocks, we gradually found ourselves surrounded
by the peculiar remains of this singular locality. On both
sides were curiously shaped tombs, either excavated from
the hving rock, with fanciful exteriors, or boldly cut out
from it, and standing apart in square masses with orna
mented facades, and surmounted with battlements, steps,
small pyramidal forms, and other devices, equally hewn
out from the mountain. Many of these excavations may
have been intended for the living, as they contain several
apartments. On the left the abrupt cliffs rise to a great
height, and towering over the undulated site of the ancient
capital, exhibit on their pierced sides numerous marks of
the industry and peculiar taste of the inhabitants of Selah.
In front is an extensive space, partiahy covered with grass,
shrubs, and ruins, and intersected with ravines, in which it
is evident that streams formerly flowed; beyond, some
lower hills from the eastern horizon, whUst to the right

IDUMEA. 337
another lofty range of precipitous hiUs hem in the valley,
and present a continued line of splendid facades, and noble
excavated temples and palaces, which at once strike the
beholder as the most extraordinary sight that the imagina
tion can conceive. — Nothing can exceed the singularity of the
general aspect : nor do the excavations lose any of their
marvels on a nearer approach. Having passed the single
column of which Laborde speaks, and also the square palace
and triumphal arch, the full and distinct view of the
wondrous line of magnificent excavations burst on my
sight. It is impossible by any description to convey an idea
of the general aspect of this most extraordinary place, where
art and nature seem to have striven for the mastery, and
each has contributed to render it alike the most wonderful
and instructive sight that can possibly be surveyed by man.
The high cliffs of the northern boundary present to view an
endless variety of excavations, dweUings, tombs, and temples."
The theatre of Petra, like that of Ammon, is not the
least remarkable memorial of its populousness and wealth,
constructed, as it was, for the simultaneous and transient
assemblage of the gayest of its citizens, and not, though
both be equally empty now, hke the tombs, for the per
manent abode of the successive generations of its nobles.
As measured by the same intelhgent and observant traveUer,
" it consists of thirty-eight rows of high steps or of stone
benches, of which the uppermost is one hundred and fifty-
two paces in length." The length of the lowest row of
seats, as measured by the writer, is two hundred and thirty-
eight feet, and that of the middle three hundred and
forty-five. The theatre was thus capable of containing,
exclusive of the spaces for passages, upwards of seven
thousand persons. But how different now is a scene there
from what it was, when the capital of Edom, deceived by
its terribleness, and fearless of danger, was given to its

22

338 IDUMEA.
pleasures, and the shout of a multitude may have been heard
in triumph. With other feelings the solitary sojourner of a
day, as may be farther related in facts, not painted in fancy,
contemplates the scene of desolated grandeur over which the
word of the Lord is triumphant.
"It was the season of fuU moon. I went out to enjoy
the fine effect produced by the shades amongst these high
cliffs, and to contemplate this scene of departed grandeur
in the stillness of night, which so well accorded with its
desolate appearance. Nothing could exceed the beauty of'
the evening. The clear sky spangled with innumerable
bright stars, whilst the light which rules the night cast its
fine pale beams on the many temples, palaces, dwellings,
and tombs that every cliff and rock presented ; their
numbers, inexplicable situations, and apparent want of
arrangement and system, rendered the scene indescribably
interesting. I chose the theatre as one point of observa
tion. There, alone, surrounded by tenantless cliffs, I tried
to conjure up some of the many scenes which had been
enacted there, when the rocks resounded with the applauses
of assembled thousands, and this deserted spot was crowded
with the noble, the great, and the wealthy, brilliant with
light, and gorgeous from the dresses of the spectators — the
power and glory of Edom seemed as a dream which could
not be credited. Turning homewards again, the view of the
open ground, the arch, the square palace, and the cliff beyond,
was peculiarly striking.
"The springs have been dried up to such an extent
as to render the renewal of the general fertility of Edom
impossible. In the vicinity of the theatre of Petra, and
in other places along the course of the stream, reeds and
shrubs grow luxuriantly, oleanders and wUd figs abound,
and give proof that a little cultivation would again cover
the rock, and fiU the cliffs with the numberless gardens

IDUMEA. 339
which once adorned them. The traces of former fertility
are innumerable ; and it is hkewise evident, that every
spot capable of sustaining vegetable life was carefuUy
watered and cultivated. There are numerous grooves in
the rocks to convey the rain water to tombs, or to the little
clefts in which even now figs are found. Every spot
capable of being so protected has been walled up, however
smaU the space gained, and however difficult the means of
securing it. The ancient inhabitants seem to have left no
accessible place untouched. They have exhibited equal art
and industry in ehciting from the grand waUs of their
marvellous capital whatever the combination of chmate,
irrigation, and botanical skiU could foster in the scanty soil
that was afforded them. The hanging gardens must have
produced an enchanting effect amongst the noble buUdings
of the town when it was in aU its glory."1
I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities
sliall not return; and ye shall know that I am the
Lord.2 " Evert one that goeth bt . it shall be
ASTONISHED."3 "I would," says a recent traveUer, "that
the sceptic could stand as I did, among the ruins of this
city among the rocks, and there open the sacred book
and read the words of the inspired penman, written when
this desolate place was one of the greatest cities in the
world. I see the scoff arrested, his cheek pale, his lip
quivering, and his heart quaking with fear, as the ruined
city cries out to him in a voice loud and powerful as that
of one risen from the dead, — though he would not believe
Moses and the prophets, he believes the hand-writing of
God himself in the desolation and eternal ruin around
him."4 " If I had never stood on the top of Mount Sinai,
• Lord Claud Hamilton's Journal. ! Ezekiel xxxv. 9.
» Jerem. xlix. 17. * Incidents of Travels, by Stephens, p. 68.

340 IDUMEA.
I should say that nothing could exceed the desolation of
the view from the summit of Mount Hor, its most striking
objects being the dreary and rugged mountains of Seir,
bare and naked of trees and verdure, and heaving their
lofty summits to the skies, as if in a vain and fruitless
effort to excel the mighty pile, on the top of which the
high-priest of Israel was buried. Before me was a land of
barrenness and ruin, a land accursed of God, and against
which the prophets had set their faces ; the land of which
it was thus written in the Book of Life, Son of man, set
thy face against Mount Seir, and prophesy against it, and
say unto it, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, 0 Mount Seir,
I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against
thee, and I will malce thee most desolate," &c, &c, — (Ezek.
xxxv.)1 They shall call them, The border of wickedness. Strabo
contrasts the quiet disposition of the citizens of Petra with
the contentious spirit of the foreigners who resided there;
and the uninterrupted tranquillity which the townsmen
mutually maintained together, excited the admiration of
Athenodorus.2 The fine gold is changed: no such people
are now to be found there. Though Burckhardt travelled
as an Arab, associated with them, submitted to aU their
privations, and was so completely master of their language
and of their manners, as to escape detection, he was yet
reduced to that state within the boundaries of Edom, which
alone can secure tranquillity to the traveUer in the desert ;
" he had nothing with him that could attract the notice, or
excite the cupidity of the Bedouins," and was even stripped
of some rags that covered his wounded ankles.3 The Arabs
in that quarter, he observes, " have the reputation of being
very daring thieves." In like manner a Motselim (governor),
' Incidents of Travels, p. 71. ' Strabo, p. 779.
s Burckhardt's Travels, p. 438.

IDUMEA. 341
who had been twenty years in office, pledged himself to
Captains Irby and Mangles, and the travellers who ac
companied, (in presence of the governor of Jerusalem,) that
the Arabs of Wady Mousa are a " most savage and trea
cherous race," and added, that they would make use of
their Frank's blood for a medicine. That this character
of wickedness and cruelty was not misapplied, they had too
ample proof, not only in the dangers with which they were
threatened, but by the fact which they learned on the spot,
that upwards of thirty pilgrims from Barbary had been
murdered at Petra the preceding year, by the men of Wady
Mousa.1 Even the Arabs of the surrounding deserts, as
already stated, dread to approach it ; and towards the
borders of Edom on the south, " the Arabs about Akaba,"
as described by Pococke, and as experienced by Burckhardt,
" are a very bad people, and notorious robbers, and are at
war with aU others."2 Such evidence, all undesignedly
given, clearly shows that in truth Edom is called the bor
der of wickedness.
I have made thee small among the nations ; thou art
greatly despised. Contrasted with what it was, or reckoned
among the nations, Edom is smaU indeed. Within almost
aU its boundary it may be said that none abide, or have
any fixed or permanent residence; and instead of the superb
structures, the works of various ages, which long adorned
its cities, the huts of the Arabs, where even huts they have,
are mere mud hovels of " mean and ragged appearance,"
which, in general, are deserted on the least alarm. But
miserable habitations as these are, they scarcely seem to
exist anywhere throughout Edom, but on a single point on
its borders; and wherever the Arabs otherwise wander in
search of spots for pasturage for their cattle, (found in
1 Irby and Mangles's Travels, p. 417. Macmichael's Journey, pp. 202, 234.
» Pococke's Description of the East, vol. i. p. 136.

342 IDUMEA.
hoUows, or near to springs after the winter rains,) tents are
their only covering. Those which pertain to the more
powerful tribes, are sometimes both numerous and large;
yet, though they form at best but a fraU dweUing, many of
them are "very low and small." Near to the ruins of
Petra, Burckhardt passed an encampment of Bedouin tents,
most of which were " the smallest he had ever seen, about
four feet high, and ten in length;" and towards the south
west border of Edom, he met with a few wanderers who
had no tents with them, and whose only shelter from the
burning rays of the sun, and the heavy dews of night, was
the scanty branches of the Tahl trees. The subsistence of
the Bedouins is often as precarious as their habitations are
mean; the flocks they tend, or which they pillage from
more fertile regions, are their only possessions; and in that
land where commerce long concentrated its wealth, and
through which the treasures of Ophir passed, the picking of
gum arabic from thorny branches is now the poor occupa
tion, the semblance of industry practised by the wild and
wandering tenants of a desert. Edom is small among the
nations; and how greatly is it despised, when the public
authorities at Constantinople denied any knowledge of it, or
of the ruins of its capital — when the city of Petra was thus
forgotten and unknown among the representatives of the
villagers of Byzantium !
Concerning Edom, thus saith the Lord of hosts, Is wis
dom no more in Teman? is understanding perished from
the prudent? Shall I not destroy the wise men out of
Edom, and, understanding out of the mount of Esaul
FaUen and despised as it now is, Edom, — did not the
prescription of many ages abrogate its right, — might lay
claim to the title of having been the first seat of learning,
as weU as the centre of commerce. WhUe splendid remains
of ancient art give undoubted proof that wisdom and under-

IDUMEA. 343
standing subsisted in the mount of Esau after the age of
the prophets, the first of modern philosophers thus speaks
of the wisdom of the Edomites in the earliest ages. " The
Egyptians having learned the skill of the Edomites, began
now to observe the position of the stars, and the length of
the solar year, for enabhng them to know the position of
the stars at any time, and to sail by them at aU times
without sight of the shore; and thus gave a beginning to
astronomy and navigation."1 " It seems that letters, and
astronomy, and the trade of carpenters, were invented by
the merchants of the Red Sea, and that they were propa
gated from Arabia Petraea into Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Asia
Minor, and Europe."2 While the philosopher may thus
think of Edom with respect, neither the admirer of genius,
the man of feeling, nor the chUd of devotion wUl, even to
this day, seek from any land a richer treasure of plaintive
poetry, of impassioned eloquence, and of fervid piety than
Edom has bequeathed to the world in the book of Job. It
exhibits to us, in language the most pathetic and sublime,
aU that a man could feel, in the outward pangs of his body,
and the inner writhings of his mind, of the fraUties of his
frame, and of the dissolution of his earthly comforts and
endearments ; aU that mortal can discern, by meditating on
the ways, and contemplating the works of God, of the omni
science and omnipotence of the Most High, and of the
inscrutable dispensations of his providence; all thai know
ledge which could first teU, in written word, of Arcturus,
and Orion, and the Pleiades; and all that devotedness of
soul, and immortality of hope, which — with patience that
faltered not even when the heart was bruised, and almost
broken, and the body covered over with distress — could say,
" Though he slay me, yet wiU I trust in him."
1 Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms, p. 208.
2 Ibid. p. 212.

344 IDUMEA.
But if the question now be asked, is understanding
perished out of Edom? the answer, hke every response to
the prophetic word, may be briefly given : it is. The minds
of the Bedouins are as uncultivated as the deserts they
traverse. Practical wisdom is, in general, the first that man
learns, and the last that he retains. And the simple but
significant fact already alluded to, that the clearing away of
a little rubbish, merely "to ahow the water to flow" into
an ancient cistern, in order to render it useful to themselves,
" is an undertaking far beyond the views of the wandering
Arabs," shows that understanding is indeed perished from
among them. They view the indestructible works of former
ages not only with wonder, but with superstitious regard,
and consider them as the work of genii. They look upon
an European as a magician, and believe that, having seen any
spot where they imagine that treasures are deposited, he can
" afterwards command the guardian of the treasure to set
the whole before him."1 In Teman, which yet maintains
a precarious existence, the inhabitants possess the desire
without the means of knowledge. The Koran is their only
study, and contains the sum of their wisdom. — And although
he was but a " miserable comforter," and was overmastered
in argument by a kinsman stricken with affliction, yet no
Temanite can now discourse with either the wisdom or the
pathos of Eliphaz of old. Wisdom is no more in Teman,
and understanding has perished out of the mount of
Esau. Knowledge shall be the stability of the times of the
Messiah. Of the times of the restitution or restoration of
all things, God hath spoken by the mouth of aU his holy
prophets. The final commission of Jeremiah, as of all the
prophets, was to build and to plant. Of Edom alone it is
written, Thy cities shall not return; when the whole earth
' Burckhardt's Travels, p. 429.

IDUMEA. 345
rejoiceth I will make thee desolate. The predicted degree
of the desolation of the cities and of the land of Israel,
whUe a testimony to the infahibility of the word of God in
the present day, is a token of the future. The cities of
Moab, in which no man dwells, while witnesses of the same
truth, are also a simUar sign, empty as they are, for their
finally destined possessors. While the spirit of prophecy
thus forbids that its words, which describe the existing
desolation of the lands and cities of Israel, of Ammon, and
of Moab, should be poeticaUy interpreted as having reference
only to times that are past, seeing that they all still point to
the future, there are testimonies concerning Idumea, which
show that its final judgments have not yet fallen on it, but
are still reserved for the year of recompences for the contro
versy of Zion, ere the desert shall rejoice and blossom as
the rose.
" The Father judgeth no man," said Christ, " but hath
committed aU judgment unto the Son." " AU things," he
said again, " that are written in Moses, and in the prophets,
and in the Psalms, concerning me, must be fulfilled." " I
would not, brethren," says Paul, in his epistle to the church
at Rome, " that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest
ye should be wise in your own conceits; that bhndness in
part is happened to Israel, untU the fulness of the Gentiles
be come in. And so aU Israel shaU be saved; as it is
written, There shaU come out of Sion the Deliverer, and
shaU turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is my
covenant unto them, when I shaU take away their sins. —
For the gifts and caUing of God are without repentance,
(without change of purpose)." There is a coming year,
" the year of my redeemed ;" there is a coming day, " the
day of recompences for the controversy of Zion;" and in
Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, Seir, Edom,
or Idumea is so named in the controversy of that day as

346 IDUMEA.
the scene of judgments on his enemies, that, in the word of
the Lord, all nations are invoked to hear.
The Song of Moses, which begins, "Give ear, 0 ye
heavens, and I wUl speak; and hear, 0 earth, the words of
my mouth," thus ends, " See now that I, even I, am he. . . .
If I whet my ghttering sword, and mine hand take hold on
judgment, I wUl render vengeance to mine enemies, and
will reward them that hate me. I wiU make mine arrows
drunk with blood, and my sword shaU devour flesh; and
that with the blood of the slain, and of the captives, from
the beginning of revenges upon the enemy. Rejoice, 0 ye
nations, with his people ; for he will avenge the blood of his
servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and
wUl be merciful unto his land, and to his people." " And
this is the blessing wherewith Moses, the man of God,
blessed the children of Israel before his death. And he
said, The Lord (Jehovah) came from Sinai, and rose up
from Seir unto them; he shined forth from Mount Paran,
and he came with ten thousands of saints: from his right
hand went a fiery law for them," fcc.1 In the Psalms it is
written, " 0 God, thou hast cast us off. — Turn thyself to
us again. — That thy beloved may be delivered, save with
thy right hand, and hear me. — God hath spoken in his
holiness; I will rejoice: I wiU divide Shechem, and mete
out the vaUey of Succoth. Gilead is mine, and Manasseh
is mine ; Ephraim also is the strength of mine head ; Judah
is my lawgiver; Moab is my washpot; over Edom wiU I cast
out my shoe : PhUistia, triumph thou because of me. Who
wUl bring me into the strong city? who wiU lead me into
Edom ? Wilt not thou, 0 God, who hadst cast us off? — He
it is that shaU tread down our enemies."2 In Isaiah it is
written again and again respecting judgments of which
Idumea, or Edom, is the scene, " in the day of vengeance"
1 Deut. xxxii. 1, 39-43; xxxiii. 1-3. "- Ps. Ix. cviii.

IDUMEA. 347
and " the year of my redeemed," " The Lord hath sworn by
his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I
wiU no more give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies. —
Prepare ye the way of the people ; cast up, cast up the high
way ; gather out the stones ; lift up a standard for the
people. Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of
the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy
salvation cometh. — Thou shalt be called, Sought out, a city
not forsaken. Who is this that cometh from Edom, with
dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his
apparel, traveUing in the greatness of his strength? I that
speak in righteousness, mighty to save. — I have trodden the
wine-press alone. — For I wiU tread them in mine anger,
and trample them in my fury. — For the day of vengeance
is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.- — I
wiU bring down their strength to the earth. I will mention
the loving-kindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the
Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us,
and the great goodness toward the house of Israel 
So he was their Saviour." x " Look upon Zion, — thine eyes
shaU see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, &e. — For the Lord
is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king;
he wiU save us. — The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick:
the people that dweU therein shaU be forgiven their iniquity.
— Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people:
let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all
things that come forth of it. For the indignation of the
Lord is upon all nations, and his fury upon aU their armies :
he hath utterly destroyed them; he hath dehvered them to
the slaughter. — AU the host of heaven shaU be dissolved. — -
For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold it shaU
come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse,
to judgment. For the sword of the Lord is fUled with
» Isa. lxii. 8-12; Ixiii. 1-7, &c.

348 IDUMEA.
blood. — For the Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great
slaughter in the land of Idumea. — For it is the day of the
Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompences for the con
troversy of Zion. And the streams thereof shaU be turned
into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land
shall become burning pitch. It shaU not be quenched night
nor day; the smoke thereof shall go forth for ever: from
generation to generation it shaU lie waste; none shall pass
through it for ever and ever. But the cormorant and the
bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall
dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of
confusion, and the stones of emptiness. They shaU call the
nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shah be there, and
aU her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall come up
in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof:
it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.
The wild beasts of the desert shaU also meet with the wild
beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his feUow ;
the screech owl also shaU rest there, and find for herself a
place of rest. There shall the great owl make her nest, and
lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: there shall
the vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate.
Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read; no one of
these shaU fail, none shall want her mate : for my mouth it
hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them.
And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath
divided it unto them by line : they shall possess it for ever,
from generation to generation shall they dweU therein. The
wilderness and the solitary place shaU be glad for them; and
the desert shaU rejoice, and blossom as the rose. . . . And
the ransomed of the Lord shaU return, and come to Zion with
songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain
joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."1
- Isa. xxxiii. 20-24; xxxiv.; xxxv. 1, 2, 10.

IDUMEA. 349
Ungodliness is not yet turned from Jacob; the people
are not yet forgiven their iniquity; Jerusalem is not yet a
quiet habitation, or a tabernacle, of which not one of the
stakes shall ever be taken down; nor is the day of the
Lord's vengeance, or the year of recompences for the contro
versy of Zion yet come.
But, as other preparations are in these days for the first
time seen, as the cities of Israel's land are desolate without
inhabitant, and the houses without man, and a tenth, but
not more, now in the land, gleanings left because of the
chUdren of Israel, it is not a departure from the testimony,
nor a breach of the commandment, " Seek ye out of the book
of the Lord and read," to inquire, whether, in the record of
this judgment, of which Idumea is the scene, there is not a
proof of its divine inspiration, and a preparation, in part at
least, for that coming day, in the animals that are gathered
there ; while the ancient proud metropolis of Idumea is bare
and desolate, and empty but for them; and while ancient
towns of Israel, with their houses, great and goodly, are
entire, waiting in readiness for their destined possessors, tiU
the controversy shaU be past.
Dr Olin, who speaks of the figurative and poetic style
of prophecy, in testifying of his impressions at Petra says,
as if this vision of Isaiah had already its fuU and final
accomplishment, " I was often reminded of the prediction of
the prophet, Isa. xxxiv., by the multitude and noise of the
wUd fowds, ' each answering to its mate.'"
They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but
none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing.
But though these be invoked in vain, where princes and
nobles dwelt in the chief city of the kingdom, dragons
have their habitation, and owls their court ; birds of prey
their nests, and the wild beasts of the desert their home,
and, as if caUed by their names, they meet where there are

350 IDUMEA.
now no nobles to convene, no kingdom to which they can
be called, no man to dweU.
Thorns come up in the palaces of Edom ; nettles and,
brambles in the fortresses thereof. The princes are nothing:
none of the nobles are there ; but other occupants are not
wanting, and it is both a habitation of dragons and a court
for owls. Dr Shaw represented the land of Edom, and the
desert of which it now forms part, as abounding with a
variety of lizards and vipers, which are very numerous and
troublesome : x and Volney relates that the Arabs, in general,
avoid the ruins of the cities of Idumea, on account of the
enormous scorpions with which they swarmed. " So plenti
ful," as observed by Mr Cory, " are the scorpions in Petra,
that though it was cold and snowy, we found them under
the stones, sometimes two under one stone ; and I have no
doubt," he adds, " that there are vast numbers of them in
the summer-time, as well as serpents, which the natives say
there are." " The creeping things," according to the testi
mony of Dr Wilson, " which are found in the ruins of Petra,
are so numerous, that the place, like aU others, I suppose,
of a similar character in the country, may be characteristic-
aUy spoken of as ' an habitation for dragons/ The Fellahin,
in the space of a few minutes, caught for us some scores of
hzards, chameleons, centipedes, and scorpions. It literaUy
swarms with them."2 He gives a delineation from nature
of some of them which he carried to Britain. We also saw
many of these " creeping things ;" and on first asking an
Arab at Petra if he could show us a scorpion, he almost
immediately brought one on the point of a sharp stick, with
which he had pierced it through, from under the first stone
which he raised ; another escaped. Serpents were said to
be very numerous in summer. 2" have laid his (Esau's)
1 Shaw's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 105, 330.
2 Lands of the Bible, vol. i. p. 329. Vol. ii. p. 738.

IDUMEA. 351
lieritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. It is a
habitation for dragons, — and a court for owls.
Captains Irby and Mangles relate, that whUe they and
their fellow-travellers were examining the ruins and con
templating the subhme scenery of Petra, " the screaming of
the eagles, hawks, and owls, who were soaring above their
heads in considerable numbers, seemingly annoyed at our
approaching their lonely habitation, added much to the
singularity of the scene." WhUe the screaming of the
eagles, hawks, and owls, which in considerable numbers
soared over their heads, was heard in the day-time by one
party of travellers, others (Laborde, &c), who more lately
followed them, and remained longer on the spot, relate, in a
like incidental manner, that at night the screech-owl was
heard above the rest. When Dr WUson and his companions
lodged among the ruins of Petra, they " enjoyed the mid
night concert of both owl and owlet. Among the birds
which we noticed, or which the Fellahin told us are to be
found there, or in the neighbourhood, are the eagle, ossifrage
(akab), kite, hawk, great owl, smaU owl, and raven, — the
partridge and the pterocles, and the kifud,"1 &c. One
traveller (quoted by Dr Wilson,) " states, that there is abun
dant evidence of the complete fulfilment of the prophecies
against Edom, without descending to minute and literal
detaUs, &c, and that he neither saw nor heard the screech-
owl." The bird of night, if undisturbed, may keep within
its court by day ; and sleep may seal up the ears against
its loud cry by night. But the same witness also states,
that he observed " some white vultures, which were generally
seen in pairs, soaring above the vaUey, or perched upon the
rocks." It shall be a court for owls. The screech-owl also
shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. There
shall the great-owl make her nest, and lay and hatch, and
i Lands of the Bible, vol. ii. p. 337.

352 IDUMEA.
gather under her shadow : there shall the vultures also be
gathered, every one with her mate, or, according to the
strictest literality, " in pairs."
At Petra we saw as weU as heard eagles, vultures, and
owls. Several of the last were scared in the day-time from
their nests, as the author passed some of the excavations,
and he saw at once at least two different species, one of
which was very large. Of eagles and vultures, or other
ravenous birds, there are, as of owls, different species. And
as each or any of these is known to man, and can be dis
tinguished even at night, or when unseen, by its peculiar
scream ; so, now that the cry of a wild beast, or the sound
of a reptUe, or the screaming of a bird of prey, are the only
forms or signs of recognition among the tenants of the
capital of Edom, it is thus that they are gathered together,
every one with her mate.
The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the
wild beasts of the island. The prediction imports, that
wild beasts of different kinds would meet in Idumea. Of
aU the wonderful circumstances attached to the history, or
pertaining to the fate of Edom, there is one which is not to
be ranked among the least in singularity, that bears no
remote application to the prefixed prophecy, and that ought
not, perhaps, to pass here unnoted. It is recorded in an
ancient chronicle, that the Emperor Decius caused fierce lions
and lionesses to be transported from [the deserts of] Africa
to the borders of Palestine and Arabia, in order that, pro
pagating there, they might act as an annoyance and a
barrier to the barbarous Saracens.1 Between Arabia and
Palestine lies the doomed and execrated land of Edom.
And to this day, those who ought to be most versant of this
1 "O outO! Aeucus pWiAcvt rr/ayev aire ttji Acppiioji Aeon-as $ o/3epous k<h Aeairas, /tai aireAuo-er
eis to Ai/iiTox apaToAi^ euro ApajSias Km IlaAaio-TiKrjc; tW; tov Kip/acrioi; Kaorpov, irpos to
in>ii)cr<u yivinLv Sm tov5 Bap^apovs SapcutTji-out. (Chronicon Alexandrinum, ad. an. C. 358.
Relandi Palsestina, p. 97.)

IDUMEA. 353
fact, testify that the wild beasts of the desert are to be
found in Edom. The sheikh and his brother who accom
panied Mr Cory, assured him that both lions and leopards
are often seen in Petra, and hills immediately beyond it,
but that they never descend into the plain beneath. Mr
Cory was of opinion that by leopards they meant ounces,
"but the lion, from their description, could not be mis
taken." More definite evidence may now be adduced.
" The wild goat and the wild boar, we were informed,"
says Dr Wilson, " are to be found in the locality. The
other mammalia of the place (Petra) and the neighbourhood,
according to the FeUahin, besides the hedgehog and porcu
pine, above alluded to, are the fox, wolf, jackal, hyena, lynx,
leopard, hare, weebar, or coney, jerboa, &c. We were told
that the lion is found in Wadi Hamad."1 The names of
the wild beasts which, without putting any leading question,
we obtained at Petra, as known there, and frequenting its
vicinity, were the wild boar, fox, leopard, jackal, wild cat,
and wolf. The wild beasts of the desert meet there with ihe
wild beasts of the island.
The satyr shall cry to his fellow. The satyr is entirely a
fabulous animal. The word (soir) literally means a rough
hairy one : and, like a synonymous word in both the Greek
and Latin languages which has the same sio-nification, has
been translated both by lexicographers and commentators,
the goat.2 Parkhurst says, that, in this sense, he would
understand this very passage : and Lowth distinctly asserts,
without assigning to it any other meaning, that " the word
originaUy signifies goat."3 Such respectable and well-known
1 Lands of the Bible, vol. ii. p. 379.
1 " So the Greek rpayoi, a he-goat, is from Tpaxv9, rough, on account of the rough
ness of his hair, and the Latin hircus, a he-goat, for hirfcus, rough." (Parkhurst's
Lexicon.) * Lowth assigns the reason why the word is translated satyr; it is supposed that
evil spirits of old time appeared in the shape of goats, as the learned Bochart has
proved. (Isa. xiii. 21.) 23

354 IDUMEA.
authorities have been cited, because their decision must have
rested on criticism alone, as it was impossible that their
minds could have been biassed by any knowledge of the
fact in reference to Edom. It was their province, and that
of others, to illustrate its meaning : it was Burckhardt's,
however unconsciously, to bear, from ocular observation,
witness to its truth. " In all the wadys south of the Modjel
and El Asha," (pointing to Edom,) " large herds of moun
tain-goats are met with. They pasture in flocks of forty
and fifty together."1 They dwell there.
The only other animals specified in prophecy are, accord
ing to the English translation, the cormorant and the bit
tern, — in the original, the kaath (r\Mp)> an(I tiie kippod
(~li2p)- The similarity of the name with that of the katta,
mentioned by Burckhardt as abounding in immense num
bers in Shera (Mount Seir), as in other districts of Syria,
induced the writer from the first to believe that it was
identical with the kaath, which is sometimes written kata}
The opinion was embraced by several learned writers ; but
has been recently controverted, as it is said that " the Arabic
and Hebrew names do not agree." Nothing of questionable
accuracy can stand as evidence. And of this animal, be
what it may, it may yet be said, as but lately of aU, " Seek
ye out of the book of the Lord, and read ; no one of these
shaU fail." While in Petra the author of these pages noted
the names of the birds from the native Arabs, whenever he
heard any of them crying to its mate, as the bird was seen,
and the cry clearly distinguished from the others. Once,
but only once, while an Arab of the country was with him,
on thus asking the name of a bird as its single cry was
heard, the answer at once was, the Icaat, as the original
Hebrew word is usually pronounced. He listened atten
tively to catch the sound a second time, but in vain. And
1 Burckhardt's Travels in Syria. ! Onkel. Simon. Lex. p. 1393.

IDUMEA. 355
this only can he say, that the cry of the kaat may be heard
among the cliffs of Petra. The subject is yet open to farther
inquiry. The kifud seems to identify itself with the kippod, (por
cupine or hedgehog) which we were told by the Fellahin, as
was also Dr Wilson, is found in the neighbouring valleys,
though not in Petra. The place divided unto these various
animals, is not any special spot, but the land of Idumea.
But if they be in Petra, its capital, though not ' exclusively
there, or in any other portion of the land, they are found
within it.
But the evidence respecting all the animals specified in
the prophecy, as the future possessors of Edom, may not be
yet complete. And the command stiU stands, for those
of future generations no less than of the present, Seek ye
out of tlie book of the Lord, and read ; no one of these
shall fail, none shall want her mate. — He hath cast the lot
for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by
line : they shall possess it for ever, from generation to
generation shall they dwell therein. Yet recent as the
disclosure of any information respecting them has been, —
and offered, as in this treatise it has been for the first time,
for the consideration of every candid mind, the positive
terms and singleness of object of the prophecies themselves,
and the undesigned and decisive evidence first given to the
facts, are surely enough to show how greatly these several
specific predictions and their respective facts exceed all pos
sibility of their being the word or the work of man, and how
clearly there may be discovered in them all, if sight itself be
conviction, the credentials of inspiration, and the operation of
His hands, to whose prescience futurity is open, — to whose
power all nature is subservient, — and " whose mouth it hath
commanded, and whose Spirit it hath gathered them."
Noted as Edom was for its terribleness, and possessed of a

356 IDUMEA.
capital city, from which even a feeble people could not easUy
have been dislodged, there scarcely could have been a ques
tion, even among its enemies, to what people that country
would eventually belong. And it never could have been
thought of by any natives of another land, as the Jewish
prophets were, nor by any uninspired mortal whatever, that ,
a kingdom, which had previously subsisted so long, (and in
which princes ceased not to reign, commerce to flourish, and
" a people of great opulence " to dwell for more than six
hundred years thereafter,) would be finally extinct, that all
its cities would be for ever desolate, and, though it could
have boasted, more than any other land, of indestructible
habitations for men, that their habitations would be
desolate ; and that certain wild animals, mentioned by
name, would possess the country from generation to genera
tion. There shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau.
Edom shall be cut off for ever.1 The aliens of Judah ever
look with wistful eyes to the land of their fathers; but no
Edomite is now to be found to dispute the right of any
animal to the possession of it, or to banish the owls from
the temples and tombs of Edom. But the house of Esau did
remain, and existed in great power, till after the commence
ment of the Christian era, a period far too remote from the date
of the prediction for their subsequent history to have been
foreseen by man. The Idumeans were soon after mingled
with the Nabatheans.2 And in the third century, their lan
guage was disused, and their very name, as designating any
people, had utterly perished ; and their country itself having
become an outcast from Syria, among whose kingdoms it had
long been numbered, was united to Arabia Petraea. Though
the descendants of the twin-born Esau and Jacob have met
a diametrically opposite fate, the fact is no less marvellous
1 Obad. 10, 18. * Origen, Kb. iii. in Job.

IDUMEA. 357
and undisputed, than the prediction in each case is alike
obvious and true. While the posterity of Jacob have been
" dispersed in every country under heaven," and are " scat
tered among all nations," and have ever remained distinct
from them aU, and while it is also declared that " a full end
wiU never be made of them ;" the Edomites, though they
existed as a nation for more than seventeen hundred years,
have, as a period of nearly equal duration has proved, been
cut off for ever; and whUe Jews are in every land, there is
not any remaining, so far as known, on any spot on earth,
of tlie house of Esau.
Idumea, in aid of a neighbouring state, did send forth on
a sudden, an army of twenty thousand armed men, — it con
tained many towns and vUlages long after the Christian era,
— successive kings and princes reigned in Petra,- — and mag
nificent tombs and temples, whose empty chambers and
naked walls of wonderful architecture still strike the tra
veller with amazement, were constructed there, at a period
unquestionably far remote from the time when it was given
to the prophets of Israel to teU, that the house of Esau was
to be cut off for ever, that there would be no kingdom
there, and that wUd animals would possess Edom for a heri
tage. And so despised is Edom, and the memory of its
greatness lost, that there is no record of antiquity that can
so clearly show us what once it was, in the days of its
power, as we can now read in the page of prophecy, its
existing desolation. But in that place where kings kept
their court, and where nobles assembled, where manifest
proofs of ancient opulence are concentrated, where princely
mausoleums and temples retaining their external grandeur,
but bereft of all their splendour, still look as if " fresh from
the chisel," — even there no man dweUs, it is given by lot
to birds, and beasts, and reptiles; it is a "court for owls,"
and scarcely are they ever frayed from " their lonely habi-

358 IDUMEA.
tation " by the tread of a solitary traveUer from a far dis
tant land, among deserted dweUings and desolated ruins.
Hidden as the history and state of Edom have been for
ages, every recent disclosure, being an echo of the prophe
cies, amply corroborates the truth, that the word of the
Lord does not return unto him void, but ever fulfils the
purpose for which he hath sent it. But the whole of its
work is not yet wrought in Edom, which has farther testi
mony in store; and while the evidence is not yet complete,
so neither is the time of the final judgments on the land
yet fully come. Judea, Ammon, and Moab, according to
the word of prophecy, shall revive from their desolation,
and the wild animals who have conjoined their depreda
tions with those of barbarous men, in perpetuating the
desolation of these countries, shall find a refuge and undis
turbed possession in Edom, when the year of recompences
for the controversy of Zion being past, it shaU be divided
unto them by line, when they shaU possess it for ever, and
from generation to generation shall dweU therein. But
without looking into futurity, a retrospect may here warrant,
before leaving the subject, a concluding clause.
That man is a bold believe?', and must with whatever
reluctance, forego tlie name of sceptic, who possesses such
redundant credulity as to think, that aU the predictions
respecting Edom, and all others recorded in Scripture, and
realized by facts, were the mere hap-hazard results of for
tuitous conjectures. And he who thus, without reflecting
how incongruous it is to " strain at a gnat and swallow a
camel," can deliberately, and with an unruffled mind, place
such an opinion among the articles of his faith, may indeed
be pitied by those who know in whom they have believed,
but, if he forfeit not thereby all right of ever appealing to
reason, must at least renounce all title to stigmatize, in
others, even the most preposterous belief. Or if such, after

IDUMEA. 359
aU, must needs be his philosophical creed, and his rational
conviction! what can hinder him from believing also that
other chance words — such as truly marked the fate of
Edom, but more numerous and clear, and which, were he to
" seek out and read," he would find in the self-same " book
of the Lord," — may also prove equally true to the spirit, if
not to the letter, against all the enemies of the gospel,
whether hypocrites or unbelievers ? May not his belief in
the latter instance be strengthened by the experience that
many averments of Scripture, in respect to times then
future, and to facts then unknown, have already proved
true? And may he not here find some analogy, at least,
on which to rest his faith, whereas the conviction which in
the former case he so readily cherishes, is totally destitute
of any semblance whatever to warrant the possibility of its
truth? Or is this indeed the sum of his boasted wisdom,
to hold to the conviction of the fallacy of all the coming
judgments denounced in Scripture till "experience," personal
though it should be, prove them to be as true as the past,
and a compulsory and unchangeable but unredeeming faith be
grafted on despair? Or if less proof can possibly suffice,
let him timely read and examine, and disprove also, all the
credentials of revelation, before he account the believer cre
dulous, or the unbeliever wise; or else let him abandon the
thought that the unrepentant iniquity and wilful perversity
of man, and an evil heart of unbelief (all proof derided, all
offered mercy rejected, all meetness for an inheritance among
them that are sanctified unattained, and all warning lost,)
shaU not finally forbid that Edom stand alone, the seared
and blasted monument of the judgments of Heaven.
A word may here be spoken even to the wise. Were
any of the sons of men to be uninstructed in the fear of
the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, and in the
knowledge of his word, which maketh wise unto salvation,

360 IDUMEA.
and to be thus ignorant of the truths and precepts of the
gospel, which should all teU upon every deed done in the
body; what in such a case, if all their superior knowledge
were unaccompanied by religious principles, would aU
mechanical and physical science eventually prove, but the
same, in kind, as the wisdom of the wise men of Edom?
And were they to perfect in astronomy, navigation, and
mechanics, what, according to Sir Isaac Newton, the Edom
ites began, what would the moulding of matter to their
wih avail them, as moral and accountable beings, if their
own hearts were not conformed to the Divine wiU; and
what would aU their labour be at last, but strength spent
for nought? For were they to raise column above column,
and again to hew a city out of the cliffs of the rock, let but
such another word of that God, whom they seek not to
know, go forth against it, and aU their mechanical ingenuity
and labour would just end in forming- — that which Petra is,
and which Rome itself is destined to be — " a cage of every
unclean and hateful bird." The experiment has already
been made; it may weU and wisely be trusted to as much
as those which mortals make; and it is set before us that,
instead of provoking the Lord to far worse than its repeti
tion in personal judgments against ourselves, we may be
warned by the spirit of prophecy, which is the testimony
of Jesus, to hear and obey the words of Him — even of
Jesus, who delivereth from tlie wrath to come. For how
much greater than any degradation to which hewn but un
feeling rocks can be reduced, is that of a soul, which while
in the body might have been formed anew after the image
of an all-holy God, and made meet for beholding his face hi
glory, — passing from spiritual darkness into a spiritual
state where all knowledge of earthly things shaU cease to
be power, — where all the riches of this world shah cease to
be gain, — where the want of religious principles and of

IDUMEA. 361
Christian virtues shall leave the soul naked, as the bare and
empty dwellings in the clefts of the rocks — where the
thoughts of worldly wisdom, to which it was inured before,
shall haunt it still, and be more unworthy and hateful oc
cupants of the immortal spirit, than are the owls amid the
palaces of Edom — and where all those sinful passions, which
rested on the things which were seen shah be like unto the
dragons which have Edom for their habitation, — when dust
shall be tlie serpent's meat ; and he that is unjust shall be
unjust still, and he that is filthy, shall be filthy still; and he
that is righteous shaU be righteous still; and he that is holy
shall be hoiy still.
But, in very faithfulness, there may well be here a word
for professing believers, as weU as for avowed sceptics. It
is near at hand, and not afar of, when Edom is the theme.
Let it not be man's but the Lord's. " Whereas Edom
saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build
the desolate places; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall
build, but I ivill throw down; and they shall call them,
The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the
Lord hath indignation for ever. And your eyes shall see,
and ye shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the
border of Israel. A son honoureth his father, and a ser
vant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine
honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the
Lord of hosts unto you, 0 priests, that despise my name.
And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name? Ye
offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein
have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the
Lord is contemptible. And if ye offer the blind for sacri
fice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it
not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased
with thee, or accept thy person ? saith the Lord of hosts, &c.
From tlie rising of the sun, even unto the going down of

362 IDUMEA.
the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and
in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and
a pure offering: for my name shall be great among ihe
heathen, saith the Lord of hosts."1
NOTE.
Only of recent years have the minds of men been turned towards
Edom ; and after the lapse of many ages, European travellers have
visited it again. It now stands forth as a witness for the Holy One
of Israel. But its testimony is not yet exhausted. Forgotten and
despised as it long has been — it may be that now at last it has at
tracted the attention of the world — that the nations may be prepared to
hear the Divine invocation to them, to regard what has there yet to
be done, or to the judgments of which even desolate Edom shall be
the appointed place — in the year of recompences for the controversy of
Zion — after which tlie wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad
for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose? The
word of the Lord is that of the Eternal, with whom one day is as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Three thousand
three hundred years have passed away since the first predictions, in
which Mount Seir was included, or Edom was involved, that have
respect to times yet future, were recorded or uttered by Moses, or by
Balaam. " / will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even unto the sea
of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river." 3 He took up
his parable and said — I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold
him, but not nigh : there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre
shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and
destroy all the cliildren of Sheth. And Edom shall be a, possession,
Seir also shall be a possession for his enemies; and Israel shall do
valiantly. Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion,
&c."4 Later prophets also testified, — "In that day will I raise up
the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches
thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the
days of old : that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all
the heathen which are called by my name, saith the Lord that doeth
this."5 "But upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall
be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions. —
1 Malachi i. 4-8, 11. " Isaiah xxxv. 1. * Exod. xxiii. 31.
4 JN umbers xxiv. 15-19. * Amos ix. 11, 12.

IDUMEA. 363
And they of the south shall possess the Mount of Esau, and they of
the plain the Philistines, &c. — And saviours shah come up on Mount
Zion to judge the Mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the
Lord's."1 "Thus saith the Lord God, When the whole earth re
joiceth, I will make thee desolate."3
These predictions speak unequivocally, — if read literally, as others
have been literally fulfilled, — of a time yet future, and of things that
are yet to come to pass. The vision, like many others, is yet for an ap
pointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry,
wait for it: because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold, his
soul which is lifted up is not upright in him : but the just shall live
by his faith.''''3 Let it here suffice to say, that desolate as Edom is,
the desolation of desolations, according to the Hebrew idiom, or the
most desolate of aU these deserted lands — alone bare as the Lord has
made it, while withered herbs, or briers, thorns, and thistles, or else
luxuriant pasturage, everywhere cover the desolated lands of Israel,
Ammon, and Moab, — there still are signs to show that there may be
a remnant of Edom capable of being the possession of the people for
whom it is destined by the Lord. Though, in the words of Burck
hardt, all the country between Maan and Akaba, as well as between
Maan and the plains of the Hauran, may with great propriety be
called a stony desert, it is yet susceptible of culture, and in many
places overgrown with wild herbs, as many traces of towns and vil
lages show that it must once have been thickly inhabited. The
valley of Ghceyr, a large rocky and uneven basin, which divides on
the north the district of Djebal, or Gabalene, from that of Djebal
Shera, or Mount Seir, is famous for excellent pasturage, produced by
its numerous springs, and has become in consequence a favourite
place of encampment for all the Bedouins of Djebal and Shera.4
Shobak, " the principal place in Djebal Shera," where about a hun
dred Arab families had built their houses, or pitched their tents, in
an old castle of Saracenic construction, is (a.d. 1812) surrounded by
gardens and olive plantations.5 Though "Maan (Teman) is situated
in the midst of a rocky country not capable of cultivation,'' yet " the
pomegranates, apricots, and peaches of Maan are of the finest quality."
The slopes of the mountain near the village of Eldjy, are formed into
artificial terraces, which, when visited by Burckhardt, were covered
with corn-fields and plantations of fruit-trees, though less fruitful,
when seen by more recent travellers. " The Befaya Bedouins — who
1 Obadiah 17, 19, 21. 2 Ezek. xxxv. 14. s Hab. ii. 3, 4.
4 Burckhardt, pp. 110, 114. 5 Ibid. p. 416.

364 IDUMEA.
have the reputation," says Burckhardt, " of being very daring thieves,
and the Arabs Saoudyne, in Mount Seir, are Fellahin, or cultivators.
The former, who had about sixty tents, the latter twice as many, had
corn-fields and vineyards, and dried large quantities of grapes." Most
desolate as Edom is — though not now a tenth nor a hundredth part
of what it was — there may yet — susceptible of culture as it partly is,
— be a larger remnant at last for a p>r>ssession to the seed of Jacob.
Bozrah is a name which, as well as Selah, has its place in unful
filled as well as in accompbshed prophecies. Some have supposed it
to be Bozrah of the Hauran ; but the lands both of Moab and Ammon
lay between that city and Mount Seir. The Bozrah of Edom seems,
with incomparably greater propriety, to be identified with Beszeyra, of
which the ruins show that it was, " in ancient times, a considerable
city." l Of late years a tower was built there by the Arabs Howeytat ;
after the erection of which the inhabitants of Omeda, now a ruined
village, three or four hours to the north of it, removed to Beszeyra,
which was a village of about fifty houses, when visited by Burck
hardt. It thus exists — or existed — again as an inhabited place.
And mean as it may seem, it is still said of Bozrah in the hook of
the Lord, in reference to the treading of ihe wine press, the day of
vengeance, the year of his redeemed, " Who is this that cometh from
Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? this that is glorious in his
apparel, travelling in the greatness of his might 1 I that speak in righte
ousness, mighty to save." — The day will declare it. But, as thus it
is written, though not thus alone, — the time may not yet be past in
which men shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border of
Israel. But the illustration of such prophecies pertains to another
theme, as they point to another time. *
1 Burckhardt, p. 407.

PHILISTIA. 365

CHAPTER IX.
PHILISTIA.
The land of the Philistines bordered on the west and south
west of Judea, and lies on the south-east of the Mediterranean
Sea. It lay within the allotted borders of the tribe of
Judah, Ekron, with her towns and villages : from Ekron
even unto the sea, all that lay near Ashdod, with their
villages : Ashdod with her towns and her villages, Gaza
with her towns and her villages, unto the river of Egypt,
and the great sea, and the border thereof} When Joshua
was old and stricken in years, all the borders of the Philis
tines were included in the very much land that remained
to be possessed, — -five lords of the Philistines; the Gazathites,
and the Ashdothites, the Eshkalonites, the Gittites, and the
Ekronites.2 After the days of Joshua and of the elders
that outlived him, when the tribes of Israel forsook the
Lord God of their fathers, all these were numbered among
their enemies that were left to try the Israelites, and to be
thorns and scourges in their sides, until they should perish
from off the good land which the Lord their God had given
them. That such the Philistines were age after age, the
Scriptural history of Israel amply shows.
The land of the Philistines retains to this day its natural
fertility as in ancient times. Nowhere through Syria is the
land more rich, the soil more deep, or finer gleanings left,
than in the land of Philistia, north of Gaza. Long after
the Christian era it possessed a very numerous population,
1 Josh. xv. 45-47. 2 Josh. xiii. 1-3.

366 PHILISTIA.
and strongly-fortified cities ; and in the comparatively recent
period of the twelfth century, Ashkelon was one of the
strongest fortresses of Syria, the last that the Crusaders
took, as it long resisted all their hosts. No human pro
bability could possibly have existed in the days of the pro
phets, or at a far later age, of its eventual desolation. But
as now explored, long after the days of its grandeur and
glory are gone, it belies every promise which the fertility
of the soU, and the excellence of its climate gave, for
many preceding centuries, of its permanency as a rich and
well-cultivated region. The gods of the Philistines that
led Israel astray are forgotten: they have all fallen, as did
Dagon before the ark of the Lord. But the land where
their worship was established, responds to the word of the
only living and true God, and takes its appointed place
among the witnesses that testify how He only is the Lord,
who was, and is, and shall be, the God of Israel. It har
boured for century after century the enemies of the people
whom He chose as his own; but the voice of prophecy,
which was not silent respecting it, proclaimed the fate that
awaited it, in terms as contradictory, at the time, to every
natural suggestion, as they are descriptive of what PhUistia
now actually is — and whose it yet shaU be.
Thus saith the Lord God, Because the Philistines have
dealt by revenge, and have taken vengeance with a despite
ful heart, to destroy it for the old hatred; therefore thus
saith the Lord God, Behold, I will stretch out mine hand
upon the Philistines, and I will cut off the Cliereiliims, and
destroy ihe remnant of the sea-coast. And I will execute
great vengeance upon them %viih furious rebukes; and they
shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my ven
geance upon them.1 — The Lord will spoil the Philistines,
the remnant of the country of Caphtor. Baldness is come
> Ezek. xxv. 15-17.

PHILISTIA. 367
upon Gaza; Ashkelon is cut off with the remnant of ilieir
valley : how long wilt thou cut thyself? 0 thou sword of
the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? Put up
thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still. How can it
be quiet, seeing that the Lord hath given it a charge against
Ashlcelon, and against the sea-shore? there hath he ap
pointed it.1 Thus saith the Lord, For three transgressions
of Gaza, and for four, I will not turn away the punish
ment thereof. — i" will send a fire on the wall of Gaza, which
shall devour the palaces thereof: and I tuill cut off ihe
inhabitant from A shdod, and him that holdeth the sceptre
from Ashkelon; and I will turn mine hand against
Ekron; and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish,
saith the Lord God.2 For Gaza shall be forsaken, and
Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the
noon-day, and Ekron shall be rooted up. Woe unto tlu
inhabitants of ihe sea-coast, the nation of the Cherethites!
the word of the Lord is against you; 0 Canaan, the land
of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee, that there shall
be no inhabitant. And the sea-coast shall be dwellings
and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks. And ihe
coast shall be for ihe remnant of the house of Judah; they
shall feed thereupon : in ihe houses of A shkelon shall they
lie down in the evening; for the Lord their God shall visit
them, and turn away their captivity.3 — The king shall
perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited.
And a bastard shall dwell in Ashdod; and, I will cut off
the pride of the Philistines. And I will take away his
blood out of his mouth, and his abominations from between
his teeth: but he that remaineth, even he, shall be for our
God; and he shall be as a governor in Judah, and Ekron
as a Jebusite. And I will encamp about mine house because
of the army, because of him that passeth by, and because
> Jer. xlvii. 4-7. 2 Amos i. 6, 7, 8. s Zeph. ii. 4-7.

368 PHILISTIA,
of him that returneth; and no oppressor slmll pass through
them any more : for now have I seen with mine eyes}
These are the words of the eternal Spirit, by whose
inspiration all Scripture was given; and they have thus
respect to the future — as stiU it is — even as they tell of the
past and depict the present. Volney may continue, as in all
former editions, to be the leading witness ; and the daguerreo
type may complete the proof.
The land of the Philistines was to be destroyed. It par
takes of the general desolation common to it with Judea
and other neighbouring states. But its aspect presents
some existing peculiarities, which travellers fail not to
particularize, and which, in reference both to the state of
the country, and the fate of its different cities, the prophets
failed not to discriminate as justly as if their description
had been drawn both with all the accuracy which ocular
observation, and all the certainty which authenticated
history could give. And the authority, so often quoted,
may here again be appealed to. Volney (though, like one
who in ancient times was instrumental to the fulfilment of
a special prediction, " he meant not so, neither did his heart
think so,") from the manner in which he generalizes his
observations, and marks the peculiar features of the different
districts of Syria, with greater acuteness and perspicuity
than any other traveller whatever, is the ever-ready purveyor
of evidence in all the cases which came within the range
of his topographical description of the wide field of pro
phecy; while, at the same time, from his known, open, and
zealous hostUity to the Christian cause, his testimony is
alike decisive and unquestionable; and the vindication of
the truth of the following predictions may safely be com
mitted to this redoubted champion of infidelity.
The sea-coast shall be dwellings and cottages for shep-
1 Zech. ix. 5-8.

PHILISTIA. 369
herds, and folds for flocks. The remnant of the Philistines
shall perish. Baldness is come upon Gaza; it shall be
forsaken. The king shall perish from Gaza. Ashkelon
shall be a desolation ; it shall be cut off with the remnant
of their valley ; it shall not be inhabited. "In the plain
between Ramla and Gaza," (the very plain of the Philistines
along the sea-coast) "we met with a number of viUages,
badly built of dried mud, and which, like the inhabitants,
exhibit every mark of poverty and wretchedness. The
houses, on a nearer view, are only so many huts (cottages)
sometimes detached, at others ranged in the form of ceUs,
around a court-yard, enclosed by a mud waU. In winter,
they and their cattle may be said to hve together, the part
of the dweUing allotted to themselves being only raised two
feet above that in which they lodge their beasts — (dwellings
and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks.) Except
the environs of these vUlages, all the rest of the country is
a desert, and abandoned to the Bedouin Arabs, who feed
their flocks on it."1 The remnant shall perish : the land
of the Philistines shall be destroyed that there shall be no
inhabitant, and the sea-coast shall be dwellings and cottages
for shepherds, and folds for flocks.
" The ruins of white marble sometimes found at Gaza,
prove that it was formerly the abode of luxury and opulence.
It has shared in the general destruction ; and, notwithstand
ing its proud title of the capital of Palestine', it is now no
more than a defenceless viUage," (baldness has come upon
it,) " peopled by, at most, only two thousand inhabitants."2
It is forsaken and bereaved of its king. " The sea-coast,
by which it was formerly washed, is every day removing
farther from the deserted ruins of Ashkelon."3 It shall be
a desolation. Ashkelon shall not be inhabited. " Amidst
the various ruins, those of Ezdoud (Ashdod,) so powerful
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 335, 336. 2 Ibid. p. 340. ' Ibid. p. 338.
24

370 PHILISTIA.
under the Philistines, are now remarkable for their scor
pions."1 Although the Christian traveUer must yield the palm to
Volney,2 as the topographer of prophecy, and although sup
plementary evidence be not requisite, yet a place is here
willingly given to the foUowing just observations.
" Ashkelon was one of the proudest satrapies of the lords
of the Philistines ; now there is not an inhabitant within
its waUs ; and the prophecy of Zechariah is fulfilled. The
king shaU perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be
inhabited. When the prophecy was uttered, both cities
were in an equaUy flourishing condition ; and nothing but
the prescience of Heaven could pronounce on which of the
two, and in what manner the vial of its wrath should be
poured out. Gaza is truly without a king. The lofty
towers of Ashkelon lie scattered on the ground, and the
ruins within its walls do not shelter a human being. How
is the wrath of man made to praise his Creator ! Hath he
said, and shaU he not do it? The oracle was delivered
by the mouth of the prophet more than five hundred years
before the Christian era, and we behold its accomplishment
eighteen hundred years after that event."8
Cogent and just as the reasoning is, the facte stated by
Volney give wider scope for an irresistible argument. The
fate of one city is not only distinguished from that of
another ; but the varied aspect of the country itself, the
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 338.
2 Had Volney been a believer; had he "sought out of the book of the Lord and
read;" and had he applied all the facts which he knew in illustration of the pro
phecies, how completely would he have proved their inspii-ation ! But it is well for
the cause of truth that such a witness was himself an unbeliever ; for his evidence,
in many an instance, comes so very close to the predictions, that his testimony in
the relation of positive facts would have been utterly discredited, and -held as pur
posely adapted to the very words of prophecy, by those who otherwise lent a greedy
ear to his utterance of some of the wildest fancies and most gross untruths that ever
emanated from the mind of man, or ever entered into a deceitful heart. He who so
artfully could pervert the truth, falls the victim of facts stated by himself.
3 Richardson's Travels, vol. ii. p. 20-1.

PHILISTIA. 371
dweUings and cottages for shepherds in one part, and that
very region named, the rest of the land destroyed and unin
habited, a desert, and abandoned to the flocks of the wan
dering Arabs ; Gaza, bereaved of a king, a defenceless village,
destitute of aU ite fortifications, Ashkelon, a desolation, and
without an inhabitant — form in each instance a specific pre
diction, and a recorded fact, and present such a view of the
existing state of PhUistia, as might render it difficult to
determine, from the strictest accordance that prevails between
both, whether the inspired penman, Or the defamer of Scrip
ture, gives the more vivid description. Nor is there any
obscurity whatever, in any one of the circumstances, or in
any part of the proof. The coincidence is too glaring, even
for wilful blindness not to discern ; and to all, the least
versed in general history, the priority of the predictions to
the events is equaUy obvious. And such was the natural
fertility of the country, and such was the strength and
celebrity of the cities, that no conjecture possessing the least
shadow of plausibility can be formed in what manner any
of these events could possibly have been thought of, even
for many centuries after "the vision and prophecy" were
sealed. After that period, Gaza defied the power of Alex
ander the Great, and withstood for two months a hard-
pressed siege. The army, with which he soon afterwards
overthrew the Persian empire, having there, as weU as at
Tyre, been checked or delayed in the first flush of conquest,
and he himself having been twice wounded in desperate
attempts to storm the city, the proud and enraged king of
Macedon, with aU the cruelty of a brutish heart, and boasting
of himself as a second AchiUes, dragged at his chariot-wheels
the intrepid general who had defended it, twice around the
waUs of Gaza.1 Ashkelon was no less celebrated for the
exceUence of its wines, than for the strength of its fortifica-
1 Quintus Curtius, lib. iv. cap. xxvi.

372 PHILISTIA.
tions.1 And of Ashdod, it is related by an eminent ancient
historian, not only that it was a great city, but that it with
stood the longest siege recorded in history, (it may almost
be said, either of prior or of later date,) having been be
sieged for the space of twenty-nine years by Psammetticus,
king of Egypt.2 Strabo, after the commencement of the
Christian era, classes its citizens among the chief inhabitants
of Syria. Each of these cities, Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod,
was the see of a bishop, from the days of Constantine to
the invasion of the Saracens. And, as a decisive proof of
their existence as cities, long subsequent to the delivery of
the predictions, it may further be remarked, that different
coins of each of these very cities are extant, and are copied
and described in several accounts of ancient coins.3 The
once princely magnificence of Gaza is still attested by the
" ruins of white marble ;" and the house of the present Aga
is composed of fragments of ancient columns, cornices, &c. ;
and in the court-yard, and immured in the wall, are shafts
and capitals of granite columns.4
In short, cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks,
partially scattered along the sea-coasts, are now truly the
best substitutes for populous cities, that the once powerful
realm of Philistia can produce; and the remnant of that
land, which gave titles and grandeur to the lords of the
Philistines, is destroyed. Gaza, the chief of its satrapies,
" the abode of luxury and opulence," now bereaved of its
king, and bald of aU its fortifications, is the defenceless re
sidence of a subsidiary ruler of a devastated province; and,
in kindred degradation, ornaments of its once splendid edi
fices are now bedded in a waU that forms an enclosure for
beasts. A handful of men could now take unobstructed
possession of that place, where a strong city opposed the
1 Kelandi Pala;stina, pp. 341, 586. » Herodot. Hist. lib. ii. cap. clvii.
3 Eelandi Falsest, pp. 595, 609, 797. 4 General Straton's MS.

PHILISTIA. 373
entrance and defied for a time the power of the conqueror
of the world. The waUs, the dweUings, and the people of
Ashkelon have aU perished; and though its name was, in
the time of the Crusades, shouted in triumph throughout
every land in Europe, it is now literally without an inhabi
tant. And the ancient Ashdod, which withstood a siege
treble the duration of that of Troy, and thus outrivaUed far
the boast of Alexander at Gaza, has, in verification of " the
word of God, which is sharper than any two-edged sword,"
been cut off, and its ruins, or ruined site, in the days of
Volney, were famous only for their scorpions.
The wonderful contrast in each particular, whether in
respect to the land, or to the cities of the Philistines, is the
exact counterpart of the literal prediction; and, having the
testimony of Volney to all the facts, and also indisputable
evidence of the great priority of the predictions to the
events, what more complete or clearer proof could there be,
that each and all of these predictions emanated from the
prescience of Heaven ? And yet, though previously un-
thought of by the writer, a more complete proof may be
given. A more precise statement may show how wonderful these
predictions are.
Set down by name, tenantless as it is, it was long other
wise with Ashkelon than with many of the unnamed cities
of the land of Israel, of which we never read that they
withstood a foe, after the Romans besieged the Jews in all
their gates. A reiterated account need not here be given
of the beauty as weU as the strength of that celebrated for
tress, or of the most famous of its sieges, when it long re
sisted and repelled the power of the combined hosts of the
Crusaders by sea and land, and yielded at last on " honour
able" terms, when the consuming flames — of which the fuel
was laid by the besieged for the destruction of a fort raised

374 PHILISTIA.
against it — made a breach in the waU which proved the
death-bed of the assailing Templars. Dismantled and re
newed again and again, in the days of Saladin of Egypt and
Richard of England, " its fortifications were at length utterly
destroyed by Sultan Bibars in the year 1270."1 But it
continued to harbour a Turkish garrison till the beginning
of the seventeenth century. The " deserted ruins" lay un
disturbed tUl Ibrahim Pasha caused a portion of them to
be raised for the construction of large barracks in the
vicinity, for his army of Syria. The work was stopped
when all was ready for its completion. But the space thus
cleared was converted into gardens by the inhabitants of a
neighbouring vUlage. Upwards of twenty fountains of
excellent water, before buried under ruins, were opened up
anew; irrigated from which many verdant spots, — formed
into gardens, fenced and terraced with stones of houses in
which Ascalonites, long of a formidable name, did dwell, —
have sprung up among the ruins, intermixed with which
were patches of wheat, barley, pulse, tobacco, while fig-
trees, — which, as seen in the plate, had not then in early
spring put forth their leaves — ohves, almonds, and pome
granates, are not wanting where not a man of Ashkelon
remains. It has been whoUy uninhabited beyond the
memory of man; and the fortress, for which many kings
have contended, is now the defenceless property of the miser
able villagers of El-Jura, whom we saw cowering within
their own mud huts at the sight of Bedouins. They have
never known an inhabitant within the waUs of Ashkelon;
and when questioned as to the fact, one of them, an aged
man, strangely asked the writer, when there last were any.
Rival caliphs of Egypt and of Bagdad, and kings from the
ends of the earth, have contended for its possession, have
conquered and have lost it, whUe some, like Baldwin IL,
' See Land of Israel, pp. 229, 231, 270, 373-378.

-is

PHILISTIA. 375
have besieged it in vain. But when all evanescent con
quests are over, the word of the Lord maintains its triumph,
and it has stUl another to achieve. The view is taken from
the interior, long crowded with inhabitants; and some of
the ruined waUs beside the eastern gate are seen, from
which fierce combatants issued forth, while proud defiance
was often shouted from the waUs. Ashkelon, too, has its
sanctuaries that are desolate, and a lesser and larger church
have been disclosed to view, when robbed of the stones that
covered their ruins. One of them is about 140 feet in
length, and 80 in breadth; and broken pedestals, capi
tals, and shafts of columns, show that the church was ele
gant as well as spacious, and seem to teU that there once
stood the cathedral of Ascalon. Now the bloody warriors
and apostate worshippers are gone. Towers and temples
ahke are desolate. But within the few past y^ears, open
fountains that before were closed, and verdant spots, yield
ing their produce to peaceful labour, where thorns, and
thistles, and wild herbs every where covered — as they stiU
largely do — the fallen houses of the proud Ascalonites, have
not yet reversed its only temporary doom; but, like the first
appearance of a bud on a bare fig-tree, like that which the
plate exhibits, they may seem in the visions of hope to show
that were aU things else ready, so also are they, for the
time when words of righteous judgment shall give place to
those of promised mercy, and Ashkelon, which at the first
lay within the borders of the tribe of Judah, shaU be built
again — not for barracks for Egyptian soldiers — but with
houses in which the remnant of Judah, returned again,
shall lie down in the evening. But to this day the word
stands true, Ashkelon shall not be inhabited. Whether de
solate, as before, or partiaUy cultivated, as of late, the old
man and others said, they had never known an inhabitant
within it; though immediately without its waUs, there are,

376 PHILISTIA.
of recent construction, two or three smaU houses for watch-
towers during the vintage, where vines, on the outside,
adorn the else useless waU of Ashkelon, even as vines shall
cover the long desolate land, when fortresses shaU cease for
ever. Ashkelon is cut off with the remnant of their valley.
WhUe the ancient capital of Ammon is to this day a
stable for camels and a couching-place for flocks, and Arabs
there fearlessly occupy it, the reason is assigned by Mr
CyrU Graham in the foUowing note communicated by him
to the author, why Ashkelon is not inhabited even by Arabs
in its immediate vicinity : — " Ashkelon itself — that is, the
site of the ancient city within the waUs — is not inhabited,
although no spot on that coast could be more ehgible. The
soil is good, and the peasants who cultivate it get a great
number of excellent fruits of many different kinds. But
what is most striking is, that immediately without the city
a small village of mud huts exists, inhabited by miserable
Fellahin. When they were asked why they lived outside
the walls, where they were exposed to aU the wind and
storms of sand, when they might be altogether sheltered
inside the ancient town, they answered that they did not
know; they feared the Jan [Genii] and the Ghul [spirits] in
the town, and no one dared five there. The fact of there
being actually an inhabited place just outside Ashkelon,
gives greater force to the fulfilment of the prophecy, " Ash
kelon shall not be inhabited."
How long wilt thou cut thyself? 0 thou sword of the
Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? Put up thyself
into thy scabbard, rest, and be still. How can it be quiet?
seeing the Lord hath given it a charge against Ashkelon,
and against the sea-shore, there hath he appointed it. How
long will it be ere the sword be quiet, and be put in the
scabbard, and rest, and be still? History cannot yet answer
the prophetic question, which the book of the Lord, else-

GAZA. 377
where, can alone resolve. But it can fully and clearly teU,
that against Ashkelon and against the sea-shore, the Lord,
in times now past, did in truth appoint it. From the
days of the prophets to the present .time, the sea-shore of
PhUistia has often been the battle-field of successive com
batants. In the twelfth century, or about two thousand years after
this prophecy of Amos, the sea-shore of PhUistia was the
scene of some of the fiercest battles of the Crusaders. There
Saladin and his armies were alternately the conquerors and
the conquered. There, near to Ashkelon, the Franks de
feated the Moslems with a terrible slaughter; and "pursuing
their vanquished foes," says the chief historian of these wars,
" for twelve mUes there did not cease to be a continued
slaughter of the enemy." 1 There, too, the last battles of the
Crusades were fought, on the sea-coast where the Lord had
appointed the sword. In the words of Gibbon, " After the
surrender of Acre, and the departure of Philip (king of
France,) the king of England led the Crusaders to the re
covery of the sea-coast; — a march of one hundred mUes,
from Acre to Ascalon was a great and perpetual battle of
eleven days."2 There the sword is not yet put up in
its scabbard. From the ruins of Ashkelon the writer saw
seven thousand Bedouins — sons of Ishmael, whose hand is
against every man, and every man's hand against them — as
they were returning from a battle fought with a hostUe
tribe on the sea-coast of PhUistia.
Of the truth of the prophecies concerning tenantless Ash
kelon there cannot be a doubt: but a question may arise
whether baldness, in the fuU meaning of the word, has come
upon Gaza, the only remaining town in PhUistia, or whether
that city, however faUen from its former greatness, can
strictly be said to be forsaken if peopled, like the modern
1 Hist. Will. Tyr. p. 1010. 2 Gibbon, vol. xi. p. 143.

378 GAZA.
town, by 2000 inhabitants. But, as in some other in
stances, the author has been driven from a comparatively
vague or undefined to a strictly literal interpretation.
Baldness shall come upon Gaza. It shall be forsaken.
The writer, after having unconsciously rested a night on the
site of ancient Gaza, as the smoothest place that could be
chosen whereon to pitch a tent, was for the first time aware
of the literal interpretation of the prophecy, when he saw it
on the spot. Detained for a day tUl camels could be pro
cured, (the plague being then prevalent at Gaza,) the author
spent it in traversing the sand hUls on which the manifold
but minute remains of an ancient city are yet in many
places to be seen. Though previously holding to the inter
pretation given above, and not imagining that any clearer
iUustration could be given, and ignorant or forgetful, at the
time, of any historical testimony that the site of modern
differed from that of ancient Gaza, it was impossible for him
to doubt that a city had once stood where innumerable ves
tiges of it are to be seen. The debris of ruins recognised
at first sight by every traveller in the East as clearly indi
cating the site of an ancient city, are abundant, but most
minute. Innumerable fragments of broken pottery, pieces
of glass, (some of which were beautifully stained,) and of
polished marble, lie thickly spread in every level and hoUow
place, at a considerable elevation and various distances, on a
space of several square mUes. These obvious indications of
the site of an ancient city, recurring over a wide extent, are so
abundant, that the number of different places in which they
profusely lie cannot be reckoned under fifty, — which not
unfrequently are surmounted by sand on every side. They
generally occupy a level space, far firmer than the surround
ing sand, and vary in size from smaU patches to more open
spaces of twelve or twenty thousand square yards. The
successive sand hills, or rather the same oblong sand hiU,

GAZA. 379
greatly varied in its elevation, and of an undulated surface,
throughout which they recur, extends to the west and west-
south-west from the sea nearly to the environs of the
modern Gaza.
Before approaching Gaza, unconscious where the ancient
city stood, it might weU be asked what is meant by bald
ness coming upon it. But having traversed the place
on which it stood, and beholding it as it rises naked and
bare above the plain, the writer could not fail to see that
its perfect baldness shows how truly that word of the Lord
rests upon it.1 On his first visit, he looked in vain for any
fragment of ruin one cubic foot in size, for any shrub, or
plant, or blade of grass, to relieve or interrupt the perfect
'baldness that has come on Gaza. He saw nothing but a
jackal freely coursing over its bare surface. The sand of
the desert is nowhere more smooth and bare; and the dark
spots, where nothing but the vestiges of ruins lie, are so
flat and level, that they form no exception to its baldness.
Many of the ruins, it may well be imagined, lie buried
in the sand; those that remained above the surface have
been carried away, and may be found in the vicinity, im
bedded in the walls of houses or court-yards of the com
paratively modern town.
1 Some supplementary evidence may here be adduced, as stated in the Narrative
by Messrs Bonar and M'Cheyne. — "Dr Black remained to examine more fully the
hills of sand. Dr Keith took the direction of the sea, which is about three miles
distant from the modern town, starting the idea, that in all probability these heaps
of sand were covering the ruins of ancient Gaza." — "Returning to our tents, we
were now prepared to verify Dr Keith's conclusion, of the truth of which he had
been fully satisfied — namely, that these hills of sand, where we had pitched our
tents, really cover the ruins of ancient Gaza. Each of us had found minute frag
ments of polished marble in the flat hollows between the sand hills, the remains no
doubt of 'the= palaces of Gaza.' We now saw in a manner we had never done before,
that God had literally fulfilled his own word, ' Baldness is come upon Gaza,' — that
literally and most remarkably the appearance of baldness has come upon Gaza. No
spot of verdure, not a single blade of grass did we see upon the sand hills. One soli
tary tree there was which only served to make the barrenness more remarkable.
This barren, bare hill of sand, is the bald head of Gaza. How awfully true and
faithful are the words of God ! '"—-Narrative, pp. 136-138.

380 GAZA.
Nothing but historical testimony to the fact, that the
site of the modern town differed from that of the ancient
city, seems requisite to complete the proof that Gaza once
flourished where baldness now reigns. And the geographer
Strabo, who lived at the commencement of the Christian
era, in describing the coast of Syria, records: — " Afterwards
is the port of Gaza, and at the distance of seven furlongs
the city, formerly illustrious, but destroyed by Alexander,
and remaining desert."1 The distance of seven furlongs
from the shore would have occupied the very site of the
ancient city, as now seen by its rubbish. But the modern
town lies at the distance of nearly three miles, or twenty-
four furlongs. Ancient writers, not distinguishing between
them, seem sometimes to have confounded the one site with
the. other. Jerome relates that, in his time, the beginning
of the fifth century, scarcely a vestige existed of the ancient
city, and that which was then seen, was built in another
place, instead of the city which was utterly ruined.2 In the
extracts from ancient authors, whose age is uncertain, edited
by Hudson, in the fourth volume of the lesser geographers,
distinct mention is made of new Gaza, and of desert Gaza}
Of the same place (rather than of the road) mention is made
in the Acts, under the same name, of Gaza, which is desert.
The very appeUation it thus received, as recorded or described
by Strabo and another Greek geographer, as weU as in the
Acts of the Apostles, and which most emphaticaUy and truly
describes it in one word,4- — for no desert can be more bare,
1 Ei0 6 rtiiv Ta£aiuiv Atyiiji* irXyjirtov vn-epKeiTat Se KaX ij 7r6At? eV eirra OTaStois, IVSo^ds
Ti-OTe yzvopAmq, Ka.T€(nra(riJ.emi 6' virb A\4£av8pov, koa. jueVovo-a epiflxos. Strabo, torn. ii.
p. 1080. Ed. Pa).
2 Antiquse civitatis locum vix fundamentorum prabere vestigia, hanc autem quae
nunc cernitur in alio loco, pro ilia quae corruit, eedificatam. Hieron. torn. iii.
p. 218.
3 Relandi Palestina, torn. i. p. 509.
4 — iroAi5 (jeVovo-a "EPHMOS. Strabo.
"H*EPHM02 r-afa. Eel. Pal. torn. i. p. 509.
— e« Vdgta,. aimj eorii/'EPHMOS. Acts viii. 26.

GAZA. 381
— shows how baldness has come upon it. It is worthy
also of remark, as Arrian relates, that the city besieged by
Alexander was great, and was situated on a height ; and that
the access to it was very difficult, on account of the height
of the sand,1- — facts precisely applicable to the site above
described, of ancient, or desert Gaza, but not of new Gaza.
Desert and desolate, as it has long been and stUl hes, not
tenanted either by man or beast, Gaza is forsaken.
On a second visit to Gaza (1844), the writer more
leisurely surveyed the site, and was fuUy confirmed in the
opinion, that the ancient city was entombed in the sand,
and that baldness had thus come upon it. In less than a
mile from the present town, on a direct line towards the
sea, the sand commences, and all vegetation ceases. For
more than a mUe and a half, in the same direction, the
whole space is covered with sand, and in every hollow in
numerable diminutive pieces of broken pottery and marble
are spread over the surface. About twelve years ago, and
for some years previously, attempts were made in various
places to cultivate the sand, and hewn stones were every
where found, where the ground was dug for planting trees,
near to the old port, and between it and the modern town.
Passing along the shore to the south, we came on the re
mains of an old wall, which reached to the sea. Ten large
massy fragments of waU were imbedded in the sand, or rest
ing on it. A large square buUding in ruins close by the
shore seems to be the remains of some public edifice. At
the farther distance of about two miles are fragments of
another wall. Four intermediate fountains stiU exist,
nearly entire, in a line along the coast, which doubtless
pertained to the ancient port of Gaza. For a short distance
inland, the debris is less frequent, as if marking the space
1 Arrian, lib. ii. 26.

382 GAZA.
between it and the ancient city: but it again becomes plenti
ful in every hollow. About half a mUe from the sea, we
saw three pedestals of beautiful marble. And many stones
had been taken to Gaza from a spot near to the sea, where
an attempt had been made to form a garden; but where the
trees are again partly buried in the sand. There is not a
single habitation near it. Holes were stiU to be seen from
which hewn stones had been taken; and the former secre
tary of Ibrahim Pasha at Gaza, and another native, (Ibra
him Jusef, and Halil Riz AUiah,) stated, that all the way
between the present town and the sea, hewn stones of vari
ous sizes had been taken out of the sand, and carried to
Gaza for building.
The author was not previously aware that hewn stones
had been raised out of the sand, or that actual proof could
thus be given of what he "imagined" to be the fact, that
the ruins of the ancient city were buried in the sand.
Positive information and visible proofs of the fact confirmed
his previous conjecture.
It thus appears how, as in Volney's days, the ruins of
white marble are found at Gaza, and also, as stated by
General Straton, how the houses of the Aga, &c. were com
posed of fragments of ancient columns, cornices, &c. On
the surface of the sand nothing was left worth taking away,
and from beneath it the proofs come forth that where bald
ness reigns, the royal city stood.
Akir, a smaU village, has been recently identified as the
site of Ekron. Some vestiges of the ancient city are still
to be seen. But these form not now, as elsewhere through
out the land, a heap of ruins. The ground has been cleared
of them; and their chief remains are now found in two or
three very smaU spots, in the midst of ploughed fields.
Ekron has been rooted up.
The sea-coast of PhUistia shall be dwellings and cot-

GAZA. 383
tages for shepherds and folds for flocks. Such in fact
it now literally is. Along the shores of GalUee, Samaria,
and Judea, only three or four villages remain, exclusive of
Tyre, Sidon, Acre, and Jaffa. But they are comparatively
numerous on the sea-coast of PhUistia. Volney, as in a
previous page, weU describes them as they were in his day,
and as they stUl are, according to the prophetic description,
true to the very letter, the " huts " are cottages for shep
herds, the " court-yards," folds for flocks. Witnesses cogni
zant of predicted truths, can only yield a testimony corres
ponding to that of the sceptic. " We were much struck by
observing how truly 'the sea-coast had become dwellings
and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks,' — for the
hiUs and vales are so completely pastoral, that from one
rising ground we counted ten large flocks and herds."1
These are driven into the viUages at night, for protection
from the wUd beasts by the mud-waUs that surround them.
And the shepherds have their separate cottages and court
yards, or folds, for the black cattle, sheep, and goats that
respectively belong to them. The cottages are entered on
passing through the fold. Each may be distinguished in
the daguerreotype view of the remnant of Ashdod, as the
former are covered, and the latter open at the top — folds,
not stables such as the ruins of Ammon supply. While the
daguerreotype view was taken, the flocks were pasturing
on the plain, but some cattle were browsing in the immedi
ate vicinity of the village, beside a sheet of water as seen
in the original plate. So lowly is Ashdod now, which of
old was one of "the proud satrapies of Philistina," whose
lords are gone, as shepherds take their place, that — though
the governor of Jaffa, whom we met by the way, ordered
an Arab soldier who accompanied us, to tell the sheikh
to give us "the best entertainment," — we preferred, even
1 Narrative, p. 138.

384 SUMMARY OF THE PROPHECIES
wdth the prospect of a rainy night, a canvass tent to the
house, or rather cottage, of the humble chief, which, like the
rest, could only be entered through a filthy fold for a flock.
Yet in that fertile land " only man is vile ;" — and in
comparably more than in Edom, there is a remnant for the
children of Israel, which awaits them stiU, richer than the
gleanings of the land that was their own. Bare to perfect
baldness as ancient Gaza is, the opposite side of the modern
town may challenge any land with ite rich grove of olives,
(at least three miles in length,) and with that also at a short
distance, in the vicinity of Migdol. Though the country,
in general, is bare, and trees are clustered around villages
alone, yet a solitary tree of the largest size, or three or four
standing singly and far between, prove that the whole plain
might be enriched anew with fruit-trees, as well as the
immediate vicinity of the viUages. One of the finest crops
of wheat which, in either journey, the author saw in Syria,
grew under the partial and protecting shade of stately olives
in the plains of Gaza. Amidst visible judgments, the
lingering remnant of what Philistia was, is itself an augury
of better things to come in other days ; for looking beyond
the time in which the sea-coast should be, as it is, dweUings
and cottages for shepherds and folds for flocks, the prophet
of the Lord, in words as sure, immediately adds, And the
coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah ; they
shall feed thereupon : in the houses of Ashkelon -they shall
lie down in the evening ; for the Lord their God shall
visit them, and turn away their captivity : and such is the
natural fertility of that coast to this day, that, though Benja
min shall possess Gilead, Judah need not envy Benjamin.
Such are the prophecies which explicitly and avowedly
refer to the land of Judea, and to the surrounding states ;
and such the very facts which the prophet foretold. The

CONCERNING JUDEA, ETC 385
predictions and the proofs of their fulfilment are so numer
ous, that it is impossible to concentrate them in a single
view, without the exclusion of many; and they are, upon
a simple comparison, so obvious and striking, that any
attempt at their farther elucidation must hazard the obscur
ing of their clearness, and the enfeebling of their force.
There is no ambiguity in the prophecies themselves, for
they can bear no other interpretation but what is descriptive
of the actual events. There can be no question of their
genuineness or antiquity, for the countries whose future his
tory they unveiled contained several millions of inhabitants,
and numerous flourishing cities, at a period centuries subse
quent to the delivery, the translation, and publication of the
prophecies, and when the regular and public perusal of their
Scriptures was the law and the practice of the Israelites ;
and they have only gradually been reduced to their existing
state of long-prophesied desolation. There could not possibly
have been any human means of the foresight of facts so
many and so marveUous ; for every natural appearance
contradicted and every historical fact condemned the suppo
sition ; and nothing but continued oppression and a succes
sion of worse than Gothic desolators, — no government on
earth but the Turkish, — no spoliators but the Arabs, — could
have converted such natural fertUity into such utter and
permanent desolation. Could it have been foreseen, that
after the lapse of some hundred years, no interval of pros
perity or peaceful security would occur throughout many
ensuing generations, to revive its deadened energies, or to
rescue from uninterrupted desolation one of the richest, and
one of the most salubrious regions of the world, which the
greater part of these territories naturally is ? Could the
present aspect of any country, with every alterable feature
changed, and with every altered feature marked, have been
delineated by different uninspired mortals, in various ages
25

386 SUMMARY OF THE PROPHECIES
from 2200 to 3300 years past? And there could not, so
far as all researches have hitherto reached, be a more tri
umphant demonstration, from existing facts, of the truth of
manifold prophecies. In reference to the complete historical
truth of the predictions respecting the successive kings of
Syria and Egypt, Bishop Newton emphaticaUy remarks, (as
Sir Isaac Newton's observations had previously proved,)
that there is not so concise and comprehensive an account
of their affairs to be found in any author of these times;
that the prophecy is really more perfect than any single
history, and that no one historian hath related so many cir
cumstances as the prophet has foretold:1 so that " it was
necessary to have recourse to several authors for the better
explaining and illustrating the great variety of particulars
contained in the prophecy." The same remark in the same
words, may, more obviously and with equal truth, be now
apphed to the geographical, as well as to the historical proof
of the truth of prophecy Judea, which, before the age of
the prophets, had, from the uniformity and peculiarity of its
government and laws, remained unvaried in a manner and
to a degree unusual among nations, has since undergone
many convulsions, and has for many generations been un
ceasingly subjected to reiterated spoliation. And now, after
the lapse of more than twenty centuries, travehers see what
prophets foretold. Each prediction is fulfilled in aU its par
ticulars, so far as the facts have (and in almost every case
they have) been made known. But while the recent dis
coveries of many travehers have disclosed the state of these.
countries, each of their accounts presents only an imperfect
delineation; and a variety of these must be combined before
they bring fuUy into view aU those diversified, discrimi
nating, and characteristic features of the extensive scene,
which were vividly depicted of old, in aU their minute lines
1 Signs of the Times, vol. i. pp. 44-73.

CONCERNING JUDEA, ETC. 387
and varied shades, by the pencil of prophecy, and which set
before us, as it were, the history, the land, and the people
of Palestine. Judea trodden down by successive desolators, — remaining
uncultivated from generation to generation, — the general
devastation of the country, — the mouldering ruins of its
many cities, — the cheerless solitude of its once happy plains,
— the wild produce of its luxuriant mountains, — the land
covered with briers and thorns, — the highways waste and
untrodden, — its ancient possessors scattered abroad; — the
inhabitants thereof depraved in character, few in number,
eating their bread with carefulness, or in constant dread of
the spoiler or oppressor; — the insecurity of property,- — the
uselessness of labour, — the poverty of their revenues, — the
land emptied and despoiled, — instrumental music ceased from
among them, — the mirth of the land gone, — the use of wine
prohibited in a land of vines, and the wine itself bitter unto
them that drink it; — the cities desolate without inhabitant,
and the houses without man; — the fortress ceased, — the
forts and towers for dens, — the devastation of the land of
Ammon, — the extinction of the Ammonites, the destruction
of all their cities, — their country a spoU to the heathen, —
and a perpetual desolation : — the desolation of Moab, its
cities without any to dweU therein, and no city escaped, —
the valley perished, the plain destroyed, — the wanderers
that have come up against it, and that cause its inhabitants
to wander, — the manner of the spoliation of the dweUers in
Moab, their danger and insecurity in the plain country, and
flying to the rocks for a refuge and a home, whUe flocks lie
down among the ruins of the cities — none there to make
them afraid, — and the despoiled and impoverished condition
of some of its wretched wanderers: — Idumea the scene of
an unparaUeled desolation, — its cities utterly abandoned and
destroyed, of the greater part of them no traces left, — a

388 SUMMARY OF THE PROPHECIES
desolate wilderness, over which the line of confusion is
stretched out, — the country bare, — no kingdom there. — its
princes and nobles nothing, and empty sepulchres their only
memorials, — thistles and thorns in its palaces, — a border of
wickedness, and yet greatly despised, — wisdom perished
from Teman, and understanding out of the Mount of Esau,
— abandoned to birds and beasts and reptiles, specified by
name) — its ancient possessors cut off for ever, and no one
remaining- of the house of Esau: — the destruction of the
cities of the Phihstines, — cottages for shepherds, and folds
for flocks, along the sea coast, — the remnant of the plain
destroyed and unoccupied by any fixed inhabitants : — Leba
non ashamed, — its cedars, few and diminutive, now a mockeiy
instead of a praise : and, finally, the different fate of many
cities particularly defined, — the long subjection of Jerusalem
to the GentUes ; — Samaria desolate, as an heap of the field,
or cast down into the vahey, and its foundations discovered,
all so clearly marked both in the prophecy and on the spot,
that they serve to fix its site; — Rabbah-Ammon, the capital
of the Ammonites, now a desolate heap, a pasture for camels,
and a couching-place for flocks ; — judgments which have
come upon many of the cities of the land of Moab by name,
and upon all its cities far and near ; — the chief city of Edom
brought down — a court for owls — and no man dweUing in
it; — Gaza forsaken, and baldness come upon it, — Ashkelon
desolate, without an inhabitant, — and Ekron rooted up : —
These are aU ancient prophecies, and these are all present
facts, which form of themselves a phalanx of evidence which
aU the shafts of infidelity can never pierce.
Though the countries included in these predictions com
prehend a field of prophecy extending over upwards of one
hundred and twenty thousand square miles, the existing
state of every part of which bears witness of their truth ;
yet the prophets, as inspired by the God of nations, foretold

CONCERNING JUDEA, ETC. 389
the fate of mightier monarchies, of more extensive regions,
and of more powerful cities; and there is not a people, nor
a country, nor a capital, which was then known to the
Israelites, whose future history they did not clearly reveal.
And, instead of adducing arguments from the preceding very
abundant materials, or drawing those facts already adduced,
to their legitimate conclusion, they may be left in their
native strength, like the unhewn rock; and we may pass to
other proofs which also show that the temple of Christian
faith rests upon a rock that never can be moved.

390 NINEVEH.

CHAPTER X.
NINEVEH.
To a brief record of the creation of the antediluvian
world, and of the dispersion and different settlements of
mankind after the deluge, the Scriptures of the Old Testa
ment add a fuU and particular history of the Hebrews for
the space of fifteen hundred years, from the days of Abra
ham to the era of the last of the prophets. WhUe the
historical part of Scripture thus traces, from its origin, the
history of the world, the prophecies give a prospective view
which reaches to its end. And it is remarkable that pro
fane history, emerging from fable, becomes clear and
authentic about the very period when sacred history termi
nates, and when the fulfilment of those prophecies com
mences, which refer to other nations besides the Jews.
Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was for a long time an
extensive and populous city. Its walls are said by heathen
historians, to have been a hundred feet in height, sixty
miles in compass, and to have been defended by fifteen
hundred towers, each two hundred feet high.1 Although it
formed the subject of some of the earliest of the prophecies,
and was the very first which met its predicted fate ; yet a
heathen historian, in describing its capture and destruction,
repeatedly refers to an ancient prediction respecting it.
> Diod. Sic. lib. ii. pp. 12, 13. See Bochart. Phaleg. lib. iv. c. xx. c. 252. Rollins
Anc. Hist. vol. ii. pp. 56, 57. Bishop Newton, Gibbon, &c. Straho, whose testi
mony also has been often repeated, states that it was larger than Babylon. " It
must be owned," says Calmet, "that Nineveh was one of the most ancient, the most
famous, the most potent, and the largest cities of the world."

NINEVEH. 391
Diodorus Siculus relates, that the king of Assyria, after the
complete discomfiture of his army, confided in an old pro
phecy, that Nineveh would not be taken unless the river
should become the enemy of the city;1 that after an inef
fectual siege of two years, the river, swoUen with long-con
tinued and tempestuous torrents, inundated part of the city
and threw down the waU for the space of twenty furlongs ;
and that the king, deeming the prediction accomplished,
despaired of his safety, and erected an immense funeral pUe,
on which he heaped his wealth ; and thus himself, his house
hold and palace were consumed.2 The book of Nahum
was avowedly prophetic of the destruction of Nineveh : ahd
it is there foretold- that " the gates of the rivers shaU be
opened, and the palace shaU be dissolved." " Nineveh, of
old, like a pool of water — with an overrunning flood he
wUl make an utter end of the place thereof."3 The histo
rian describes the facts by which the other predictions of
the prophet were as literally fulfilled. He relates that the
king of Assyria, elated with his former victories, and igno
rant of the revolt of the Bactrians, had abandoned himself
to scandalous inaction ; had appointed a time of festivity,
and supplied his soldiers with abundance of wine ; and that
the general of the enemy, apprised by deserters of their
negligence and drunkenness, attacked the Assyrian army
whUe the whole of them were fearlessly giving way to in
dulgence, destroyed great part of them, and drove the rest
into the city.4 The words of the prophet were hereby veri
fied : " WhUe they be f olden together as thorns, and while
they are drunken as drunkards, they shaU be devoured as
stubble fuUy dry."5 The prophet promised much spoU to
the enemy: " Take ye the spoil of silver, take the spoU of
1 Diod. Sio. lib. ii. pp. 82, 83, edit. Weasel. 1793. See Univ. Hist. vol. iv. pp.
805-8, v. 37, &c. Bishop Newton, -p. 134, 13th edition.
' Ibid. p. 84. Poole, Uniy. Hist. ibid. Bishop Newton.
s Nahum i. ii. * Diod. Sic. lib. ii. pp. 81, 84. Univ. Hist. ibid. 5 Nahum i. 10.

392 NINEVEH.
gold ; for there is none end of the store and glory out of
aU the pleasant furniture."1 And the historian affirms, that
many talents of gold and sUver preserved from the fire,
were carried to Ecbatana.2 According to Nahum, the city
was not only to be destroyed by an overflowing flood, but
the fire also was to devour it ;8 and, as Diodorus relates,
partly by water, partly by fire, it was destroyed.4
The utter and perpetual destruction and desolation of
Nineveh were foretold : " The Lord will make an utter end
of the place tliereof. — Affliction shall not rise up the second
time. She is empty, and void, and waste. The Lord will
stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria ;
1 Nahum ii. 9.
- Diod. p. 87. "The two armies," says Rollin, after quoting this prophecy,
"enriched themselves with the spoils of Nineveh." Vol. ii. p. 103. Bishop Newton.
8 Nahum iii. 15.
4 See Bishop Newton's Dissertation ix. Nineveh, which first led Israel captive,
was the first city of the Gentiles that met its predicted fate. The fulfilment of the
prophecies concerning it, which are all contained in the short book of Nahum, and
in three verses of Zephaniah, was too remarkable to pass unnoticed in the earliest
ages of our era. Josephus, after briefly describing the reign of Jotham, states, that
"there was at that time a prophet, named Nahum, who prophesied thus of the
catastrophe or overthrow of Nineveh, 'Nineveh shall be a pool of water agitated,1
&c, Nahum ii. 8-13, and he adds, that the prophet foretold many other things
which it was unnecessary for him to repeat, and which were all fulfilled after the
lapse of a hundred and fifteen years," Ant. lib. ix. c. 11. sect. 3. Jerome (a.d. 392,)
in his preface to the book of Jonah, relates, that both Hebrew and Greek historians
recorded its overthrow. (Tom. vi. c. 399, 390, ed. Venet. 1768.) And in his com
mentary on Nahum, he repeatedly refers to its capture and spoliation by ths Chal
deans, or Babylonians, in illustration of the prophecy, Ibid. c. 534, 555, &c. In
like manner, Cyril of Alexandria (a.d. 412), in his commentary on the same pro
phecy, quoted by Bochart, describes not only the destruction of Nineveh, but, in
terms analogous to those of Lucian, its entire desolation. Besides other intervening
writers who treat of the subject, Bochart, Marsham, and Poole, in the seventeenth cen
tury, adduced the testimony of Diodorus Siculus, who has long been the chief authority
upon the subject, although his testimony in regard to the magnificence and subse
quent destruction of Nineveh is corroborated by that of Herodotus, Strabo, Tacitus,
Pliny, &c. The fall of Nineveh is described, and the prophecies both of Nahum and
Zephaniah, thereby illustrated, are quoted or referred to in such well-known works
published in the last century, as Prideaux's Connections (a.d. 1715), RoUin's Ancient
History (a.d. 1730), The Universal History (a.d. 1747), and Bishop Newton's
Dissertation on the Prophecies (a.d. 1754) — the last of which, the latest and the
best, is referred to in every edition. The edition of Diodorus Siculus, from which
the facts were quoted and the references taken, was published forty years after the
last of these works. The facts, like the prophecies, are few, and are all included in
a few pages, to which the index readily points in every edition of his works.

NINEVEH. 393
and, will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wil
derness. — How is she become a desolation, a place for
beasts to lie down in!"1 In the second century, Lucian, a
native of a city on the banks of the Euphrates, testified
that Nineveh was utterly perished, — that there was no
vestige of it remaining, — and that none could tell where
once it was situate.2 This testimony of Lucian, and the
lapse of many ages, during which the place was not known
where it stood, rendered it at least somewhat doubtful whether
the remains of an ancient city, opposite to Mosul, which have
been described as such by traveUers, were indeed those of
ancient Nineveh. The name, however, was attached to the
spot by the inhabitants of the country in the beginning of
the seventh century. The battle of Nineveh decided the
fate of Chosroes. Its locality is thus described by Gibbon:
— " The Romans boldly advanced from the Araxes to the
Tigris, and the timid prudence of Rhazates was content to
follow them by forced marches through a desolate country,
tih he received a peremptory mandate to risk the fate of
Persia in a decisive battle. Eastward of the Tigris, at the
end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly
been erected: the city, and even the ruins of the city, had
long since disappeared: the vacant space {empty, void, and
waste'] afforded a spacious field for the operation of the two
armies."3 The great city had become "the field" of
Nineveh. An utter ruin had been made of it at once;
affliction did not rise up a second time. " One thing
is sufficiently obvious to the most careless observer," says
Rich, who was himself a most careful observer, " which is,
the equality of age of aU these vestiges. Whether they
belonged to Nineveh or some other city, is another question,
and one not so easily determined; but that they are aU of
' Nahum i. 8, 9 ; ii. 10. Zeph. ii. 13-15.
2 Bochart, Marsham, Calmet, Bishop Newton, &c.
3 Hist. vol. viii. pp. 250, 251, u. 46.

394 NINEVEH.
the same age and character does not admit of a doubt."1
" Pottery, and other Babylonian fragments" — " fragments
of cuneiform inscriptions on stone, simUar in every respect
to those got at Babylon,"2 are found in the mounds that
constitute the ruins. In contrasting the then existing great
and increasing population, and the accumulating wealth of
the proud inhabitants of the mighty Nineveh, with the
utter ruin that awaited it, — the word of God, (before whom ah
the inhabitants of the earth are as grasshoppers), by Nahum
was — Make thyself many as the canker-worm, make thyself
many as the locusts. Thou hast multiplied thy merchants
above the stars of heaven: the canker-worm spoileth and
fleeth away. Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy cap
tains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in
the cold day; but when the sun ariseth, they flee away; and
their place is not known where they are,3 or were. Whether
these words imply that even the site of Nineveh would in
future ages be uncertain or unknown, or as they rather seem
to intimate, that every vestige of the palaces of its monarchs,
of the greatness of its nobles, and of the wealth of its nume
rous merchants, would wholly disappear; the truth of the
prediction cannot be invalidated under either interpretation.
The avowed ignorance respecting Nineveh, and the oblivion
which passed over it, for many an age, prove that the place
was long unknown where it stood. And, if the only spot
that bears ite name, or that can be said to be the place
where it was, be indeed the site of one of the most exten
sive of cities on which the sun ever shone, and which con
tinued for many centuries to be the capital of Assyria, — the
" principal mounds," few in number, in many places over
grown with grass, " resemble the mounds left by intrench-
ments and fortifications of ancient Roman camps," and the
1 Rich's Residence in Koordistan and Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 44.
« Ibid. pp. 38, 55. » Ch. iii. 15-17.

NINEVEH. 395
appearances of other mounds and ruins, less marked than
even these, extending for ten miles, and widely spread, and
seeming to be " the wreck of former buUdings,"1 show that
Nineveh is left without one monument of royalty, without
any token or memorial of its ancient splendour and magni
ficence; and so entirely are the very vestiges of the city in
many places swept away, that of a large space which the
plough has passed over for ages, it is said, " what part was
covered by ancient Nineveh it is nearly now impossible to
ascertain."2 " The country," " this uneven country," are
epithets descriptive of its supposed site. " In such a
country it is not easy to say what are ruins and what are
not; what is art converted by the lapse of ages into a sem
blance of nature, and what is merely nature broken by the
hand of time into ruins approaching in their appearance
those of art/'3 Of the merchants, that were multiplied
above the stars of heaven — of the crowned and of the cap
tains of the great Nineveh, it may be said, that they were
as the great grasshoppers, which, camping in the hedges in
a cold day, flee away on the rising of the sun, and their
place is not known where they were. Neither from the
low grounds, covered with bushes of tamarisk, where it is
not cultivated,4 nor from the high country completely covered
with pebbles,5 could it be known where the nobles of Nineveh
were. " The name of Nineveh," said Volney, " seems to be
threatened with the same oblivion which has overtaken its
greatness/'6 Tlie Lord hath given a commandment con
cerning thee, that no more of thy name be sown: — I will
make thy grave, for thou art vile. Darkness shall pursue
his enemies} The great Nineveh is no more. No more of
its name is sown: the town near to its site is caUed by
another name. But its name written in the word of God,
1 Buckingham's Travels in Mesopotamia, vol. ii. pp. 49, 51, 62.
2 Rich's Residence in Koordistan, vol. ii. p. 53.
3 Ibid. p. 57. «Ibid. p. 62. 5 Ibid. p. 59. 8 Ruins, c. 8. 'Nahum i. 8, 14.

396 NINEVEH.
shaU not pass into oblivion, tUl tongues shall cease and pro
phecy fail.
The Lord did make the grave of Nineveh. And, disclos
ing at last its ancient glory, else but obscurely known, it has
of late been partly disinterred. There is now another proof
than that of the largeness of a heap, where the palace stood.
And the written record of the manner of its destruction is
accredited as if by a voice from its grave. The government
of France has become the purveyor of evidence: and Paris
might learn a lesson from the shipload of the relics of
Nineveh, ere the cities of ihe nations fall. More may
hence be learned than the knowledge of Assyrian arts.
" Nineveh, the city of fifteen hundred towers, whose walls
were a hundred feet in height, and had space on their sum
mits for three chariots abreast, seemed more utterly ruined
than even Babylon; yet from beneath its dust has the long-
buried arts of the Assyrian been recovered. Fifteen halls
of this vast palace, with their corresponding esplanades, have
been cleared. The rest of the monument, it is made quite
certain, has been destroyed, — intentionally however, the
stones having been carried off to serve for other buildings.
A fortunate accident — that would seem an evil one at the
time — has preserved for us what remains. This portion of
the palace has been ravaged by fire, which has entirely de
stroyed only the timbers of the roofs: but as the other cal
cined materials were rendered useless for new constructions,
they have been left where they were; and thus one-third of
the edifice remains to testify of the rest."1 " Fifteen cham
bers, some above a hundred feet in length, and evidently
forming part of a magnificent palace, have been opened.
Their waUs are entirely covered with inscriptions and sculp
tures. The latter are almost without exception historical,
and illustrate events of the highest interest, sieges, naval
1 Athenamm, No. 900. January 25, 1845, p. 99.

NINEVEH. 397
manoeuvres, triumphs, single combats, &c. The inscriptions
are in the cuneiform character, and are of such great length
that all the arrow-headed inscriptions before known, if
united together, would not equal them. Although the
ornaments, robes, and various implements of war are finished
with extraordinary precision, they do not detract from the
effect of the whole, nor do they add heaviness to the figures.
The extreme beauty and elegance of the various objects in
troduced among the groups, are next to be admired. The
shapes of the vases, of the drinking-cups, the sword-scab
bards adorned with lions, and the shields decorated with
animals and flowers — the chairs, tables, and other articles
of domestic use, — the ornaments of the head, and bracelets
and ear-rings, are aU designed with the most consummate
taste, and rival the productions of the most cultivated period
of Greek art."1 "Nineveh seemed more utterly ruined than
even Babylon: yet from beneath its dust have the long
buried arts of the Assyrian been discovered." I will make
thy grave. I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and
make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazing-stock.2
" Fifteen haUs of this vast palace, with their correspond
ing esplanades, have been cleared. This portion of the
palace has been ravaged with fire, which has entirely de
stroyed only the timbers of the roofs : but as the other cal
cined materials were rendered useless for new constructions,
they have been left where they were; and thus one-third of
the edifice remains to testify of the rest." While they be
folden together as thorns, and while they are drunken as
drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry. The
fire sliall devour thy bars. There shall the fire devour thee.3
The buried arts of the Assyrian have been recovered from
beneath the dust of Nineveh. And still figured on the cal-
¦ Athenseum,. No. 901, pp. 120, 122. 2 Nahum i. 14 ; iii. 6.
3 Nahum i. 10; iii. 13, 15.

398 NINEVEH.
cined waUs of the disentombed palace, are vases, drinking-
cups, decorated scabbards and shields, chairs, tables, and
other articles for domestic use, ornaments of the head, and
bracelets and ear-rings, all designed with the most consum
mate taste, so as to rival the productions of the most culti
vated period of Greek art — and also figures of the very
things of which the prophet spake, in issuing his mandate
to the enemies of Nineveh, to be obeyed ere that city should
be turned into its grave. Take ye the spoil of silver, take
the spoil of gold; for there is none end of the store and
glory out of all the pleasant furniture.
Such was, and such is, the capital of Assjrria, which led
Israel captive — and such the evidence that when raised from
the grave, it discloses, that the God of Israel is the Lord of
Hosts, and that aU the vain glories of the proudest mortals
perish at his word.
All controversy or question is now at an end respecting
the mounds or ruinous heaps near to Mosul, as those of
Nineveh of old. " Bricks from Kouyunjik are inscribed with
the name of Nineveh."1 Of " the discoveries in the ruined
palace of Sennacherib " at the time of his departure for
Europe, Mr Layard says, " In this magnificent edifice I had
opened no less than seventy-one halls, chambers, and pas
sages, whose walls, almost without an exception, had been
paneUed with slabs of sculptured alabaster, recording the
wars, the triumphs, and the great deeds of the Assyrian
king. By a rough calculation, about 9880 feet, or nearly
two mUes, of bas-reliefs, with twenty-seven portals, formed
by colossal winged bulls and lion-sphinxes, were uncovered
in that part alone of the building explored during my re
searches. The greatest length of the excavations was about
750 feet; the greatest breadth 600 feet. The pavement of
the chambers was from 20 to 35 feet below the surface of
1 Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 639.

NINEVEH. 399
the ground. Only a part of the palace has been excavated,
and much still remains under ground of this enormous
structure. Since my return to Europe, other rooms and
sculptures have been discovered. — The excavations were not
limited to the corner of Kouyunjik, containing the palace.
Deep trenches and tunnels were opened, and experimental
shafts sunk in various parts of the mound. Enormous walls
and foundations of brick masonry, fragmente of sculptured
and unsculptured alabaster, inscribed bricks, numerous small
objects, and various other remains were discovered."1
" There are ravines on aU sides of the Kouyunjik, except
that facing the Tigris. If not entirely worn by the winter
rains, they have, undoubtedly, been deepened and increased
by them. They are strewed with fragments of pottery,
bricks, and sometimes stones and burnt alabaster, whUst the
falling earth frequently discloses in their sides vast masses
of solid brick masonry, which feU in when undermined by
the rains," &c.2 "The sculptures of Kouyunjik had been
exposed to the fire which had destroyed the palace."3
1 Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 589. s Ibid. 3 Ibid. p. 458.

400 BABYLON.

CHAPTER XI.
BABYLON.
If ever there was a city that seemed to bid defiance to
any predictions of its fall, that city was Babylon. It was
for a long time the most famous city in the whole world.1
Its walls, which were reckoned among the wonders of the
world, appeared rather like the bulwarks of nature than
the workmanship of man.2 The temple of Belus, half a
mile in circumference and a furlong in height — the hang
ing gardens, which, piled in successive terraces, towered
as high as the walls — the embankments which restrained
the Euphrates — the hundred brazen gates — and the ad
joining artificial lake — aU displayed many of the mightiest
works of mortals concentrated in a single point.3 Yet,
while in the plenitude of its power, and according to the
' Plinii Hist. Nat. lib. v. cap. xxvi.
2 The extent of the walls of Babylon is variously stated, by Herodotus at 480
stadia, or furlongs, in circumference ; by Pliny and Solinus at sixty Roman miles,
or of equal extent ; by Strabo at 385 stadia ; by Diodorus Siculus, according to the
slightly different testimony of Ctesias and Clitarchus, both of whom visited Baby
lon, at 360 or 365; and to the last of these statements that of Quintus Cnrtius
nearly corresponds, viz. 368. The difference of a few stadia rather confirms than
disproves the general accuracy of the three last of these accounts. There may have
been an error in the text of Herodotus of 480, instead of 380, which Pliny and Soli
nus may have copied. The variation of 20 or 25 stadia, in excess, may have been
caused by the line of measurement having been the outside of the trench, and not
immediately of the wall. And thus the various statements may be brought nearly
to correspond. Major Rennel, estimating the stadium at 491 feet, computes the ex
tent of the wall at 34 miles, or eight and a half on each side. The opposite and con
tradictory statements of the height and breadth of the wall may possibly be best re
conciled on the supposition that they refer to different periods. Herodotus states
the height to have been 200 cubits, or 300 feet, and the breadth 50 cubits, 75 feet.
According to Curtius, the height was 130 feet, and the breadth 32; while Strabo
states the height at 75 feet, and the breadth at 32 feet.
3 Herod, lib. i. c. clxxviii. Diodor. Sic. lib. ii. p. 26. (Calmet.) Plin. lib. v,
xxvi. Quintus Curtius, lib. v. c. iv. See Prideaux, Rollin, &c.

BABYLON. 401
most accurate chronologers, 160 years before the foot of
an enemy had entered it, the voice of prophecy pronounced
the doom of the mighty and unconquered Babylon. A
succession of ages brought it gradually to the dust ; and
the gradation of its fall is marked till it sunk at last into
utter desolation. At a time when nothing- but magnificence
was around Babylon the great, faUen Babylon was deli
neated exactly as. every traveUer now describes ite ruins. —
And the prophecies concerning it may be viewed connectedly
from the period of their earliest to that of their latest fulfil
ment. The immense fertility of Chaldea, which retained also the
name of Babylonia tiU after the Christian era,1 corresponded,
if that of any country could vie, with the greatness of
Babylon. It was the most fertile region of the whole east.2
Babylonia was one vast plain, adorned and enriched by the
Euphrates and the Tigris, from which, and from the nume
rous canals that intersected the country from the one river
to the other, water was distributed over the fields by
manual labour and by hydraulic machines,3 giving rise, in
that warm climate and rich exhaustless soil, to an exuber
ance of produce without a known paraUel, over so extensive
a region, either in ancient or modern times. Herodotus
states, that he knew not how to speak of ite wonderful fer
tility, which none but eye-witnesses would credit ; and,
though writing in the language of Greece, itself a fertUe
country, he expresses his own consciousness that his descrip
tion of what he actually saw would appear to be improbable,
and to exceed belief. In his estimation, as well as that of
Strabo and of Pliny, (the three best ancient authorities that
can be given,) Babylonia was of aU countries the most fertile
in corn, the soil never producing less, as he relates, than two
1 Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 743.
2 " Agrum totius orientis fertilissimnm. " (Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. v. c. xxvi.)
s Herod .. . i. c. cxcii. 26

402 BABYLON.
hundred fold, an amount, in our colder regions, scarcely
credible, though Strabo, the first of ancient geographers,
agrees with the " father of history " in recording that it
reached even to three hundred, the grain, too, being of pro
digious size.1 After being subjected to Persia, the govern
ment of Chaldea was accounted the noblest in the Per
sian empire.2 Besides supplying horses for military ser
vice, it maintained about seventeen thousand horses for
the sovereign's use. And, exclusive of monthly subsidies,
the supply from Chaldea (including perhaps Syria) for the
subsistence of the king and of his army, amounted to a
third part of all that was levied from the whole of the
Persian dominions, which at that time extended from
the Hellespont to India.3 Herodotus incidentally men
tions that there were four great towns in the vicinity of
Babylon. Such was the " Chaldee's excellency," that it departed not
on the first conquest, nor on the final extinction of its
capital, but one metropolis of Assyria rose after another in
the land of Chaldea, when Babylon had ceased to be " the
glory of kingdoms." The celebrated city of Seleucia, whose
ruins attest its former greatness, was founded, and built by
Seleucus Nicator, king of Assyria, one of the successors of
Alexander the Great, in the year before Christ 293, — three
centuries after Jeremiah prophesied. In the first century of
the Christian era it contained six hundred thousand inhabi
tants.4 The Parthian kings transferred the seat of empire
to Ctesiphon, on the opposite bank of the Tigris, where they
resided in winter ; and that city, formerly a vUlage, became
great and powerful.5 Six centuries after the latest of the
predictions, Chaldea could also boast of other great cities/
' Herod, lib. i. u. cxcii. Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 742.
2 Ibid. lib. i. c. cxcii. » Ibid.
* Plin. lib. vi. c. xxvi.
s Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 743. « Ibid. p. 744.

BABYLON. 403
such as Artemita and Sitacene, besides many towns. When
invaded by Julian, it was, as described by Gibbon, a " fruit
ful and pleasant country." And, at a period equally distant
from the time of the prophets and from the present day, in
the seventh century, Chaldea was the scene of vast magni
ficence, in the reign of Chosroes. " His favourite residence of
Artemita or Destagered,was situated beyond the Tigris, about
sixty miles to the north of the capital (Ctesiphon). The ad
jacent pastures," in the words of Gibbon, " were covered
with flocks and herds ; the paradise, or park, was replenished
with pheasants, peacocks, ostriches, roebucks, and wUd boars ;
and the noble game of lions and tigers was sometimes turned
loose for the golden pleasures of the chase. Nine hundred and
sixty elephants were maintained for the use and splendour of
the great king ; his tents and baggage were carried into the
field by twelve thousand great camels, and eight thousand of a
smaUer size ; and the royal stables were fUled with six thou
sand mules and horses. Six thousand guards successively
mounted before the palace gate, and the service of the inte
rior apartments was performed by twelve thousand slaves.
The various treasures of gold, sUver, gems, sUk, and aroma-
tics, were deposited in an hundred subterranean vaults,"1 —
In the eighth century the towns of Samarah, Horounieh, and
Djasserik, formed, so to speak, one street of twenty-eight
miles."2 Chaldea, with its rich soil and warm climate, and in
tersected by the Tigris and Euphrates, was one of the last
countries in the world, of which the desolation could have
been thought of by man. For to this day " there cannot be
a doubt, that, if proper means were taken, the country

1 Gibbon's History, vol. viii. c. 46, pp. 227, 228.
2 Malte-Brun's Geography, vol. ii. p. 119. Historical documents are not wanting
to prove that the richness of Chaldea, down to the time of the Arabian califs, was
such as to give the charm of truth (which, indeed, it is generally admitted that they
possess) to many of the splendid descriptions which abound in the otherwise fictitious
narratives, of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

404 BABYLON.
would with ease be brought into a high state of cultiva
tion."1 Manifold are the prophecies respecting Babjdon and
the land of the Chaldeans ; and the long lapse of ages
has served to confirm the words which were uttered against
them when Babylon was in aU its glory. The judgments of
Heaven are not casual, but sure ; they are not arbitrary,
but righteous. And they were denounced against the Baby
lonians, and the inhabitants of Chaldea, expressly because of
their idolatry, tyranny, oppression, pride, covetousness, drunk
enness, falsehood, and other wickedness. So debasing and
brutifying was their idolatry, — -or so much did they render
the name of religion subservient to their passions, — that
practices the most abominable, which were universal among
them, formed the very observance of some of their religious
rites, of which even heathen writers could not speak but in
terms of indignation and abhorrence. Though enriched with
a prodigality of blessings, the glory of God was not regarded
by the Chaldeans ; and all the glory of man, with which
the plain of Shinar was covered, has become, in conse
quence as weU as in chastisement of prevailing vices and
of continued though diversified crimes, the wreck, the ruin,
and utter desolation which the word of God (for whose
word but his ?) thus told from the beginning that the event
would be.
" The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz
did see. — The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like
as of a great people ; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms
of nations gathered together; the Lord of hosts mustereth
the host of the battle. They come from a far country, from
the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of his
indignation, to destroy the whole land. — Behold I will
stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard
1 Bombay Philosophical Transactions, vol. i. p. 124.

BABYLON. 405
sUver ; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it. Their
bows also shaU dash the young men to pieces ; and they
shaU have no pity on the fruit of the womb ; their eye
shaU not spare chUdren. And Babylon, the glory of king
doms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as
when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shaU never
be inhabited, neither shaU it be dwelt in from generation to
generation : neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there ;
neither shaU the shepherds make their fold there ; but wild
beasts of the desert shaU he there ; and their houses shaU
be fuU of doleful creatures ; and owls shaU dweU there, and
satyrs shaU dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands
shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their plea
sant palaces."1 "Thou shalt take up this proverb against
the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor
ceased ! the golden city ceased ! Thy pomp is brought
down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols : the worm is
spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. Thou shalt
be brought down to heU, to the sides of the pit. Thou art
cast out of thy grave hke an abominable branch. I wiU
cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and
nephew, saith the Lord. I wiU also make it a possession
for the bittern, and pools of water; and I wiU sweep it with
the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts."2 " Baby
lon is fallen, is fallen ; and aU the graven images of her gods
he hath broken unto the ground."3 "Thus saith the Lord
— that saith to the deep, Be dry ; and I wUl dry up thy
rivers ; that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shaU
perform aU my pleasure,4 — and I will loose the loins of
kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates ; and the
gates shall not be shut."5 "Bel boweth down," &c.6
" Come down and sit in the dust, 0 virgin daughter of Baby-
» Isa. xiii. 1, 4, 5, 17-22. " Isa. xiv. 4, 11, 15, 19, 22, 23.
" Isa. xxi. 9. * Isa. xliv. 24, 27, 28.
s Isa. xiv. 1. - 6 Isa. xlvi. 1.

406 BABYLON.
Ion; sit on the ground : there is no throne, 0 daughter of the
Chaldeans. Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, 0
daughter of the Chaldeans ; for thou shalt no more be caUed
The lady of kingdoms. Thou saidst I shall be a lady for ever.
- — Hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dweU
est carelessly ; that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else
besides me ; I shaU not sit as a widow, neither shall I know
the loss of children. But these two things shall come to
thee in a moment in one day, the loss of chUdren, and
widowhood : they shaU come upon thee in their perfection, for
the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance
of thine enchantments. For thou hast trusted in thy wicked
ness : " &c. — Therefore shall evU come upon thee ; thou shalt
not know from whence it riseth : and mischief shah fall
upon thee ; thou shalt not be able to put it off : and deso
lation shaU come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not
know."1 " I wUl punish the land of the Chaldeans, and wih make
it perpetual desolations. And I wiU bring upon that land
aU my words which I have pronounced against it, even ah
that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied
against aU the nations. For many nations and great kings
shall serve themselves of them also : and I will recompense
them according to their deeds, and according to the works
of their own hands."2 " The word that the Lord spake
against Babylon, and against the land of the Chaldeans, by
Jeremiah the prophet. Declare ye among the nations, and
publish, and set up a standard ; publish, and conceal not ;
say, Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken
in pieces ; her idols are confounded, her images are broken
in pieces. For out of the north there cometh up a nation
against her, which shaU make her land desolate, and none
shall dwell therein ; they shaU remove, they shall depart,
1 Isa. xlvii. 1, 5, 7-11. 2 Jer. xxv. 12-14.

BABYLON. 407
both man and beast."1 "For, lo, I wiU raise and cause to
come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from
the north country ; and they shaU set themselves in array
against her ; from thence she shall be taken ; their arrows
shaU be as of a mighty expert man ; none shall return in
vain. And Chaldea shaU be a spoil ; aU that spoil her shaU
be satisfied, saith the Lord. Behold, the hindermost of the
nations shall be a wUderness, a dry land, and a desert. Be
cause of the wrath of the Lord it shaU not be inhabited, but
it shaU be whoUy desolate : every one that goeth by Baby
lon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues." 2 " Her
foundations are fallen, her waUs are thrown down ; for it is
the vengeance of the Lord ; take vengeance upon her ; as
she hath done, do unto her. Cut off the sower from Baby
lon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest :
for fear of the oppressing sword they shall turn every one
to his people, and they shaU flee every one to his own
land."3 " Go up against the land of Merathaim, even
against it, and against the inhabitants of Pekod ; waste and
utterly destroy after them. — A sound of battle is in the
land, and of great destruction. How is the hammer of the
whole earth cut asunder and broken ! how is Babylon
become a desolation among the nations ! I have laid a
snare for thee, and thou art also taken, 0 Babylon, and
thou wast not aware; thou art found, and also caught, be
cause thou hast striven against the Lord. The Lord hath
opened his armoury, and hath brought forth the weapons
of his indignation : for this is the work of the Lord God of
hosts in the land of the Chaldeans. Come against her from
the utmost border, open her store-houses ; cast her up as
heaps, and destroy her utterly ; let nothing of her be left."4
" The voice of them that flee and escape out of the land of
Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of the Lord our
' Jer. 1. 1, 2, 3. * Jer. L 9, 10, 12, 13. 3 Jer. I 15, 16. « Jer. 1. 21-26.

408 BABYLON.
God, the vengeance of his temple. Call together the archers
against Babylon : aU ye that bend the bow, camp against
her round about : let none thereof escape : recompense
her according to her work ; according to all that she hath
done, do unto her : for she hath been proud against the
Lord, against the Holy One of Israel. Therefore shaU her
young men fall in the streets, and aU her men of war shah
be cut off in that day, saith the Lord. Behold, I am against
thee, 0 thou most proud, saith the Lord God of hosts : for
thy day is come, the time that I wiU visit thee. And the
most proud shaU stumble and faU, and none shall raise him
up : and 1 wiU kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall de-
devour all round about him. "1 "A sword is upon the
Chaldeans, saith the Lord, and upon the inhabitants of
Babylon, and upon her princes, and upon her wise men.
A sword is upon the liars ; — a sword is upon her mighty
men ; — a sword is upon their horses, and upon their chariots,
and upon all the mingled people that are in the midst of
her, and they shaU become as women ; a sword is upon her
treasures ; and they shaU be robbed. A drought is upon
her waters ; and they shaU be dried up ; for it is the land
of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols. There
fore the wUd beasts of the desert, with the wild beasts of
the islands, shaU dweU there, and the owls shall dwell
therein : and it shaU be no more inhabited for ever ; neither
shaU it be dwelt in from generation to generation. As
God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighbour
cities thereof, saith the Lord ; so shall no man abide there,
neither shall any son of man dwell therein. Behold, a
people shall come from the north, and a great nation, and
many kings shaU be raised up from the coasts of the earth.
They shaU hold the bow and the lance ; they are cruel, and
wiU not show mercy ; their voice shall roar like the sea,
' Jer. 1. 28-32.

BABYLON. 409
and they shaU ride upon horses, every one pu in array, like
a man to the battle, against thee, 0 daughter of Babylon.
The king of Babylon hath heard the report of them, and
his hands waxed feeble : anguish took hold of him, and
pangs as of a woman in travail. Behold, he shall come up
like a lion from the sweUing of Jordan unto the habitation
of the strong ; but I will make them suddenly run away
from her ; and who is a chosen man, that I may appoint
over her ? for who is like me ? and who wUl appoint me
the time ? and who is that shepherd that will stand before
me ? Therefore hear ye the counsel of the Lord, that he
hath taken against Babylon, and his purposes, that he hath
purposed against the land of the Chaldeans ; surely the least
of the flock shall draw them out ; surely he shaU make
their habitation desolate with them.1 I will send unto
Babylon fanners, that shaU fan her, and shall empty her
land : for in the day of trouble they shaU be against her
round about. Against him that bendeth let the archer
bend his bow, and against him that lifteth himself up in his
brigandine : and spare ye not her young men ; destroy ye
utterly aU her host. Thus the slain shaU fall in the land
of the Chaldeans, and they that are thrust through in her
streets, &c. Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed :
howl for her ; take balm for her pain, if so be she may be
healed. We would have healed Babylon, but she is not
healed : forsake her, and let us go every one unto his own
country, for her judgment reacheth unto heaven, and is
lifted up even to the skies.2 The Lord hath raised up the
spirit of the kings of the Medes : for his device is against
Babylon to destroy it, &c. O thou that dweUest upon
many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come, and
the measure of thy covetousness. The Lord of hosts hath
sworn by himself, saying, Surely I wUl fiU thee with men,
' Jer. 1. 35-15. ! Jer. li. 2-4, 8, 9.

410 BABYLON.
as with caterpUlars ; and they shall lift up a shout against
thee.1 Behold, I am against thee, 0 destroying mountain,
saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth ; and I will
stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from
the rocks, and wUl make thee a burnt mountain. Set ye
up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the
nations, prepare the nations against her; call together against
her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashcbenaz; — prepare
against her the nations, with the kings of the Medes, the
captains thereof, and aU the rulers thereof, and aU the land
of his dominion. And the land shall tremble and sorrow ;
for every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against
Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation without
an inhabitant. The mighty men of Babydon have forborne
to fight, they have remained in their holds ; their might
hath failed ; they became as women ; they have burnt her
dweUing-places ; her bars are broken. One post shaU run
to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show
the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end, and that
the passages are stopped. — Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the
God of Israel, The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing-
floor : it is time to thresh her ; yet a little while, and the
time of her harvest shaU come.2 I wiU dry up her sea, and
make her springs dry. And Babydon shaU become heaps, a
dwelling-place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing,
without an inhabitant. In their heat I will make their
feasts, and I wUl make them drunken, that they may
rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake. How is
the praise of the whole earth surprised ! How is Babylon
become an astonishment among the nations ! The sea is
come up upon Babylon : she is covered with the multitude of
the waves thereof. Her cities are a desolation, a dry land,
and a wUderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither
' Jer. li. 11, 13, 14. 2 Jer. li. 25, 27-33.

BABYLON. 411
doth any son of man pass thereby. And I will punish Bel
in Babylon ; and I wUl bring forth out of his mouth that
which he hath swallowed up : and the nations shall not
flow together any more unto him ; yea the waU of Babylon
shah faU. A rumour shaU both come one year, and after that
in another year shaU come a rumour, and violence in the
land, ruler against ruler. Therefore, behold, the days come
that I will do judgment upon the graven images of Babylon ;
and her whole land shaU be confounded, and aU her slain
shaU faU in the midst of her, fcc.1 And I wiU make drunk
her princes, and her wise men, her captains, and her rulers,
and her mighty men; and they shall sleep a perpetual
sleep, and not wake, saith the King, whose name is the
Lord of hosts. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, The broad
walls of Babylon shaU be utterly broken, and her high gates
shah be burned "with fire ; and the people shaU labour in vain,
and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary. And it
shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book,
that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst
of Euphrates ; and thou shalt say, Thus shaU Babylon sink, and
shah not rise from the evil that I wiU bring upon her."2
The enemies who were to besiege Babylon — the cowar
dice of the Babylonians — the manner in which the city was
taken, and aU the remarkable circumstances of the siege,
were foretold and described by the prophets as the facts are
related by ancient historians.
Go up, 0 Elam (or Persia); besiege, 0 Media! The Lord
hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes; for his
device is against Babylon to destroy it.3 The kings of
Persia and Media, prompted by a common interest, freely
entered into a league against Babylon, and with one accord
intrusted the command of their united armies to Cyrus,4 the
¦ Jer. li. 36, 37, 39, 41-44, 46, 47. 2 Jer. li. 57, 58, 63, 64.
3 Jackson (Dr Thos.), Grotius, Poole, Prideaux, Lowth, Rollin, Bishop Newton, &c.
1 Xenoph. Cyrop. lib. i. ;. v. p. 53, ed. Hutch. Glasg. 1821.

412 BABYLON.
relative and eventuaUy the successor of them both. But
the taking of Babylon was not reserved for these kingdoms
alone ; other nations had to be prepared against her.
Set ye up a standard in the land; blow the trumpet
among the nations, prepare the nations against her, call
together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and
Ashchenaz. Lo, I will raise, and cause to come up
against Babylon, an assembly of great nations from the
north country, fee.1 Cyrus subdued the Armenians, who
had revolted against Media, spared their king, bound
them over anew to their allegiance, by kindness rather
than by force, and incorporated their army with his own.2
He adopted the Hyrcanians, who had rebeUed against Baby
lon, as aUies and confederates with the Medes and Persians.3
He conquered the united forces of the Babylonians and
Lydians, took Sardis, with Croesus and aU his wealth, spared
his life, after he was at the stake, restored to him his famUy
and his household, received him into the number of his coun-
seUors and friends, and thus prepared the Lydians, over
whom he reigned, and who were formerly combined with
Babylon, for coming up against it} He overthrew also the
Phrygians and Cappadocians, and added their armies in like
manner to his accumulating forces.6 And by successive
alliances and conquests, by proclaiming liberty to the slaves,
by a humane policy, consummate skill, and a pure and noble
disinterestedness, and a boundless generosity, he changed,
within the space of twenty years, a confederacy which the
king of Babylon had raised up against the Medes and
Persians, whose junction he feared, into a confederacy even
of the same nations against Babylon itself; — and thus a
standard was set up against Babylon in many a land,
kingdoms were summoned, prepared, and gathered together
1 Jackson, Grotius, Poole, &c. &c. 2 Xenoph. Cyrop. lib. iii. «. i. p. 156.
3 Ibid. lib. iv. c. ii. pp. 215, 217. « Xenoph. lib. v. c. ii. pp. 408, 416.
» Ibid. lib. vii. c. iv. pp. 427, 428.

BABYLON. 413
against her; and an assembly of great nations from the
north, — including Ararat and Minni, or the greater and
lesser Armenia, and Ashchenaz, or according to Bochart,
Phrygia, — were raised up and caused to come against
Babylon. Without their aid, and before they were sub
jected to his authority, he had attempted in vain to conquer
Babylon ; but when he had prepared and gathered them
together, it was taken, though by artifice more than by
power. They shall hold the bow and the lance — they shall ride
upon horses — let the archer bend his bow — all ye that
bend the bow shoot at her. They rode upon horses. Forty
thousand Persian horsemen were armed from among the
nations which Cyrus subdued; many horses of the captives
were besides distributed among aU the allies. And Cyrus
came up against Babylon with a great multitude of horses;1
and also with a great multitude of archers and javelin-men,2
that held the bow and the lance.
No sooner had Cyrus reached Babylon, with the nations
which he had prepared and gathered against her, than in
hope of discovering some point not utterly impregnable,
accompanied by his chief officers and friends, he rode around
the waUs, and examined them on every side, after having
for that purpose stationed his whole army round the city.3
They camped against it round about. They put themselves
in array against Babylon round about.
Frustrated in the attempt to discover, throughout the
whole circumference, a single assailable point, and finding
that it was not possible, by any attack, to make himself
master of walls so strong and so high, and fearing that his
army would be exposed to the assault of the Babylonians
by a too extended and consequently weakened fines, —
Cyrus, standing in the middle of his army, gave orders that
1 Xenoph. Cyrop. vii. c. iv. p. 428. 2 Ibid. p. 429. ' Ibid. c. v.

414 BABYLON.
the heavy armed men should move, in opposite directions,
from each extremity towards the centre ; and the horse ;md
light armed men being nearer and advancing first, and the
phalanx being redoubled and closed up, the bravest troops
thus occupied alike the front and the rear, and the less
effective were stationed in the middle.1 Such a disposition
of the army, in the estimation of Xenophon, himself a most
skilful general, was well adapted both for fighting and pre
venting flight; while the Christian, judging differently of
their successive movements, may here see the fulfilment of
one prediction after another. For, as in this manner " they
stood facing the walls," in regular order, and not as a disor
derly and undisciplined host, though composed of various
nations, they set themselves in array against Babylon, every
man put in array.
A trench was dug round the city, — towers were erected
— Babylon was besieged — the army was divided into twelve
parts, that each, monthly by turn, might keep watch through
out the year ;2 — and though the orders were given by Cyrus,
the command of the Lord of Hosts was unconsciously obeyed
— let none thereof escape.
The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight.
They have remained in their holds ; their might hath
failed, they became as women} Babylon had been the
hammer of the whole earth, by which nations were broken
in pieces, and kingdoms destroyed. Its mighty men carried
the terror of their arms to distant regions, and led nations
captive. But they were dismayed according to the word
of the God of Israel, whenever the nations which he had
stirred up against them stood in array before their waUs.
Their timidity, so clearly predicted, was the express com
plaint and accusation of their enemies, who in vain attempted
1 Xenoph. Cyrop. vii. c. iv. 430. • Ibid. pp. 430, 434.
¦ Prideaux, Lowth, Bishop Newton, &c.

BABYLON. 415
to provoke them to the contest. Cyrus challenged their
monarch to single combat, but also in vain;1 for the hands of
the king of Babylon waxed feeble. Courage had departed
from both prince and people ; and none attempted to save
their country from spoliation, or to chase the assailants
from their gates. They sallied not forth against the invaders
and besiegers, nor did they attempt to disjoin and dis
perse them, even when drawn all around their waUs, and
comparatively weak along the extended line. Every gate
was stUl shut ; and they remained in their holds. Being
as unable to rouse their courage, even by a close blockade,
and to bring them to the field, as to scale or break down
any portion of their stupendous walls, or to force their gates
of solid brass, Cyrus reasoned that the greater their number,
the more easily would they be starved into surrender, and
yield to famine, since they would not contend with arms or
come forth to fight. And hence arose for the space of two
years his only hope of eventual success. So dispirited be
came its people, that Babylon, which had made the world
as a wUderness, was long unresistingly a beleaguered town.
But, possessed of many fertile fields, and of provisions for
twenty years, which in their timid caution they had plenti
fully stored, they derided Cyrus from their impregnable
walls within which they remained.2 Their profligacy, their
wickedness and false confidence were unabated ; they con
tinued to live carelessly in pleasures, but their might did not
return; and Babylon the Great, unlike to many a small for
tress and unwalled town, made not one effort to regain its
freedom, or to be rid of the foe.
Much time having been lost, and no progress having been
made in the siege, the anxiety of Cyrus was strongly excited,
and he wa3 reduced to a great perplexity, when at last it
1 Xen. Cyrop. lib. v. c. iii. p. 290.
2 Ibid. 1. vii. c. v. p. 434. Herod. 1. i. c. cxc.

416 BABYLON.
was suggested and immediately determined on, to turn the
course of the Euphrates. But the task was not an easy
one. The river was a quarter of a mile broad, and twelve
feet deep, and, in the opinion of one of the counsehors of
Cyrus, the city was stronger by the river than by its waUs.
DUigent and laborious preparation was made for the execu
tion of the scheme, yet so as to deceive the Babylonians.
And the great trench, ostensibly formed for the purpose of
blockade, which for the time it effectually secured, was dug
around the waUs on every side, in order to drain the Euph
rates, and to leave its channel a straight passage into the
city, through the midst of which it flowed. When aU things
were in readiness for the execution of his design, Cyrus, hav
ing formed his army into two great divisions, stationed them
respectively where the river entered, and where it emerged
from the city, and hasted with the ineffective part of his
troops to the lake which the queen of Babylon had made,
and suddenly diverted the course of the Euphrates. So soon
as the water ceased to flow into its wonted channel, Cyrus
having returned to his army, commanded those about him to
descend into the dry part of the river,1 to ascertain if a pas
sage could be effected ; and on their reporting its practica-
bUity, the order was given to the vast besieging army to pass
by the bed of the river as a road into the city. " I will dry
up her sea, and make the springs dry. Thus saith the
Lord, — that saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up
thy rivers. A drought is upon her waters; and they shall
be dried up."2
Each command of Cyrus, and each act of his army, as
related by Herodotus and Xenophon, shows how the plea
sure of the Lord and his purpose against Babylon were
performed. 1 E19 to fapov tov irorafiov, Xen. vii. 5, p. 435. Tovs n-OTOfious tou ^rjpcwia. Septuagint
translation. 2 Grotius, Jackson, Prideaux, Lowth, Rollin, Bishop Newton, &c.

BABYLON. 417
The father of history expresses a doubt whether the de
vice, by which a way, unimpeded by the impregnable waUs,
was opened into Babylon, was the invention of Cyrus, or
the suggestion of another. But there is not a doubt in his
tory that then, as at a future period, a snare was laid for
Babylon} The execution of an enterprise so hazardous, demanded
the greatest circumspection and regularity of movement.
And Cyrus gave orders to eaeh Persian captain of a thousand
men, cavalry as well as infantry, to be at his post and in his
own presence, at the head of his soldiers, ranged two and
two, to be followed by the aUies in their wonted order.2 And
thus watching their time and preserving their, ranks, they
marched into the city, every man in the order previously pre
scribed. That men should have rode in hostUe array against
such a city as Babylon, begirt with stupendous waUs, except
where a deep river passed between them, is not the least
wonder of the siege. But Cyrus, with his many thousands
of horsemen, and Alexander afterwards with his band, of
Greeks, were both the servants of the Lord in accomplishing
the prediction. They shall ride upon horses, every man put
in array, like a man to ihe battle against thee, 0 daughter
of Babylon. WhUe hosts of enemies thus stole into Babylon, hke a
thief into a house by stratagem and at night, no situation
for the moment could have been more critical and danger
ous than theirs : for if the design had been discovered, and
if the gates leading from the river to the city had been shut,
they would have been shut up as in a net, as Herodotus
relates,3 and their destruction would have been seemingly in
evitable ; and but for the word that never errs, and the eye
that watches over all, the assaUants would have been the
' Grotius, Jackson, &c. 2 Xen. vii. 5, p. 435.
? Her. lib. i. c. cxci. Jackson, &c 21

4 i 8 BABYLON.
victims. But the Babylonians, given up on that night to
intemperance in honour of their gods, exercised no caution
as they felt no fear, and the enemy passed into the city
without obstruction or opposition, — for, though they knew
it not, the prophecy was true, the gates shall not be shut.
To encourage his troops to pass fearlessly through the
streets, and to cast off the dread of being assailed with darts
from the roofs of the houses, Cyrus previously announced
that the doors were of palm-wood, covered with bitumen,
and would easUy be set on fire by the torches and inflam
mable matter with which, for that intent, they were plenti-
fuUy supplied.1 They have burnt her dwelling-places ; her
bars are broken. To which it is added,
One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger
to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city
is taken at one end ; and that ihe passages are stopped,
and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of
war are affrighted. The king was in the city, and yet
had to be told that it was taken. The seeming enigma,
that messengers should run in different and opposite direc
tions, to convey to the same place tidings of the same event,
is expounded by the fact of the nearly simultaneous entrance
of the enemy at both ends of Babylon, between which the
space of at least eight miles intervened. In attempting to
bear with all expedition the disastrous tidings to the king in
his palace, situated near the centre of the city, messengers
from each end would thus necessarily so run as to meet
each other, unconscious that the same message was alike
borne by both, and that their speed would be in vain. The
proof is not here the less striking because it is inferential ;
for it may weU be presumed that such messengers did run,
and that the numerous torches of the invading host were
uot borne in vain. ¦ Xen. lib. vii. 5, p. 436.

BABYLON. 419
The river, from its great breadth and depth, and its sides
being walled and strongly fortified, was held to be a defence
of the city, rivaUing, if not surpassing, that of the walls.
And the city was taken, not only in a manner most un
suspected, but at a time when the Babylonians were the
most unprepared and aU sobriety and vigilance set aside.
Herodotus relates, on the testimony of the inhabitants, that
from the great extent of the city, and its being taken at the
time of a feast, while the people were given up to dancing
and indulgence, those who lived in the utmost parts of the
city were in the hands of their enemies, before those who
dwelt in the centre were conscious of the fact.1 And though
it may seem incredible that, as Aristotle relates, the tidings
were unknown in some places within the waUs on the third
day ; yet such a statement from such a pen, adds to the
proof of the predicted fact. There was no alarm from
without ; nor even the appearance of a foe. Not a gate of
the city wall was opened; not a brick of it had fallen. But,
as a snare had been laid for Babylon, so also it was taken,
and it was not aware;2 it was found and also caught, for
it had striven against the Lord. How is the praise of the
whole earth surprised! For thou hast trusted in thy
wickedness ; and thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath
perverted thee; therefore shall evil come upon thee, and thou
shalt not know from whence it ariseth ; and mischief shall
fall upon thee, and thou shalt not be able to put it off, &c.
— None shall save thee.
In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make
them drunken, tliat they may rejoice and sleep a perpetual
sleep, and not wake, saith the Lord. I will bring them
down like lambs to the slaughter, &c. / will make drunk
her princes and her wise men; her captains and her rulers,
and her mighty men, and they shall sleep a perpetual
1 Herod, lib. i. c. cxci. 2 Grotius, Jackson, Poole, &c.

420 BABYLON.
sleep} &c. Cyrus, having purposely chosen, for the execu
tion of his plan, the time of a great annual Babylonish
festival, stimulated his assembled troops to enter the city,
because, in that night of general revel within the walls,
many of them were asleep, many drunk, and confusion
universally prevailed. On passing, without obstruction or
hindrance, into the city, the Persians slaying some, putting
others to flight, and joining with the revellers as if slaughter
had been merriment, hastened by the shortest way to the
palace, and reached it ere yet a messenger had told the king
that the city was taken. The gates of the palace, which was
strongly fortified, were shut. The guards stationed before
them were drinking beside a blazing light, when the Per
sians rushed impetuously upon them. The louder and altered
clamour, no longer joyous, caught the ear of the inmates of
the palace, and the bright hght showed them the work of
destruction, without revealing its cause. And not aware of
the presence of an enemy in the midst of Babylon, the king
himself, excited by the warlike tumults at the gates, com
manded those within to examine from whence it arose ; and
according to the same word, by which the gates (leading
from the river to the city) were not shut, the loins of kings
were loosed to open before Cyrus the two-leaved gates. At
the first sight of the opened gates of the palace of Babylon,
the eager Persians sprang in. Tlie king of Babylon heard
the report of them — anguish took hold of him, — he and all
who were about him perished : God had numbered his
kingdom and finished it : it was divided and given to the
Medes and Persians ; the lives of the Babylonian princes,
and lords, and rulers, and captains, closed with that night's
festival : the drunken slept a perpetual sleep, and did not
wake}

1 Grotius, Jackson, Poole, &c.
2 Herod, lib. i. c. cxci. Xen. Cyr. lib. vii. c. v. pp. 430, 434.

BABYLON. 421
Cyrus' brief address to his generals before marching into
Babylon, concluded, as recorded by Xenophon, in these re
markable words : " Go, seize your arms ; and together with
the gods, I wUl lead you on (^o-opu) . Do ye, said he,
Gadatas and Gobryas, show us the ways, for ye know them ;
and, once entered, advance with the utmost expedition to the
palace." The speed of the conqueror and of the avenger of
blood, outstripped that of the running messenger of misfor
tune. Gobryas, formerly an injured vassal of the king of
Babylon, pressed on with those about him, not without the
hope that on such a night, while unguarded revelry reigned
universally in the city, the gates of the palace, like those of
the river, might be open. But though their hopes were
vain, and the palace gates were shut, and a double waU sur
rounded it, yet the gates were opened, and when the palace
was taken, and the king and his nobles slain, the castles
were delivered up,1 and Cyrus, in a single night, was master
of Babylon. I will go before thee, and make ihe crooked
places straight.
To mask their purpose, the invading host mimicked the
shouting, as their leaders knew the customs of the intempe
rate and frantic crowd, through whom they passed, or whom
they slew. And it was from the warlike and tumultuous
noise,2 exceeding the obstreperous mirth of drunken soldiery,
around the palace and at the very gates, that the two-leaved
gates were opened. Shout against her round about. Their
voice shall roar (lit. sound, or make a tumultuous noise,)
like the sea. The king of Babylon heard the report of
them, &c.
All her slain shall fall in the midst of her. The Ba
bylonians would not go forth to fight. They mocked the
enemy from their lofty walls, and defied danger from with
out, and dreaded it not within. In the siege, none of the
¦ Xen. ibid. p. 440. 2 Ibid. p. 438.

422 BABYLON.
Babylonians feU — but in the city, even in the midst of it
they were slain. There the palace was situated and the
guards were stationed, and in the very midst of it the sol
diery of Babylon were massacred; the men of war were
affrighted, and then, together with the king, his princes and
lords, were there slain.
She hath been proud against the Lord, against the Holy
One of Israel: therefore shall her young men fall in the
streets, and all her men of war shall be cut off in
that day. Cyrus sent troops of horse throughout the
streets, with orders to slay all who were found there. And
he commanded proclamation to be made, in the Syrian
language, that aU who were in the houses should remain
within; and that, if any one were found abroad, he should
be killed. These orders were obeyed.1 Every one that is
found shall be thrust through, &c. They shall wander every
man to his quarter.
I will fill thee with men as with caterpillars. Not
only did the Persian army enter with ease as caterpillars,
together with aU the nations that had come up against
Babylon, but they seemed also as numerous. Cyrus, after
the capture of the city, made a great display of his cavalry
in the presence of the Babylonians, and in the midst of
Babylon. Four thousand guards stood before the palace
gates, and two thousand on each side. These advanced as
Cyrus approached; two thousand spearmen fohowed them.
These were succeeded by four square masses of Persian
cavalry, each consisting of ten thousand men ; and to these
again were added, in their order, the Median, Armenian,
Hyrcanian, Caducian, and Sacian horsemen, — all as before
riding upon horses, every man in array — with lines of
chariots four abreast, concluding the train of the numerous
hosts.2 Cyrus afterwards reviewed, at Babylon, the whole
1 Xen. Cyr. ibid. p. 439. * Ibid. lib. viii. c. iii. pp. 494, 495.

BABYLON. 423
of his army, consisting of one hundred and twenty thousand
horse, two thousand chariots, and six hundred thousand
foot.1 Babylon, which was taken when not aware, and
within whose waUs no enemy, except a captive, had been
ever seen, was also filled with men as with caterpillars, as
if there had not been a waU around it. The Scriptures do
not relate the manner in which Babylon was taken, nor do
they ever aUude to the exact fulfilment of the prophecies.
But there is, in every particular, a strict coincidence between
the predictions of the prophets and the historical narratives
both of Herodotus and Xenophon.
On taking Babylon suddenly, and by surprise, Cyrus,
as had been literaUy prophesied concerning him, and as the
sign by which it was to be known that the Lord had caUed
him by his name, (Isa. xiv. 1-42) became immediately
possessed of the most secret treasures of Babylon. No
enemy had ever dared to rise up against that great city.
To take it, seemed not a work for man to attempt; but it
became the easy prey of him who was caUed the servant of
the Lord. And as at this day, — from the perfect represen
tation given by the prophets, of every feature of fallen
Babylon, now at last utterly desolate, — men may know
that God is the Lord, seeing that all who have visited and
describe it, show that the predicted judgments against it
have been literaUy fulfilled; so at that time, Cyrus — who,
for two years, could only look on the outer side of the outer
waU of Babylon, and who had begun to despair of reducing
it by famine,— was to know by the treasures of darkness,
and hidden riches of secret places being given into his
- Xen. Cyr. c. vi. p. 532.
" Isaiah prophesied above one hundred and sixty years before the taking of
Babylon, two hundred and fifty years before Herodotus, and nearly three hundred
and fifty before Xenophon. See Bishop Newton. — Josephus states that this pro
phecy was delivered by Isaiah two hundred and ten years before the taking of
Babylon- Isaiah prophesied. E. o. 760-798. Babylon was taken by Cyrus, B. o. 538.
Herodotus was born about 484 B. c, and Xenophon 349.

424 BABYLON.
hand, that ihe Lord which had called him by his name,
was ihe God of Israel. And when the appointed time
had come that the power of their oppressor was to be
broken, Babylon was taken; and when the similarly pre
scribed period of the captivity of the Jews, for whose sake
he was ealled, had expired, Cyrus was their deliverer.
Thus saith ihe Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose
right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.
Cyrus commencing his career with a small army of Persians,
not only succeeded to the kingdom of the Medes and Per
sians, first united under him, but the Hyrcanians yielded
also voluntarily to his authority. He subdued the Syrians,
Assyrians, Cappadocians, both Phrygias, the Lydians, Carians,
Phoenicians, and Babylonians. He governed the Bactrians,
Indians, and CUicians, and also the Sacians, Paphlagonians,
and Mariandinians, and other nations. He likewise re
duced to his authority the Greeks that were in Asia, and the
Cyprians, and the Egyptians.1 Nations were thus subdued
before him.
I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not
regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in
it. He who was caUed the anointed of the Lord was free
from covetousness. His character is drawn by Xenophon,
(who states that he excehed all other kings,) as the model
of a wise and generous prince. The liberality of Cyrus
was more noble than the mere possession of immensity of
wealth, though including both the riches of Croesus and the
treasures of Babylon. He reckoned that his riches belonged
not any more to himself than to his friends.2 And he
made as weU as pronounced it his object to use and not to
hoard his wealth, and to apply it to the reward of his
servants, and in relief of their wants. So little did he
regard silver or delight in gold, that Croesus told him
1 Xen. Cyr. lib. i. pp. 4, 5. • Ib. lib. viii. t. iv. p. 516.

BABYLON. 425
that, by his liberality, he would make himself poor,
instead of storing up vast treasures to himself. The
Medes possessed, in this respect, the spirit of their chief, of
which an instance, recorded by Xenophon, is too striking
and appropriate to be passed over.1 When Gobryas,
an Assyrian governor, whose son the king of Babylon
had slain, hospitably entertained him and his army,
Cyrus appealed to the chiefs of the Medes and Hyrcanians,
and to the noblest and most honourable of the Persians,
whether giving first what was due unto the gods, and leav
ing to the rest of the army their portion, they would not
overmatch his generosity by ceding to Mm their whole
share of the first and plentiful booty which they had won
from the land of Babylon. Loudly applauding the proposal,
they immediately and unanimously consented; and one of
them said, " Gobryas may have thought us poor, because
we came not loaded with golden coins,2 and drink not out
of golden cups ; but by this he wiU know, that men can be
generous even without gold."3 As for gold, they did not
delight in it.
Gobryas, it may be presumed, was stirred up and pre
pared, by gratitude on the one hand, as weU as by revenge
on the other, to go up against Babydon. And, it may be
mentioned, he was afterwards the first to lead the way to
the palace; and — for, though a great deep, the judgments
of God are altogether righteous, — his hand was among those
who slew the murderer of his son.
WhUe such abundant illustrations of the truth of pro
phecy in respect to the siege of Babylon are before us, it
may be specially noted, that there is not any other king or
conqueror in ancient history, or even in Christian times,
whose character, in the union of a noble disinterestedness
and nobler self-denial, and of a sound because moral policy,
1 Xen. Cyr. lib. viii. c. ii. p. 482. 2 Darics. 3 Xen. lib. v. p. 289.

426 BABYLON.
and of an integrity which casts the conduct of many others
into the shade, and of forbearance and generosity toward
conquered enemies, the Babylonians excepted, ever sur
passed that of Cyrus, as drawn or described by profane
historians. By some it has indeed been deemed, we think
unjustly, as in part a fiction, even because of its very excel
lence. But the description is given by a heathen, which
taUies so closely with the word of the prophet. Thus saith
the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus — I have raised him up
in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways}
And it is immediately added by the prophet — he shall
build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price
nor reward, saith the Lord of Hosts.2 And assuredly he
was the man who first set forth the decree for the restora
tion of the Jews and the rebuilding of the temple. And
far from acting thus, either for price or reward, he com
manded the generals and governors in the vicinity of Judea,
to supply the Jews with gold and sUver, for the building of
the temple and beasts for sacrifice, which accordingly they
did.3 Cyrus, thus called by name, — a hundred and twenty
years, as recorded by Josephus, before the destruction of the
temple, — to the execution, in ite appointed time, of the
Lord's purpose of restoring the captive Jews and giving
commandment for the rebuUding of the city of Jerusalem,
issued his decree to that effect, in the full knowledge, as
related by the Jewish historian, of the prophecy of Isaiah,
after the seventy years' captivity had expired. Scriptural
history bears, " In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia,
that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might
be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of
Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout aU his
kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith
- Isaiah xiv. 1, 13. 2 Isaiah xiv. 13. 3 Jos. Ant. lib. xi. c. i. sect. 2, 3.

BABYLON. 427
Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath
given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath
charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in
Judah."1 The words of the decree, or writing, are re
corded by Josephus, which bear, that the Lord Almighty,
the God of Israel, had given him aU the kingdoms of the
earth, (rr/s oiKoiyxevr;s arroSei^e /JacnAta).2 In profane history it is
related, in like manner, that Cyrus was the founder of the
Persian empire, — the second great monarchy or universal
empire, after the faU of the Babylonian. Arrian, Strabo,
and Plutarch give the inscription on the tomb of Cyrus,
— which was visited by Alexander the Great, the subverter
of the Persian empire; "0 mortal, I am Cyrus, the son of
Cambyses, who founded the Persian empire and ruled over
Asia, do not envy me a monument." The name of Cyrus
in the prophetic record, is far more enduring than any monu
ment of marble or of brass. And he who thus executed the-
counsel of the Lord, was no subordinate ruler, but a mighty
king, the conqueror of nations, and the liberator of the Jews.
Such, as Herodotus states, was the first conquest; such
the first conqueror of Babylon: and such the prophetic his
tory of both.
None shall return in vain. The walls of Babjdon
were incomparably the loftiest and the strongest ever built
by man. They were constructed of such stupendous size
and strength, on very purpose that no possibility might
exist of Babylon ever being taken. And, if ever confidence
in bulwarks could not have been misplaced, it was when the
citizens and soldiery of Babylon, who feared to encounter
their enemies in the field, — in perfect assurance of their
safety, and beyond the reach of the Parthian arrow, scoffed,
from the summit of their impregnable waUs, the hosts which
encompassed them. But though the proud boast of a city
! Ezra i. 1, 2. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22, 23. " Ant. xi. 1.

428 BABYLON.
so defended, and which had never been taken — that it
would stand for ever, — seemed scarcely presumptuous ; yet,
subsequently to the delivery of the prophecies concerning it,
Babylon was not only repeatedly taken, but was never once
besieged in vain. Cyrus indeed departed, after he first ap
peared before its waUs, but he went to prepare and gather
together the nations against it. And he did not return in
vain. But this prediction, as it is applicable also to all
others, is true, not of him only, but also of aU who, in after-
ages, came up against Babylon. It feU before every hand
that was raised against it. Yet its greatness did not depart,
nor was its glory obscured in a day. Cyrus was not its
destroyer; but he sought by wise institutions to perpetuate
its pre-eminence among the nations. He left it to his suc
cessor in aU its strength and magnificence. RebeUing
against Darius, the Babylonians made preparations for a
siege, and bade defiance to the whole power of the Persian
empire. Fully resolved not to yield, and that famine might
never reduce them to submission, they adopted the most
desperate and barbarous resolution of putting every woman
in the city to death, with the exception of their mothers,
and one female, the best beloved in every famUy, to bake their
bread. AU the rest were assembled together, and strangled.1
These two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day,
the loss of children and widowhood: they shall come upon
thee in their perfection, for the multitude of thy sorceries,
and for the great abundance of thine enchantments. For thou
hast trusted in thy wickedness, &c. They did come upon
them in their perfection, when their wives and chUdren
were strangled by their own hands ; and so suddenly, as
before, in a moment in one day, did these things come upon
them, that the victims were assembled for the sacrifice ; so
general was the instant widowhood, that fifty thousand
1 Herod, lib. iii. c. cl. torn. iii. 160, edit. Foul. — See Prideaux, Bishop Newton.

BABYLON. 429
women were afterwards taken, in proportionate numbers,
from the different neighbouring provinces of the empire, to
replace those who had been slain ; and the very reservation
of their mothers multiplied the lamentations for the loss of
children. But trust in their wickedness 'brought them no
safety. For, while they were thus instrumental in the in
fliction of one grievous judgment, for which such murderers
were ripe, their iniquity was not thereby lessened ; and
therefore, at however great a price, they procured not any
security against another judgment, which also had been
denounced against Babylon for its wickedness. They
deemed themselves absolutely secure against famine and
against assault. The artifice of Cyrus could not again be a
snare ; and an attempt to renew it was, along with every
other, entirely frustrated. But still it was not in vain that
Darius besieged Babylon.
In the twentieth month of the siege a single Persian,
whose body was covered over with the marks of stripes and
with blood, and whose nose and ears had been newly cut
off, presented himself at one of the gates of Babylon, — a
helpless object of pity, and, if not a great criminal indeed,
the obvious victim of wanton and savage cruelty. He had
fled, or escaped, from the camp of the enemy. But he was
not a common deserter, such as they might not have ad
mitted within their waUs, — but it was Zopyrus, who was
weU known as one of the chief nobles of Persia. He repre
sented to the Babylonians, that, not for any crime, but for
the honest advice which he had given to Darius to raise
the siege, as the taking of the city seemed to all impossible,
the enraged tyrant (his pride wounded, or his fears perhaps
awakened, that his army would be discouraged by such
counsel) had inflicted upon him the severest cruelties,
caused him to be mutilated as they saw, and to be scourged,
of which his whole body bore the marks ; — to one of his

430 BABYLON.
proud spirit and high rank, disgrace was worse than suffer
ing, and he came to join the revolters, his soul burning for
vengeance against their common tyrant. " And now," ad
dressing them, he said, " I come for the greatest good to
you, for the greatest evil to Darius, to his army, and to the
Persians. The injuries which I have suffered shaU not be
unrevenged, for I know, and will disclose all his designs."
On such proofs, and cheered by such hopes, the Baby
lonians did not doubt the sincerity of Zopyrus nor his
devotion to their cause, identified, as it clearly seemed, with
the only hope of revenge against the cruel author of his
wrongs, towards whom they could not conceive but that he
would cherish an inflexible, hatred. He sought but to fight
against their enemies. At his request, they gladly and
unhesitatingly intrusted , him with a military command.
Forgiveness of injuries was not then reckoned a virtue —
which it is too seldom practically accounted even in a
Christian land ; and vengeance, still called honour, sleeps
not in an unforgiving breast. Zopyrus soon satisfied the
Babylonians that his wrongs would not long be unavenged.
To their delight, having watched the first opportunity, he
saUied forth from the gate of Semiramis, on the tenth day
after his entrance into the city, and falling suddenly on a
thousand of the enemy, slew them every one. After ah
interval of only seven days, twice that number were, in like
manner, slain, near to the Ninian gates. The men of Baby
lon were animated with new vigour and new hopes ; and
the praise of Zopyrus was on every tongue. He received
a higher command. But the Persians, seemingly more
wary, were nowhere open to attack for the space of twenty
days. On the expiration of that period, however, Zopyrus,
by a noted exploit, again proved himself worthy of stiU
greater authority, by leading out his troops from the Chal
dean gates, and killing, in one spot, four thousand men

BABYLON. 431
In reward for such services, and such tried fidelity, skUl,
and courage, as none, they thought, could be more worthy
of the honour and of the trust, they not only raised him to
the chief command of their army, but appointed him to the
dignified and most responsible office in Babylon, which it
was his aim to attain, that of (ru^orj>v\ai) guardian of their
waUs.1 Darius, as if to be secure against the continued repetition
of such desultory carnage of his troops, advanced with all
his army to the waUs. They were manned to repel the
assault. But the treachery of Zopyrus, however incredible,
and unknown and unsuspected, alike by the Babylonians
and the Persians, became immediately apparent. Intrusted
as he was, in virtue of his office, with the gates of the city,
no sooner had the enemy approached, and the armed
citizens ascended the waUs, than he opened the Belidian and
the Cissian gates, close to which the choicest Persian troops
were stationed. The whole scheme was a preconcerted
sna/re, known only to Darius and Zopyrus, and invented'
solely by the latter, the mutilation of whose body was his
own voluntary act. To the glory of the deed were added
the greatest gifts and honours, and the governorship of
Babylon without tribute, for his reward. The numbers of
the different detachments of the Persian troops who fell,
their positions, and the precise time of their successive ad
vancements, had all been resolved on and arranged.2 And
Darius as freely sacrificed the lives of seven thousand men,
as Zopyrus had inflicted incurable wounds upon himself.
" Thus," says Herodotus, " was Babylon a second time
taken." And thus was the word of God, — from whom
nothing past, present, or future can be hid, — a second time
fulfilled against Babylon — none shall return in vain.
Babylon was a third time taken by Alexander the Great.
1 Herod, c. clii.— civil pp. 166-173. ° Ibid. u. clviii. clix.

432 BABYLON.
Mazaeus, the Persian general, surrendered the city into his
hands, and he entered it with his army drawn up, " as if
they were marching to battle."1 Again was it filled with
men, — and literaUy was every man put in array, like a
man to the battle. The siege of so fortified a city would
have been a work of great difficulty and labour, even to the
conqueror of Asia.2 But the inhabitants eagerly flocked
upon the walls to see their new king, and exchanged, with
out a straggle, the Persian for the Macedonian yoke.
Babylon was afterwards successively taken by Antigonus,
by Demetrius, by Antiochus the Great, and by the Par
tisans. But whatever king or nation came up against it,
none returned in vain.
Each step in the progress of the decline of Babylon was
the accomplishment of a prophecy. Conquered, for the first
time,3 by Cyrus, it was afterwards reduced from an imperial
to a tributary city. Come down and sit in the dust, 0
virgin daughter of Babylon ; sit on the ground : there is
no throne, 0 daughter of the Chaldeans. — After the Baby
lonians rebelled against Darius, the walls were reduced in
height, and aU the gates destroyed.4 The wall of Babylon
shall fall, her walls are thrown down. — Xerxes, after his
ignominious retreat from Greece, rifled the temples of Baby
lon,5 in which the golden images alone were estimated at
£20,000,000, beside treasures of vast amount, i" will
punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his
mouth that which he has swallowed up ; I will do judg
ment upon the graven images of Babylon} — Alexander the
1 " Quadrato agmine, quod ipse ducebat, velut in aciem irent, ingredi suos jubet. "
(Quint. Curt. lib. v. c. ii.)
2 " Tam munitas urbis. " (Ibid.)
3 Herod, lib. i. c. cxci. Lowth, Bishop Newton.
4 Ibid. lib. iii. c. cl. Calmet, &c.
5 Ibid. lib. i. c. elxxxiii. Arrian. de Expeditione Alex. lib. vii. c. xvii. Frideaux,
Lowth, Bishop Newton.
« Jer. li. 44, 47, 52.

BABYLON. 433
Great attempted to restore it to its former glory, and de
signed to make it the metropolis of a universal empire.
But whUe the building of the temple of Belus, and the
reparation of the embankments of the Euphrates, were
actuaUy carrying on, the conqueror of the world died, at the
commencement of this his last undertaking, in the height of
his power, and in the flower of his age.1 Take balm for her
pain, if so be she may be healed. We would have healed
Babylon, but she is not healed.2 — Patrocles, the governor
of Babylon under Seleucus, one of the successors of Alex
ander, alarmed at the sudden and unexpected tidings, that
his enemy Demetrius, with an army, was at hand, dared
not, from the smaU number of his forces, wait his approach,
ordered the Babylonians to leave the city and to " flee into
the desert,"3 and, abandoning the city, sought protection for
himself and for his troops from the marshes of the Euphrates
rather than the walls of Babylon. On entering Babylon,
though he had come up suddenly like the swelling of a
river, Demetrius found "a deserted city."4 He shall come
up like a lion from the swelling of Jordan unto the habi
tation of the strong : but I will make them suddenly run
away from her}
Babylon was soon resorted to again, but the vicinity of
the city of Seleucia built on very purpose, as Phny records,6
and as Christian writers have long remarked, tended greatly
to ite abandonment and decay, and was the chief cause of
the decline of Babylon as a city, and drained it of a great
part of its population. Ptolemy Euergetes, who extended
his conquests beyond the Euphrates, carried with him into
1 Arrian. lib. vii. c. xvii. Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 738. Ibid. Rollin.
2 Jer. li. 8, 9.
3 <j)vyelv eis Tt\v ep-qp.ov.
* Bafivhiova Tqv iro\lv kK\eKeutip.ivrp, evpe. Diod. Sic. tom. viii. lib. xix. pp. 423, 424.
5 Jer. I. 44.
8 In solitudinem rediit exhausta vicinitate Seleuciffi, ob id conditse a Nicatore.
Plin. Nat. Hist. 1. vi. «. 36. 28

434 BABYLON.
Egypt 2500 idols, some of which Cambyses, who reigned at
Babylon, had long before taken from the Egyptians.1 At
a later period, or 130 years before the Christian era, Phra-
hates king of Parthia, as Justin relates, having marched
against the Scythians who had begun to lay waste his terri
tories, delegated his authority to one Himerus, a favourite
on account of the beauty of his youth or childhood, who,
forgetful of his former (condition of) life, and of his duty as
deputy, grievously oppressed the Babylonians and other
states.2 Phrahates was discomfited and slain by the
Scythians, as was also his uncle and successor, Artabanus,
soon after by the Thogarii ; and his son Mithridates the
Great immediately succeeded to the kingdom of Parthia.
Diodorus Siculus, in seeming inadvertence, speaks of Eue-
merus or Humerus as king of Parthia ; but mentions that
he was an Hyrcanian by birth, and in a single passage or
fragment, his description of the cruelties exercised by him
against the Babylonians is rich in illustrations, and, con
joined with corroborative testimony, marks the continued
progress of the prophetic judgments against Babylon. Ex
ceeding in cruelty aU known tyrants as Diodorus relates, he
omitted no sort of punishment ; for having enslaved many
of the Babylonians even for any cause whatever, he was
wont to send them away with all their households into
Media, having given orders that their effects, or rather that
they themselves should be sold as spoU. He also set fire
to the forum of Babylon, and to some of the temples, and
destroyed the fairest part of the city3
There is no throne, 0 daughter of the Chaldeans ; for
1 Hieron. Tom. v. p. 706, in Dan. xi. 8.
2 Phrahates cum adversus eos proficisceretur, ad tutelam regni reliquit Himerum
quendam, pueritise sibi flore conciliatum ; qui tyrannica crudelitate, ublitus et vital
prseteritas, et vicarii officii Babylonios, multasque alias civitates importune vexavit.
Justin, lib. xlii. p. 268.
3 'On "EvTj^epos 6 Tiav TIap$oiv /3ao-iXei;s, 'Yokcwos wv to yevos, wjiAOTirrc 65 VTTe/>/3aAAaw iravras
tovs ftvrip.ovcvoiJi^vov9 Tvpawovs, owe kanv brroiov Ti/xwpias yevos dn-eXtire. IIoXXovs fie Tiav

BABYLON. 435
thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Take
the millstones and grind meal, &c. This prophecy is
thus interpreted by Grotius and Lowth, without any allu
sion to the actual fact of the servitude or slavery of the
Babylonians — " Prepare yourself for servile offices."1 " From
being mistress of kingdoms thou shalt become a mean slave ;
thy captives shall be set to grind, which was reckoned the
lowest degree of drudgery (see Exod. xi. 5 ; Judges xvi. 21),
such was the pistrinum, or turning the mill among the
Romans."2 Himerus, the worst of tyrants, exercised every
species of cruelty upon the Babylonians, and reduced many
of them to actual slavery, and consequently to its meanest
toils. I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease,
and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible}
In suddenly running away from her at the approach
of Demetrius, some of the inhabitants of Babylon left the
Euphrates and fled to the desert, others passed, over the
Ba(3uXo)Vttor Kat km Tats TVXpvo-a.is cttTtats TraLvoiKtow; Z^a.vSpaiToSio'a.p.evos etc; tt]V MTjfitap
e£en-ep.i^e 7rpoora£as Aa</>upOTruA7]o-at.* /cat tj]9 Ba^uAcovos ttjv ayopav, /cat Tiva nav lepmv,
eee7rp7]o-e, Kat to KpaTto-TOf n]5 7roA.e«s cueipfctpe. Diod. Sic. vol. x. p. 128. Translated as
above. The preceding passage of Diodorus is quoted by Usher and Bishop Newton,
&c, as descriptive of the desolation of Babylon and of the cruelties exercised against
the Babylonians, without any specific reference to any special prediction. In the
common Latin translation, which alone they quote, there is no mention whatever,
as in the original, of the fact, that commandment was given by the tyrant that
their spoils should be sold, or that the exiles, as spoil, should be set up for sale.
But it is not unworthy of being noted; for Lowth, who does not refer to this testi
mony of Diodorus or to any similar facts whatever, thus gives the interpretation of
the words of the prophecy, Uncover thy locks, &c. " Thy hairs shall hang about
thy ears, without being dressed up or adorned with a diadem ; thou shalt lose all
thy finery and those ornaments in which thou didst pride thyself, as marks of thy
state; and the persons of the greatest quality shall be despoiled of their gaiety, and
oakkied captives in a mean and ragged condition." Such was the interpretation of
an able commentator before the fact was applied to the prediction. And such is the
confirmation which it receives, after the lapse of more than a century, from the words
omitted by a translator, but which are to be found in the old as well as modern edi
tions of Diodorus. 1 Para te servilibus ministeriis. Grot. Isa. xlvii. 2.
• Lowth. Isa. xlvii. 2. 3 Isa. xiii. 11.
* Aac^vpa is a term which specially denotes the spoils taken from the living, as distinguished
from o-kuAo, or those of the dead. iScap. The compound word is otherwise used Dy Diodoms to
lenote that the persons of captives were sold as spoil, and thus implies that they were subjected
to the lowest servitude and utmost spoliation.

436 BABYLON.
Tigris into Susiana ; and the intervening rivers and ditches,
or marshy ground, over which they had to pass in their
hasty retreat, were the best protection of the band that
accompanied Patrocles. After reducing many of the Baby
lonians to bondage, Himerus banished them from Babylon
into Media, which lay beyond the Tigris and Choaspes and
their tributary streams : but first he commanded that they
should be sold ; and the rich and gay apparel of the proud
daughter of Babylon, ill-suited to the wandering exiles, did
not any longer befit their station or their toils. The man
dates of those who at different times had been appointed
over her, were obeyed ; but it had long before been written
concerning the daughter of the Chaldeans, uncover thy locks,
make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers,
&c. Thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever : so that thou
didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remem
ber the latter end of it.1
The temples of Babylon were rifled of their idols by
Xerxes the king of Persia, tUl the weight of these in gold
amounted to 400,000 pounds. Ptolemy Euergetes having
extended his conquests beyond the Euphrates, took with
him from the conquered provinces, on his sudden recall
and hasty return into Egypt, 2500 idols, some of which
Cambyses the son of Cyrus, who reigned at Babylon, had
previously taken from the Egyptians. When Babylon was
exhausted by Seleucia, forty mUes distant, and many of the
Babylonians removed to that city; and also when many of
them at a later period were commanded, together with ah
their households (iravouiiovi), to depart to Media — it may be
presumed that their household gods, though a hindrance
rather than a help, thus formed, time after time, a portion
of their household effects ; and that when their temples were
finally burned, many of the idols were carried away by the
1 Isa. xlvii. 2, 3, 7.

BABYLON. 437
idolatrous Babylonians, condemned to perpetual slavery and
banishment, in their weary pUgrimage to the far distant
land of their enemies. And thus it was written: Their
idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle, your
carriages were heavy loaden; they are a burden to the weary
beast. They stoop; they bow down together; they could not
deliver the burden;
But themselves are gone into captivity.1 Media, from the
first, was caUed to besiege Babylon; for the device of the
Lord was against Babylon to destroy it. And in the latter
end, 308 years after the siege, and 582 years after the date
of the prophecy, the enslaved Babylonians did go to Media
into captivity.
Himerus, an Hyrcanian by birth, was but a youth, if not
a boy, the floridness of whose juvenile looks (flore pueritice)
was, together with the casual absence of the king, the cause
of his sudden elevation to that power which, forgetful of
his former state, he so greatly abused as to excel all tyrants
in cruelty. And whUe the fuU measure of his severities, of
which none were omitted, was the cup of indignation pre
pared for the Babylonians, it may be said also of him, —
Surely the least of the flock shall draw them out; surely he
shall make their habitation desolate with them.2 His youth,
and elevation to power from such a cause, may mark him
out as the least of the flock; and in fulflUing the counsel that
the Lord had taken against Babylon, surely he at once drew
them out, and made their habitation desolate with them.
He sent them forth from Babylon, together with aU their
households ; many of the Babylonians had previously removed
with all their effects to Seleucia — They shall remove, they
shall depart, both man and beast.3
The temple of Belus, first built to bind the human race
to the plains of Shinar, and the other temples of their gods,
> Isa. xlvi. 1, 2. 2 Jer. 1. 45. 3 Jer. 1. 3.

438 BABYLON.
and many of their fine houses, whUe yet undemolished, may
have long tended to keep the lingering Babylonians within
the precincts of the devoted city. But the judgment of
God rested on the most magnificent of their temples, as
well as on the proud idolaters and their senseless idols: and
the soothsayers, the star-gazers, and ihe monthly prognosti-
cators, could not stand up and save them from the things
that were to come upon them; and the time was come when
the temples of the Babylonians could no longer be their trust
or their resort, and when their efforts to save them or their
habitations would be in vain. For it is expressly related
that Himerus set fire to the forum and some of the temples,
and destroyed the fairest part of the city — Behold they
shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not
deliver themselves from the power of the flame.1 The people
shall labour in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall
be weary.2 Bel boweih down; Nebo stoopeth; I will punish
Bel in Babylon; — and ihe nations shall not flow together any
more unto him}
It is ihe vengeance of ihe Lord: take vengeance upon
her; as she hath done, do unto her} — Woe unto them! for
their day is come, the time of their visitation. The voice of
them that flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to
declare in Zion the vengeance of the Lord our God, the
vengeance of his temple — Recompense her according to her
work; according to all that she hath done, do unto her: for
she hath been proud against the Lord, against the Holy One
of Israel} — i" will render unto Babylon, and to all the inha
bitants of Chaldea, all their evil that they have done in Zion
in your sight, saith the Lord — The Lord God of recom
pences shall surely requite} The facts relative to the siege
of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jews, thus take the
1 Isa. xlvii. 13, 14. * Jer. li. 58. = Isa. xlvi. 1 ; Jer. li. 44.
• Jer. 1. 15. 5 jer. i. 27, 28, 29. « Jer. li. 24, 56.

BABYLON. 439
place of predictions ; and a paraUel may at length be
drawn between what the Babylonians did, and what they
suffered. Bands of the Chaldees, and bands of the Syrians, and
bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Ammon
came up against Judah to destroy it.1 And so soon as the
time of recompences began, -an assembly of great nations
gathered together out of aU the countries from Egypt to the
bounds of the Caspian, and from Lydia to the Persian Gulph,
came up against Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he, and all his
host, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it; and they
built forts against it round about, and the city was besieged.2
Cyrus, having prepared the nations against Babylon, en
camped against it round about, built forts against it,3 and
laid siege to the city, which had long been the terror of the
nations. The Chaldeans took Zedekiah, the king of Judah, and
gave judgment upon him, and slew his sons the princes
or judah before his eyes; and the captain of the Babylonish
guard took the chief priest and the second priest, and the
officer that was set over the men cf war, and five men of
them that were in the king's presence, and the principal
scribe, which mustered the people of the land, and threescore
others, and brought them to the king of Babylon, and the
king of Babylon smote them and slew them,} And in the
night in which Babylon was taken, the king, together with
many of his nobles, was slain. Nor was the slaughter of
the chief rulers of Israel left unavenged, when Darius, as
Herodotus relates, impaled 3000 of the chief nobihty of
Babylon.5 All the army of the Chaldees brake down the walls of
1 2 Kings xxiv. 2. " 2 Kings xxv. 1, 2.
» Xen. Cyr. lib. vii. c. v. p. 433. * 2 Kings xxv. 6, 7, 18-21.
5 *0 Aapeto; tojv arSptav tovs nopv<paiovs juaAiO"Ta es TpiaxiAiovs ayec/coAoTrtcre.

440 BABYLON.
Jerusalem round about} and thus Darius brake down the
waU of Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar carried of the vessels of the house of the
Lord to Babylon, and put them im his temple at Babylon
— and all the vessels of the house of God, great and small,
and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures
of the king, and of his princes: all these he brought to Baby
lon.2 — The treasures of the temple of Belus became the pro
perty of Cyrus, and Darius and Xerxes, devoted Magians
or worshippers of fire, began and carried on against it the
revenges of the temple of Jerusalem, tiU aU its treasures
were exhausted, and aU its idols broken, and all that Bel
had swallowed up was brought forth out of his mouth.
Nebuzar-adan, a captain of the guard, a servant of the
king of Babylon, came unto Jerusalem : and he burnt the
house of the Lord, and the king's house, and all the houses
of Jerusalem, and every great man's house burnt he
with fire.3 Himerus, a deputy and servant of the king of
Parthia, set fire to the forum and some of the temples of
Babylon, and destroyed the best or fairest parts of the city.
The people (of Judah) transgressed very much, they mocked
the messengers of God — therefore he brought upon them the
king of the Chaldees, and he gave all into his hand} The
captive JewTs were servants to Nebucliadnezzar and his sans.
The poorest only of the people of the land were left to be
vine-dressers and, husbandmen, and to serve ihe king of
Babylon. And when the conquerors became the conquered,
Cyrus held all the property and the persons of the Baby
lonians, as given unto him.5 Having taken Babylon, Cyrus
commanded the Babylonians, on pain of death, to deliver
up their arms; enacted that they should cultivate the land,
and pay tribute, and serve those to whom they were respec-
1 2 Kings xxv. 10. 2 2 Chron. xxxvi. 7, 18. 3 2 Kings xxv. 8, 9.
* 2 Chron. xxxvi. 14, 16, 17. 5 Jer. lii 16. Xen. Cyr. lib. vii. c. v. pp. 440, 441.

BABYLON. 441
tively given, and he ordered the Persians, and their allies,
to speak as masters or lords to those whom they had
received.1 Addressing his assembled chiefs, he maintained
that all were theirs by right of conquest, as by an eternal
law, and that they had entered into the possession of a large
and fertUe country, and of a people to cultivate it for their
use. Successive rulers held them in the same dependent
state, and revolt from oppression finally entailed a servitude
as heavy and grievous as that which they had formerly
exacted. The Babylonians had made the Jews to serve in a hard
bondage, and showed them no mercy, but laid their yoke
very heavily upon them.2 Cyrus reduced the Babylonians
to the most abject state, to secure their submission.3 Darius
after their rebellion tyrannised over them more cruelly than
before. The cruelties exercised by the idolaters against the
worshippers of the God of Israel were retaliated on them
selves by the worshippers of fire, and enemies of idolatry.
And while no mercy was shown unto Israel, Himerus,
exceUing all known tyrants in cruelties, exercised them aU,
and omitted no sort of punishment, or showed no mercy to
the inhabitants of Babylon.
Babylon that led Judah captive, and smote tlie people in
wrath with a continual stroke, and that ruled the nations
in anger, became the victim of the wrath it had provoked,
and was smitten with a continual stroke, and long conti
nued to be the threshing-floor of the nations, though 400
years had elapsed from its subjection to Cyrus tiU its
enslaved citizens, in token of the vengeance of the temple
of the Lord, went forth into captivity dazzled and distressed
by the blaze of the temples of Babylon.
The " golden city," which once triumphed over Jerusalem,
1 Xen. Cyr. lib. vii. pp. 452, 453. * Isa. xiv. '3. Ib. xlvii. 6.
' Xen. Cyr. lib. vii. p. 451.

442 chaldea.
thus gradually verged, for centuries, towards poverty and
desolation. — Notwithstanding that Cyrus resided chiefly at
Babylon, and sought to reform the government and remodel
the manners of the Babylonians, the succeeding kings of
Persia preferred, as the seat of empire, Susa, Persepohs, or
Ecbatana, situated in their own country; and in like manner
the successors of Alexander did not attempt to complete his
purpose of restoring Babylon to its pre-eminence and glory ;
but, after the subdivision of his mighty empire, the very
kings of Assyria, during their temporary residence even in
Chaldea, deserted Babylon, and dwelt in Seleucia. And
thus the foreign inhabitants, first Persians, and afterwards
Greeks, imitating their sovereigns by deserting Babylon,
acted as if they verily had said, — Forsake her, and let us
go every man into his own country : for her judgment
reacheth unto heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies.
Babylan, shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no
man taketh up; they shall every man turn to his own
people, and flee every one into his own land.
Babylon laid Jerusalem ' in heaps, and Babylon Ues in
heaps to this day.

SECTION II.
THE LAND OP CHALDEA.
Kindred judgments — the issue of common crimes — rested
on the land of Chaldea, as weU as on its doomed metropohs;
and the tracing of their fulfilment may best lead to the view
of the utter desolation of faUen Babylon.
They come from a far country, from the end of the earth,
to destroy the whole land. Many nations and great kings
shall serve themselves of them also, &c. The Persians, the
Macedonians, the Parthians, the Romans, the Saracens, and

CHALDEA. 443
the Turks, are the chief of the many nations who have
unscrupulously and unsparingly served themselves of the
land of the Chaldeans : and Cyrus and Darius, kings of
Persia; Alexander the Great, and Seleucus, king of Assyria;
Demetrius and Antiochus the Great; Trajan, Severus, Julian,
and Herachus, emperors of Rome ; the victorious Omar, the
successor of Mohammed; and Holagou and Tamerlane, are
great kings, who successively subdued or desolated Chaldea,
or exacted from it tribute to such an extent, as scarcely any
other country ever paid to a single conqueror. And, though
the names of some of these nations were unknown to the
Babylonians, and unheard of in the world at the time of
the prophecy, most of these many nations and great kings
need now but to be named, to show that, in local rela
tion to Chaldea, they came from the utmost border, from the
coasts of the earth.
They are cruel both in anger and fierce wrath to lay
the land desolate, &c. The Persians vied with the Par-
thians in cruelty and fierceness against resisting and against
subjugated enemies. Three thousand Babylonians were at
once impaled by order of Darius. Conquest was the object,
and kindness was not in the nature of the Macedonian con
querors of Babylon. The possession of Chaldea was con
tested between Antigonus and Seleucus, and ruler rose
against ruler. After its long subjection to the Seleucidse,
the proverbiaUy cruel Parthians held Babylonia in bondage.
In the second century of the Christian era, the Romans,
coming from afar, stiU maintained the character of the
cruel and fierce desolaters of Chaldea, and were thus the
unconscious instruments of the fulfilment of other prophecies.
'Under the reign of Marcus, the Roman generals pene
trated as far as Ctesiphon and Seleucia. They were re
ceived as friends by the Greek colony; they attacked as
enemies the seat of the Parthian kings, yet both cities expe-

444 CHALDEA.
rienced the same treatment. The sack and conflagration of
Seleucia, with the massacre of three hundred thousand of
the inhabitants, tarnished the glory of the Roman triumph.
Seleucia sunk under the fatal blow ; but Ctesiphon, in about
thirty-three years, had sufficiently recovered its strength to
maintain an obstinate siege against the Emperor Severus."1
Ctesiphon was thrice besieged and thrice taken by the pre
decessors of Julian. And when attacked by Julian the
anger of that Roman emperor and that of his army was not
moderated, nor their cruelty abated, by the effectual resist
ance of the citizens of Ctesiphon against sixty thousand
besiegers. " The fields of Assyria were devoted by Julian
to the calamities of war; and the philosopher retaliated on
a guiltless people the acts of rapine and cruelty which had
been committed by their haughty master in the Roman
provinces, — the Persians beheld from the walls of Ctesiphon
ihe desolation of the adjacent country."2 With such violence
did he wreak his vengeance on the inhabitants of Chaldea,
that their fierce wrath was conjoined with the cruelty of
their enemies to lay the land desolate. " The extensive
region that lies between the river Tigris and the mountains
of Media, was filled with villages and towns; and the fertile
soil, for the most part, was in a very improved state of cul
tivation. — But on the approach of the Romans, this rich and
smiling prospect was instantly blasted. Wherever they
moved, the inhabitants deserted the open villages, and took
shelter in the fortified towns; the cattle were driven away;
the grass and ripe corn were consumed with fire; and as
soon as the flames had subsided which interrupted the march
of Julian, he beheld the melancholy face of a SMOKING AND
naked desert."3 But "the second city of the province,
large, populous, and well fortified," in vain resisted a fierce
1 Gibbon, vol. i. u. viii. p. 333.
2 Ibid. vol. iv. c. xxiv. pp. 169, 185.
3 Ibid. pp. 191, 192.

CHALDEA. 445
and desperate assault ; and a large breach having been made
by a battering-ram in the waUs, the " soldiers of Julian
rushed impetuously into the town, and after the fuU grati
fication of every mUitary appetite, Perisabor was reduced
to ashes; and the engines which assaulted the citadel were
planted on the ruins of the smoking houses."1 When, in
after-ages, the Romans, under Heraclius, penetrated to the
royal seat of Destagered, and spread over Chaldea to the
gates of Ctesiphon, " whatever could not be easily trans
ported, they consumed with fire, that Chosroes might feel
the anguish of those wounds which he had so often inflicted
on the provinces of the empire; and justice might allow the
excuse," says Gibbon, "if the desolation had been confined
to the works of regal luxury, if national hatred, mUitary
licence, and religious zeal, had not wasted with equal rage
the habitations and the temples of the guUtless subjects."2
The fierce Abassides, proverbially reckless of committing
murder, which was the very work that their missionaries
went forth to execute, long reigned over Chaldea ; and Bag
dad, its new capital, distant about fifteen miles from Seleucia
and Ctesiphon, was their imperial seat for five hundred
years.3 " Their daggers, their only arms, were broken by
the sword of Holagou, and except the word assassin, not a
vestige is left of the enemies of mankind,"4' — for again and
again has it proved true of the land of Chaldea — I will
destroy the sinners thereof out of it. The Mogul Tartars
succeeded as the guUty possessors and cruel desolaters of the
land of Babylon. " Bagdad, after a siege of two months,
was stormed and sacked by the Moguls, under Holagou
Khan, the grandson of Ghengis Khan."5 And Tamerlane,
another great king, "reduced to his obedience the whole
course of the Tigris and Euphrates, from the mouth to the
1 Gibbon, vol. iv. c. xxiv. p. 170. " Ibid. vol. viii. c. xlvi. p. 253.
3 Ibid. vol. i. u. lii. p. 35. 4 Ibid. vol. xi. u Ixiv. p. 417.
5 Ibid. vol. xi. c. Ixiv. p. 418

446 CHALDEA.
sources of these rivers ; and he erected on the ruins of Bag
dad a pyramid of ninety thousand heads."1 Finahy, not
with abated, but if possible, with increasing, or with more
persevering cruelty, the Turks, aided by Saracens, Koords,
and Tartars, have become ihe weapons of the indignation of
the Lord, brought forth out of his armoury which he hath
opened; for — fearful as a token of judgment, and clear as
the testimony of truth — this is the work of the Lord God of
Hosts in the land of the Chaldeans. — Waste and utterly
destroy after them. A sword is upon the Chaldeans. A
sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction. I
will kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall devour all
round about him. A sound of great destruction cometh
from the land of the Chaldeans.
And Chaldea shall be a spoil ; all that spoil her shall
be satisfied, saith the Lord. Come against her from the
utmost border, open her storehouses. A sword is upon her
treasures, and they shall be robbed. 0 thou that dweUest
upon many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is
come, and ihe measure of thy covetousness. On taking
Babylon suddenly by surprise, Cyrus became immediately
possessed of the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches
of secret places. On his first publicly appearing in Babylon,
aU the officers of his army, both of the Persians and allies,
according to his command, wore very splendid robes, those
belonging to the superior officers being of various colours,
aU of the finest and brightest dye, and richly embroidered
with gold and sUver ; and thus the hidden riches of
secret places were openly displayed. And when the trea
sures of Babylon became the spoU of another great king,
Alexander gave six mince (about £15) to each Macedonian
horseman; to each Macedonian soldier and foreign horseman,
two minse (£5); and to every other man in his army, a
1 Gibbon, vol. xii. c. lxv. pp. 9-24.

chaldea. 447
donation equal to two months' pay Demetrius ordered his
soldiers to plunder the land of Babylon for their own use.1
But it is not in these instances alone that Chaldea has been
a spoil, and that all who spoil her have been satisfied. It
was the abundance of her treasures which brought successive
spoliators. Many nations came from afar, and though they
returned to their own country, (as in- formerly besieging
Babylon, so in continuing to despoil the land of Chaldea,)
none returned in vain. From the richness of the country
new treasures were speedily stored up, tUl again the sword
came upon iliem, and they were robbed. The prey of the
Persians and of the Greeks for nearly two centuries after the
death of Alexander, Chaldea became afterwards the prey
chiefly of the Parthians, for an equal period, till a greater
nation, the Romans, came from the coasts of the earth to
piUage it. To be restrained from dominion and from plun
der, was the exciting cause, and often the shameless plea, of
the anger and fierce wrath of these famed but cruel con
querors of the world. Yet within the provinces of their
empire, it was their practice, on the submission of the inha
bitants, to protect and not to destroy. But Chaldea, from
its extreme distance, never having yielded permanently to
their yoke, and the limits of their empire having been fixed
by Hadrian on the western side of the Euphrates, or on the
very borders of Chaldea, that hapless country obtained not
their protection, though repeatedly the scene of ruthless
spoliation by the Romans. The authority of Gibbon, in
elucidation of Scripture, cannot be here distrusted any
more than of heathen historians. To use his words, "a
hundred thousand captives, and a rich booty, rewarded the
fatigues of the Roman soldiers,"2 when Ctesiphon was taken,
in the second century, by the Romans. " The city opened
its gates to Cassius, the Roman general ; but nevertheless
1 Plutarch, Life of Demetrius. " Gibbon, vol. i. c viii. p. 334.

448 chaldea.
Cassias ordered the inhabitants, to the number of four
hundred thousand souls, to be inhumanly massacred, and
the city to be utterly demolished."1 Even Julian, who, in
the fourth century, was forced to raise the siege of Ctesi
phon, came not in vain to Chaldea, and failed not to take
of it a spoil ; nor, though an apostate, did he fail to verify-
by his acts the truth which he denied. After having given
Perisabor to the flames, " the plentiful magazines of corn, of
arms, and of splendid furniture, were partly distributed
among the troops, and partly reserved for the public ser
vice ; the useless stores were destroyed by fire, or thrown
into the streams of the Euphrates."2 Having also rewarded
his army with a hundred pieces of silver to each soldier, he
thus stimulated them (when still dissatisfied) to fight for
greater spoil — "Riches are the object of your desires; those
riches are in the hands of the Persians ; and the spoils of
this fruitful country are proposed as the prize of your valour
and discipline."3 The enemy being defeated after an arduous
conflict, " the spoil was such as might be expected from the
riches and luxury of an Oriental camp ; large quantities of
silver and gold, splendid arms and trappings, and beds and
tables of massy silver." i
When the Romans, under Heraclius, ravaged Chaldea,
" though much of the treasure had been removed from Des-
tagered, and much had been expended, the remaining wealth
appears to have exceeded their hopes, and even to have
satiated their avarice."5
While the deeds of Julian and the words of Gibbon show
how Chaldea was spoiled — how a sword continued to be on
her treasures — and how, year after year, and age after age,
there was rumour on rumour, and violence in her land, and
that all that spoil her would be satisfied — more full iUustra-
1 Universal Hist. vol. xv. p. 216. 2 Gibbon, vol. iv. c. xxiv. p. 171.
' Gibbon, p. 176. i Ibid. vol. iv. c. xxiv. p. 184.
1 Ibid. vol. viii. c. xlvi, p. 252.

chaldea. 449
tions remain to be given of the truth of the same prophetic
word. And as one painter of great power may cope with
another, by drawing, as closely to the life as he, though the
features be different, so Gibbon's description of the sack of
Ctesiphon, as previously he had described the sack and confla
gration of Seleucia, (cities, each of which may aptly be called
" the daughter of Babylon," having been, like it, the capital of
Chaldea,) is written as if, by the most graphic representation
of facts, he had been aspiring to rival Volney as an illustrator
of Scripture prophecy. " The capital was taken by assault ;
and the disorderly resistance of the people gave a keener edge
to the sabres of the Moslems, who shouted with religious
transport, ' This is the white palace of Chosroes ; this is the
promise of the apostle of God. The naked robbers of the
desert were suddenly enriched beyond the measure of their
hope or knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treasure,
secreted with art, or ostentatiously displayed ; the gold and
silver, the various wardrobes and precious furniture, sur
passed (says Abulfeda) the estimate of fancy or numbers ;
and another historian defines the untold and almost infinite
mass by the fabulous computation of three thousand of thou
sands of thousands of pieces of gold. — One of the apart
ments of the palace was decorated with a carpet of silk
sixty cubits in length, and as many in breadth (90 feet); a
paradise, or garden, was depicted on the ground ; the flowers,
fruits, and shrubs were imitated by the figures of the gold
embroidery, and the colours of the precious stones ; and the
ample square was encircled by a variegated and verdant
border. The rigid Omar divided the prize among bis
brethren of Medina; the picture was destroyed; but such
was the intrinsic value of the materials, that the share of
Ali alone was sold for 20,000 drachms. A mule that car
ried away the tiara and cuirass, the belt and bracelets of
Chosroes, was overtaken by the pursuers ; the gorgeous
29

450 CHALDEA.
trophy was presented to the commander of the faithful, and
the gravest of his companions condescended to smile when
they beheld the white beard, hairy arms, and uncouth figure
of the veteran who was invested with the spoil of the great
king."1 Recent evidence is not wanting to show, that, wherever
a treasure is to be found, a sword, in the hand of a fierce
enemy, is upon it, and spoliation has not ceased in the land
of Chaldea. " On the west of Hillah, there are two towns, which, in
the eyes of the Persians and all the Shiites, are rendered
sacred by the memory of two of the greatest martyrs of that
sect. These are Meshed Ali and Meshed Housein, lately
filled with riches, accumulated by the devotion of the
Persians, but carried off by the ferocious Wahabees to the
middle of their deserts."2
And, after the incessant spoliation of ages, now that tlie
end is come of the treasures of Chaldea, the earth itself fads
not to disclose its hidden treasures, so a,s to testify that
they once were abundant. In proof of this an instance
may be given. At the ruins of Hoomania, near to those
of Ctesiphon, pieces of silver having (on the 5 th of March
LSI 2) been accidentally discovered, edging out of the bank
of the Tigris, " on examination, there were found and brought
away," by persons sent for that purpose by the pasha of
Bagdad's officers, " between six and seven hundred ingots
of silver, each measuring from one to one and a half feet in
length ; and an earthen jar, containing upwards of two
thousand Athenian coins, all of silver. Many were pur
chased at the time by the late Mr Rich, formerly the East
India Company's resident at Bagdad, and are now in his
valuable cohection, since bought by government, and deposited
1 Gibbon vol. ix. c. li. pp. 370, 371.
2 Malte-Brun's Geog. vol. ii. p. 119. Buckingham's Travels in Mesopotamia,
vol ii. p. 246.

chaldea. 451
in the British Museum."1 Amidst the ruins of Ctesiphon,
" the natives often pick up coins of gold, silver, and copper,
for which they always find a ready sale in Bagdad. Indeed,
some of the wealthy Turks and Armenians, who are collect
ing for several French and German consuls, hire people to
go and search for coins, medals, and antique gems ; and I
am assured they never return to their emploj^ers empty-
handed ; " 2 — as if all who spoil Chaldea shall be satisfied, till
even the ruins be spoUed unto the uttermost.
The past history of the land of the Chaldeans may be
briefly closed in the language of prophecy ; for tiid prophets
in their visions saw it as it is ; although historians knew
not, even after its grandeur was partially gone, how to tell
of its fertility, which they witnessed, and hope to be believed.
Those who recorded the word that the Lord spake against
Babylon, and against the land of the Chaldeans, had no
such fear, though two thousand four hundred years have
elapsed since they described what is now only at last to be
seen. I will punish the land of ihe Chaldeans, and will make
it perpetual desolations. Cut off the sower from Babylon,
and him that handleth ihe sickle in the time of harvest. A
drought is on the waters, and they shall be dried up.
Behold the hindermost of the nations, a dry land and a
desert. Her cities are a desolation, a dry land and a
wilderness, a land where no man dwelleth, neither doth son
of man pass thereby. I will send unto Babylon fanners
that shall fan her, and shall empty her land. The land
sliall tremble and sorroiv; for every purpose of the Lord
shall be performed against Babylon, to make the land of
Babylon a- desolation without an inhabitant.
The land of the Chaldeans was to be made perpetual or
long continued desolations. — Ravaged and spoiled for ages,
1 Captain Mignan's Travels, p. 53. ! Ibid. p. 74.

452 CHALDEA.
the Chaldees' excellency finaUy disappeared, and the land
became desolate, as stUl it remains. Rauwolff, who passed
through it in 1574, describes the country as bare, and " so
dry and barren that it cannot be tilled."1 And the most
recent travellers all concur in describing it in similar
terms. The lomd of Babylon was to be fanned and emptied — to
be a dry land, a wilderness, and a desert, &c. — On the one
side, near to the site of Opis, " the country all around
appears to be one wide desert of sandy and barren soil,
thinly scattered over with brushwood and tufts of reedy
grass."2 On the other, between Bussorah and Bagdad,
" immediately on either bank of the Tigris, is the untrodden
desert. The absence of all cultivation, — the sterile, arid,
and wild character of the whole scene, formed a contrast to
the rich and delightful accounts delineated in Scripture.
The natives, in travelling over these pathless deserts, are
compelled to explore their way by the stars."3 " The face
of the country is open and flat, presenting to the eye one
vast level plain where nothing is to be seen but here and
there a herd of half-wild camels. This immense tract is very
rarely diversified with any trees of moderate growth, but is an
immense wild bounded only by the horizon."4 In the inter
mediate region, " the whole extent from the foot of the wall
of Bagdad is a barren waste without a blade of vegetation
of any description ;" on leaving the gates, the traveller has
before him " the prospect of a bare desert, — a flat and barren
country. — The whole country between Bagdad and Hillah
is a perfectly flat and (with the exception of a few spots as
you approach the latter place) uncultivated waste." 5 " That
' Rauwolff 's Travels, in Ray's Collection of Travels, 1693, p. 164.
3 Buckingham's Travels in Mesopotamia, vol. ii. p. 155.
•' Mignan's Travels, p. 5.
' Ibid. pp. 31, 32. Keppel's Nar. vol. i. p. 2S0. Buckingham's 1 ravels, p. 212.
Kinnier's Memoirs of Persia, p. 279.
5 Itich's Memoir, p. 4.

CHALDEA. 453
it was at some former period in a far different state, is evi
dent from the number of canals by which it is traversed,
now dry and neglected ; and the quantity of heaps of earth
covered with fragments of brick and broken tiles, which are
seen in every direction, — the indisputable traces of former
population. At present the only inhabitants of the tract
are the Sobeide Arabs."1 " Around as far as the eye can
reach, is a trackless desert."2 "The abundance of the
country has vanished as clean away as if the ' besom of
destruction' had swept it from north to south ; the whole
land from the outskirts of Babylon to the farthest stretch
of sight lying a melancholy waste. Not a habitable spot
appears for countless mUes."3 Bedouins traverse the deso
lated land of Babylon ; and every man met with in the
desert is looked on as an enemy. WUd beasts have now
their home in the land of Chaldea ; but the traveller is less
afraid of them, — even of the lion,- — than of " the wilder
animal, the desert Arab." The country is frequently " totaUy
impassable." " Those splendid accounts of the Bab}donian
lands, yielding crops of grain two or three hundred fold,
compared with the modern face of the country, afford a
remarkable proof of the singular desolation to which it has
been subjected. The canals at present can only be traced
by their decayed banks."4
" The soU of the desert," says Captain Mignan, who
traversed it on foot, and who, in a single day, crossed forty
ancient water-courses, " consists of a hard clay, mixed with
sand, which at noon becomes so heated with the sun's rays,
that I found it too hot to walk over it with any degree of
comfort. Those who have crossed those desert wilds, are
1 Transactions of the Literary Society at Bombay, vol. i. pp. 123, 138. Captain
Frederick on the State of Babylon.
¦ Keppel's Narrative, p. 87.
3 Sir R. K. Porter's Travels in Babylonia, &c, vol. ii. p. 185.
Mignan's Travels, p. 2.

454 CHALDEA.
already acquainted with their dreary tediousness even on
horseback; what it is on foot they can easily imagine."1
Where astronomers first registered eclipses, and marked
the motions of the planetary bodies, the natives, as in the
deserts of Africa, or as the mariner without a compass on
the pathless ocean, can now direct their course by the stars,
over the pathless desert of Chaldea. Where cultivation
reached its utmost height, and where two hundred fold was
stated as the common produce, there is now one wide and
uncultivated waste; and the sower and reaper are cut off
from the land of Babylon. Where abundant stores and
treasures were laid up, and annually renewed and increased,
fanners have fanned, and spoilers have spoiled them till
they have emptied the land. Where labourers, shaded by
palm-trees a hundred feet high, irrigated the fields till all
was plentifully watered from numerous canals, the wanderer,
without an object on which to fix his eye, but " stinted and
short lived shrubs," can scarcely set his foot without pain,
after the noon-day heat, on the " arid and parched ground,"
in plodding his weary way through a desert, a dry land,
and- a wilderness. Where there were crowded thorough-
fares from city to city, there is now "silence and solitude;"
for the ancient cities of Chaldea are desolations, — where
no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass
thereby} ' Mignan's Travels, pp. 2, 31-34.
3 Sin has wrought desolation in Chaldea, as finally, if unrepented of, it must in
any and in every land. But justice shall yet dwell in the wilderness, and righteous
ness remain in the fruitful field : and— not in Judea alone, on the restoration and
conversion of all the house of Israel, bet throughout all nations when enlightened by
the word of God, and renewed by his Spirit, moved by whom the prophets spake,—
the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness
snd assurance for ever. (Isa. xxxii. 15-17.) And it is pleasing to pause for a
moment, and to turn from the direful retrospect of sin, judgment, and desolation,
which the past history of Chaldea holds up to view, to a word of 3cripture, (one
word, if rightly interpreted, is enough,) which, like a bright star in the east, shines
as the harbinger of a brighter day, after the long night of darkness which has rested
on that land which was full of wickedness, and therefore has been emptied in judg-

CHALDEA. 455
Her cities are desolations. The course of the Tigris
through Babylonia, instead of being adorned, as of old, with
cities and towns, is marked with the sites of " ancient ruins,"1
Sitace, Sabaut, Narisa, Fuchera, Sendia " no longer exist."2
A succession of multitudinal mounds; crossed at right angles
by others, mark the supposed site of Artemita, or Destagered.
Its once luxuriant gardens are covered with grass; and a
higher mound distinguishes " the royal residence" from the
ancient streets.3 Extensive ridges and mounds (near to
Houmania), varying in height and extent, are seen branch
ing in every direction."'' A wall, with sixteen bastions, is
the only memorial of ApoUonia.5 The once magnificent
Seleucia is now a scene of desolation. There is not a single
building, but the country is strewed for miles with fragments
of decayed buildings. "As far," says Major Keppel, "as
the eye could reach, the horizon presented a broken line of
mounds; the whole of this place was a desert flat."6 On
the opposite bank of the Tigris, where Ctesiphon its rival
stood, besides fragments of walls and broken masses of brick
work, and remains of vast structures encumbered with heaps
ment. And seemingly commencing convulsions, in the war and the trial of principles
throughout the wide world, that must come, — the rising " hurricane" which, con
trolled by the Lord, shall yet sweep every moral "pestilence" from the earth, seem,
in their beginning, to betoken that the time may not be distant, when the effect of
the vision shall be seen. Then said I io the angel that- talked with one (Zechariah v.
10, 11), Whither do these bear the ephahi And he said unto me, To build it an house
in the land of Shinar: and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base, — in
the land of Shinar, but it is not said, in the city of Babylon. Building, establishing,
and setting, all appear to be significative of a blessing — of reconstruction on a new
base, and not reducible to heaps; and though the previous vision be of judgment, he
whose name is The Branch, is immediately after spoken of; and, in "building the
temple of the Lord," his office is redemption. But without a metaphor, it is said,
and, without a doubt, it shall prove true — All the ends of the earth shall see the
salvation of the Lord. The whole earth shall rejoice, — the wilderness and the
solitary places shall be glad for them; and the desert sLull rejoice, and blossom as
the rose.
1 See Chart prefixed to Major Keppel's Narrative.
2 Plau of the Environs of Babylon, &c. in Major Rennel's Ceography of Herodotus,
p. 335.
' Keppel's Narrative, vol. i. p. 267. * Mignan's Travels, p. 49.
5 Keppel, p. 276. - Ibid. p. 125.

456 CHALDEA.
of earth, there is one magnificent monument of antiquity,
" in a remarkably perfect state of preservation," " a large
and noble pile of building, the front of which presents to
view a wall three hundred feet in length, adorned with four
rows of arched recesses, with a central arch, in span eighty-
six feet, and above an hundred feet high, supported by
walls sixteen feet thick, and leading to a hall which extends
to the depth of one hundred and fifty-six feet,"1 the width
of the building. A great part of the back wall and of the
roof is broken down ; but that which remains " still appears
much larger than Westminster Abbey."2 It is supposed to
have been the lofty palace of Chosroes ; but there desolation
now reigns. " On the site of Ctesiphon, the smallest insect
under heaven would not find a single blade of grass wherein
to hide itself, nor one drop of water to allay its thirst."3
In the rear of the palace, and attached to it, are mounds
two miles in circumference, indicating the utter desolation of
buildings, formed to minister to luxury. But, in the words
of Captain Mignan, " such is the extent of the irregular
mounds and hiUocks that overspread the sites of these
renowned cities, that it would occupy some months to take
the bearings and dimensions of each with accuracy."4
While the ancient cities of Chaldea are thus desolate, the
sites of others cannot be discovered, or have nob been visited,
as none pass thereby ; the more modern cities, which
flourished under the empire of Califs, "are all in ruins."6
The second Bagdad bas not indeed yet shared the fate of
the first. And Hillah — a town of comparatively modern
date, near to the site of Babylon, but in the gardens of
which there is not the least vestige of ruins — yet exists.
But the former, " ransacked by massacre, devastation, and
oppression, during several hundred years," has been " gradu-
1 Keppel's Narrative, p. 130. 2 Mignan's Travels, p. 79.
- Buckingham, p. 441. * Mignan's Travels, p. 81.
5 Mignan's Travels, p. 82.

CHALDEA. 457
aUy reduced from being a rich and powerful city, to a state
of comparative poverty, and the feeblest means of defence."1
And of the inhabitants of the latter, about eight or ten
thousand, it is said that " if anything could identify the
modern inhabitants of Hillah as the descendants of the
ancient Babylonians, it would be their extreme profligacy,
for which they are notorious even amongst their immoral
neighbours."2 They give no sign of repentance and refor
mation to warrant the hope that judgment, so long continued
upon others, wiU cease from them; or that they are the
people that shall escape. Not many years have passed since
towns in Chaldea have been ravaged and piUaged by the
Wahabees; and in 1823, the town of Shehreban "was sacked
and ruined by the Koords," and reduced to desolation.3
Indications of ruined cities, whether of a remote or more
recent period, abound throughout the land. The process of
destruction is still completing. Gardens which studded the
banks of the Tigris have very recently disappeared, and
mingled with the desert, — and concerning the cities also of
Chaldea, the word is true that they are desolations. For
" the whole country is strewed over with the debris of
Grecian, Roman, and Arabian towns, confounded in the same
mass of rubbish."4
But while these lie in indiscriminate ruins, the chief of
the cities of Chaldea, the first in name and in power that
ever existed in the world, bears many a defined mark of the
judgments of Heaven.
> Sh- R. K. Porter's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 265, 266.
2 Keppel's Narrative, vol. i. pp. 182, 183.
' Ibid. pp. 272, 278.
* Malte-Brun's Geography, vol. ii. p. 119.

458 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLOn.
SECTION III.
FALLEN- BABYLON.
The progressive and predicted decline of Babylon the
Great, tiU it ceased to be a city, has already been briefly
detailed. About the beginning of the Christian era a small
portion of it was inhabited, and the far greater part was
cultivated.1 It diminished as Seleucia increased, and the
latter became the greater city. In the second century
nothing but the walls remained. It became gradually a
great desert ; and in the fourth century, its waUs, repaired
for that purpose, formed an enclosure for wUd beasts, and
Babylon was converted into a field for the chase — 'a hunting-
place for the pastime of the Persian monarchs. The name
and the remnant were cut off from Babylon ; and there is a
blank, during the interval of many ages, in the history of its
mutilated remains and of its mouldering decay. It remained
long in the possession of the Sara.eens ; and abundant evi
dence has since been given, that every feature of its pro
phesied desolation is now distinctly visible, for the most
ancient historians bore not a clearer testimony to facts con
firmatory of the prophecies relative to its first siege and
capture by Cyrus, than the latest travellers bear to the ful
filment of those which refer to its final and permanent ruin.
The identity of its site has been completely established.2
And the truth of every general and every particular pre
diction is now so clearly demonstrated, that a simple exhi
bition of 'the facts precludes the possibility of any cavil,
1 Diod. Sic. torn. ii. p. 35.
2 Rennell's Geography of Herodotus, p. 349. Keppel's Narrative, p. 171. Though
this fact was previously doubted by some, all question concerning it is now set at rest
by "the inscription usually found on Babylonian bricks," containing the name and
titles of Nebuchadnezzar. Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 496, 502, 504, 506.

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 459
and supersedes the necessity of any reasoning on the
subject. It is not merely the general desolation of Babylon —
however much that alone would have surpassed aU human
foresight — which the Lord declared by the mouth of his
prophets. In their vision, they saw not more clearly,
nor defined more precisely, the future history of Babylon,
from the height of its glory to the oblivion of its name, than
they saw and depicted fallen Babylon, as now it lies, and
as, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, it has for
the first time been fully described.1 And now when an end
has come upon Babylon, after a long succession of ages has
wrought out its utter desolation, both the pen and the
pencil of travellers, who have traversed and inspected its
ruins, must be combined, in order to delineate what the
word of God, by the prophets, told from the beginning that
that end would be.
Truth ever scorns the discordant and encumbering aid of
error: but to diverge in the least from the most precise
facts, would here weaken and destroy the argument ; for the
predictions correspond not closely with anything, except
alone with the express and literal reality To swerve from
it is, in the same degree, to vary from them : and any mis
representation would be no less hurtful than iniquitous.
But the actual fact renders any exaggeration impossible, and
any fiction poor. Fancy could not have feigned a contrast
more complete, nor a destruction greater than that which
has come from the Almighty upon Babylon. And though
the greatest city on which the sun ever shone be now a de
solate wilderness, there is scarcely any spot on earth more
1 Niebuhr, Ives, Irwin, Ottar, Evirs, Thevenot, Della Valle, Texeira, Edrisi,
Abulfeda, and Balbi, were consulted by Major Rennell ; to these may now be added,
Mr Rich, Sir Robert Ker Porter, Captain Frederick, the Hon. Major Keppel,
Colonel Kennier. Mr Buckingham, and Captain Mignan,— most of whom were ac-
compinied by others.

460 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
clearly defined — and none could be more accurately deline
ated by the hands of a draftsman — than the scene of Baby
lon's desolation is set before us in the very words of the
prophets; and no words could now be chosen like unto those,
which for two thousand five hundred years have been its
" burden " — the burden which now it bears.
Such is the multiplicity of prophecies and the accumula
tion of facts, that the very abundance of evidence increases
the difficulty of arranging them, in a condensed form, and
thus appropriating its specific fulfilment to each precise and
separate prediction ; and many of them may be viewed
connectedly. AU who have visited Babylon concur in ac
knowledging or testifying that the desolation is exactly
such as was foretold. They, in general, apply the more
prominent predictions ; and, in minute details, they some
times unconsciously adopt, without any aUusion or reference,
the words of inspiration.
Babylon is wholly desolate. It has become heaps — it is
cut down to the ground — brought down to the grave —
trodden on — uninhabited — its foundations fallen — its walls
thrown down, and utterly broken- — its loftiest edifices
rolled down from the rocks — the golden city has ceased —
the worms are spread under it, and the worms cover it, &c.
There the Arabian pitches not his tent ; there the shepherds
make not their folds ; but wild beasts of the desert lie there,
and their houses are fuU of doleful creatures, and owls dwell
there, &c. It is a possession for the bittern, and a dwelling-
place for dragons — a wUderness, a dry land, and a desert —
a burnt mountain- — pools of water — spoiled — empty —
nothing left — utterly destroyed — every one that goeth by it
is astonished, &c.
Babylon shall become heaps. Babylon the glory of king
doms is now the greatest of ruins. " Immense tumuh of
temples, palaces, and human habitations of every descrip-

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 461
tion," are everywhere seen, and form " long and varied lines
of ruins," which in some places "rather resemble natural
hills than mounds which cover the remains of great and
splendid edifices."1 Those buildings which were once the
labour of slaves and the pride of kings, are now misshapen
heaps of rubbish. " The whole face of the country is covered
with vestiges of building, in some places consisting of brick-
walls surprisingly fresh, in others, merely a vast succession
of mounds of rubbish, of such indeterminate figures, variety,
and extent, as to involve the person who should have formed
any theory in inextricable confusion."2 " Long mounds
running from north to south, are crossed by others from east
to west ;" and are only distinguished by their form, direc
tion, and number, from the decayed banks of canals. " The
greater part of the mounds are certainly the remains of
buildings, originally disposed in streets, and crossing each
other at right angles."3 The more distinct and prominent
of these " heaps " are double, or lie in parallel lines, each
exceeding twenty feet, and " are intersected by cross pas
sages, in such a manner as to place beyond a doubt the fact
of their being rows of houses or streets fallen into decay."4
Such was the. form of the streets of Babylon, leading towards
the gates ; and such are now the lines of its heaps. " There
are also, in some places, two hollow channels, and three
mounds, running parallel to each other for a considerable
distance, the central mound being, in such cases, a broader
and flatter mass than the other two, as if there had been
two streets going parallel to each other, the central range of
houses which divided them being twice the size of the
others, from their being double residences, with a front and
door of entrance to face each avenue."6 " Irregular hillocks
1 Porter's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 294, 2D7.
2 Rich's Memoirs, r,. 2.
" Buckingham's Tiavels in Mesopotamia, vol. ii. p. 298.
• Ibid. p. 299. 5 Ibid. p. 299.

462 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
and mounds, formed over masses of ruins, present at every
step memorials of the past."1
From the temple of Belus and the two royal palaces,
to the streets of the city and single dwellings, all have
become heaps ; and the only difference or gradation now is
from the vast and solid masses of ruins which look hke
mountains, to the slight mound that is scarcely elevated
above the plain. Babylon is fallen, literally fallen to
such a degree that those who stand on its site and look on
numerous parallel mounds, with a hollow space between, are
sometimes at a loss to distinguish between the remains of
a street or a canal, or to tell where the crowds frequented,
or where the waters flowed. Babylon is fallen, till its
ruins cannot fall lower than they lie. It is cut down to
the ground. Her foundations are fallen; and the ruins
rest not on them. Its palaces, temples, streets, and houses,
lie " buried in shapeless heaps." 2 And " the view of
Babylon," as taken from the spot, is truly a picture of utter
desolation, presenting its heaps to the eye, and showing how,
as if literally buried under them, Babylon is brought down
to the grave.
Cast her up as heaps. Mr Rich, in describing a grand
heap of ruins, the shape of which is nearly a square of seven
hundred yards in length and breadth, states that the work
men pierce into it in every direction, in search of bricks,
" hollowing out deep ravines and pits, and throwing up the
rubbish in heaps on the surface."3 " The summit of the
Kasr," (supposed to have been the lesser palace,) is in like
manner "covered with heaps of rubbish."
Let nothing of her be left. " Vast heaps constitute all
that now remains of ancient Babylon."4 All its grandeur
is departed; all its treasures have been spoiled; all ite
1 Mignan's Travels, vol. ii, p. 116. 2 Porter's Travels, p. 294.
* Rich's Memoirs, p. 22. * Keppel's Narrative, p. 196.

Engraved by po-misswrifroTTt a print m-tPu, Travels et" ' Su-A^l-src A'cr Porter

BabyloniE fallen.— Isaiah XXI_9 I -will sweep u-imh the bei
destruction saiibi the Lord" of Hosts __ls.nali XlT_23
Babylon ;-b,dl Verm* heaps without jc .nbabnan t ..Jer. LI -37

En^byW.HLtzaxs

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 463
excellence has utterly vanished ; the very heaps are searched
for bricks when nothing else can be found ; even these are
not left wherever they can be taken away, and Babylon has
for ages been "a quarry above ground," ready to the hand
of every successive despoiler. Without the most remote
allusion to this prophecy, Captain Mignan describes a mound
attached to the palace, ninety yards in breadth by half that
height, the whole of which is deeply furrowed in the same
manner as the generality of the mounds. " The ground is
extremely soft, and tiresome to walk over, and appears
completely exhausted of aU its building materials : nothing
now is left save one towering hUl, the earth of which is
mixed with fragments of broken brick, red varnished
pottery, tile, bitumen, mortar, glass, shells, and pieces of
mother of pearl,"1 — worthless fragments, of no value to the
poorest. Let nothing of her be left. One traveUer, towards
the end of last century, passed over the site of ancient
Babylon, without being conscious of having traversed it.2
Mr Layard, who has enriched the British Museum with
sculptures from Nineveh, thus speaks of his " discoveries
amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon. They were far less
numerous and important than I could have anticipated, and
did not tend to prove that there were remains beneath the
heaps of earth and rubbish which would reward more
extensive excavations. It was not even possible to trace
the general plan of any one edifice ; only shapeless piles of
masonry, and isolated walls and piers, were brought to light
— giving no clue whatever to the original forms of the build
ings to which they belonged."3
Babylon shall be pools of water. While the workmen
cast her up as heaps in piling up the rubbish while exca-
» Mignan's Travels, pp. 190, 200.
" Transactions of the Literary Society at Bombay, vol. i. p. 130. Note, Cun
ningham's Journey to India, 1785.
3 Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 527-528.

464 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
vating for bricks, that nothing may be left, they labour more
than doubly in the fulfilment of prophecy, for the numerous
and deep excavations form pools of water, on the overflow
ing of the Euphrates, and, annually filled, they are not dried
up throughout the year. " Deep cavities are also formed by
the Arabs, when digging for hidden treasure."1 " The ground
is sometimes covered with pools of water in the hollows."2
Sit in the dust, sit on the ground, 0 daughter of the
Chaldeans. The surface of the mounds which form all
that remains of Babylon, consists of decomposed buildings,
reduced to dust ; and over all the ancient streets and habi
tations, there is literally nothing but the dust or the ground
on which to sit.
Thy nakedness shall be uncovered. " Our path," says
Captain Mignan, " lay through the great mass of ruined
heaps on the site of ' shrunken Babylon.' And I am per
fectly incapable of conveying an adequate idea of the dreary,
lonely nakedness that appeared before me."3
Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness. There reigns
throughout the ruins "a silence profound as the grave."4
Babylon is now a " silent scene, a sublime solitude."5
It shall never be inhabited, nor dwelt in from generation
to generation. From Rauwolff 's testimony it appears that
in the sixteenth century " there was not a house to be
seen. " 6 And now " the eye wanders over a barren
desert in which the ruins are nearly the only indication
that it ever had been inhabited." " It is impossible," adds
Major Keppel, " to behold this scene and not to be reminded
how exactly the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah have
been fulfilled, even in the appearance Babylon was doomed
to present, that she should never be inhabited ; that the
1 Mignan's Travels, p. 213.
' Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii. p. 296. Keppel's Travels, vol. i. p. 125.
3 Mignan's Travels, p. 11 6.
1 Porter's Travels, vol. ii. p. 294. 5 Ibid. p. 407. • Ibid. p. 174.

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 465
' Arabian should not pitch his tent there ;' that she should
'become heaps;' that her cities should be 'a desolation, a
dry land, and a wilderness.' "1 "Babylon is spurned alike
by the heel of the Ottomans, the Israelites, and the sons of
Ishmael."2 It is "a tenantless and desolate metropolis."3
It shall not be inhabited but be wholly desolate.
Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there ; neither shall
the shepherds make their fold there. It was prophesied of
Ammon that it should be a stable for camels and a couching-
place for flocks; and of the sea-coast of PhUistia, that it
should be dwellings for shepherds, and folds for flocks. But
Babylon was to be visited with a far greater desolation,
and to become unfit or unsuitable even for such a purpose.
And that neither a tent would be pitched there, even by an
Arab, nor a fold made by a shepherd, implies the last
degree of solitude and desolation. " It is common in these
parts for shepherds to make use of ruined edifices to shelter
their flocks in."4 But Babylon is an exception. Instead
of taking the bricks from it, the shepherd might with
facility erect a defence from wild beasts, and make a fold
for his flock amidst the heaps of Babylon ; and the Arab
who fearlessly traverses it by day, might pitch bis tent by
night. But neither the one nor the other could now be
persuaded to remain a single night among the ruins. The
superstitious dread of evil spirits, far more than the natural
teiror of the wild beasts, effectually prevents them. Captain
Mignan was accompanied by six Arabs, completely armed,
but be " could not induce- them to remain towards night,
from the apprehension of evil spirits; It is impossible to
eradicate this idea from the minds of these people, who are
very deeply imbued with superstition." And wdien the
sun sunk behind the Mujelibe, and the moon would have
- Keppel's Narrative, vol. i. p. 107. 2 Ibid. p. 234.
• Mignan's Travels, p. 108. 4 Ibid. p. 235.
30

466 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
stiU lighted his way among the ruins, it was with infinite
regret that he obeyed "the summons of his guides."1 "All
the people of the country assert that it is extremely dan
gerous to approach this mound after nightfall, on account of
the multitude of evil spirits by which it is haunted."2
Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there ; neither shall the
shepherds make their fold there. But
Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses
shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell
there, and satyrs (goats) shall dance there, &c. " There are
many dens of wild beasts in various parts. There are quan
tities of porcupine quiUs" (kephud ?). And while the lower
excavations are often pools of water, "in most of the cavi
ties are numbers of bats and owls."3 "These soutterains
(caverns), over which the chambers of majesty may have
been spread, are now the refuge of jackals and other savage
animals. The mouths of their entrances are strewed with
the bones of sheep and goats : and the loathsome smell that
issues from most of them is sufficient warning not to proceed
into the den."4 The king of the forest now ranges over
the site of that Babylon which Nebuchadnezzar built for his
own glory. And the temple of Belus, the greatest work of
man, is now like unto a natural den of lions. " Two or
three majestic lions" were seen upon its heights, by Sir
Robert Ker Porter, as he was approaching it ; and " the
broad prints of their feet were left plain in the clayey soil."5
Major Keppel saw there a similar foot-print of a lion. It
is also the unmolested retreat of jackals, hyenas, and other
noxious animals.6 Wild beasts are " numerous" at the
Mujelibe, as well as on Birs Nimrood. " The mound was
full of large holes ; we entered some of them, and found
1 Mignan's Travels, pp. 201, 235.
' Rich's Mem. p. 27. Buckingham's Travels, v. ii. p. 397. 3 Ibid. p. 30.
' Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, vol. ii. p. 342. 6 Ibid. p. 387.
8 Kinnier's Memoirs, p. 279.

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 467
them strewed with the carcases and skeletons of animals
recently kiUed. The ordure of wild beasts was so strong
that prudence got the better of curiosity, for we had no
doubt as to the savage nature of the inhabitants. Our
guides, indeed, told us that all the ruins abounded in
lions and other wild beasts ; so literaUy has the Divine pre
diction been fulfilled, that wild beasts of the desert should
he there, and their houses be full of doleful creatures ; that
the wUd beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate
houses."1 " A foul and unbearable stench issued from these
loathsome remains (in the Birs Nimrood), and from the pas
sages which had become the den of wild beasts, who had
worked their way into them from above."2
The sea is come upon Babylon. She is covered with the
multitude of the waves thereof. The traces of the western
bank of the Euphrates are now no longer discernible. The
river overflows unrestrained ; and the very ruins, " with every
appearance of the embankment," have been swept away.
" The ground there is low and marshy, and presents not the
slightest vestige of former buildings, of any description what
ever."3 " Morasses and ponds tracked the ground in various
parts. For a long time after the general subsiding of the
Euphrates, great part of this plain is little better than a
swamp," &c.4 "The ruins of Babylon ai-e then inundated,
so as to render many parts of them inaccessible, by convert
ing the valleys among them into morasses."5 "From the
summit of the Birs Nimrood," says Mr Layard, " I gazed
over a vast marsh, for Babylon is made ' a possession for the
bittern, and pools of water.' " 6 But while Babylon is thus
covered with the multitude of waves and the waters come
' Keppel's Narrative, vol. i. pp. 179, 180.
* Layard's Nineveh and Babylon.
¦ Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii. p. 278.
4 Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 389, 390.
- Rich's Memoirs, p. 13.
" Nineveh and Babylon, p. 500.

468 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
upon it, yet, in striking contrast and seeming contradiction
to such a feature of desolation, (like the formation of pools
of water from the casting up of heaps) at all times the ele
vated sun-burnt ruins, which the waters do not overflow,
and generally throughout the year, the " dry waste, and
parched and burning plain," T on which the heaps of
Babylon lie, equaUy prove that it is a desert, a dry land,
and a wilderness. One part, even on the western side
of the river, is "low and marshy, and another an arid
desert."2 It shall never be inhabited. It shall be utterly desolate.
" Ruins composed, like those of Babylon, of heaps of rubbish
impregnated with nitre, cannot be cultivated."3 "The de
composing materials of a Babylonian structure doom the
earth on which they perish to everlasting sterility. — On this
part of the plain, both where traces of buildings were left,
and where none had stood, all seemed equally naked of
vegetation ; the whole ground appearing as if it had been
washed over and over again, by the coming and receding
waters, till every bit of genial soil was swept away ; its half-
clay, half-sandy surface being left in ridgy streaks, like what
is often seen on the flat shores of the sea after the retreating
of the tide."4 Babylon, which in its pride did say, I shall
be a lady for ever, is no more called the lady of kingdoms,
but is desolate for ever.
Bel boweih down. The temple of Belus or Baal, here
evidently spoken of, was a stadium, or furlong in height,
computed by Major Rennell at five hundred, and by Pri-
deaux at six hundred feet. By the lowest computation it
was higher than the greatest pyramids. The highest of the
heaps which now constitute fallen Babylon, is the Birs Nim-
1 Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 302, 305.
2 Mignan's Travels, p. 139, Plan.
* Rich's Memoirs, p. 16.
« Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, vol. ii. p. 392.

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 469
rood,1 generally supposed to have been the temple of Belus.
The heap occupies a larger space of ground than that on
which the temple stood, having spread in faUing down be
yond its original base. It rests not now upon its ancient
foundations, but lies upon the earth, an enormous mass of
ruin. " At first sight it presents the appearance of a hUl,
with a castle at the top,"2 so as not only to deceive the eye
in beholding it at a distance, or in looking on its picture ;
but, " incredible as it may seem, the ruins on the summit of
it are actuaUy those spoken of by Pere Emmanuel, who takes
no sort of notice of the prodigious mound on which they are
elevated. It is almost needless to observe, that the whole
of the mound is itself a ruin."3
Bel is confounded. Originally constructed of eight succes
sive towers, one rising above another, it is now consolidated
into one irregular hill, presenting a different aspect and of
different altitudes on every side, — a confused and misshapen
mass. " The eastern face presente two stages of hill ; the
first showing an elevation of about sixty feet cloven in the
middle into a deep ravine, and intersected in aU directions
by furrows channelled there by the descending rains of suc
ceeding ages. The summit of this first stage stretches in
rather a flattened sweep to the base of the second ascent,
which springs out of the first in a steep and abrupt conical
form, terminated on the top by a solitary standing fragment
of brick-work, like the ruin of a tower. From the founda
tion of the whole pile to the base of this piece of ruin,
measures about two hundred feet, and from the bottom of
the ruin to its shattered top are thirty-five feet. On the
western side, the entire mass rises at once from the plain in
1 That it was a Babylonian building which existed in the days of Jeremiah, is
manifest from the fact, "that every inscribed brick taken from it — and there are
thousands and tens of thousands— bear the name of this king" (Nebuchadnezzar).
Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 496.
2 Mignan's Travels, p. 192. 3 Rich's Memoirs, p. 37.

470 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
one stupendous, though irregular, pyramidal hill, broken, in
the slopes of its sweeping acclivities, by the devastations of
time and rougher destruction. The southern and northern
fronts are particularly abrupt."1 Such, and so confounded
is now the temple of Belus.
I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee
down from the rocks, and ' will make thee a burnt moun
tain. On the summits of the hill are " immense fragments
of brick-work of no determinate figures, tumbled together,
and converted into solid vitrified masses."2 " Some of these
huge fragments measured twelve feet in height, by twenty-
four in circumference ; and from the circumstance of the
standing brick-work having remained in a perfect state, the
change exhibited in these is only accountable from their
having been exposed to the fiercest fire, or rather, scathed by
lightning."3 "They are completely molten — a strong pre
sumption that fire was used in the destruction of the tower,
which in part resembles what the Scriptures prophesied it
should become, ' a burnt mountain.' In the denunciation
respecting Babylon, fire is particularly mentioned as an agent
against it. To this Jeremiah evidently ahudes, when he
says that it should be, ' as when God overthrew Sodom and
Gomorrah,' on which cities it is said, ' the Lord rained brim
stone and fire.' — ' Her high gates shall be burnt with fire,
and the people shaU labour in vain, and the folk in the fire,
and they shaU be we?/y.' "4 "In many of these immense
unshappen masses, might be traced the gradual effects of the
consuming power, which had produced so remarkable an
appearance ; exhibiting parts burnt to that variegated dark
hue, seen in the vitrified matter lying about in glass manu
factories ; while, through the whole of these awful testi
monies of the fire, (whatever fire it was !) which, doubtless,
1 Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, vol. ii. p. 310, ' Rich's Memoirs, p. 36.
> Mignan's Travels, p. 207. ' Keppel's Narrative, pp. 194, 125.

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 471
hurled them from their original elevation," (/ will roll thee
down from the rocks,) " the regular lines of the cement are
visible, and so hardened in common with the bricks, that
when masses are struck they ring like glass. On examining
the base of the standing wall, contiguous to these huge
transmuted substances, it is found tolerably free from any
similar changes, in short, quite in its original state; hence,"
continues Sir Robert Ker Porter, " I draw the conclusion,
that the consuming power acted from above, and that the
scattered ruin feU from some higher point than the summit
of the present standing fragment. The heat of the fire
which produced such amazing effects, must have burned with
the force of the strongest furnace ; and from the general
appearance of the cleft in the waU, and these vitrified
masses, I should be induced to attribute the catastrophe
to lightning from heaven. Ruins, by the explosion of
consumable matter, would have exhibited very different
appearances."1 " The fallen masses bear evident proof of the operation
of fire having been continued on them, as well after they
were broken down as before, since every part of their sur
face has been so equally exposed to it, that many of them
have acquired a rounded form, and in none can the place of
separation from its adjoining one be traced by any appear
ance of superior freshness, or any exemption from the in
fluence of destroying flame."2 " The calcined and vitreous
surface of the bricks fused into rock-like masses, show that
their fall may have been caused by lightning."3
The high gates, which were standing in the time of Hero
dotus, have been burnt with fire; the vitrified masses, which
feU when Bel bowed down, rest on the top of its stupendous
ruins. The hand of the Lord has been stretched upon it; it
> Sir Robert Kei Porter's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 312, 313.
* Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii. p. 375.
' Layard's Mineveh and Babylon, p. 496.

472 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
has been rolled down from the rocks, and has been made a
burnt mountain, — of which it was further prophesied,
They shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a
stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate for ever,
saith the Lord. The old wastes of Zion shall be buUt; its
former desolations shall be raised up; and Jerusalem shall
be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.
But it shaU not be with Bel as with Zion, nor with Baby
lon as with Jerusalem. For as the " heaps of rubbish, im
pregnated with nitre," which cover the site of Babylon,
"cannot be cultivated,"1 so the vitrified masses on the sum
mit of Birs Nimrood cannot be rebuilt. Though still they
be of the hardest substance, and indestructible by the ele
ments, and though once they formed the highest pinnacles
of Belus, yet incapable of being hewn into any regular form,
they neither are, nor can now be taken for a corner or for
foundations. And the bricks on the solid fragments of
wall, which, rest on the summit, though neither scathed nor
molten, are so firmly cemented, that according to Mr Rich,
"it is nearly impossible to detach any of them whole;"2 or,
as Captain Mignan stiU more forcibly states, " they are so
firmly cemented, that it is utterly impossible to detach any
of them."3 " My most violent attempts," says Sir Robert
Ker Porter, "could not separate them;"4 and Mr Bucking
ham, in assigning reasons for lessening the wonder at the
total disappearance of the walls at this distant period, and
speaking of the Birs Nimrood generally, observes, that, " the
burnt bricks (the only ones sought after) which are found
in the Mujelibe, the Kasr, and the Birs Nimrood, the only
three great monuments in which there are any traces of
their having been used, are so difficult, in the two last in
deed so impossible, to be extracted whole, from the tenacity
1 Rich's Memoirs, p. 16. ' Ibid. p. 36.
" Mignan's Travels, p. 206. ? Travels, vol. ii. p. 311.

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 473
of the cement in which they are laid, that they could never
have been resorted to while any considerable portion of the
walls existed to furnish an easier supply; even now, though
some portion of the mounds on the eastern bank of the
river" (the Birs is on the western side) "are occasionally"
dug into for bricks, they are not extracted without a com
paratively great expense, and very few of them whole, in
proportion to the great number of fragments that come up
with them.1 Around the tower there is not a single whole
brick to be seen.2
These united testimonies, given without aUusion to the
prediction, afford a better than any conjectural commentary,
such as had previously been given without reference to these
facts. While in many places nothing is left, yet, of the burnt
mountain, which forms an accumulation of ruins enough in
magnitude to buUd a city, men do not take a stone for
foundations nor a stone for a corner. Having undergone
the action of the fiercest fire, and being completely molten,
the masses on the summit of Bel, on which the hand of the
Lord has been stretched, cannot be reduced into any other
form or substance, nor be built up again by the hand of
man. And the tower of Babel, if such was the temple of
Belus, which witnessed the first dispersion of mankind, shaU
itself be witnessed by the latest generation, even as now it
stands desolate for ever,- — an indestructible monument of
human pride and folly, and of divine judgment and truth.
The greatest of the ruins, as once of the edifices of Babylon,
is rolled down into a vast, indiscriminate, cloven, confounded,
useless, and blasted mass, from which fragments might be
hurled with as httle injury to the ruined heap, as from a
bare and rocky mountain's side. Such is the triumph of
- Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii. p. 332.
2 Porter's Travels, vol. ii. p. 329.

474 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
the word of the living God over the proudest of the temples
of BaalMerodach is broken in pieces. Merodach was a name
or title common to the princes and kings of Babylon, of
which, in the brief Scriptural references to their history, two
instances are recorded, viz. Merodach-Baladan the son of
Baladan, king of Babylon, who exercised the office of govern
ment, and Evil-Merodach, who lived in the days of Jere
miah. From Merodach being here associated with Bel,
or the temple of Belus, and from the similarity of their
judgments — the one bowed down and confounded, and the
other broken in pieces — it may reasonably be inferred that
some other famous Babylonian budding is here also denoted ;
while, at the same time, the express identity of the name
with that of the kings of Babylon, and even with Evil-
Merodach, then residing there, it may with equal reason be
inferred that, under the name of Merodach, the palace is
spoken of by the prophet. And next to the idolatrous
temple, as the seat of false worship which corrupted and
destroyed the nations, it may well be imagined that the
royal residence of the despot who oppressed the people of
Israel, and made the earth to tremble, would be selected as
the marked object of the righteous judgments of God. And
secondary only to the Birs Nimrood, in the greatness of its
ruins, is the Mujelibfe or Makloube, generally understood
and described by traveUers as the remains of the chief palace
of Babylon. The palace of the king of Babylon almost vied with the
great temple of their god. And there is now some contro
versy, in which of the principal mountainous heaps the one
or the other lies buried. But the utter desolation of both
leaves no room for any debate on the question, — which of
the twain is bowed down and confounded, and which of
them is broken in pieces.

awb> gcwra TS3iwg ©if iriaia $rraEEsO
peririz£sio7V'jh)7n/&pr^in/tkej7W'cls of Sir JtcbcrEAtr Porter

tiig4bTwirr

TifeKida.cn (the palace) is broken in pieces  Jer. L 2
Thy pomp is Irroug-nt Sown to the gTavu io
Thou .shale ielrougiit dL™-n u. die sid.- of the pit -La *IV 11 15

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 47-5
The two palaces, or castles of Babylon, were strongly
fortified. And the larger was surrounded by three waUs of
great extent.1 When the city was suddenly taken by
Demetrius, he seized on one of the castles by surprise, and
displaced its garrison by seven thousand of his own troops,
whom he stationed within it.2 Of the other he could not
make himself master. Their extent and strenprth, at a
period of three hundred years after the delivery of the pro
phecy, are thus sufficiently demonstrated. The solidity of
the structure of the greater, as well as of the lesser palace,
might have warranted the belief of its unbroken durability
for ages. And never was there a budding whose splendour
and magnificence were in greater contrast to its present
desolation. The vestiges of the walls which surrounded it
are still to be seen, and serve with other circumstances to
identify it -with the Mujelibe, as the name Merodach is
identified with the palace. It is broken in pieces, and
hence its name Mujelibe, signifying overturned, or turned
upside down. Its circumference is about half a mile; its
height one hundred and forty feet. But it is " a mass of
confusion, none of its members being distinguishable."3 The
existence of chambers, passages, and ceUars, of different forms
and sizes, and built of different materials, bas been fully
ascertained.4 It is the receptacle of wild beasts, and fuU of
doleful creatures : wild beasts cry in the desolate houses,
and dragons in the pleasant palaces; "venomous reptiles
being very numerous throughout the ruins." 5 " All the
sides are worn into furrows by the weather, and in some
places where several channels of rain have united together,
these furrows are of great depth, and penetrate a consider-
- Diod or. Sic. lib. ii. p. 29. Herod, lib. i. cap. clxxxi.
° Plutarch's Life of Demetrius.
s Delia Valle. See Univ. Hist. vol. i. p. 135. Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii.
p. 273.
« Ibid. p. 274. .s Mignan's Travels, p. 168.

476 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
able way into the mound."1 " The sides of the ruin exhibit
hollows worn partly by the weather." 2 It is brought down
to the grave, to the sides of the pit.
They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and
consider thee, saying, Is this tlie man that made the earth
to tremble, that did shake kingdoms? Narrowly to look
on and to eonsider even the view of the Mujelibe, is to
see what the palace of Babylon, in which kings, proud as
" Lucifer," boasted of exalting themselves above the " stars
of God," has now become, and how, cut down to the ground,
it is broken in pieces}
" On pacing over the loose stones and fragments of brick
work which lay scattered through the immense fabric, and
surveying the sublimity of the ruins," says Captain Mignan,
" I naturally recurred to the time when these waUs stood
proudly in their original splendour, — when the halls were
the scenes of festive magnificence, and when they resounded
to the voices of those whom death has long since swept
from the earth. This very pile was once the seat of luxury
and vice ; now abandoned to decay, and exhibiting a melan
choly instance of the retribution of Heaven. It stands
alone; — the solitary habitation of the goat-herd marks not
the forsaken site."4 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave,
and the noise of thy viols; the worm is spread under thee,
and tlie worms cover thee.
1 Rich's Memoirs, p. 29. ! Mignan's Travels, p. 167.
3 By the kindness of Sir Robert Ker Porter's family, in his absence abroad, the
author was presented with the original drawings of the Birs Nimrood and Mujelibe,
for engravings, as here inserted. His Travels in Persia, Babylonia, &c., contain
four views of each, which show how, on every side, they are bowed down and broken
inpieces. Small engravings of them are also inserted in Mines de I'Orient, Vienne;
in Rich's Memoirs on the Ruins of Babylon, and in Mr Buckingham's Travels.
There is a view of each in Captain Mignan's Travels. The curious reader may
contrast the Mujelibe with Martin's splendid picture of " Belshazzar's Feast."
The place, no longer a palace, is the same. Every child is familiar with the com
mon picture of the temple of Belus, the ancient magnificence of which could not well
be exaggerated, any more than the faintest resemblance to its ancient splendour
could be recognised in what it now ig — the Birs Nimrood.
* Mignan's Travels, pp. 172, 173.

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 477
Thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable
branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust
through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit;
as a carcase trodden under feet. " Several deep excava
tions have been made in different places, into the sides of
the Mujelibe : some probably by the wearing of the seasons ;
but many others have been dug up by the rapacity of the
Turks, tearing up its bowels in search of hidden treasure," —
as if the palace of Babylon were cast out of its grave.
" Several penetrate very far into the body of the structure,"
till it has become as the raiment of those that are slain,
thrust through with a sword. " And some, it is likely,
have never yet been explored, the wild beasts of the desert
literally keeping guard over them." 1 " The mound was full
of large holes"2 — thrust through.
Near to the Mujelibe, on the supposed site of the hang
ing gardens, which were situated within the walls of the
palace, " the ruins are so perforated, in consequence of
the digging for bricks, that the original design is entirely
lost. AU that could favour any conjecture of gardens
built on terraces, are two subterranean passages. There
can be no doubt that both passages are of vast extent ; they
are lined with bricks laid in with bitumen and covered
over with large masses of stone. This is nearly the only
place where stone is observable."3 Arches built upon
arches raised the hanging gardens from terrace to terrace,
till the highest was on a level with the top of the city
walls. Now they are cast out like an abominable branch —
and subterranean passages are disclosed, — down to the stones
of the pit.
As a carcase trodden under feet. The streets of Babylon
were parallel, crossed by others at right angles, and abounded
1 Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, vol. ii. p. 343.
2 Keppel's Travels, vol i, p. 179. 3 Ibid. vol. i. p 205.

478 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
with houses three and four stories high;1 and none can
now traverse the site of Babylon, or find any other path,
without treading them under foot. The traveller directs his
course to the highest mounds; and there are none, whether
temples or palaces, that are not trodden on. The Mujelibe
"rises in. a steep ascent, over which the passengers can only
go up by the winding paths worn by frequent visits to the
ruined edifice."2
Her idols are confounded, her images are broken in
pieces. All the graven images of her gods he hath broken
unto the ground. "This place," says Beauchamp, quoted
by Major Rennel, " and the mount of Babel, are commonly
caUed by the Arabs Makloube, that is, turned topsy-turvy.
I was informed by the master-mason, employed to dig for
bricks, that the places from which he procured them were
large thick walls, and sometimes chambers. He has fre
quently found earthen vessels, engraved marbles, and about
eight years ago, a statue as large as life, which he threw
among the rubbish. On one waU of the chamber, he found
the figure of a cow, and of the sun and moon, formed of
varnished bricks. Sometimes idols of clay are found, repre
senting human figures." 3 " Small figures of brass or copper
are found at Babylon."4 "Bronze antiquities, generally
much corroded with rust, but exhibiting small figures of men
and animals, are often found among the ruins,"5 or broken
unto the ground. "No sculptures or inscribed slabs, the
paneUing of the walls of palaces, have been discovered
among the ruins of Babylon as in those of Nineveh. Scarcely
a detached figure in stone, or a solitary tablet, bas been
dug out of the vast heaps of rubbish. ' Babylon is fallen, is
1 Herod, lib. i. cap. clxxx.
2 Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii. p. 258.
3 Rennel's Geography of Herodotus, p. 362.
4 liich's Second Memoir, p, 58.
5 Mignan's Travels, p. 229.

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 479
faUen ; and aU the graven images of her gods he hath
broken unto the ground.' "x
The broad walls of Babylon shaU be utterly broken.
They were so broad, that, as ancient historians relate, six
chariots could be driven on them abreast; or a chariot
and four horses might pass and turn. They existed, as
waUs, for more than a thousand years after the prophecy
was delivered ; and long after the sentence of utter destruc
tion had gone forth against them, they were numbered
among " the seven wonders of the world." And what can
be more wonderful now, or what could have been more in
conceivable by man, when Babylon was in its strength and
glory, than that the broad waUs of Babylon should be so
utterly broken, that it cannot be determined with certainty
that even the slightest vestige of them exists ?
" All accounts agree," says Mr Rich, " in the height
of the walls, which was fifty cubits, having been reduced
to these dimensions from the prodigious height of three
hundred and fifty feet," (formerly stated, by the lowest
computation of the length of the cubit, at three hundred
feet,) " by Darius Hystaspes, after the rebellion of the
town, in order to render it less defensible. • I have not
been fortunate enough to discover the least trace of them
in any part of the ruins at HiUah; which is rather an
unaccountable circumstance, considering that they survived
the final ruin of the town, long after which they served as
an enclosure for a park; in which comparatively perfect
state St Jerome informs us they remained in his time." "
In the sixteenth century they were seen for the last time
by a European traveller (so far as the author has been able
to trace), before they were finally so utterly broken as
totally to disappear. And it is interesting to mark both
the time and the manner in which the walls of Babylon,
1 Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 528. ' Rich's Memoirs, pp. 43, 44.

480 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
like the city of which they were the impregnable yet un-
avaUing defence, were brought down to the grave, to be seen
no more.
" The meanwhile," as Rauwolff describes them, " when
we were lodged there, I considered and viewed this ascent,
and found that there were two behind one another," (Hero
dotus states that there was both an inner, or inferior, and
outer wall)1 " distinguished by a ditch, and extending them
selves like unto two parallel walls a great way about, and
that they were open in some places, where one may go
through like gates; wherefore I believe that they were the
wall of the old town that went about them ; and that the
places where they were open have been anciently the gates
(whereof there were one hundred) of that town. And this
the rather because I saw in some places under the sand
(wherewith the two ascents were almost covered) the old
wall plainly appear."2
The cities of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, Destagered, Kufa, and
anciently many others in the vicinity, together with the
more modern towns of Mesched Ali, Mesched Hussein, and
Hill ah, " with towns, villages, and caravansaries without
number ; " 3 have, in all probability, been chiefly built out of
the walls of Babylon. Like the city, the walls have been
taken from thence, till none of them are left. The rains of
many hundred years, and the waters coming upon them
annually by the overflowing of the Euphrates, have also, in
all likelihood, washed down the dust and rubbish from the
broken and dilapidated walls into the ditch from which they
were originally taken, till at last the sand of the parched
desert has smoothed them into a plain, and added the place
where they stood to the wUderness, so that the broad walls
of Babylon are utterly broken. And now, as the subjoined
! Lib. i. c. 181. ' Ray's Collection of Travels, pp. 177, 178.
8 Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, vol. ii. p. 338.

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 481
evidence, supplementary of what has already been adduced,
fully proves, — it may verily be said that the loftiest wall
ever built by man, as well as the " greatest city on which the
sun ever shone," which these walls surrounded, and the most
fertile of countries, of which Babylon the Great was the
capital and the glory, — have all been swept by the Lord of
Hosts with the besom of destruction.
A chapter of sixty pages in length, of Mr Buckingham's
Travels in Mesopotamia, is entitled, " Search after the WaD
of Babylon." After a long and fruitless search, he discovered
on the eastern boundary of the ruins, on the summit of an
oval mound from seventy to eighty feet in height, and from
three to four hundred feet in circumference, " a mass of solid
waU, about thirty feet in length, by twelve or fifteen in
thickness, yet evidently once of much greater dimensions
each way, the work being, in its present state, broken and
incomplete in every part : " 1 and this heap of ruin and frag
ment of waU he- conjectured to be a part — the only part, if
such it be, that can be discovered — of the walls of Babylon,
so utterly are they broken. Beyond this there is not even a
pretension to the discovery of any part of them-.
Captain Frederick, of whose journey it was the " principal
object to search for the remains of the wall and ditch that
had compassed Babylon," states, that neither of these has
been seen by any modern traveller. " All my inquiries
among the Arabs," he adds, " on this subject, completely
failed in producing the smallest effect. Within the space
of twenty-one miles in length, along the banks of the
Euphrates, and twelve miles across its breadth, I was un
able to perceive anything that could admit of my imagining
that either a wall or a ditch had existed within this exten
sive area. If any remains do exist of the walls, they must
have been of greater circumference than is allowed by
1 Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 206, 307.
31

482 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
modern geographers. I may possibly have been deceived ;
but I spared no pains to prevent it. I never was employed
in riding and walking less than eight hours for six successive
days, and upwards of twelve on the seventh."1
Major Keppel relates, that he and the party who ac
companied him, "in common with other, travellers, had
totally failed in discovering any trace of the city walls ; "
and he adds, "the Divine predictions against Babylon have
been so literaUy fulfilled in the appearance of the ruins,
that I am disposed to give the fuUest signification to the
words of Jeremiah — the broad walls of Babylon shall be
utterly broken."2
Babylon shall become an astonishment — Every one that
goeth by Babylon shall be astonished. It is impossible to
think on what Babylon was, and to be an eye-witness of
what it is, without astonishment. On first entering its
ruins, Sir Robert Ker Porter thus expresses his feelings: " I
could not but feel an indescribable awe in thus passing, as
it were, into the gates of fallen Babylon."3 " I cannot
portray," says Captain Mignan, " the overpowering sensation
of reverential awe that possessed my mind, while contem
plating the extent and magnitude of ruin and devastation on
every side."4
How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder I
How is Babylon become a desolation among' the nations !
The following interesting description has lately been given
from the spot. After speaking of the ruined embankment,
divided and subdivided again and again, like a sort of
tangled net- work, over the apparently interminable ground
— of large and wide-spreading morasses — of ancient founda
tions — and of chains of undulated heaps — Sir Robert Ker
1 Transactions of the Literary Society, Bombay, vol. i. pp. 130, 131.
2 Keppel's Narrative, vol. i. p. 175. Jer. li. 58.
J Sir Robert Ker Porter's Travels, vol. ii. p. 294.
4 Mignan's Travels, p. 117.

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 483
Porter emphaticaUy adds ; — " The whole view was particu
larly solemn. The majestic stream of the Euphrates wander
ing in solitude, like a pilgrim monarch through the silent
ruins of his devastated kingdom, still appeared a noble river
under aU the disadvantages of its desert-tracked course. Its
banks were hoary with reeds ; and the grey osier willows
were yet there on which the captives of Israel hung up
their harps, and, while Jerusalem was not, refused to be
comforted. But how has the rest of the scene changed since
then ! At that time those broken hills were palaces — those
long undulating mounds, streets — this vast solitude filled
with the busy subjects of the proud daughter of the East. —
Now wasted with misery, her habitations are not to be
found, and for herself, the worm is spread over her."1
From palaces converted into broken hiUs; — from streets
to long lines of heaps;— from the throne of the world to
sitting on the dust; — -from the hum of mighty Babylon to
the death-like silence that rests upon the grave to which it
is brought down ; — from the great storehouse of the world,
where treasures were gathered from every quarter, and the
prison-house of the captive Jews, where, not loosed to return
homewards, they served in a hard bondage, to Babylon the
spoil of many nations, itself taken from thence, and nothing
left ; — from a vast metropolis, the place of palaces, and the
glory of kingdoms, whither multitudes ever flowed, to a
dreaded and shunned spot, not inhabited nor dwelt in from
generation to generation, where even the Arabian, though
the son of the desert, pitches not his tent, and where the
shepherds make not their fold; — from the treasures of dark
ness, and hidden riches of secret places, to the taking away
of bricks, and to an uncovered nakedness; from making the
earth to tremble, and shaking kingdoms, to being cast out
of the grave like an abominable branch; — from the many
I 1 Sir Robert Ker Porter's Travels, vol " p. 237.

484 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
nations and great kings from the coasts of the earth, that
have so often come up against Babylon, to the workmen
that stUl cast her up as heaps, and add to the number of
pools in her ruins; — from the immense artificial leke, many
miles in circumference, by means of which the annual rising
of the Euphrates was regulated and restrained, to those pools
of water, a few yards round, dug by the workmen, and
filled by the river; — from the first and greatest of temples,
to a burnt mountain desolate for ever; — from the golden
image, forty feet in height, which stood on the top of the
temple of Belus, to aU the graven images of her gods that
are broken unto the ground and mingled with the dust ; —
from the splendid and luxurious festivals of Babylonian
monarchs, the noise of the viols, the pomp of Belshazzar's
feast, and the godless revelry of a thousand lords drinking
out of the golden vessels that had been taken from Zion,
to the cry of wild beasts, the creeping of doleful creatures,
of which their desolate houses and pleasant palaces are full,
the nestling of owls in cavities, the dancing of wild goats
on the ruinous mound as on a rock, and the dwelling-place
of dragons, and of venomous reptiles; — from arch upon
arch, and terrace upon terrace, tiU the hanging gardens of
Babylon rose like a mountain, down to the stones of the
pit, now disclosed to view; — from the palaces of princes who
sat on the mount of the congregation, and thought in the
pride of their heart to exalt themselves above the stars of
God, to heaps cut down to the ground, perforated as the
raiment of those that are slain, and as a carcase trodden
under feet; — from the broad walls of Babylon, in all their
height, as Cyrus camped against them round about, seeking
in vain a single point where congregated nations could scale
the walls or force an opening, to the untraceable spot on
which they stood, where there is nothing left to turn aside,
or impede in their course, the worms that cover it- and

THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON. 485
finally, from Babylon the Great, the wonder of the world, to
fallen Babylon, the astonishment of all who go by it; in
extremes like these, whatever changes they involve, and by
whatever instrumentality they may have been wrought out,
there is not to this hour, in this most marvellous history of
Babylon, a single fact that may not most appropriately be
ranked under a prediction, and that does not taUy entirely
with its express and precise fulfilment, while at the same
time they aU when united show, as may now be seen- —
reading the judgments to the very letter, and looking to the
facts as they are, — the destruction which has come from the
Almighty upon Babylon.
And having so clear iUustrations of the facts before us,
what mortal shall give a negative answer to the question,
subjoined by their omniscient Author to these very pro
phecies? — ¦" Who hath declared this from ancient time ? Who
hath told it from that time? Have not I the Lord? and
there is no God beside me; — declaring the end from the
beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not
yet done, saying, My counsel shaU stand, and I wiU do all
my pleasure."1 Is it possible that there can be any attes
tation of the truth of prophecy, if it be not witnessed here?
Is there any spot on earth which has undergone a more
complete transformation ? " The records of the human
race," it has been said with truth, " do not present a con
trast more striking than that between the primeval magni
ficence of Babylon, and its long desolation."2 Its ruins have
of late been carefuUy and scrupulously examined by different
natives of Britain, of unimpeachable veracity, and the result of
every research is a more striking demonstration of the literal
accomplishment of every prediction. How few spots are
there on earth of which we have so clear and faithful a
picture, as prophecy gave of faUen Babylon at a time when
1 Isa. xiv. 21 ; xlvi. 10. * Edinburgh Review, No. i. p. 439.

486 THE DESOLATION OF BABYLON.
no spot on earth resembled it less than ite present desolate
sohtary site ! Or could any prophecies respecting any single
place have been more precise or wonderful, or numerous, or
true, — or more graduaUy accomplished throughout many
generations ? Or what other spot is there on earth of which
all these prophecies would be precisely descriptive ? And
when they look at what Babylon was, and what it is, and
perceive the minute realization of them aU — may not nations
learn wisdom — may not tyrants tremble — and may not scep
tics think?
But smitten by a continual stroke as Babylon and the
land of the Chaldeans have been, the time is not yet come
¦ — while aught of judgment remains to be fulfilled — of which
the prophet speaks: — " The Lord will have mercy on Jacob,
and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land.
And it shall come to pass, in tlie day that the Lord shall
give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from
the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou
shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon,
and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city
ceased!"1 1 Isa. xiv. 1, 3, 4.

TYRE. 487

CHAPTER XII.
TYRE.
Tyre was the most celebrated city of Phoenicia, and the
ancient emporium of the world. Its colonies were numerous
and extensive. " It was the theatre of an immense com
merce and navigation, the nursery of arts and science, and
the city of perhaps the most industrious and active people
ever known." J In the period of their greatest splendour and
perfect independence, Tyre stood at the head of the Phoeni
cian cities.2 Carthage, the rival of Rome, was originaUy
one of the colonies of Tyre. While this mart of nations
was in the height of its opulence and power, and at least
one hundred and twenty-five years before the destruction of
old Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, Isaiah pronounced its irrevo
cable faU. The pride and wickedness of the Tyrians, their
exultation over the calamities of the Israelites, and their
cruelty in selling them to slavery, are assigned as the reasons
of the judgments that were to overtake them, or as the causes
of the revelation of the judgments on their city. And the
whole fate of Tyre was foretold.
Ezekiel's description of the commerce, riches, and pride
of Tyre, the ancient Queen of the Ocean, is designated by
Volney, a valuable historical fragment: and he cites the
words, as he terms it, " in aU their prophetic enthusiasm."
But the prophet denounced its doom before he described its
splendour and power; and he traced its future history, with
1 Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 210. Steph. Die. p. 2039. Marshami Can. Chron.'
p. 304, &c. Strabo, Bochart, &c.
2 Heeren's Researches, vol. ii. p. 17.

488 tyre.
all the precision of truth, tUl the city that was perfect in
beauty became a place whereon fishers spread their nets, till
the stones and timber of its superb dwellings were cast into
the midst of the waters; and the very dust was scraped
from off the place where the princely merchants gloried in
their pride, and heaped up their silver and their gold. The
marvellous facts which Ezekiel and other prophets foretold,
give, to unobservant minds, the semblance of enthusiasm to
their unerring words. And -confessedly faithful to the facts,
as was " the historical fragment," so also is the prophecy
which contrasts with it, as exhibiting the entire reversal of
lyrian magnificence : and the prophetic history of the down
fall and ruin of Tyre may be read more fully and clearly in
the words of Ezekiel, than its history, prior to its celebrated
siege by Alexander the Great, has been recorded in the extant
works of profane writers.
Ezekiel's " historical fragment" begins by declaring, " The
word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, be
cause that Tyrus hath said against J erusalem, Aha, she is
broken that was the gates of the people ; she is turned unto
me; I shall be replenished, now she is laid waste. There
fore thus saith the Lord God; Behold I am against thee,
0 Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against
thee, as the sea causeih his waves to come up. And they
shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her
towers : I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her
lilce the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spread
ing of nets in the midst of the sea : for I have spoken it,
saith the Lwd God; and it shall become a spoil to the
nations, &C1
The first of the many nations that came up against
Tyre was the Chaldeans or Babylonians, under Nebuchad
nezzar. History, without explicitly recording the facts or
1 Ezek. xxvi. 1-5.

li?

TYRE. 489
the result of the siege, relates little else than its duration
for thirteen years. The length alone of the siege accords
with the historical narration given by Ezekiel at a subse
quent period, that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, caused
his army to serve a great service against Tyrus, till every
head was bald, and every shoulder was peeled ; yet had he
no wages nor his army for Tyrus, for the service that he
had served against it.
The vision of the prophet " tarried," but did not faU. It
reached, with equal clearness, throughout all future ages.
And the time is not yet come respecting which Tyre is
finaUy spoken of in the word of the Lord. But from the
height of its dignity, to the depth of its debasement, a
" fragment " of the book of the prophetic Scriptures marked
out its fate. The confederate Greeks, under their " great
king," came up against Tyrus, at an interval of two hundred
and seventy years, after its siege by Nebuchadnezzar. And
restricting the illustration of the prophecies to recorded and
indisputable facts, which are notorious in history, the most
unexceptionable testimony is supplied by Arrian and Quintus
Curtius, whose names are associated with the history of
Alexander and the siege of Tyre,1 as those of Herodotus
and Xenophon with that of Cyrus and the capture of Babylon.
One of the most singular events in history was the manner
in which the siege of insular Tyre was conducted by Alex
ander the Great. Irritated that a single city should alone
oppose his victorious march, enraged at the murder of some
of his soldiers, and fearful for his fame — even his army's
despairing of success could not deter him from the siege.
And Tyre was taken in a manner, the success of which was
more wonderful than the design was daring; for it was sur
rounded by a wall one hundred and fifty feet in height, and
1 See Prideaux, Rollin, Bishop Newton, &c. on the fulfilment of the prophecies
concerning Tyre.

490 TYRE.
situated on an island half a mUe distant from the shore. A
mound was formed from the continent to the island; and
the ruins of old Tyre} on the continent, which, according to
the word of the prophet Ezekiel, Nebuchadnezzar had be
sieged and destroyed, afforded ready materials for the pur
pose. Such was the work, that the attempt at first de
feated the power of an Alexander. The enemy consumed
and the storm destroyed it. But its remains, buried be
neath the water, formed a barrier which rendered successful
his renewed efforts. A vast mass of additional matter was
requisite. The soil and the very rubbish were gathered
and heaped. And the mighty conqueror, who afterwards
failed in raising again any of the ruins of Babylon, cast
those of Tyre into the sea, and took her very dust2 from off
her. He left not the remnant of a ruin; and the site of
ancient Tyre is now unknown,3 or undiscoverable by any of
its ruins. Who then taught the prophet to say of Tyre,
which Nebuchadnezzar besieged, " They shall lay thy stones
and thy timber, and thy dust, in the midst of the water.
I will also scrape her dust from her. I will make thee
a terror, and thou shalt be no more. Though thou be sought '
for, yet shalt thou never be found again." A
Where ancient Tyre flourished in its greatness and pride,
not a city, nor town, nor village now stands; and not a
house is to be seen over the wide extended space, but a few
hovels near a copious fountain, that springs forth as pure
and full as ever. Tyre, on the continent, as it existed in
the days of the prophets, in all its magnificence and wealth,
has wholly vanished, and scarcely a vestige of it remains,
but a fragment of a ruined aqueduct. It is no more. It
1 " Magna vis saxorum ad manum erat. Tyro vetere prsbente." (Quintus Cur
tius, lib. iv. cap. ix.) See Prideaux, Rollin, Bishop Newton, &c.
2 " Huhus aggerabatur." (Ibid, cap. xi.) The soil was heaped up.
3 Pococke's Description of the East, b. i. ch. xx. Bishop Newton. Volney's
Travels, vol. ii. p. 212. Buckingham's Travels, p. 46.
4 Ezek. xxvi. 4, 12, 21.

TYRE. 491
may be sought for, but it cannot be found. The stones and
the timber that formed it, and even its very dust, lie, where
¦ the first great king of Grecia cast it, in the midst of the
waters. It is trodden under foot by every one who now
passes over the bare and unobstructed path to the ancient
island to which it still unites the shore, now forming a
peninsula. The neck of land thus constructed in verifica
tion of the prophetic word, is also, according to it, bare like
the top of a, rock, and forms on both sides a beach ever
washed by the sea. The fishers of the modern viUage on
the ancient island, literally spread their nets on the sand
which covers the surface of the mound, which forms on
either side a place for the spreading of nets in the midst
of the sea. In passing along the shore, once that of the
island, the writer, on reaching the south-western extremity
of the mound, came suddenly on five or six fishermen, sit
ting on some prostrate columns, with their nets spread on
the sand, at a short distance before them, upon the side of
the mole in ihe midst of the sea. On our return some of
them had gone away, but the nets were still there; and ere
they could be represented on a dauguerreotype plate, it was
necessary for the fishermen who remained, to draw their
nets a little way along the side of the mole to a ruin, at the
base of which lay two granite columns on one side, and
three on the other, and to raise the end of the nets as seen
in the plate. The very city that was cast into ihe sea, now
buried in the waters, having thus served the conqueror's
purpose in passing to the previously insular Tyre, has be
come a place for ihe spreading of nets in ihe midst of the
sea. Thus it is written, in the continuous words of the
Lord, They shall destroy ihe walls of Tyrus, and break
down her towers; I will also scrape her dust from her,
and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for
the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have

492 TYRE.
spoken it, saith the Lord God} It is written also, in the
same chapter, of the city or Tyrus on the continent, which
was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar, And they shall make a
spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy 'merchandise;
and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy plea
sant houses: and they shall lay thy stones, and thy timber,
and thy dust, in the midst of the water. And I will cause
ihe noise of thy songs to cease ; and the sound of thy harps
shall be no more heard. And I will make thee like the top
of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou
shalt be built no more; for I the Lord hath spoken it, saith
the Lord God.2 They shall lament over thee, saying, What
city is like Tyrus, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea.3
And surely the fate of ancient Tyrus is altogether without
a parallel. After the capture of insular Tyre, the conqueror ordered
it to be set on fire. Fifteen thousand of the Tyrians escaped
in ships. And exclusive of multitudes that were cruelly
slain, thirty thousand were sold into slavery.4 Each of
these facts had been announced for centuries: — Behold, the
Lord will cast her out- — he will smite her power in the
sea; and she shall be devoured with fire} — i" will bring
forth a fire from the midst of thee—I will bring thee to
ashes upon the earth.6 Pass ye over to Ttirshish — pass over
to Chittim} The isles that are in the sea shall be troubled
at thy departure} Thou shalt die the deaths of them tliat
are slain in the midst of the seas} The children also of
Judah, and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold — I will
return the recompence upon your own head.10
Tyre, on the island, though deprived of its former in
habitants, soon revived as a city, and greatly regained its
1 Ezek. xxvi. 4, 5. 2 Ezek. xxvi. 12-14. " Ezek. xxvii. 32.
* Rollin, Bishop Newton, &c. 5 Zech. ix. 4. 6 Ezek. xxviii. IS.
7 Isa. xxiii. 6, 12. s Ezek. xxvi. 18. ' Ezek. xxviii. 8.
10 Joel iii. 6, 7.

TYRE. 493
commerce. It was populous and flourishing at the begin
ning of the Christian era. It contained many disciples of
Jesus, in the days of the apostles. An elegant temple and
many churches were afterwards built there. It was the see
of the first archbishop under the patriarch of Jerusalem. In
the seventh century Tyre was taken by the Saracens ; in the
twelfth by the Crusaders, at which period it was a great
commercial city. The Mamelukes succeeded as its masters;
and it remained for three hundred years in the possession of
the Turks. But it was not excluded from among the mul
titude of cities and of countries whose ruin and devastation,
as accomplished by the cruelties and ravages of Turkish
barbarity and despotism, were foretold nearly two thousand
years before the existence of that nation of plunderers. And
although it has more lately, by a brief respite from the
greatest oppression, risen somewhat from its ruins, the last
of the predictions respecting it has been literally fulfilled,
according to the testimony of many witnesses. But that of
Maundrell, Shaw, Volney, and Bruce, may suffice.
" You find here no similitude of that glory for which it
was so renowned in ancient times. You see nothing here
but a mere Babel of broken walls, pillars, vaults, &c. Its
present inhabitants are only a few poor wretches, harbour
ing themselves in the vaults, and subsisting chiefly upon
fishing, who seem to be preserved in this place by Divine
providence, as a visible argument how God hath fulfilled his
word concerning Tyre."1 "The port of Tyre, small as it is
at present, is choked up to that degree with sand and rubbish,
that the boats of those fishermen who now and then visit
this once renowned emporium, and dry their nets upon its
rocks and ruins, can with great difficulty only be admitted. "*
And even Volney, after quoting the description of the great-
i Maundrell's Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, p. 82. Prideaux, Lowth,
Univ. Hist., Bishop Newton.
2 Shaw's Travels, vol. ii. p. 31. Bishop Newton, &c.

494 TYRE.
ness of Tyre, and the general description of the destruction
of the city, and the annihilation of its commerce, acknow
ledges that "the vicissitudes of time, or rather the bar
barism of the Greeks of the Lower Empire and the Moham
medans, have accomplished this prediction. Instead of that
ancient commerce, so active and so extensive, Sour, (Tyre,)
reduced to a miserable village, has no other trade than the
exportation of a few sacks of corn and raw cotton : nor any
merchant but a single Greek factor, in the service of the
French of Saide, who scarcely makes sufficient profit to
maintain his family." But though he overlooks the fulfil
ment of minuter prophecies, he relates facts more valuable
than any opinion, and more corroborative of their truth: —
" The whole village of Tyre contains only fifty or sixty poor
families, who live obscurely on the produce of their little
ground and a trifling fishery. The houses they occupy are
no longer, as in the time of Strabo, edifices of three or four
stories high, — but wretched huts, ready to crumble into
ruins."1 Bruce describes Tyre as " a rock whereon, fishers
dry their nets."
After the days of Volney, there were again some houses
of two or three stories in new Tyre; but these, like the
town and fortress of Safed, and the walls of Tiberias, fell
in the earthquake in the year 1834. On our visiting it,
ten years thereafter, we sought in vain throughout its few
miserable shops, unworthy of the name of bazaars, for any
thing that could be purchased to be carried away, as a
memorial of Tyre. Tyrus, a merchant of the people for
many isles, that said, I am of perfect beauty, with its
benches of ivory, and fine linen with broidered work from
Egypt, and shields and helmets upon its walls round about,
and horns of ebony and ivory, whose fairs were replenished
with emeralds, purple, and broidered wor'k, and coral, and
' Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 212.

TYRE. 495
agate, and balm, and wine, and cassia, and calamus, and
precious clothes for chariots, and chests of rich apparel, and
bright iron, and white wool, and the chief of all spices, and
with all precious stones, the sardius, topaz, and the dia
mond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the
emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold, and all sorts of mer
chandise, has now nothing to supply: but there are there
fishermen who stiU spread their nets over the bare grave of
the once proud Queen of the Ocean, in the midst of the sea.
Of Tyre it was written, Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries
by the multitude of thine iniquities: and in the ruins of
Tyre its sanctuaries have their place. Of the celebrated
temple of Hercules, not a vestige remains, and its site is un
known. In Christian times, the comparatively modern city
could boast of many churches, and a magnificent cathedral,
which, as its remains show, was about two hundred and
thirty feet in length. AU ruined as it is, see plate, it shows,
no less than any other in the land, that the sanctuaries
have been destroyed, and the altars overthrown, and that
the holy places are to this day defiled. In the days of
Alexander the Great, the waU of insular Tyre, ere he broke
it down, was a hundred and fifty feet in height. Now, the
ruins of the cathedral may be seen as they tower over the
lowly wall of a miserable village, that now but only serves
to defend from wandering Arabs the humble fishermen who
ply their predicted task, where the conqueror of the world
laboured long and hard to accomplish his, ere he could reach
the now broken wall, the ancient girdle of an isle, or cast
down one of the columns on which wretched representatives
of princely Tyrians sit and watch their outspread nets.
It matters not by what means these "prophecies have
been verified;" for the means were as inscrutable, and as
impossible to have been foreseen by man, as the event. The

49 6 TYRE.
fact is beyond a doubt that they have been Uterally fulfilled,
and therefore the PROPHECIES ARE TRUE. They may be
overlooked, but no ingenuity can pervert them. No facts
could have been more unlikely or striking, and no predic
tions respecting them could have been more clear.
" No traveller," says Van de Velde, " can visit this city
without being completely convinced that not one single word
which the Lord hath said concerning (against) Tyre has
faUen to the ground."1 "Even in the more modern Tyre
of the middle ages, what has become of her double and
triple walls, her lofty towers, her large and massive man
sions? Not only have these structures been overthrown,
but their very materials have in a great measure disappeared.
Tyre has been used as a quarry for the repair of the fortifi
cations of Akka (Acre), and the construction of the modern
houses of Beyrout; her stately columns, whose size and
material place them beyond the reach of modern architects,
have been left where they were cast, ' in the midst of the
water/ The sites once occupied by her palaces have been
made bare ' as the top of a rock ; ' the fishermen • spread
their nets' upon the prostrate ruins of her ramparts, her
harbours are filled up by drifting sand, her commerce and
her wealth have long deserted her ; ' what city is like Tyrus,
like the destroyed in the midst of the sea?'"2
¦ Van de Velde, p. 191.
2 Hand-Book for Syria and Palestine, p. 395.

EGYPT. 497

CHAPTER XIII.
EGYPT.
Egypt was one of the most ancient and one of the mightiest
of kingdoms, and the researches of the traveller are still
directed to explore the unparalleled memorials of its power.
No nation, whether of ancient or of modern times, has ever
erected such great and durable monuments. While the
vestiges of other ancient monarchies can hardby be found
amidst the mouldered ruins of their cities, those artificial
mountains, visible at the distance of thirty miles, the Pyra
mids of Egypt, without a record of their date, have with
stood, unimpaired, aU the ravages of time. The dynasty of
Egypt takes precedence, in antiquity, of every other. No
country ever produced so long a catalogue of kings. The
learning of the Egyptians was proverbial. The number of
their cities,1 and the population of their country, as recorded
by ancient historians, almost surpass credulity. Nature and
art united in rendering it a most fertile region. It was
called the granary of the world. It was divided into several
kingdoms, and their power often extended over many of the
surrounding countries.2 Yet the knowledge of all its great
ness and glory deterred not the Jewish prophets from de
claring, that Egypt shall become a base kingdom, and never
exalt itself any more above the nations. And the literal
fulfilment of every prophecy affords as clear a demonstra-
i Twenty thousand. (Herod, lib. ii. cap. clxxvii.)
¦ Marshami Can. Chron. pp, 239, 242.
32

498 EGYPT.
tion as can possibly be given, that each and all of them are
the dictates of inspiration.
Egypt was the theme of many prophecies, which were
fulfilled in ancient times ; and it bears to the present day, as
it has borne throughout many ages, every mark with which
prophecy had stamped its destiny: —
" They shaU be a base kingdom. It shall be the basest
of the kingdoms ; neither shaU it exalt itself any more above
the nations: for I wiU diminish them, that they shaU no
more rule over the nations.1 The pride of her power shaU
come down. — And they shaU be desolate in the midst of
the countries that are desolate, and her cities shall be in the
midst of the cities that are wasted. I wUl make the land
of Egypt desolate, and the country shaU be destitute of
that whereof it was full. — I will sell the land into the hand
of the wicked: and I wiU make the land waste, and aU
that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I the Lord have
spoken it. And there shall be no more a prince of the land
of Egypt."2Egypt became entirely subject to the Persians about
three hundred and fifty years previous to the Christian era.
It was afterwards subdued by the Macedonians, and was
governed by the Ptolemies for the space of two hundred
and ninety-four years, until, about thirty years before
Christ, it became a province of the Roman empire. It
continued long in subjection to the Romans — tributary first
to Rome, and afterwards to Constantinople. It was trans
ferred, a.d. 641, to the dominion of the Saracens. In 1250
the Mamelukes deposed their rulers, and usurped the com
mand of Egypt. A mode of government the most singular
and surprising that ever existed on earth, was established
and maintained. Each successive ruler was raised to
supreme authority, from being a stranger and a slave: no
' Ezek. xxix. 14, 15. 2 Ezek. xxx. 6, 7, 12, 13; xxxii. 15.

EGYPT. 499
son of the former ruler, no native of Egypt succeeding to
the sovereignty ; but a chief was chosen from among a new
race of imported slaves. When Egypt became tributary to
the Turks in 1517, the Mamelukes retained much of their
power, and every pasha was an oppressor and a stranger.
During aU these ages, every attempt to emancipate the
country, or to create a prince of the land of Egypt, has
proved abortive, and has often been fatal to the aspirant.
Though the facts relative to Egypt form too prominent a
feature in the history of the world to admit of contradic
tion or doubt, yet the description of the fate of that country,
and of the form of its government, shall be left to the testi
mony of those whose authority no infidel will question, and
whom no man can accuse of adapting their descriptions to
the predictions of the event. Gibbon and Volney are again
our witnesses of the facts.
" Such is the state of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three
centuries ago of her natural proprietors, she has seen her
fertile fields successively a prey to the Persians, the Mace
donians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Georgians,
and, at length, the race of Tartars distinguished by the
name of Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes, purchased as
slaves and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power,
and elected a leader. If their first establishment was a
singular event, their continuance is not less extraordinary.
They are replaced by slaves brought from their original
country. The system of oppression is methodical. Every
thing the traveUer sees or hears, reminds him he is in the
country of slavery and tyranny."1 " A more unjust and
absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which con
demns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude, under
the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such
has been the state of Egypt above five hundred years. The
1 Volney's Travels, vol. i. pp. 74, 103, 110, 198.

500 EGYPT.
most illustrious sultans of the Baharite and Borgite dynasties
were themselves promoted from the Tartar and Circassian
bands; and the four-and-twenty Beys, or military chiefs,
have ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their
servants."1 These are the words of Volney and Gibbon ; —
and what did the ancient prophets foretell? I will make
the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hands of
strangers: I the Lord have spoken it. And there shall be
no more a prince of the land of Egypt. The sceptre of
Egypt shall depart away. The prophecy adds — they shall
be a base kingdom; it shall be the basest of the king
doms. After the lapse of two thousand and four hundred
years from the date of this prophecy, a scoffer at religion,
but an eye-witness of the facts, thus describes the self-same
spot: — ''' In Egypt there is no middle class, neither nobility,
clergy, merchants, landholders. A universal air of misery,
manifest in all the traveller meets, points out to him the
rapacity of oppression and the distrust attendant upon
slavery. The profound ignorance of the inhabitants equally
prevents them from perceiving the causes of their evils, or
applying the necessary remedies. Ignorance, diffused through
every class, extends its effects to every species of moral and
physical knowledge. Nothing is talked of but intestine
troubles, the public misery, pecuniary extortions, bastinadoes,
and murders. Justice herself puts to death without forma
lity."2 Other travehers describe the most execrable vices
as common, and represent the moral character of the people
as corrupted to the core. As a token of the desolation of
the country, mud-walled cottages are now the only habita
tions where the ruins of temples and palaces abound.
Egypt is surrounded by the dominions of the Turks and of
the Arabs; and the prophecy is literaUy true which marked
1 Gibbon's History, vol. xi. u. lix. p. 164.
' Volney's Travels, vol. i. pp. 190, 193.

EGYPT. 501
it in the midst of desolation: — They shall be desolate im, the
midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities shall be
in the midst of the cities that are wasted." The systematic
oppression, extortion, and plunder, which have so long pre-
vaUed, and the price paid for his authority and power by
every Turkish pasha, have rendered the country desolate of
that whereof it was full, and still show both how it has been
wasted by the hand of strangers, and how it has been sold
into the hand of the wicked.
The waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be
wasted and dried up. And they shall turn the rivers far
away; and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried
up: the reeds and flags shall wither. The paper reeds by
the brooks, by the mouth of tlie brooks, and everything sown
by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more}
&c. I will make the rivers dry,- — and. I will make the
land waste,2 &c. " Son of man, speak unto Pharaoh king of
Egypt, and to his multitude, Whom art thou like in thy
greatness? The waters made him great, the deep set him
up on high with her rivers running round about his plants,
and sent out her little rivers unto aU the trees of the field.
Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the
field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches be
came long, because of the multitude of waters, when he
shot forth. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length
of his branches; for his root was by great waters, &c. I
have driven him out for his wickedness. Thou shalt lie in
the midst of the uncircumcised, with them that be slain by
the sword. This is Pharaoh, and aU his multitude, saith the
Lord God."3
The turning far away of the rivers, or of ancient branches
of the Nile from their course, and the drying up of
the canals, and consequent emptying of the brooks, which
' Isaiah, xix. 5-7. 2 Ezek. xxx. 12. 3 Ezek. xxxi. 2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 18.

502 EGYPT.
spread fecundity over Egypt, may be ranked among the
immediate and most influential causes of the desolation
which has spread over the far greater part of Egypt.
Wherever, on the banks of the Nile, irrigation is practised,
and the little rivers run about the plants, and are sent out
unto aU the trees of the field, the wonderful luxuriance of
the irrigation may well astonish a European : and the sickly
green-house plants of our cold and comparatively sunless
clime, assume a gigantic form. And partial and narrow as
these rich fringes now are, advancing hills of sand, (through
the sloping sides of which the stems, and upper branches,
and topmost twigs of trees buried, or being buried, may be
seen as marking the progress of yet unstayed desolation,) in
some places, as at Rosetta, threaten destruction, like that of
the felon condemned to stand on the brink of the rising
tide. But over great part of Egypt desolation has done its
perfect work. The streams of the Nile are now circum
scribed within narrow limits to what formerly they were.
On the western side of Egypt, as seen in Heath's Plan of
Egypt, an " ancient bed of the river Nile, now dry, and
called by the natives Bellomah," is distant eighty miles from
the nearest branch of that river. The intermediate space,
of greater length than breadth, is marked as " immense
sandy plains;" and a long canal which partly intersected it,
is now " dry, except at the time of the inundation." Along
the sea-coast the land is level and destitute of trees. And
on the eastern side of Egypt, " the Pelusian branch of the
Nile is choked up," and the plain in which it flowed, except
in a few stagnant pools, is undistinguished from the sandy
desert which now surrounds it on every side. In the inter
mediate space, and even wdthin the far narrower limits now
occupied by the streams of the Nile, the dry lines of the
rivers and canals are to be seen, and the desert covers many
extensive regions which once raised Egypt among the chief

EGYPT. 503
of the kingdoms. With the exception of the environs of
Rosetta and Damietta, and of a few miserable villages, in
traversing the once rich Delta of Egypt from one side to
another, the traveUer, as the writer witnessed, passes
through a desert; and where streams once ran about the
plants, and the little rivers were sent out among the trees of
the field, water skins are a necessary equipage of a traveller,
and can only be fiUed anew, after a journey of eight or ten
hours, or of a longer period, and sometimes, too, at an un
wholesome stagnant weU, of the like of which the cattle in
this country would not drink. Assuredly the desert has
spread over a large portion of the once fertile land of Egypt.
The land is waste, and everything is withered, where the
rivers have been turned far away, and the brooks are
emptied and dried up.
The most recent travellers in Egypt, as in other countries,
now see and acknowledge the marveUous fulfilment of the
prophecies. " Long," says Lord Lindsay, " did we gaze on the scene
around and below us, (temple of Carnac at Thebes) —
utter, awful desolation ! Truly, indeed, has No been ' rent
asunder.' The towers of the second, or eastern propylon,
are mere heaps of stones, ' poured down,' — as prophecy and
modern travellers describe the foundations of Samaria — into
the court on one side, and the great hall on the other;
giant columns have been swept away hke reeds before the
mighty avalanche," &c. " Returning to the great obelisk,
and seating myself on the broken shaft of its prostrate com
panion, I spent some delightful moments in musing over the
scene of ruins scattered around me, so visibly smitten by
the hand of God, in fulfilment of the prophecies that de
scribe No -Ammon as the scene of desolation I then beheld
her. The hand of the true Jove Ammon, Ael-Amunah, the
God of Truth, has indeed ' executed judgments on all the

504 EGYPT.
gods of Egypt,' but especiaUy on his spurious representative,
the idol of this most stupendous of earthly temples ; silence
reigns in its courts; the 'multitude of No' has been cut
off; Pathros is 'desolate;' — the land of Ham is stUl the
basest of kingdoms, — so sure is the word of prophecy, so
visible its accomplishment!" "We have spent the whole
day in visiting the site of Memphis and the pyramids of
Dashour and Sacara. Mounds and embankments, a few
broken stones, and two colossal statues, disinterred a few
years ago by our friend Caviglia, are the solitary remains of
the ancient capital of Lower Egypt. We rode for mUes
through groves of palm and acacia, cultivated fields, and
wastes of sand, over what we knew must be the site of
Memphis, but every other vestige of her ancient grandeur
has disappeared. Noph is indeed 'waste and desolate.'"1
" Thus saith the Lord God, I will also destroy the idols,
and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph. — And
I will make Pathros desolate, and will set fire in Zoom,
(marg. Tanis), and will execute judgments in No. And I
will pour my fury upon Sin, the strength of Egypt; and
I will cut off the multitude of No. And I will set fire in
Egypt: Sin shall have great pain, and No shall be rent
asunder, and Noph shall have distresses daily. The young
men of Aven (Heliopolis), and of Pi-beseth (Pelusium), shall
fall by the sword: and, these cities shall go into captivity.
At Tehaphnehes also the day shall be darkened, when I shall
break there the yokes of Egypt; and the pomp of her
strength shall cease in her. — Thus will I execute judgments
in Egypt; and they shall know that I am the Lord."2
Though Herodotus numbered the cities of Egypt by
thousands, yet all those which existed in the days of the
prophets have long been in ruins. Egypt, of old exceed
ingly rich and populous, is now, except where still partially
1 Lord Lindsay's Travels, vol. i. pp. 185-189. 2 Ezek. xxx. 13-19.

EGYPT. 505
watered by the NUe and cultivated, bare and depopulated.
Its two great cities, Cairo and Alexandria, are bordered by
the desert. And with the exception of Rosetta and Damietta,
and a few miserable viUages, not a single town is to be met
with, in traversing Lower Egypt from Alexandria to El
Arish, or from one extremity to the other. Thebes, once
famed for its hundred gates, may be called, from the mag
nificence of its remains, the metropolis of ruins. The
mummies, so abundant at Memphis, remain, though the city
has perished; and the human forms which once peopled it,
have retained their perfect structure long after its palaces
and temples have mouldered into indistinguishable heaps.
Heliopolis has now a single erect obelisk to tell that the
mounds around it were once the " city of the sun." A single
street, with its central square, of the city of Alexandria,
built after the era of the prophets, occupied a greater space
than the modern city.1 " At Bubastus, now Tel Basta, the
Pi-beseth of Scripture, are lofty mounds, and some remains
of the ancient city of Pasht. Many other mounds, in
various parts of the Delta, mark the sites of ancient towns."2
The author, in hastily passing through Egypt, heard of ruins
in various directions, and passed over those of Zoan,3 of
which, besides the general desolation that was to come on
the cities of Egypt, the prophet said, / will set a fire in
Zoan. As the Lord wrought wonders of old in the fields
of Zoan, so that city (the locality of which is undoubted,)
now bears in its ruins the proof of its ancient greatness, and
the marks of its prophetic fate. The remains of Zoan being
little known, as only partially described by travellers, may
be more particularly noticed.
San, or, as pronounced by the Arabs on the spot, Zaan, a
1 See Heath's Plan of Alexandria.
2 Wilkinson's Thebes, p. 347.
3 Arriving late in the day at San (Zoan), my friend the Rev. Andrew Bonar first
directed my attention to these ruin3.

506 EGYPT.
small fishing village, built of mud and brick, some of the
dwellings consisting of the former and some of the latter, is
the only representative of this seat of Pharaoh's glory. In
its immediate vicinity, but raised considerably above the
plain, are the ruins of the ancient city. These, in general,
where not buried under sand, consist of large heaps of debris,
formed of earth, broken bricks, and tUes in great abundance.
The chief remains, all faUen, and lying almost in straight
lines, seem to have belonged to the same range of grand
and public edifices. On the remote extremity from the
viUage, high sandy mounds render any ruins or buUdings
invisible, if ever, as in all likelihood, they have existed there.
Two fragments of obelisks, the one twenty-seven, the other
sixteen feet long, first appear above the sand. At the
distance of sixty yards, upwards of twenty large blocks of
granite, evidently some portion of an ancient building, lie
on the ground, and nearly the same number at a farther
similar distance. Besides these last, there are broken frag
ments of obelisks, covered with rubbish, and a stone figure
or image, in a sitting position, eleven feet in height, resting
on a block five feet high, and four broad, but lying nearly
horizontaUy, with the head inclined downwards, as if licking
the dust. About thirty-six yards farther on, in the same
direction, are three broken obelisks, of one of which, the top
or upper part, which has been broken off, is twenty-four
feet long, lying horizontally, while the lower part, in two
other fragments, dips obliquely into the sand. The second
obelisk, lying near it, is hid at both extremities, and broken
in the middle: though above thirty feet long, it is evident
that only a portion of it is seen, the narrowest part of which
that is visible, is four feet in diameter. The third is evi
dently in an unfinished state. And this is a token, among
other proofs, that the Lord has been a swift messenger
against Egypt, and that his judgments have come upon it

EGYPT. 507
suddenly. At a farther distance of fifty yards, two other
obelisks lie contiguous ; and at a little distance from these,
in a single spot, from seventy to eighty large stones or
blocks of granite are crowded together (some of them six
feet by four,) most of which are partly hid in the ground,
and some scattered around. Fragments of ruins lie over a
large extent, and among these many vitrified pieces, larger
than those on Gaza, are to be found, clearly indicating that
the Lord hath set fire in Zoan.
Can any words be more free from ambiguity, or could
any events be more wonderful in their nature, or more
unlikely or impossible to have been foreseen by man, than
these prophecies concerning Egypt ? The long line of its
kings commenced with the first ages of the world, and,
while it was yet unbroken, its final termination was revealed.
The very attempt once made by infidels to show, from the
recorded number of its monarchs and the duration of their
reigns, that Egypt was a kingdom previous to the Mosaic
era of the deluge, places the wonderful nature of these pre
dictions respecting it in the most striking view. And the
previous experience of two thousand years, during which
period Egypt had never been without a prince of its own,
seemed to preclude the possibility of those predicted events
which the experience of the last two thousand years has
amply verified. Though it had often tyrannized over Judea
and the neighbouring nations, the Jewish prophets foretold
that its own sceptre should depart away ; and that that
country of kings (for the numbers of its contemporary as
well as successive monarchs may warrant the appeUation)
would never have a prince of its own; and that it would be
laid waste by the hand of strangers. They foretold that it
should be a base kingdom, the basest of the kingdoms ; that
it should be desolate itself, and surrounded by desolation ;
and that it should never exalt itself any more over the

508 EGYPT.
nations. They describe its ignominious subjection and
unparalleled baseness, notwithstanding that its past and
present degeneracy bears not a more remote resemblance to
the former greatness and pride of its power than the frailty
of its mud-walled fabrics now bears to the stability of its
imperishable pyramids. Such prophecies, accomplished in
such a manner, prove, without a comment, that they must
be the revelation of the omniscient Ruler of the universe.1
On a review of the prophecies relative to Nineveh, Baby
lon, Tyre, and Egypt, may we not, by the plainest induction
from indisputable facte, conclude that the fate of these cities
and countries, as well as of the land of Judea and the adjoin
ing territories, demonstrates the truth of aU the prophecies
respecting them ? and that these prophecies, ratified by the
events, give the most powerful of testimonies to the truth
of the Christian religion? The desolation was the work of
man, and was effected by the enemies of Christianity; and
would have been the same as it is, though not a single pro
phecy had been uttered. It is the prediction of these facts,
1 Egypt has indeed risen under its late spirited but despotic pasha, who was both
an oppressor and a stranger, to a degree of political importance and power unknown
to it for many past centuries. Yet this fact, instead of militating against the truth
of prophecy, may, possibly at no distant period, serve to illustrate another prediction,
which implies that, however base and degraded it might continue to be throughout
many generations, it would, notwithstanding, have strength sufficient to be looked
to for aid or protection, even at the time of the restoration of the Jews to Judea,
who will seek "to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in
the shadow of Egypt." Other prophecies respecting it await their fulfilment. Yet,
whatever its apparent strength may be, it is still but "the shadow of Egypt." (Isa.
xxx. 2; xxxi. 1.) The whole earth shall yet rejoice; and Egypt shall not be for ever
base. The Lord skall smite Egypt; he shall smite and heal it; w,id they shall return
to the Lord, and he shall be entreated of them, and shall heal them. — Tlie Egyptian
shall serve with the Assyrian. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and
with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of tlie earth: whom the Lord of hosts shall
bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and
Israel mine inheritance. (Isa. xix. 10-25.) Of the time when Israel shall be saved,
it is written, And the pride of Assyria shall be brought down, and the sceptre of Egypt'
shall depart away. And I will strengthen (hem in the Lord; and they slmll walk up
and dovm in, his name, saith Jehovah. (Zech. x. 11. 12.) Let God arise, let his
enemies be scattered. . . . Scatter thou the people that delight in war. Princes shall
come out of Egypt ; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God. (Ps. lxviii.
1, 31, 32.)

EGYPT. 509
in all their particulars, infinitely surpassing human foresight,
which is the work of God alone. And the ruin of these
empires, while it substantiates the truth of every iota of
these predictions, is thus a miraculous confirmation and proof
of the inspiration of the Scriptures. By what fatality is it,
then, that infidels should have chosen for the display of their
power this very field, where, without conjuring, as they have
done, a lying spirit from the ruins, they might have read
the fulfilment of the prophecies on every spot ? Instead of
disproving the truth of every religion, the greater these
ruins are, the more strongly do they authenticate the Scrip
tural prophecies ; and it is not, at least, on this stronghold
of faith that the standard of infidelity can be erected. Every
fact related by Volney is a witness against all his specula
tion ; and out of his own mouth is he condemned. Can any
purposed deception be more glaring or great, than to over
look all these prophecies, and to raise an argument against
the truth of Christianity from the very facts by which they
have been fulfilled ? Or can any evidence of divine inspira
tion be more convincing and clear, than to view, in conjunc
tion, aU these marveUous predictions, and their exact com
pletion ?

510 THE ARABS.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE ARABS.
The history of the Arabs, so opposite in many respects to
that of the Jews, but as singular as theirs, was concisely
and clearly foretold. It was prophesied concerning Ishmael :
¦ — ¦" He will be a wild man ; his hand will be against every
man, and every man's hand against him : and he shah dwell
in the presence of all his brethren. I wUl make him fruit
ful, and wiU multiply him exceedingly ; — and I will make
him a great nation."1 The fate of Ishmael is here identified
with that of his descendants ; and the same character is
common to them both. The historical evidence of the fact —
the universal tradition, and constant boast of the Arabs
themselves — their language, and the preservation for many
ages of an original rite, derived from him as their primo
genitor — confirm the truth of their descent from Ishmael.
The fulfilment of the prediction is obvious. Even Gibbon,
while he attempts, from the exceptions which he specifies,
to evade the force of the fact, that the Arabs have main
tained a perpetual independence, acknowledges that these
exceptions are temporary and local ; that the body of the
nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful
monarchies ; and that " the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of
Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of
Arabia." '' But even the exceptions which he specifies,
though they were justly stated, and though not coupled
with such admissions as invalidate them, would not detract
1 Gen. xvi. 12; xvii. 20. 2 Gibbon's Hist. vol. ix. c 1. p. 23U.

THE ARABS. 511
from the truth of the prophecy. The independence of the
Arabs was proverbial in ancient as weU as in modern times;
and the present existence, as a free and independent nation,
of a people who derive their descent from so high antiquity,
demonstrates that they have never been whohy subdued, as
ah the nations around them have unquestionably been ; and
that they have ever dwelt in the presence of their brethren.
They not only subsist unconquered to this day, but the pro
phesied and primitive wildness of their race, and their
hostUity to aU, remain unsubdued and unaltered. " They
are a wild people ; their hand is against every man, and
every man's hand is against them." In the words of
Gibbon, which strikingly assimilate with those of the pro
phecy, they are " armed against mankind." Plundering is
their profession. Their alliance is never courted, and can
never be obtained ; and all that the Turks, or Persians, or
any of their neighbours, can stipulate for from them, is a
partial and purchased forbearance. It cannot be aUeged, with
truth, that their peculiar character and manner, and its unin
terrupted permanency, are the necessary result of the nature
of their country. They have continued wild or uncivilized,
and have retained their habits of hostUity towards all the rest
of the human race, though they possessed for three hundred
years countries the most opposite in their nature from the
mountains of Arabia. The greatest part of the temperate
zone was included within the limits of the Arabian conquests ;
and their empire extended from the confines of India to the
shores of the Atlantic,1 and embraced a wider range of
territory than ever was possessed by the Romans, those
boasted masters of the world. The period of their conquest
and dominion was sufficient, under such circumstances, to
have changed the manners of any people : but, whether in
the land of Shinar or in the vaUeys of Spain, on the banks
1 Gibbon, vol. ix. t. li. p. 501 — vol. *. c. lii. p. 2.

512 THE ARABS.
of the Tigris or the Tagus, in Araby the blessed, or Araby
the barren, the posterity of Ishmael have ever maintained
their prophetic character ; they have remained, under every
change of condition, a wild people; their hand has still been
against every man, and every man's hand against them.
The natural reflection of a recent traveller, on examining
the peculiarities of an Arab tribe, of which he was an eye
witness, may suffice, without any art of controversy, for the
Ulustration of this prophecy : — " On the smallest computa
tion, such must have been the manners of those people for
more than three thousand years ; thus in all things verifying
the prediction given of Ishmael at his birth, that he, in his
posterity, should be a wUd man, and always continue to be
so, though they shall dwell for ever in the presence of their
brethren. And that an acute and active people, surrounded
for ages by polished and luxurious nations, should, from
their earliest to their latest times, be still found a wild
people, dwelling in the presence of all their brethren (as we
may call those nations), unsubdued and unchangeable, is
indeed a standing miracle, — one of those mysterious facts
which establish the truth of prophecy."1
1 Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, p. 304.
The truth of prophecy is not exhausted by accomplished facts concerning the seed
of Ishmael. There was a blessing also for that son of Abraham. Kedar and
Nebaioth were sons of Ishmael. All Israel shall be saved, for it is written,. There
shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.
(Rom. xi. 26.) In that prophecy it is also written, All they from Sheba shall come,
and they shall sliow forth the praises of Jehovah. All the flocks of Kedar shall be
gathered together unto thee. The rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee. — And I
will glorify the house of my glory. (Isa. Ix. 6, 7.)

THE DESCENDANTS OF NOAH. 5 ] 3

CHAPTER XV.
SLAVERY OF AFRICANS  EUROPEAN COLONIES IN ASIA.
Not only do the different countries and cities, which form
the subjects of prophecy, exhibit to this day their predicted
fate, but there is also a prophecy recorded as delivered in
an age coeval with the deluge, when the members of a single
family included the whole of the human race, the fulfilment
of which is conspicuous even at the present time. And
while the fate of the Jews and of the Arabs, throughout
many ages, has confirmed, in every instance in which the
period of their prediction is already past, the prophecies
relative to the descendants of Isaac and of Ishmael,- — exist
ing facts, which are prominent features in the history of the
world, are equaUy corroborative of the predictions respecting
the sons of Noah. The unnatural conduct of Ham, and the
dutiful and respectful behaviour of Shem and Japheth
towards their aged father, gave rise to the prediction of the
future fate of their posterity, without being at aU assigned
as the cause of that fate. But whatever was the occasion
on which it was delivered, the truth of the prophecy must
be tried by its completion : — " Cursed be Canaan ; a servant
of servants shaU he be unto his brethren. Blessed be the
Lord God of Shem ; and Canaan shaU be his servant. God
shaU enlarge Japheth, and he shaU dweU in the tents of
Shem; and Canaan shaU be his servant."1
The historical part of Scripture, by its describing so par
ticularly the respective settlements of the descendants of
• Gen. ix. 25, 26, 27.
33

5 1 4 THE CANAANITES.
Noah, " after their generations in their nations," affords to
this day, the means of trying the truth of the prediction,
and of ascertaining whether the prophetic character, as given
by the patriarch of the post-diluvian world, be still appli
cable to the inhabitants of the different regions of the earth
which were peopled by the posterity of Shem, of Ham, and
of Japheth. The isles of the Gentiles} or the countries
beyond the Mediterranean, to which they passed by sea, viz.
those of Europe, were divided by the sons of Japheth. The
descendants of Ham inhabited Africa and the south-western
parts of Asia. The families of the Canaanites were spread
abroad. The border of the Canaanites was from Sidon.2
The city of Tyre was called the daughter of Sidon; and
Carthage, the most celebrated city of Africa, was peopled
from Tyre. And the dweUings of the sons of Shem were
unto the east,3 or Asia. The particular allotment, or portion
of each, "after their families, after their tongues, in their
countries, after their nations,"4 is distinctly specified. And
although the different nations descended from any one of
the sons of Noah, have intermingled "with each other, and
undergone many revolutions, yet the three great divisions
of the world have remained distinct, as separately peopled
and possessed by the posterity of each of the sons of Noah.
On this subject the earliest commentators are agreed ; before
the existence of those facts which give to the prophecy its
fuUest illustration. The facts themselves, by which the
prediction is verified, are so notorious and so applicable, that
the most brief and simple statement may suffice. Before
the propagation of Christianity, which first spoke peace to
earth, taught a law of universal love, and called aU men
brethren, slavery everywhere prevailed, and the greater part
of the human race, throughout aU the world, were born to
1 Gen. x. 5. 2 Gen. x. 6, 18, 19. » Gen. x. 30.
' Gen. x. 31, 32.— See Mede, Die. L. p. 277, &c.

ENLARGEMENT OF JAPHET. 515
slavery, and unredeemed for life. Man can now boast of a
nobler birthright. But though long banished from almost
all Europe, slavery stiU fingers in Africa. That country is
distinguished above every other as the land of slavery.
Slaves at home, and transported for slavery, poor Africans,
the descendants of Ham, are the servants of servants,
or slaves to others. Yet so unlikely was this fact to
have been foreseen by man, that, for centuries after the
close of the Old Testament history, inhabitants of Africa
disputed with the Romans the empire of the world. But
Hannibal, who was once almost master of Rome and of
Europe, was forced to yield to and own the fate of

Carthage.1

" God shaU enlarge Japheth, and he shaU dweU in the
tents of Shem." Some of the ablest interpreters of prophecy,
of a former age, conceived that this prediction was fulfilled,
not only by the conquests which the Macedonians and the
Romans obtained over many of the countries of Asia, but
that the promise or blessing of enlargement to Japheth was
also verified in a metaphorical sense, by the extension of the
knowledge of true religion to the nations of Europe. But
it stands not now in need of any questionable interpretation,
having received a literal accomplishment. What is at
present the relative situation or connexion of the inhabitants
of Europe and of Asia, the descendants of Japheth and of
Shem ? May not the former be said literaUy to dweU in
the tents of the latter? Or what simUe, drawn from the
simplicity of primeval ages, could be more strikingly graphic
of the numerous and extensive European colonies in Asia ?
And how much have the posterity of Japheth been enlarged
within the regions of the posterity of Shem ? In how many
of their ancient cities do they dwell? How many settle
ments have they established ? — whUe there is not a single
1 Livii Hist., lib. xxvii. u. 51. Mede, ibid.

516 UNJUSTIFIABLENESS OF SLAVERY.
spot in Europe the colony or the property of any of the
nations whom the Scriptures represent as descended from
Shem, or who inhabit any part of that quarter of the world
which they possessed. And it may be said, in reference to
our own island, and to the immense extent of the British
Asiatic dominions, that the natives of the isles of the Gentiles
dwell in the tents of the East ! From whence, then, could
such a prophecy have emanated, but from inspiration by Him
whose presence and whose prescience are alike unlimited by
space or by time ?
Whatever events the prophecies reveal, they never sanction
any iniquity or evil. The wrath of man worketh not the
righteousness of God, though it be made to praise him. And
any defence or attempted justification of slavery, or of man
having any moral right of property in man, must be sought
in vain from the fulfilment of this prediction. Nebu
chadnezzar was the guilty instrument of righteous judg
ments ; and although, in the execution of these, he was the
servant of the Lord, it was his own gain and glory which
he sought, and after having subdued nations not a few, he
was driven from men, and had his dweUing with the beasts.
Never were judgments more clearly marked than those
which have rested on the Jews in every country under
heaven. Yet he that toucheth them toucheth the apple of
his eye : and the year of recompences for the controversy
of Zion shall be the day of the Lord's vengeance, when he
wUl plead with all flesh for his people and for his heritage.
And if these examples suffice not to show that it is a wrest
ing of Scripture to their destruction, for any to seek from
them the vindication of slavery, because Canaan was to be
a servant of servants unto his brethren, yet they who pro
fess to look here to the Holy Scriptures for a warrant,
because that fact was foretold, should remember, that though
Christ was delivered into the hands of his enemies " by the

UNJUSTIFIABLENESS OF SLAVERY. 517
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, it was by
wicked hands that he was crucified and slain." God hath
made of one blood all the nations of the earth. And,
were the gospel universaUy and rightly appealed to, no other
bond would be known among men but that of Christian
brotherhood.1 1 It is worthy of remark, that in copies of this treatise, republished and exten
sively circulated in the Slave States of America, this paragraph was omitted I

518 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA.
Incomplete as has been the view given in the foregoing
pages of the Evidence of Prophecy, yet do not the joint clear
ness of the prophecies themselves, and the profusion of pre
cise facts which show their literal fulfilment, bid defiance to
the most subtle sceptic to forge or feign the shadow of a just
reason to prove how they could all have been spoken, except
by inspiration of God? The sure word of prophecy has in
deed unfolded many a desolation which has come upon the
earth ; but while it thus reveals the operation, in some of
its bearings, of the " mystery of iniquity," it forms itself a
part of the " mystery of godliness : " and it is no less the
testimony of Jesus, because it shows, as far as earthly ruins
can reveal, the progress and the issue of the dominion of
" other lords" over the hearts of the children of men. The
sins of men have caused, and the cruelty of men has effected,
the dire desolations which the word of God foretold. Signs
and tokens of his judgments there indeed have been, but
they are never to be found but where iniquity first prevaUed.
And though all other warnings were to fail, the sight of his
past judgments, and the sounding of those that are to come,
might teach the unrepenting and unconverted sinner to give
heed to the threatenings of his word and to the terrors of
the Lord, and to try his ways and turn unto God, while space
for repentance may be found, ere, as death leaves him, judg
ment shall find him. And may not the desolations which
God has wrought upon the earth, and that accredit his word,

THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 519
wherein life and immortality are brought to hght, teach the
man whose God is the world, to cease to account it worthy
of his worship and of his love, and to abjure that " cove-
tousness, which is idolatry," tUl the idol of mammon in the
temple within shall fall, as feU the image of Dagon before the
ark of the Lord, in which " the testimony" was kept ?
But naming, as millions do, the name of Christ, without
departing from iniquity, there is another warning voice that
may come more closely to them all. And it is not only
from the desolate regions where heathens dwelt, which show
how holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost ; but also from the ruins of some of the cities where
churches were formed by apostles, and where the religion of
Jesus once existed in its purity, that aU may learn to know
that God is no respecter of persons, and that he wUl by no
means clear the guUty " He that hath an ear, let him heai
what the Spirit saith unto the churches."
What church could rightly claim or ever seek a higher
title than that which is given in Scripture to the seven
churches of Asia, the angels of which were the seven stars in
the right hand of Him who is the first and the last, of Him
that liveth and was dead and is alive for evermore, and that
hath the keys of heU and of death; and which themselves
were the seven golden candlesticks in the midst of which he
walked ? And who that hath an ear to hear, may not humbly
hear and greatly profit by what the Spirit said unto them ?a
The Church of Ephesus, after a commendation of their
first works, to which they were commanded to return, were
accused of having left their first love, and threatened with
the removal of their candlestick out of its place, except
they should repent.2 Ephesus is situated nearly fifty miles
north of Smyrna. It was the metropolis of Ionia, and a
great and opulent city, and (according to Strabo) the great
1 Rev. ii. and iii. 2 Rev. ii 5.

520 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA.
emporium of Asia Minor. It was chiefly famous for the
temple of Diana, " whom aU Asia worshipped," which was
adorned with one hundred and twenty-seven columns of
Parian marble, each of a single shaft, and sixty feet high,
and which formed one of the seven wonders of the world.
The remains of its magnificent theatre, in which it is said
that twenty thousand people could easily have been seated,
are yet to be seen.1 But " a few heaps of stone, and some
miserable mud cottages, occasionally tenanted by Turks,
without one Christian residing there, are all the remains of
ancient Ephesus."2 — It is, as described by different travel
lers, a solemn and most forlorn spot. The epistle to the
Ephesians is read throughout the world : but there is none
in Ephesus to read it now. They left their first love ; they
returned not to their first works. Their candlestick has
been removed out of its place ; and the great city of Ephe
sus is no more.
The Church of Smyrna was approved of as " rich," and
no judgment was denounced against it.3 They were warned
of a tribulation of ten days (the ten years' persecution by
Dioclesian), and were enjoined to be faithful unto death,
and they would receive a crown of hfe. And, unlike to the
fate of the more famous city of Ephesus, Smyrna is stUl a
large city, containing nearly one hundred thousand inhabit
ants, with several Greek churches ; and an English and other
Christian ministers have resided in it. The light has indeed
become dim, but the candlestick has not been whoUy removed
out of its place.
The Church of Pergamos is commended for holding
fast the name of the Lord, and not denying his faith, during
a time of persecution, and in the midst of a wicked city.
But there were some in it who held doctrines, and did deeds,
1 Acts xix. 29.
2 Arundel's Visit to the Seven Churches of Asia, p. 27.
' Rev. ii. 8-11.

THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 521
which the Lord hated. Against them He was to fight with
the sword of his mouth ; and aU were caUed to repent. But
it is not said as of Ephesus, that their candlestick would be
removed out of its place.1 Pergamos is situated to the north
of Smyrna, at a distance of nearly sixty-four miles, and "was
formerly the metropolis of HeUespontic Mysia." It still con
tains at least fifteen thousand inhabitants, of whom fifteen
hundred are Greeks, and two hundred Armenians, each of
whom has a church.
In the Church of Thyatira, like that of Pergamos,
some tares were soon mingled with the wheat. He who hath
eyes like unto a flame of fire, discerned both. Yet happUy
for the souls of the people, more than for the safety of the
city, the general character of that church, as it then existed,
is thus described : " I know thy works, and charity, and ser
vice, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works ; and the
last to be more than the first."2 But against those — for
such there were among them, who had committed fornica
tion, and eaten things sacrificed unto idols, to whom the
Lord gave space to repent of their fornication, and they re
pented not— great tribulation was denounced ; and to every
one of them was to be given according to their works. These,
thus warned while on earth in vain, have long since passed,
whither all are daily hastening, to the place where no re
pentance can be found, and no work be done. " But unto
the rest in Thyatira, (as many as have not known the depths
of Satan) I will put upon you, saith the Lord, none other bur
den."3 There were those in Thyatira who could save a city.
It stiU exists, while greater cities have fallen. Mr Hartley,
who visited it in 1826, describes it as "embosomed in
cypresses and poplars." The Greeks are said to occupy three
hundred houses, and the Armenians thirty. Each of them
has a church.
' Rev. ii. 12-16. 2 Rev. ii. 19. 3 Rev. ii. 24.

522 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA.
The Church of Sardis differed from the churches of
Pergamos and Thyatira. They had not denied the faith ;
but the Lord had a few things against them, for there
were some evU doers among them, and on those if they
repented not, judgment was to rest. But in Sardis, great
though the city was, and founded though the church had
been by an apostle, there were only a few names which
had not defiled their garments. And to that church the
Spirit said, " I know thy works, that thou hast a name
that thou livest, and art dead." But the Lord is long-
suffering, not wiUing that any should perish, but that aU
should come to repentance. And the church of Sardis was
thus warned, " Be watchful, and strengthen the things
which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found
thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how
thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent.
If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a
thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon
thee." 1 The state of Sardis now is a token that the
warning was given in vain ; and shows that the threaten
ings of the Lord, when disregarded, become certain judg
ments. Sardis, the capital of Lydia, was a great and
renowned city, where the wealth of Croesus, its king, was
accumulated, and became even a proverb. But now a few
wretched mud huts, " scattered among the ruins," are the
only dwellings in Sardis, and form the lowly home of Turkish
herdsmen, who are its only inhabitants. As the seat of a
Christian church, it has lost — all it had to lose — the name.
" No Christians reside on the spot/'
"And to the angel of the Church in Philadelphia
write ; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true,
he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no
man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth ; I know
» Rev. iii. 2, 3.

THE seven churches OF ASIA. 523
thy works : behold, I have set before thee an open door,
and no man can shut it : for thou hast a little strength,
and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. — ¦
Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also
wiU keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall
come upon all the world." 1 The promises of the Lord are
as sure as his threatenings. Philadelphia alone long with
stood the power of the Turks, and in the words of Gibbon,
" at length capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans.
Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia," he adds,
" Philadelphia is stiU erect ; a column in a scene of ruins." 2
" It is indeed an interesting circumstance," says Mr Hartley,
" to And Christianity more flourishing here than in many
other parts of the Turkish empire : there is still a numerous
Christian population ; they occupy three hundred houses.
Divine service is performed every Sunday in five churches."
Nor is it less interesting, in these eventful times, and not
withstanding the general degeneracy of the Greek church,
to learn that the present bishop of PhUadelphia accounts
" the Bible the only foundation of aU reHgious belief ; " and
that he admits that " abuses have entered into the church,
which former ages might endure ; but the present must put
them down." 3 From the prevailing iniquities of men
many a sign has been given how terrible are the judg
ments of God. But from the fidelity of the church in
Philadelphia of old in keeping his word, a name and me
morial of his faithfulness has been left on earth, while the
higher glories, promised to those that overcame, shall be
ratified in heaven ; and towards them, but not them only,
shall the glorified Redeemer confirm the truth of his blessed
words, " Him that overcometh wUl I make a pillar in the
temple of my God" ; " even as assuredly as Philadelphia,
¦ Rev. iii. 7, 8, 10.
2 Gibbon, vol. xi. ch. Ixiv. p. 427.
3 Missionary Register, June 1S27.

524 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA.
when aU else feU around it, " stood erect," our enemies
themselves being judges, " a column in a scene of ruins."
" And unto the angel of the Church OF the Laodi-
CEANS write ; These things saith the Amen, the faithful
and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God ;
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot : I
would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art
lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I wiU spue thee out of
my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased
with goods, and have need of nothing ; and knowest not
that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind,
and naked : I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the
fire, that thou mayest be rich ; and white raiment, that
thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy naked
ness do not appear ; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve,
that thou mayest see." 1 All the other churches were found
worthy of some commendation ; and there was some bless
ing in them all. The church of Ephesus had laboured and
had not fainted, though she had forsaken her first love ;
and the threatened punishment, except she repented, was
the removal of her candlestick out of its place. A faithless
and wicked few polluted the churches of Pergamos and
Thyatira by their doctrines or by their lives ; but the body
was sound, and the churches had a portion in Christ. Even
in Sardis, though it was dead, there was life in a few, who
had not defiled their garments ; " and they shall walk
with me in white," saith the Lord, " for they are worthy."
But in what the Spirit said to the church in Laodicea,
there was not one word of approval : it was lukewarm,
without exception ; and therefore it was whoUy loathed.
The religion of Jesus had become to them as an ordinary
matter. They would attend to it just as they did to other
things, which they loved as well. The sacrifice of the Son
> Rev. iii. 14-18.

THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 525
of God upon the cross was nothing thought of more than a
common gift by man. They were not constrained by the
love of Christ more than by other feelings. They could
repeat the words of the first great commandment of the law,
and of the second that is like unto it ; but they showed
no sign that the one or the other was truly a law to them.
There was no Dorcas among them, who, out of pure Chris
tian love, made clothes for the poor. There was no Phile
mon to whom it could be said, " The church in thy house,"
and who could look on a Christian servant as a " brother
beloved." There was no servant who looked to the eye of
his Father in heaven more than to that of his master on
earth, and to the recompense of eternal reward more than to
the hireling wages of a day ; and who, by showing all good
fidelity, sought to adorn the doctrine of God his Saviour in
aU things. There was nothing done as everything should
be, heartUy, as to the Lord, and not unto men.
They neither felt nor lived as if tbey knew that what
soever is not of faith is sin. Their lukewarmness was
worse, for it rendered their state more hopeless than if
they had been cold. For sooner would a man in Sardis
have felt that the chiU of death was upon him, and have
cried out for life, and called to the physician, than would a
man of Laodicea, who could calmly count his even pulse,
and think his Hfe secure, while death was preying on his
vitals. The character of lukewarm Christians, a self-con
tradicting name, is the same in every age. Such was the
church of the Laodiceans. — But what is that city now, or
how is it changed from what it was !
Laodicea was the metropolis of the Greater Phrygia ;
and, as heathen writers attest, it was an extensive and very
celebrated city. Instead of then verging to its decline, it
arose to its eminence only about the beginning of the Chris
tian era. It was the mother-church of sixteen bishoprics.

526 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA.
Its three theatres, and the immense circus, which was cap
able of containing upwards of thirty thousand spectators, the
spacious remains of which (with other ruins buried under
ruins) are yet to be seen, give proof of the greatness of its
ancient wealth and population, and indicate too strongly,
that in the city where Christians were rebuked, without
exception, for their lukewarmness, there were multitudes
who were lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. The
amphitheatre was buUt after the Apocalypse was written,
and the warning of the Spirit had been given to the church
of the Laodiceans to be zealous and repent ; but whatevei
they there may have heard or beheld, their hearts would
neither have been quickened to a renewed zeal for the ser
vice and glory of God, nor turned to a deeper sorrow for
sin, and to a repentance not to be repented of. But the
fate of Laodicea, though opposite, has been no less marked
than that of Philadelphia. There are no sights of grandeur,
nor scenes of temptation around it now. Its own tragedy
may be briefly told. It was lukewarm and neither cold
nor hot, and therefore it was loathsome in the sight of
God. It was loved, and rebuked, and chastened in vain.
And it has been blotted from the world. It is now as
desolate as its inhabitants were destitute of the fear and the
love of God, and as the church of the Laodiceans was devoid
of true faith in the Saviour, and zeal in his service. It is,
as described in his Travels by Dr Smith, " utterly desolated,
and without any inhabitant, except wolves, and jackals, and
foxes."1 It can boast of no human inhabitants, except occa
sionally when wandering Turkomans pitch their tents in its
spacious amphitheatre. The "finest sculptured fragments"
are to be seen at a considerable depth, in excavations which
have been made among the ruins;2 and Colonel Leake ob-
1 See Smith's Survey of the Seven Churches in Calmet's Diet. Fragments, 320.
Bishop Newton, &c.
2 Arundel's Travels, p. 85.

THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 527
serves,1 " there are few ancient cities more likely than Lao
dicea to preserve many curious remains of antiquity beneath
the surface of the soil ; its opulence, and the earthquakes to
which it was subject, rendering it probable that valuable
works of art were often there buried beneath the ruins of
the pubhc and private edifices." A fearful significancy is
thus given to the terrific denunciation, " Because thou art
lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I wiU spue thee out of
my mouth."
" He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the
Spirit saith unto the churches." The Spirit searcheth all
things, yea the deep things of God. Each church, and each
individual therein was weighed in the balance of the sanc
tuary according to their works. Each was approved of
according to its character, or rebuked and warned according
to its deeds. Was the church itself pure, the diseased mem
bers alone were to be cut off. Was the church itself dead,
yet the few names, in which there was life, were all written
before God, and not one of those who overcame would be
blotted out of the book of life. All the seven churches were
severally exhorted by the Spirit according to their need.
The faith dehvered to the saints was preached unto them
all ; and aU, as Christian churches, possessed the means of
salvation. The Son of man walked in the midst of them,
beholding those who were, and those who were not his.
By the preaching of the gospel, and by the written word,
every man in each of the churches was warned, and ever}'-
man was taught in aU wisdom, that every man might be
presented perfect in Christ Jesus. And in what the Spirit
said unto each and aU of the churches, which he that hath
ears to hear was commanded to hear, the promise of ever
lasting blessedness, under a variety of the most glorious
representations, was given without exception, restriction, or
1 Journal, p. 252.

5 28 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA.
reservation to him that overcometh. The language of love,
as weU as of remonstrance and rebuke, was urged even on
the lukewarm Laodiceans. And if any Christian feU, it was
from his pwn resisting and quenching the Spirit ; from his
choosing other lords than Jesus to have dominion over him ;
from his lukewarmness, deadness, and virtual denial of the
faith ; and from his own wUful rejection of freely-offered and
dearly-purchased grace ; sufficient, if sought and cherished,
and zealously used, to have enabled him to overcome and
triumph in that warfare against spiritual wickedness to
which Christ hath called his disciples ; and in which, as the
finisher of their faith, he is able to make the Christian more
than conqueror.
But if such, as the Spirit described them and knew them
to be, were the churches and Christians then, what are the
churches, and what are Christians now? Or, rather, we
would ask of the reader, what is your own hope towards
God, and what the work of your faith ? If, whUe Christi
anity was in its prime, and when its divine truths had
scarcely ceased to reach the ears of believers from the Hps
of Apostles, on whose heads the Spirit had visibly descended,
and cloven tongues, like as of fire, had sat ; if even at that
time, one of the seven churches of Asia had already de
parted from its first love ; if two others were partiaUy pol
luted by the errors in doctrine, and evils in the practice, of
some of their members ; if another had only a few names
that were worthy, and yet another none ; and if they, who
formed the last and worst of these, thought themselves rich
and increased with goods, and that they had need of nothing;
and knew not, that, being lukewarm, they were wretched,
and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked ; have you
an ear to hear, or a heart to understand such knowledge ?
and do you, professing yourself a Christian, as they also did,
see no cause or warning here to question and examine your-

THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA, 529
self — even as the same Spirit would search and try you —
of your works, and charity, and service, and faith and
patience, and thy works, and the last more than the first?
What is your labour of love, or wherein do you labour at
all for his name's sake, by whose name you are caUed ?
What trials does your faith patiently endure, what tempta
tions does it triumphantly overcome ? Is Christ in you the
hope of glory, and is your heart purified through that blessed
hope ? To a church, we trust, you belong : but whose is
the kingdom within you ? What principles ever actuate you
which Christ and his Apostles taught? Where, in your
affections and life, are the fruits of the Spirit — love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance ? Turn the precepts of the gospel into questions,
and ask thus, what the Spirit would say unto you, as he said
unto the churches ?
What the Spirit said unto primitive and apostolic
churches, over which " the beloved disciple " personally pre
sided, may suffice to prove that none who have left their
first love, if ever they have truly felt the love of Jesus —
that none who are guUty of seducing others into sin and
uncleanness — that none who have a name that they hve and
are dead — and that none who are lukewarm, are worthy
members of any Christian communion ; and that, while such
they continue, no Christian communion can be profitable to
them. But unto them is " space to repent " given. And
to them the word and Spirit speak in entreaties, encourage
ments, exhortations, and warnings ; that they may turn from
their sins to the Saviour, and that they may Hve and not
die. But were there one name in Sodom, or a few in
Sardis, that are the Lord's, he knows and names them every
one ; and precious in his sight is the death of his saints.
Some, on the other hand, may be sunk into the depths of
Satan, though in outward fellowship with a church, were
34

530 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA,
such to be found, as pure as once was that of Thyatira
Whatever, therefore, the profession of your faith may be,
seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness ; that king
dom which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy
Ghost, and that righteousness which is through faith in
Christ, who gave himself for the church, that he might
sanctify and cleanse it. And whatever dangers may then
encompass you around, fear not — only believe ; ah things
are possible to him that believeth.
It was by keeping the word of the Lord, and not denying
his faith, by hearing what the Spirit said, that the Church
of Philadelphia held fast what they had, and no man took
their crown, though situated directly between the church of
Laodicea, which was lukewarm, and Sardis, which was dead.
And dead as Sardis was, the Lord had a few names in it
which had not defiled their garments — Christians, worthy of
the name, who lived, as you yourself should ever live, in the
faith of the Lord Jesus — dead unto sin, and alive unto
righteousness : while all around them, though naming the
name of Jesus, were dead in trespasses and sins. Try your
faith by its fruits; judge yourselves that you be not judged ;
examine yourselves whether you be in the faith ; prove your
ownselves ; and, with the whole counsel of God, as revealed
in the gospel, open to your view, let the rule of your self-
scrutiny be what the Spirit said unto the churches.
If you have seen any wonderful things out of the law of
the Lord, and have looked, though from afar off, on the
judgments of God that have come upon the earth, lay not
aside the thought of these things when you now lajr down
this book. Treat them not as if they were an idle tale, or
as if you yourself were not to be a witness — and more than
a witness — of a far greater judgment which shall be brought
nigh unto you, and shall be your own.
If, in traversing some of the plainest paths of the field of

THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 531
prophecy, you have been led by a way which you knew not
of before, let that path lead you to the well of living waters,
which springeth up into everlasting life to every one that
thirsts after it and drinks. Let the words of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ be to you this well-spring of the Chris
tian life. Let the word of God enlighten your eyes, and it
will also rejoice your heart. Search the Scriptures, in them
are no lying divinations; they testify of Jesus, and in them
you wiU find eternal life. Pray for the teaching and the
aid of that Spirit by whose inspiration they were given.
And above all Christian virtues, that may bear witness of
your faith, put on charity, love to God, and love to man,
the warp and woof of the Christian's new vesture without a
seam ; which is the fruit of the Spirit, the end of the com
mandment, the fulfilling of the law, the bond of perfectness,
and a better gift, and a more excellent way than speaking
with tongues, or interpreting or prophesying ; and without
which you would be as nothing, though you understood aU
mystery and all knowledge. From the want of this the
earth has been covered with ruins. Let it be yours, and,
however poor may be your earthly portion, it will be in
finitely more profitable to you than all the kingdoms of the
world, and aU their glory. Prophecies shall fail ; tongues
shall cease; knowledge shall vanish away; the earth and the
works that are therein shall be burned up; but charity never
faileth. If you have kept the word of the Lord, and have not
denied his name, hold that fast which thou hast, that no
man take thy crown. But if heretofore you have been luke
warm, and destitute of Christian faith, and zeal, and hope,
and love, it would be vain, in closing a chapter on such a
subject, to leave you with any mere human admonition ;
hear what the Spirit saith, and harden not your heart
against the heavenly counsel, and the glorious encourage-

532 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA.
ment given unto you by that Jesus, of whom aU the pro
phets bear witness, and unto whom aU things are now com
mitted by the Father : — " I counsel thee to buy of me gold
tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich ; and white rai
ment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame, of
thy nakedness do not appear ; and anoint thine eyes with
eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I re
buke and chasten : be zealous therefore, and repent. Be
hold, I stand at the door, and knock : if any man hear my
voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and wUl
sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh
wUl I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also
overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto
the churches."

CONCLUSION. 533

CONCLUSION.
The whole of the preceding brief and imperfect sketch
forms little else than an enumeration of some of the more
striking prophecies, and of facts which demonstrate their ful
filment ; and a recapitulation of aU the particulars would be
an unnecessary repetition. The numerous obscure prophecies,
which contain much and striking evidence, have hitherto
been omitted, that the charge of ambiguity, too generaUy
and indiscriminately attached to them aU, might be proved
to be unfounded. But, having seen, in hundreds of instances,
that prophecies which were plainly dehvered, have been as
clearly fulfilled, comprehending all in a single argument,
and leaving the decision to the enemies of Christianity, or
to those who are weak in the faith, and appealing to their
reason without bespeaking their favour, — may it not, in the
first instance, be asked if it be an easy task which is assigned
them, to disprove even this part of the positive evidence
to the truth of the religion of Jesus? If they have ever
staggered at the promises or threatenings of the Scriptures
because of unbelief — discrediting aU revelation from on high
— can they not here discern supernatural evidence in confir
mation of supernatural truths ? May not sight lead them to
faith ? Must they not concede that the Christian has some
reason for the hope that is in him ? And may they not, at
the very least, be led from thence to the calm and unpre
judiced investigation, not only of the other prophecies, but of
aU the evidence which Christianity presents ?
It cannot be aUeged, with truth, that the prophecies
which have been selected are ambiguous ; that they bear

534 conclusion.
the character of those auguries which issued from the cloud
that always overhung the temple of ApoUo, or of those pre
tended inspirations which emanated from the cave of Hera.
It cannot be denied, that they were ah pronounced hundreds
or thousands of years before the events, which even at the
present day demonstrate their fulfilment, though every other
oracle has ceased for ages to appeal to a single fact. And
the historical and geographical facts, which were so clearly
foretold, are, in general, of so wonderful a nature, that the
language of prophecy, though expressive of literal truth,
seems at first sight to be hyperbolical ; and the prophecies of
Isaiah, in particular, have been charged with being " fuU of
extravagant metaphor ; " 1 the more extravagant the meta
phor, or the more remarkable the predicted fact, the farther
are the prophecies removed from all possibUity of their bav
ins: been the words of human invention.
The following comprehensive and luminous statement of
the argument, extracted from a review of a former edition
of this treatise, is here so apposite, that no apology need be
offered for inserting it at length.
1 Were it not for tlie impiety with which they are conjoined, the remarks of Paine
on the prophecies would, to those who have studied them at all, be sufficiently amus
ing. He characterises the book of Isaiah as "one continued bombastical rant, full
of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning." The pre
dictions respecting Babylon, Moab, &c. are forsooth compared "to the story of the
Knight of the Burning Mountain, the story of Cinderella, "and such like. Isaiah, in
short, "was a lying prophet and impostor." And t( what can we say," he asks, "of
these prophets, but that they were all impostors and liars?" Such words are not
merely harmless; they may be also useful, as they show, that while every possible
corroboration from history, fact, reason, and even the unconscious testimony of in
fidels themselves, is given to the truth of the prophecies, nothing can be alleged on the
other hand but what in the sight of all men manifestly is "bombastical rant, and ex
travagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning." And since both
speak not the truth, who is the liar ? Isaiah the prophet, or Paine the infidel ] And
" what can we say " of this stanch assertor of rights, but that his right to the title
is undisputed, and that these very words of his, were others wanting, must in every
" age of reason " rivet to his unblest memory the foul aspersions he so falsely applied 1
Argument in such a case would be an idle waste of words. But while it would be an
act of mere prodigality and folly to cast pearls before swine, the filth which they have
snorted out may well be cast into their own kennel again, that they and their kind
may partake of what pertains to them.

conclusion. 535
" This geographical argument (viz. the fulfilment of those
prophecies which describe the future fate of particular
nations, and the future aspect of their countries) has always
appeared to us one of the most impregnable strongholds of
Christian prophecy ; or rather, one of the most resistless and
wide-ranging instruments of aggressive evidence. There is
no obscurity in the language of the prophet. There is
no variety of opinion with regard to the object in his view.
There is no denying of the change which he predicts.
There is no cbaUenging of the witnesses who prove the
facts of the case. The former glory of these regions and
kingdoms is recorded by ancient heathen historians, who
knew nothing of the fall foretold. Their present state is
described by recent and often infidel travellers, who knew
often as little of the predictions which they were verifying
by their narratives. It is not a particular event which has
passed away, or a particular character who has perished, for
whose era we must search in the wide page of history, and
of whose description we may find so many resemblances as
to become perplexed in our application. The places and
the people are named by the prophet, and the state in
which they now exist is matter of actual observation. The
fulfilment of the prediction is thus inscribed as upon a
public monument, which every man who visits the countries
in question may behold with his own eyes ; and is expressed
in a language so universally intelligible, that every man
may be said to read it in his own tongue. To these scenes
of Scripture prophecy we may point with triumph as to
ocular demonstration ; and say to the sceptical inquirer, in
the words of the evangelist, ' Come and see.' The multi
tude of travellers who have recently visited the Holy Land
and the adjacent regions, have furnished ample and authentic
materials for the construction of so irrefragable an argument.
Many of these travellers have discovered no intention of

536 conclusion.
advocating by their statements the cause of revealed truth ;
and some of them have been obviously influenced by hostihty
to its claims. Yet in spite of these prejudices, and alto
gether unconsciously on their part, they have recorded the
most express confirmation of the Scripture prophecies, fre
quently employing in their descriptions the very language
of inspiration, and bringing into view (though evidently
without design) those features of the scene which form the
precise picture painted in the visions of the prophet."
Willingly might the Christian here rest his assurance
" in the faith once delivered to the saints," and leave to the
unbeliever his hopeless creed. But the reasonings of one
class of infidels must be combined with the researches of
another, to give full force to the Evidence of Prophecy; and
they jointly supply both the clearest facts and the strongest
arguments, and have made ready the means which need
only to be applied for bringing the controversy with them,
in its various bearings, and in their own words, to a short
issue. The metaphysical speculations of Hume,1 and the mathe-
1 It may not be here amiss to allude to that kind and courteous admonition to
Christian writers, so meekly given, and with wisdom rivalling its modesty, by this
great master of ideal philosophy, in which, in order perhaps to bring their arguments
to cope the better with his own, he prescribes to them, as best suited to their cause,
the total rejection of reason ! After quoting a passage from Lord Bacon's works,
which has a very different application, he adds, — This method of reasoning (about
monsters, magic, and alchymy, &c. ) may serve to confound those dangerous friends or
disguised enemies of the Christian religion, who have undertaken to defend it by the
principles of human reason (of whom, by the by, Lord Bacon was one, and Sir Isaac
Newton another). ¦ Our most holy religion is founded on faith, not on reason; and it
is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is by no means fitted to
endure. (Hume's Essays, sect. 10, vol. ii. pp. 136-137, edit. Edin. 1800.) If these
words may not justly be retorted against the " unbeliever's creed ; " excluding the
epithet of holy ; or if Mr David Hume was better acquainted with the principles of
the Christian Religion than the Author of it, who appealed to the reason of men, and
asked them why they did not of themselves judge that which was right, and than the
apostles Peter and Paul, who enjoin Christians to try all things, and to hold fast that
which is good, and to be able to give an answer to every one that asketh them a
reason of the hope that is in them; then the writer of this treatise, having only the
hard alternative of being either "a dangerous friend or disguised enemy of the Chris
tian religion," would, with whatever reluctance, prefer the former, and has to lament
the evil he has done, and the " sure method " he has taken " of exposing it." And

CONCLUSION. 5 37
matical demonstrations of Laplace, which have been directed
against the credibility of the miracles, rest entirely on the
" Theory of Probability ." Assuming its logical and legitimate
appHcation to the testimony of any supernatural evidence of
a divine revelation, it is argued that the improbabilities of
the occurrence of miracles, being contradictory to uniform
experience, are so extreme as to destroy entirely the validity
of any testimony to their truth which has been transmitted
through so many ages. " And upon the whole, we may
conclude," says Hume, " that the Christian religion, even at
this dajr, cannot be beHeved by any reasonable person, with
out a miracle." What, then, is the evidence, that, even at
this day, there are subsisting miracles which must command
the belief of every person to the truth of the Christian re
ligion, who is not so utterly unreasonable, and his mind so
steeled against conviction, as not to be persuaded even by
miraculous demonstration ? And in what better or less ex
ceptionable " method " can this evidence be meted out than
according to the very " measure of probability " in use with
unbelievers ; and by means of which they profess to have
discovered the deficiency of testimony to the truth of ancient
miracles ?
Archimedes demanded only a spot whereon to stand, that
although he may hope that Christians in their charity will forgive him, he must yet
leave to unbelievers the comfort and the joy of the triumph, which, in the exercise ot
that reason which they have monopolized, these pages must necessarily give them.
Or if, on the other hand, in somewhat stricter accordance with the truths of Scrip
ture, the author of the essay on Human, Nature supplies, by the prefixed words, as
clear practical proof, in his " Academical Philosophy," or Scepticism in Theory, that
it is one of the characteristics of the heart of man to be deceitful above all things, as
mere worldly wisdom and infidelity in practice too frequently demonstrate that it is
also desperately wicked; and if Scripture prophecy can " endure the trial of reason,"
and its evidence be rejected,— then the disciples of Hume, the traducers of the Chris
tian religion as not founded on reason, holding to " human nature " as of itself it is,
a.nd deriding the idea of its proffered ransom from the guilt and rescue from the
power of sin, have need, without exhausting their reason in abstract speculations, to
look to their own harder alternative, and (if both be not possibly conjoined) to choose
between the incomparable deceitfumess and desperate wickedness of the heart within
—evils greater far than all that the Christian can ever fear for himself from all the
sneers of the sophist, or the railings of the ungodly.

538 CONCLUSION.
he might move the world. If the most reasonable concession
from the infidel be not as impossible to be obtained as the
demand of Archimedes ; and if he will admit either the
truth of his own principles, or the force of mathematical
proof, or if his prejudices be not immoveable as a world,
the existing and obvious fulfilment of a multiplicity of pro
phecies might weU excite his attention, and convince him of
the truth.
The doctrine of chances, or calculation of probabilities,
has been reduced into a science, and is now in various ways
of great practical use, and securely acted upon in the affairs
of life. But it is altogether impossible that short-sighted
man could select, from the infinite multitude of the possible
contingencies of distant ages, any one of such particular
facts as abound in the prophecies ; and it is manifest that,
upon the principle of probabilities, the chance would be in
calculable against the success of the attempt, even in a single
instance. Each accomplished prediction is a miracle. But
the advocate for Christianity may safely concede much, and
reduce his data to the lowest terms. And if the unbeliever
reckon not his own cause utterly hopeless, and " by no
means fitted to endure the trial of reason," he must grant
that there was as great a probability that eaxh prediction
would not as that it would have been fulfilled ; or that the
probabilities were equal for and against the occurrence of each
predicted event. The Christian may fearlessly descend to
meet him even on this very lowly ground. And without
enumerating aU the particulars included in the volume of
prophecy respecting the life and character and death of
Christ — the nature and extent of Christianity, &c. — the
destruction of Jerusalem — the fate of the Jews in every age
and nation — the existing state of Judea, of Ammon, Moab,
Edom, PhUistia, Babylon, Tyre, Egypt, the Arabs, &c. — the
church of Rome, and the prophetic history which extends

CONCLUSION. 539
throughout two thousand three hundred years ; may it not
be assumed (though fewer would suffice, and though incon
testable evidence has been adduced to prove more than double
the number) that a hundred different particulars have been
foretold and fulfiUed ? What, then, even upon these data,
is the chance, on a calculation of probabilities, that all of
them would have proved true — the chance diminishing one-
half for every number ; or what, in other words, is the hun
dredth power of two to unity ? 1 Such is the desperate
hazard to which the unbeliever would trust, that even from
these premises, it is mathematically demonstrable that the
number of chances is far greater against him than the num
ber of drops in the ocean, although the whole world were one
globe of water. Let the chance at least be counted before it
be confided in. But who would risk a single mite against
the utmost possible gain, at the stake on which unbelievers
here recklessly put to certain peril the interests of eternity ?
But each prediction recorded in Scripture, being a miracle
of knowledge, is equal to any miracle of power, and could
have emanated only from the Deity. "All prophecies are
real miracles, and as such only can be admitted as proof of
any revelation." 2 They may even be said to be peculiarly
adapted, in the present age of extended knowledge and en
lightened inquiry, for being "the testimony of Jesus ;" and
> Essai Philosophique sur les ProbahilitSs, par M. le Comte Laplace. Emmerson
on Chances, prop. 3. Hutton's edit, of Ozanam's Mathemat. Recr. vol. i. See
Gregory's Letters on the Christian Religion, p. 124.
2 Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 137. This statement of Hume's combined with the
manifest truth of prophecy, shows how all his theory against the truth of miracles
may easily be overthrown by an admission of his own. Prophecy being true, and
uniformly true, and all prophecies being real miracles, miracles are not contrary to
universal, or even in a restricted sense, to uniform experience. They "are rendered
probable by so many analogies," (Ibid. p. 134,) that on sufficient testimony they be
come provable, even upon Hume's own principles, especially when the inspiration
of those very Scriptures, which record the disputed miracles, is verified by other
miracles, the truth of which is established and experienced. And thus the boldest
do»mas of scepticism may not only be braved but reversed ; and it is more wonderful
that the testimony sealed in blood and rendered credible by miracles equally great,
should be false, than that the miracles should be true.

540 CONCLUSION.
they cannot justly be viewed as of inferior importance or
authority to any miracles whatever.
Though the founder of a new religion, or the messenger
of a divine revelation, and his immediate followers, who had
to promulgate his doctrine, would give clear and unequivocal
proof, by working miracles, that their commission was from
on high; yet, the relation between any miraculous event,
wrought in after-ages, and a religion previously established,
might not be so apparent. Or, even if it were, yet any
single and transient act of superhuman power being confined
to a particular region, and cognizable only by a limited
number, the testimony of these witnesses would be regarded
only as secondary evidence, and could not at least in a Chris
tian land be substantiated by proof so complete as that which
was sealed by the blood of martyrs. And even if perpetual
manifestations of miraculous power (however much men in
apparent vindication of their unbelief may unreasonably ask
such proof) were submitted to the inspection and experience
of each individual in every age, they would only seem to
distort the order and frame of nature, and by thus disturbing
the regularity and uniformity of her operations, would, from
their very frequency, cease to be regarded as supernatural;
and influenced by the same sceptical thoughts, those who
now demand a sign would then be the first to discredit it.
And true to reason and to nature it is, that those who wiH
not believe Moses and the prophets would not be persuaded
though one rose from the dead. For the prophecies bear a
direct reference to religion that is easily comprehended, and
that cannot be misapplied. They have a natural and obvious
meaning that may be known and read of aU men. " Thus
saith the Lord " is their prefix : " this is the fact " is their
proof. Instead of being weakened by the greatness of their
number, the more they are multiplied, or the more frequently
that facts formerly unknown, or events yet future, spring

CONCLUSION. 541
up in their verification, their evidence is redoubled, and
they are ever permanent and existing witnesses that the
word is of God. And further, the testimony which in every
passing age confirms their truth, cannot be cavilled at ; it is
not "diluted by transmission through many ages;" it is
borne, not to events in themselves miraculous, but to
natural facts, whether historical or geographical, which have
been proved by conclusive evidence, and which in numerous
instances stiU subsist to stand the test of any inquiry. And
even many of the facts (such as the marvellous fate of the
expatriated Jews) are witnessed by all, and need no testi
mony whatever to declare them. And the records of the
prophecies, preserved throughout every age, by the enemies
of Christianity, are in every hand. If, then, no evidence
less exceptionable, more conclusive, or more clearly miracu
lous could be given, the disciples of Hume, in resigning an
'' academic " for a Christian faith, have only to apply aright
the words of their master — " A wise man proportions his
belief to the evidence ; " x and they may thus find — what he in
vain thought that he had discovered — an "everlasting check"
against " delusion." 2
It was the boast of Bolingbroke, in summing up his
" phUosophical " labours, that " he had pushed inquiry as
far as the true means of inquiry are open — that is, as far as
phenomena could guide him." Christian philosophy asks no
more. It lays open the " means of inquiry," and presents,
in the fulfilment of many prophecies, " phenomena " more
wonderful than external nature ever exhibited, and demands
only integrity of purpose, and that " inquiry be pushed unto
the uttermost," that candour and reason may thus guide the
impartial inquirer, by the light of positive evidence and
miraculous proof, to the conviction and acknowledgment of
the inspiration of the Scriptures.
1 Hume's Essay on Miracles, vol. ii. p. 117. ! Ibid. p. 116.

542 CONCLUSION.
The argument drawn by Volney from " The Euin of
Empires," is completely controverted by facts stated by him
self, which, instead of militating against religion, directly
establish the truth of prophecy ; — and the unsubstantial
fabric which he raised needs no other hand but his own to
lay it in the dust.
But ridicule alone has often supplanted reason, and has
been held as a test of the truth, and directed especially
against the prophecies. And may not an evidence of their
inspiration be found even in this last retreat of infidelity?
The ruins of the moral world are as obvious in the sight of
Omniscience as the ruins of the natural, of cities or of king
doms : and his word can foretell the one as weU as the other.
And if those who scoff at religion can perceive no evidence
from any historical facts, or any external objects, they might
look within, and they would find engraven on their own
hearts, in characters sufficiently legible, a confirmation of
the prophecies. And if they substitute railing for reason,
and think to mar religion with their mockery, to all others
they stand convicted, the living witnesses of the truth.
" There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after
their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his com
ing ? for since the fathers fell asleep, ALL things CONTINUE
AS THEY WERE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE CREATION. For
this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God
the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the
water and in the water: whereby the world that then was,
being overflowed with water, perished." "There shall be
mockers in the last time." 1
1 2 Peter iii. 3-6. Jude 18.
Tlie Christian religion hastlius to rank among its enemies many false teachers, who
were to arise, and who, as characterized in Scripture, speak evil of the things that
they understand not, who despise government, who are presumptuous and self-willed,
who speak great swelling words of vanity to allure others, promising them liberty while
they themselves are the servants of corruption, and foaming out their shame. (2 Peter,
chap. ii. verses 1, 10, 12, 18, 19.) Blasphemy, obscenity, and unmeaning abuse, aie

CONCLUSION. 543
But if unbelievers lay just claim to wisdom, and make a
fair appeal to reason, then, rather than place their security
in abstract speculations, and tamper thus with the immortal
hopes of their feUow-men, rather than trust in ridicule as the
the weapons of their warfare ; they seek to debase religion into a conformity with theii
gross and grovelling imaginations ; speaking of things that they know not, they utter
great swelling words of vanity, as if, by a mere glance of their jaundiced mental
vision, they could compass at once the whole of religious truth. But their argu
ments are as weak as their principles are base. And so manifestly does reason dis
claim them, that for subverting their false assumptions, it is only necessary, in gene
ral, to make the contradiction as flat as the assertion is positive. As an example, it
may be remarked, that in a list of aphorisms which lately issued from the London
mart of infidelity, the most specious of the whole was thus expressed, — " All other
religions are false, and therefore the Christian religion is false also ; " or as the argu
ment may be more logically stated, All other religions are false, and therefore the
Christian religion is true. Yet who can look but with sorrow for the fate, as well as
disgust and derision at the efforts of such pitiful cavillers, carping at the truth of the
Christian religion — like unto foul and small fry (the less dignified the more befitting
is the simile) nibbling at some weeds that have been cast by human hands upon a
rock, and pressing with all their little strength to remove it ?
But there is another and a different class of unbelievers, to whom the words in the
text no less strikingly apply ; for they may be brought to confute the subtlest argu
ments of the ingenious sceptic, as well as to condemn the profane mockery of the most
senseless railer. The great argument of infidelity, urged so strenuously in these last
days, against the credibility of miracles, from the inviolability of the laws of nature,
could not be more plainly or forcibly stated than in the words of the apostle, declar
ing what that argument, the result of modern science, would be. If it had not been
urged, a part of Christian evidence, derived from the fulfilment of this prediction,
would still have been wanting, and we should still have had to wait for the last argu
ment of infidelity, from whence to draw a new illustration of the truth. But the
apostle not only states, he also confutes what scoffers in the last days would say, and
not from Scriptural authority, unavailing with them, but on philosophical principles,
or from facts of which they are willingly ignorant — viz. the creation of the world,
and its having been overflowed by water, which show that all things were not as they
were at the beginning of the creation. Hume, Bentham, and Laplace, must yet veil
their heads, in the academy as well as in the temple, before the humble fishermen of
Galilee. And their reasonings need only to be rightly applied, that they may as
strongly advocate the undoubted evidence which miracles give, that the doctrine is of
God, as the facts attested by Gibbon and Volney demonstrate that the prophecies of
Scripture were given by inspiration of God. — But such a subject can only be touched on
in a concluding note; and abundant is the evidence of prophecy, seeing that it here
needs only to be thus noticed. The transference of the leading argument of infidelity
— which a text and a fact may suffice to transfer — into an additional and fundamen
tal evidence of the truth, merits a full consideration, more recently given by it to the
writer, in a Demonstration of the Truth of the Christian Religion.
In these times of inquiry and discovery, it is pleasing to observe how the progress
of science becomes ultimately subservient to the cause of truth. Philosophy begins to
confess its great error, and to offer some expiation to religion. Since the publication of
the sixth edition of this treatise, new testimony may now be subjoined to the preceding
note, not less important towards the illustration of the evidence of Christianity, than
the plates of Petra. The recent origin of man is a fact now universally adn.itted by

544 CONCLUSION.
test of reHgious truth,' and caU an assumed and yet unpaid
licence to blasphemy by the name of liberty, — does it not
behove them to look first to the positive evidence and
miraculous proof of revelation, to detect its faUacy or own
its power, and to quit their frail entrenchments, if, indeed,
they find that the standard of Christian faith may, in despite
of all their efforts, be fixed upon the proudest towers of in
fidelity ? Let them, in the words of the prophet, bring forth
their witnesses, that they may be justified, or let them hear,
and say, It is truth.
But, in conclusion, it may in reason be asked, if there be
not something repugnant to the principles of Christianity, in
the mind of that man who will not hear Moses and the
prophets, and who is slow of heart to believe aU that they
geologists ; and in the Edinburgh Review (No. civ. p. 396,) it is said, in reference
to that fact alone, that "it seems to us to be fatal to the theory, which we
have presumed to call a misconception of the uniformity of causation, as signifying
an unalterable sequence of causes and effects " — or, in other words, that it is a
demonstration that all thing3 have not continued as they were from the beginning
of the creation. "Certain strata have been identified," continues the Reviewer,
"with the period of man's first appearance. We cannot do better than quote from
Dr Pritehard's excellent book, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, his
comment and application of this fact. ' It is well known that all the strata of which
our continents are composed were once a part of the ocean's bed. There is no land in
existence that was not formed beneath the surface of the sea, or that has not risen
from beneath the water. Mankind had a beginning, since we can now look back
to the period when the surface on which they lived began to exist. We have only to
go back, in imagination, to that age, to represent to ourselves that there existed
nothing on this globe but unformed elements, and that in the next period there had
begun to breathe, and move in a particular spot, a human creature, and we shall already
have admitted, perhaps the most astonishing miracle, recorded in the whole compass
of the sacred writings,' " &c. Thus, in a better and more philosophic spirit, resting
on a fact, of which the structure of the earth bears witness, and not on an unwar
rantable and false assumption, men, without reference to the prediction, have at last
discovered the very argument urged by the apostle in refutation of the sceptical say
ing of scoffers in the last days. The heavens were of old, and the earth standing out
of the water and in the water. The earth at first was without form and void. And
since the beginning of the creation man himself was created. An unalterable experi
ence has not therefore to be set up against the testimony of the Christian miracles;
for there is experience of the truth of " perhaps the most astonishing miracle recorded
in the whole compass of the sacred writings." The argument of the scoffers, and its
manifest confutation, are alike confirmations of the truth of prophecy, — itself, too, a
miracle. Hume's argument had previously been advocated in some articles in the
Edinburgh Review.

INDEX OF TEXTS.

V Thau marked R. are in the "Refutation of Poetical Interpretations."

GENESIS.
ix. 25, 26, 27, p. 513.
X 5, 6, 18, 19, 30, 31, 32, p.
514.
X. 14, p. 24.
xii. 6-10, B. p. 22.
xiii. 2, 18, R. p. 22.
xiii. 18, p. 228.
xiv. 5, R. p. 33.
xv. 13, R. p. 22.
xvi 12, p. 510.
xvii. 6, p. 24.
xvii. 8, p. 86.
xvii. 20, p. 510.
xviii. 1, 33, p. 228.
xviii. 2, 6, Ac, R. p. 22.
xxlii. 2, 18-20, p. 228.
xxiv. 87, R. p. 22.
xxv. 27, R. p. 22.
xxvi. 17, 25, R. p. 22.
xxvii. 39, p. 302.
xxxi. 25, R. p. 22.
xxxi. 46, R. p. 18.
xxxiii 18, R. p. 22.
xxxv. 21, R. p. 22.
xxxvL 31-43, p. 302.
xxxvii. 14, p. 228.
xlix 1-S, R. p. 24.
xlix. 10, p. 18.
xlix. 19, R. p. 27.
EXODUS.
xi. 5, p. 435.
ivi 4, 8, 21, &c, R. p. 10.
xxiii 31, p. 362.
LEvrricus.
xix. 9, 10, p. 214.
xxiii. 22, p. 214.
xxvi. 18, 21, 24, p. 98.
xxvi. 19, 20, 32, 34, p. 235.
xxvi. 22, p. 183, 186.
xxvi. 30, p. 53.
xxvi 30, 31, p. 195
xxvi 31, R. p. 53.
xxvi. 31-33, p. 113, 127.
xxvL 31-34, 43, p. 99.
xxvi Sl-34, 43-45, R. p. 11.
xxiv. 33, R. p. 53.

xxvi. 33, 34, p. 163.
xxvi. 33, 36-39, 44, p. 69.
xxvi 34, 35, R. p. 54.
xxvi 36, 44-46, p. 95.
xxvi. 43, p. 164.
NUMBERS.
i. 19-21, R. p. 25.
ii. 2, 10-16, R. p. 25.
xiii. 22, p. 228.
xx. 22, R. p. 46.
xxi. 4, R. p. 4G.
xxl 25, R. p. 23, 24.
xxiv. 15-19. p. 362.
xxiv. 17, p. 41.
xxxii 20-26, 34-36, R. p. 26.
xxxii 33, R. p. 23.
xxxii. 37, 38, R. p. 24.
xxxii 41, R. p. 28.
xxxvi 7-9, R. p. 24.
DEUTERONOMY.
ii 23, R. p. 21.
ii 31-36, R. p. 23.
iii. 1-13, p. 126 ; R. p. 23.
iii. 2, p. 126.
iii. 3-6, 13, R. p. 2S.
iii 3-14, R. p. 33.
iii. 4, 5, p. 114; R. p. 29.
iv. 2, R. p. 10.
iv. 27, p. 69.
viii 2-4, R. p. 10.
xiL 32, R. p. 10.
xviii. 15, 18, p. 16.
xviii. 18, 19, p. 34.
xxiv. 19-21, p. 214.
xxviii 25, p. 69.
xxviii 28, 29, p. 85.
xxviii. 28, 29, 32, 33, 36, 37,
p. 69.
xxviii 38, 42, p. 188.
xxviii 43, p. 74.
xxviii 45, 46, 63-67, p. 70.
xxviii 47, 48, 59, p. 70.
xxviii 49-52, p. 50.
xxviii 53-57, p. 51.
xxviii 62, p. 53.
xxviii. 64, R. p. 50.
xxix. 22, 24, 27, p. 99, 197.
35

xxix 25, p. 197.
xxix. 27, p. 106.
xxix. 28, p. 74.
xxx. 2, 3, R. p. 50.
xxxii 1, 39-43, p. 346.
xxxiii 1-3, p. 346.
xxxiii. 1-6, R. p. 25.
xxxiii 6, R. p. 25.
xxxiii 20, 21, R. p. 25.
xxxiii 29, R. p. 25.
JOSHUA
xi. 5, p. 153.
xi 10, p. 151.
xi 13, p. 152.
xiii. 1-3, p. 365.
xiii. 12, R. p. 33.
xiii 15-21, R. p. 24.
xiii. 24-28, R. p. 26.
xiii 30, 31, R. p. 28.
xv. 20-63, p. 114.
XV. 29, R. p. 21.
xv. 45-47, p. 365.
xviii 23, R. p. 21.
xxiv. 13, p. 113.
JUDGES.
iv. 2, 3, p. 151.
v. 17, R. p. 29.
x. 3, 4, R. p. 28.
xi 14-27, R. p. 30.
xi 32, 33, R. p. 30
xii. 7, R. p. 30.
xvi 21, p. 435.
2 SAMUEL.
ii. 11, p. 228.
vii 12, 16, p. 24.
1 KINGS.
iv. 13, R. p. 29, 33.
xvi. 24, p. 244.

2 KINGS.

vi. 25, p. 51.
xiv. 7, p. 304.

548

INDEX OF TEXTS.

xvii. 5, 6, p. 246.
xxiii 15, R. p. 54.
xxiv. 2, p. 439.
xxv. 1, 2, p. 439.
xxv. 6, 7, 18-21, p. 439.
xxv. 8, 9, 10, p. 440.
1 CHRONICLES.
ii 22, 23, E. p. 28.
xii. 14, 18, 22, 23, R. p. 2(
xii 37, 38, R. p. 25.
2 CHRONICLES.
xxxvi 7, 18, p. 440.
xxxvi. 14, 16, 17, p. 440.
xxxvi 22, 23, p. 427.

EZRA
L 1, 2, p. 427.
ii 28, R. p. 20.
ix. 6, 8, R. p. 49.

NEHEMIAH.
ix. 21, R. p. 10.
PSALMS.
ii. p. 28.
ii. 2, p. 38.
li 8, p. 41.
xvi. 10, p. 26.
xxii 1, 6, 7, 16, 18, p. 28.
xxii. 16, 18, p. 26.
xxii. 27, p. 41.
xxxv. 7, 11, 12, p. 28.
xiv. 2, p. 26.
Ix. p. 346.
lxviii. 1, 31, 32, p. 508.
lxviii 30-34, p. 268.
ixix. 20, p. 26.
lxix. 20, 21, p. 28.
lxxii. 17, p. 41.
lxxiv. 3, R. p. 54.
xxviii 19, 20, 24, 25, R. p. 10.
xxx. 13, p. 187.
ixxxix. 3, 4, p. 24.
cii. 13, p. 258.
cii. 13, 14, p. 67.
cv. 8-12, p. 86.
cviii. p. 346.
cix. 2, 3, 5, 25, p. 28.
c-xviii. 12, p. 28.
cxviii 26, p. 16.
ISAIA1L
11, 7, R. p. 53.
1 7-9, 30, p. 99.
i 27, p. 258.
i. 30, p. 171.
li 2, p. 41.

ii 2, 3, p. 258.
ii. 17, 18, p. 38.
iii. 4, 12, p. 84.
v. 9, R. p. 54.
v. 9, 10, 17, p. 100.
vl. 9, 11, R. p. 54.
vi. 10-12, p. 71.
vi 11, p. 74, 114; R. p. 11.
vi. 11, 12, R. p. 20.
vi. 11-13, p. 100, 209 ; R. p. 54.
vi 13, p. 97, 232.
vii 9, p. 245.
viii 14, p. 38.
viii, 20, R. p. 10.
ix. 1, 2, p. 25.
ix. 6, 7, p. 34,
x. 14, R. p. 19.
x. 33, 34, p. 240.
xi. 1, 2, p. 23.
xi. 1, 3, 4, p. 34.
xi. 1, 4, 9-14, p. 262.
xi. 2, p. 26.
xi. 10, p. 39.
xi. 14, p. 276.
xiii. 1, 4, 5, 17-22, p. 405.
xiii. 11, p. 435.
xiv. 1, 3, 4, p. 486.
xiv. 3, p. 441.
xiv. 4, 11, 15, 19, 22, 23, p. 405.
xv. 1, 2, 4, 6, p. 277.
xvi. 1, p. 405.
xvi. 2, p. 294.
xvi 2, 6-10, p. 277
xvi. 4-6, p. 276.
xvii 2, p. 278.
xvii. 3, p. 142.
xvii. 3-6, p. 237.
xvii. 3, 4-7, R. p. 46.
xvii 4-6, p. 100.
xvii 4-6, 9, p. 208.
xvii 6, 9-14, p. 97.
xvii. 7, p. 234.
xvii 9, R. p. 19, 54.
xix. 5-7, p. 501.
xix. 19-25, p. 50S.
xix. 23-25, p. 242.
xxi. 9, p. 405.
xxiii. R. p. 42, 55.
xxiii. 1, 4, 7, Ii. p. 55.
xxiii. 1-15, E. p. 38.
xxiii. 6, 12, p. 492.
xxiv. R. p. 53.
xxiv. 1, 3-11, 13, p. 101.
xxiv. 1, 23, p. 105.
xxiv. 3, p. 53, 195.
xxiv. 3-11, 13, p. 207.
xxiv. 5, p. 198, 199.
xxiv. 7, 9, p. 203, 205.
xxiv. 8, p. 202.
xxiv. 13, p. 208.
xxv. R. p. 19.
xxv. 7, p. 41.
xxv. 7-10, p. 276.
xxv. 8, R. p. 13.
xxvi. 1, 4, 5, p. 150.

xxvi 11, p. 234.
xxvii 10, p. 125; R. p. 53.
xxvii 10, 11, p. 101.
xxvii. 11, p. 179.
xxviii. 1—4, p. 245.
xxviii 5, p. 253.
xxix. 18, R. p. 45.
xxx. 2, p. 508.
xxx. 20, p. 83.
xxxi 1, p. 508.
xxxii 10, 12-14, p. 207.
xxxii 10-15, p. 101.
xxxii. 13-15, p. 114; R. p. 12.
xxxii. 14, p. 195.
xxxii. 14, 15, E. p. 53.
xxxii. 14-17, p. 142, 150.
xxxii. 15-17, p. 105, 454.
xxxiii. 8, R. p. 54.
xxxiii 8, 9, p. 101, 184, 207.
xxxiii. 9, p. 173.
xxxiii. 20-24, p. 348; R. p. 52.
xxxiv. p. 348.
xxxiv. 8, p. 258.
xxxiv. 14, R. p. 47.
xxxv. p. 319.
xxxv. 1, p. 42, 362.
xxxv. 1, 2, 10, p. 348.
xxxv. 4, p. 16.
xxxv. 5, 6, p. 28.
xi 5, p. 41.
xi 11, p. 26.
xlii. 1, p. 29.
xlii. 2, p. 26.
xlii. 3, p. 26.
xlii 4, p. 41.
xlii. 6, p. 34.
xliii. 9, R. p. 12.
xliii 21, p. 96.
xliv. 6, 7, R. p. 13.
xliv. 24, 27, 28, p. 405.
xiv. 1, p. 405.
xiv. 1-4, p. 423.
xiv. 1, 13, p. 426.
xiv. 17, R. p. 50.
xiv. 21, p. 485.
xlvi. 1, p. 438.
xlvi 1, 2, p. 437.
xlvi. 10, p. 485.
xlvii. 1, 2, p. 435.
xlvii. 1, 5, 7-11, p. 406.
xlvii 2, 3, 7, p. 436.
xlvii. 6, p. 441.
xlvii. 13, 14, p. 438.
xlix. 6, p. 29, 35, 41.
xlix. 7, p. 25, 38.
xlix. 14-19, R. p. 52.
xlix. 17, p. 106.
xlix. 19, p. 88.
1 4, 6, p. 26.
1. 5. 7, p. 27.
Iii. 1, 2, R. p. 52.
lii. 7, p. 35.
lii. 10, p. 41 ; R. p. 45.
lii. 13-15, p. 29.
liii p. 25, 29.

INDEX OF TEXTS.

549

iii. 7, p. 26.
iii. 9, p. 26.
iv. 1-3, 5, p. 42.
iv. 6, R. p. 19.
Iv. 3, 5, p. 34, 39.
Iv. 7, p. 36.
Iv. 11, R. p. 13.
lvi. 6-8, p. 35.
Iviii 12, p. 106, 295.
lix 20, p. 16.
Ix. 3, p. 38.
Ix. 5, p. 41.
Ix. 6, 7, p. 512.
Ix. 8, p. 84.
Ix. 9, p. 87.
Ix. 14, p. 258.
Ix. 14, 15, R. p. 52.
Ix. 18, p. 149.
Ix. 21, p. 141, R. p. 50.
Ixi 1, 2, p. 85.
Ixi. 2, 3, p. 36.
Ixi. 4, p. 105, 127, 141, 295.
R. p. 12, 54.
Ixi 6, p. 87.
Ixii. 2, p. 39.
lxil 4, p. 105.
Ixii. 6, 7, 10, p. 92.
Ixii. 8-12, p. 347.
lxil. 11, p. 16.
lxiii. R. p. 52.
lxiii. 1-7, p. 347.
Ixiv. 10, 11, R. p. 52, 53.
lxv. 1, p. 39, 41.
JEREMIAH.
i. 9, 10, R. p. 48.
iv. 20, 26-28, p. 102.
iv. 26, p. 166.
iv. 26, 27, p. 209.
iv. 29, p. 74.
viii 3, p. 71.
ix. 11, R. p. 19, 55.
ix. 15, 16, p. 70.
xii. 4, p. 171.
xii 4, 7, 10-13, p. 102.
xii. 10, p. 169 ; R. p. 53.
xii 12, R. p. 53.
xv. 4, p. 70.
xv. 5, p. 67.
xv. 7, p. 71.
xvi. 13, p. 70.
xix. 8, p. 103.
xxiii. 5, 6, p. 24.
xxiv. 9, 10, p. 71.
xxv. 12-14, p. 406.
xxvi. 18, p. 53, 257; R. p. 21.
xxix. 18, p. 71.
xxx. 11, p. 209; R. p. 50.
xxx. 17, 18, R. p. 55.
xxx. 17-24, R. p. 55.
xxx. 18, R. p. 19.
xxxi. 5, 6, p. 253.
xxxi 10, p. 72.
xxxi. 20, 21, p. 297.

xxxi. 31, 33, 34, p. 34.
xxxi. 34, p. 36.
xxxi, 36, R. p. 50.
xlvi 27, 28, p. 72.
xlvi. 28, It. p. 50.
xlvii. 4-7, p. 367.
xlvii. 5, 7, R. p. 36.
xlviii. 1, 21-24, R. p. 12.
xlviii. 1, 2, 8, 9, 11, 12, 17, 18,
20-25, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 38,
39, 42, p. 278.
xlviii. 39, p. 294.
xlviii. 47, p. 295.
xlix. 2, R. p. 19.
xlix. 2, 6, p. 262, 263.
xlix. 6, p. 295.
xlix. 7, 13, E. p. 12.
xlix. 7-10, 12, 13, 15-18. p. 299.
xlix. 7, 13-17, R. p. 56.
xlix. 9, 10, R. p. 57.
xlix. 16, R. p. 56.
xlix. 17, p. 339.
xlix. 18, R. p. 47, 57.
xlix. 33, p. 151.
1. 1, 2, 3, p. 407.
1 1, 23, 26, 45, R. p. 12.
1 3, p. 437.
1. 9-13, p. 407.
1 15, p. 438.
1 15, 16, p. 407.
1 19, 20, p. 178.
1. 21-26, p. 407.
1. 27-29, p. 438.
1 28-32, p. 408.
1 35-45, p. 409.
1. 44, p. 433.
1 45, p. 437.
li 2-4, 8, 9, p. 4
li. 8, 9, p. 433.
U, 11, 13, 14, p. 410.
Ii 24, 56, p. 438.
li. 25, 27-33, p. 410.
li 36, 37,39, 41-44, 46, 47,p.411.
li. 37, R. p. 19.
li. 37, 58, 64, R. p. 12.
li. 44, p. 438.
li. 44, 47, 52, p. 432.
11 57, 58, 63, 64, p. 411.
li. 58, p. 438.
lii 16, p. 440. EZEKIEL.
v. 10, p. 71.
v. 14, 17, p. 186.
vi. 3, 6, 14, p. 102.
vi. 5, p. 53.
vi. 6, p. 127.
vii. 7-9, 15, p. 53.
vii 19, p. 71.
vii 21, 22, p. 169.
vii 22, R. p. 53.
vii 24, p. 103, 193.
xii. 15, p. 71.
xii 19, p. 103.

XX. 24. 25, p. 15.
xxi. 32, p. 263.
xxii. 18-22, p. 97.
xxv. 2, 5, 7, 10, p. 263.
xxv. 5, R. p. 12.
xxv. 13, p. 299.
xxv. 15-17, p. 366.
xxv. 16, p. 195.
xxvi. -xxviii. R. p. 38.
xxvi 1-5, p. 488.
xxvi 4-12, R. p. 38.
xxvi. 4, 12, 21, p. 490.
xxvi. 4, 5, 12-14, 18, p. 492
xxvi 5, 12, 14, 19, R. p. 56.
xxvi 12, 19, R. p. 56.
xxvi. 35, 38, p. 127.
xxvii 32, p. 492.
xxviii. 8, 18, p. 492.
xxviii 20-22, 24, S. p. 55.
xxix. 14, 15, p. 498.
xxx. 6, 7, 12, 13, p. 498.
xxx. 12, p. 501.
xxx. 13-19, p. 504.
xxxi. p. 507.
xxxi 18, p. 241.
xxxii 15, p. 498.
xxxiv. 23, 25, p. 34.
xxxiv. 25, p. 187.
xxxv. p. 340.
xxxv. 1-4, 7, 9, 14, 15, p. 299.
xxxv. 3, 4, 15, R. p. 56.
xxxv. 9, p. 339.
xxxv. 14, p. 363.
xxxvi. 1-15, p. 112.
xxxvi. 8, 10, p. 105.
xxxvi 25, p. 38.
xxxvi. 33, 36, p. 295.
xxxvi 35, p. 175.
xxxvii. 1-18, p. 95.
xxxvii. 21, p. 105.
xxxvii. 22-26, p. 34.
xxxviii. 8, p. 105.
xlvii. 13, 14, R. p. 25.
xlviii 6, R. p. 25.
DANIEL.
ix. 24, 25, p. 19, 36.
ix. 25, 26, p. 17.
ix 26, 27, p. 20, 28, 105.
x 14, 21, p. 92.
xi. 41, p. 295.
xii 1, p. 296.
xii 1, 4, p. 92.

HOSEA.
i. 4, p. 245.
1 10. p. 41.
ii. 6, 10-12, p. 245.
ii 11, 12, p. 262.
ii. 14, 15, 19, p. 253.
iii 4, 5, p. 72.
v. 5, p. 245.
ix. 9, 11, p. 216.

550

INDEX OF TEXTS.

ix 17, p. 71.
X 5, 7, p. 246.
xi. 8, 9, 11, p. 297.
xiii. 14, R. p. 14.
xiii 16, p. 246. JOEL.
i. 2-4, 10, 12, p. 103.
i 4, p. 188.
i. 6, 7, 12, p. 176.
ii 25, 26, p. 103.
iii 6, 7, p. 492.
iii. 18, p. 224.
iii 19, p. 299

AMOS.
i 5, p. 239.
i. 6, 7, 8, p. 367
i 11, p. 299.
iii 14, 15, p. 157.
iv. 13, p. 232.
v. 3, p. 232.
V. 3, 5, p. 103.
v. 4, 5, p. 157.
v. 5, R. p. 54.
vi. 1-7, p. 246.
vii 8, 9, p. 103.
ix 4, p. 72.
ix 8, p. 209.
ix. 9, p. 71.
ix 11, 12, p. 362.
ix. ]4, 15, p. 106.
ix 15, R. p. 50.
OBADIAH.
1, 6, 8, 15, 17-21, p. 300.
3, R. p. 56.
5, R. p. 57.
10, 18, p. 356.
15, p. 253.
17, 19, 21, p. 363.
19, p. 253. MICAH.
i 5, 6, p. 246.
1 6, p. 103, 243 ; R. p. 21.
iii 12, p. 53, 257 ; R. p. 21, 55.
iv. 1, p. 41.
iv. 1, 2, p. 258.
v. 2, p. 24.
vi. 16, p. 246. NAHUM.
i. p. 391.
i. 8, 9, p. 393.
I. 8, 14, p. 395.
i. 10, p. 391, 397.
i. 14, p. 397.
ii. p. 391.
li 9, p. 892.
ii 10, p. 893

iii. 6, p. 397.
iii 13-15, p. 397.
iii. 15-17, p. 394.
HABAKKUK.
ii. 3, 4, p. 363.
ZEPHANIAH.
ii. 3-7, R. p. 36.
ii 4, 7, R. p. 35.
ii. 4-7, p. 367.
ii 8-10, p. 278.
ii. 5, 6, R. p. 85.
il 9, p. 263, 276, 295 ; R. p. 12,
54.
ii 13-15, p. 393.
iii 19, 20, R. p. 36/
HAGGAL
ii 7, 9, p. 19.
ZECHARIAH.
i 21, p. 93.
ii 5-13, Ii. p. 50.
v. 10, 11, p. 455.
viii 23, R. p. 36.
ix. 1-10, R. p. 36.
ix. 4, p. 492, R. p. 38.
ix 5-8, p. 368.
ix 9, p. 16, 26, 35, 38.
x. 10, p. 88, 242.
x 11, 12, p. 508.
xi. 1, 2, p. 241.
xi. 12, p. 26.
xii. 3, 6, 10, p. 50.
xii. 10, p. 29, 97.
xiii. 1, 9, p. 97 ; E. p. 50.
xiii. 2, p. 3a
xiii. 7, p. 29.
xiv. 9, 11, p. 97 ; R. p. 50.
MALACHI.
i 3, 4, p. 300.
i 4-8, 11, p. 362.
iii. 1, p. 16, 18.'
iv. 4, p. 104. MATTHEW
iv. 15, 16, p. 25.
ix 33, p. 28.
X 17, p. 88.
xi, 5, p. 28.
xi. 20-23, p. 158.
xiii 44-46, p. 4.
xvi 18, p. 38.
xxi 18, 19, 33-44, p. 54.
xxii. 1-7, p. 54.
xxiii 29, 32, 34, 36-39, p. 57
xxiv. p. 56.
xxiv. 1, 2, E. p. 14.
xxiv. 14, p. 38.

xxv. 14-30, p. 54.
xxviii. 19, p. 38.
MAR It
xi. 12-20, p. 54.
xiii. p. 56.
xiii. 1, 2, R. p. 14.
LUKE.
xiii. 6-9, p. 54.
xiv. 16-24, p. 54.
xvi 31, p. 8 ; R. p. 11.
xix 41—44, p. 57.
xx 9-18, p. 54.
xxi. p. 56.
xxi. 23, 24, p. 66.
xxi. 24, p. 105; R. p. 51.
xxiii. 27-31, p. 54.
xxiv. 25, R. p. 11.
ACTS.
vii. 5, 6, R. p. 22.
vii. 36, R. p. 10.
viii 26, p. 380.
xv. 10, p. 15.
xix 29, p. 520.
xxviii. 25-28, p. 11.

xi. 15, p. 96.
xi 26, p. 178, 512.
xi. 26, 29, R, p. 11.
1 CORINTHIANS.
xv. 54, 55, R. p. 14.
1 THESSALONIANS.
v. 21, p. 3. 1 PETER.
iii. 15, p. 3. 2 PETER.
ii. 1, 10, 12, 18, 19, p. 642.
iii. 3-6, p. 542.
REVELATION.
ii. 5, p. 519.
ii. 8-11, p. 520.
ii. 12-16, 19, 24, p. 521.
iii. 2, 3, p. 522.
iii. 7, 8, 10, p. 523.
iii 14-18, p. 524.
xvi. 12, p. 296.
xxii. 16, p. 262.
xxii 18, 19, R. p. 10.

GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX.
*% Tliose marked R. are in "Refutation of Poetical Interpretations.'

Abdeh, 116.
Acrabatene, 122.
Acrabeh, 122.
Acre. 117.
Adgeloun, 115; Adjloun, Castle of, 143.
Adoraim, 116.
Affghans — heads of villages called Melkim, 296.
Africans, the, 513-517.
Ai, R. 20.
Ailah (Eloth). 301.
Ain-el-Tin, 159.
Ain Jidy, 116.
Ajlun, 127, 218.
Akaba, 184.
Akir (Ekron), 3S2.
Akka, 115.
Aleppo, Pachalic of, 170.
Alexandria, 58.
Ammon, 260-274.
Ammonites, the, 264.
Anab, 116.
Anepta, 223.
Annabeh, 116.
Antioch, 184.
Antipatris, 115.
Anyk, 309.
Apamea, 58.
Appollonia, 455.
Aqfin, 136.
Araayr (Aroer), 281.
Arabs, the, 510-512.
Aram, R. 28.
Arad, 116— Tell, 116.
Ararah, 116.
Ararat, 412, 413.
Area, 115.
Argob (Regaba), 131 ; R. 29.
Arimathea, 122.
Armenia, the Greater and Lesser, 413.
Aroer (Araayr), 281 ; (Arair), 282 ; R. 24, 26, 30.
Aroer (in Judah), 116.
Artemita, or Destagered, 403, 455.
Aschenaz, 412, 413.
Ashdod (Ezdoud), 369, 383.
Ashdoth-pisgah, R. 24.
Ashkelon, 369, 370 ; deserted ruins, 373 ; why
uninhabited, 376 ; R. 35, 36.
Astioum Gaber (Esion Gaber), 301.
Ataroth, R. 26.
Athlite, 115; (Castel Pelegrino), 144, 194.
Atroth, R. 26.
Attlr. 116.

Aven (Heliopolis), 504.
Avims or Avites, R. 21.
Ayoun. 134. 292.
Azubah, meaning of, R. 18, 19.
Azzah, R. 21.
Baalbec, 193, 240; R. 20, 53.
Babylon, 400-442; Fallen, 458-486; R. 12, 14.
Bactrians, the, 424.
Bagdad, 445, 456.
Bamoth-baal R. 24. ,
Bashan, 125, 176, 222 ; R. 28.
Basta, 309.
Bathanyeh, 222.
Bedouins, 170; burning of trees by, 175; wan
derers, 291.
Beersheba, 116.
Beisan, 122. ,
Beit Dejan, 122.
Beit 'Ur, 122.
Bekaa, 239.
Berachah 116.
Bereikur, 116.
Beshirrai, 226.
Beszeyra (Bozrah), 364.
Beth-aram, R. 26.
Beth-aven, E. 54.
lieth Dagon, 122.
Beth-diblathaim, R. 12.
Bethel (Beitin), 156; come to nought, Beth-
aven, 157 ; E. 54.
Beth-gamul, 284; a large city forsaken, 285;
E. 12, 33.
Beth-haran, E. 26.
Beth-horon, 122.
Beth-jeshimoth, E. 24.
Beth-meon (Myoun), 281; E. 12, 24.
Beth-nimrah, E. 26.
Beth-peor, R. 24.
Bethsaida, 162.
Bethsan, 122.
Beth Shitta, 122.
Betonlm, R. 26.
Beyrout, Description of, 227.
Bikath-aven (Bekaa) 239.
Bir el Beytar, 309.
Bir es Seba, 116.
Birs Nimrood, 469, 472.
Bosra (Bozrah) — its importance in the seventh
and twelfth centuries, 132, 143.
Bozrah (Bosra), 132, 143, 177, 284 ; description
of its ruins. 288 : R. 12. 33.

552

GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX

Bozrah of Edom (Beszeyra), 364.
Bubastus, or Tel Basta (Pi-beseth), 505.
Burd, 287.
Caesarea, 58, 115, 118; splendid harbour; mole
of immense stones; towers, 148; cathedral,
194.
Cseaarea Philippi, 118, 124, 194.
Caffrin, 226.
Capernaum; identified with Tell-hum; brought
down to hades, 158.
Capharnaoum, Fountain of, 159.
Cappadocians, the, 412, 424.
Carians, the 424.
Carmel, 177.
Carmel (of Judah), 116.
Carthage, 487, 514.
Castel Pelegrino (Athlite), 144.
Chaldea, 442-457.
Chorazin (Korazi, or Korazee), 160, 161.
Cilicians, the, 424.
Colosse, 58.
Crete, 58.
Ctesiphon, 184, 402, 444, 447, 451'; site of, 456.
Cyprians, the, 424.
Curds, the, 470.
Dama (Dhami), 133.
Damascus, 58; pachalic of, 170; R. 36, 45.
Dan, R. 27, 28.
Daumeh, 116, 122.
Debir, R. 26.
Deir ed, 287.
Deir el-Kaffer, 287.
Destagered, or Artemita, 303, 445, 455.
Dhami (Dama), 133.
Dibon (Diban), 281, 282; R. 12, 24, 26.
Diban (Dibon), 281.
Dibbin, Valley of, 225.
Djasserik, 403.
Djebal, or Gabalene, 363.
Djeloul, 282.
Djerba, 309.
Dothan, 148.
Draa (Edrei), 132.
Druses, 238.
Dmmah, 116.
Dura, 116.
Eboda, 116, 117.
Ecbatana, 442.
Edom, 298-364; R. 56.
Edrei (Draa), 132; R. 23, 28, 33.
Edumia, 122.
Egypt, 497-509.
Ekron (Akkir), 382.
El Aal (Eleale), 280, 282.
El-Deir, 223; R. 57.
El-Deir, the, 331.
Eleale (El Aal), 280 ; R. 24.
El-Gitta, 225.
El Hossn, 131.
El Kefeyrat, 282.
El Mesouh, 282
El-Moladah. 116

El Ryhha, 281.
El Samek, 282.
El Teym, 282.
El Torra, 212.
Eloth, (Ailah), 301.
Elusa, 116, 117.
Endor, 117.
Endnr, 117.
Engedl, 116.
Ephesus, 519.
Esdraelon, Plain of, 118, 164, 168 ; R. 53.
Esion Gaber, 301.
Eyl, 309.
Ezdoud (Ashdod), 369.
Ezra (Zavara),133.
Faghur, 116.
Fahaez, 187.
Fendakumieh, el, 122
Ferdakh, 309.
Fokhara, 282.
Fuchera, 455.
Fuhais, el, 274.
Gabalene (Djebal), 363.
Gad, R. 26, 27.
Gadara, 50, 131.
Gal, R. 18.
Gamala, 50, 132.
Gaza, 369, 371; description of ruins, 378;
Desert Gaza, 380; ancient city entombed in
sand, 381; R. 36.
Geba, 122.
Gedor, 116.
Gerasa (Gerash), 115; theatres and temple, 129,
194.
Gerizzim, 118, 215.
Geshur, R 28.
Gherandel (Arindela), 309.
Ghceyr, Valley of, 363.
Gilboa, 122.
Gilead, 188, 218-221 ; R. 28, 29.
Gilgal, 122.
Hamatn, R. 36.
Haramon, 117.
Haurftn, the, 125, 212, 290, 292; R. 54.
Havoth-jair, R. 28, 29.
Hazerim, R. 21.
Hazor, 145 (Hazouri) ; a desolation ; Ain-Hazour,
Djebel-Hazour, 151-154; no human habita
tion near it; stately oaks and groves, 155.
Hebran, 223.
Hebron, 116 ; description of, 227.
Heliopolis, 504, 505.
Hermon, 117.
Heshban (Heshbon), 280, 282.
Heshbon (Heshban), 280, 282; fields of, 292,
E. 24, 30.
Hierapolis, 58.
Hillah, 452, 456.
Holon, R. 12.
Hoomania, 450, 455.
Hor, Mount, 308, 340.
Horounieh, 403.

GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX

553

Houle, 217.
Hub, 136.
Huleh, 117,
Hyrcanians, the, 412, 424.
Idumea, 298-364 ; R. 46, 56.
lim, R. 20.
Ije-abarim, R. 20.
Israel, Lost Tribes of, 296.
Jaazer, R. 26.
Jaffa, 175 ; (Yoppa) 201 ; environs of, 217.
Jahazah, R. 12, 24.
Jair, R. 28.
Jattir, 116.
Jebah, 122.
Jeblon, 122.
Jedur, 116.
Jeu'uleh, 122.
Jemurrin, 287.
Jerash, R. 53. (See Gerasa.)
Jericho, 122.
Jerusalem, Fulfilment of Predictions concern
ing, 253-259 ; R. 51, 52, 55.
JezreeL 118.
Jogbehah, R. 26.
Jordan, Sources of, 482.
Judea, Summary of Prophecies concerning,
384-389; R. 53.
Kaimun, 147.
Kalaat, 309.
Kanawat (Kenath), 171.
Kannia, 226.
Kanout (Kenath) 132.
Karyetein, 116, 117.
• Kaus, 136.
Kedemoth, R. 24.
Keires (Kir-heres), 287; (Keres), 292.
Kenath (Kanout), extensive ruins, 132; (Kanca-
wat), 171; (Kunawat), 222; R. 28.
Kerek, 282.
Kereye (Kerioth), 134.
Kerioth (Kereye or Kureiyeh), 116, 134, 186,
284; R. 12, 33.
Kesrouan, 237.
Khan Minyeh, 159.
Kherbet Tabouk, 282.
Khulasah, el, 116.
Kiriathaim, R 12, 24.
Korazi or Korazee (Chorazin), 160, 165.
Kuffer, 133.
Kuleib, el, Peak of, 223.
Kunawftt (Kenath), 222.
Kureiyeh (Kerioth), 136; P.. 3a
Kuresin, 287.
Kurmul, 116.
Kuweizis, 136.
Laodicea, 58, 524-527.
Lebanon, 237; cedars of, 240.
Lebona, 115; Lebonah, 122.
Lejjuin, el, 147.
Lubban, 122.
Lydda, 117.

Lydians, the, 412, 424
Maan (Teman), 363.
Madeba (Medaba), 280, 282 ; R. 24
Magdala, 162.
Mahanaim, E. 26.
Main, 116.
Malah, 136.
Maon, 116.
Mariandinians, 424
Maronites, 238.
Massada or Masada, 80 ; fortress of, 143.
Medaba (Madeba), 280, 282.
Media, 411.
Meghanny, 282.
Mekabbelz, 282.
Memphis, 505.
Meon (Myoun), 281.
Mephaath, R. 12, 24.
Meraszas, 282.
Merdj Ekke, 282.
Merodach, 474, 475.
Milh, el, 116. ,^- 
Minni, 412,-413.'
Misserha, 133.
Moab, 275-297.
Monte-Pellegrino, 115.
Mount Gilead, 218.
Mujelib<5, 474, 475.
Mukhalid, 174, 175.
Myoun (Meon), 281, 282.
Nabatheans, 300, 303.
Nabulus, orNeapolis, 117, 122; (Sychem), 215.
Naour, 282.
Narisa, 455.
Nazareth, 117.
Nebo, Mount, 2S2.
Nebo (Neba) city, 282; R. 12, 24
Neva (Nowa), 138.
Nezib, 116.
Nineveh, 390-399 ;
discoveries, 396.
No, 504.
Nowa (Neva), 138.
Nusib, Beit, 116.
Oerman, 134.
Om Aamoud, 282.
Om el Aamed, 282.
Oom Keis, 131.
'Orman (Philopoppolis), 136.
Orthosia, 194.
Palestine, R. 53.
Palmyra (Tadmor), 193; R. 20, 53.
Paneas, 115, 118, 123 ;CastleofShubeibeh,or,145.
Paphlagonians, 424.
Pasht, 505.
Pathros, 504.
Pelusium (Pi-beseth), 504.
Pentacomias, 122.
Pergamos, 520.
Perisabor, 445.
Persepohs, 442.

its utter ruin, 393 ; modern

554

GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX.

Persia, 411.
Petra, 303; ruins of, 312; origin of name, 313;
houses, temples, and tombs in the rock, 314-
316, 321-325; excavations, dwellings not
tombs, 325-330; extraordinary number of
rock-dwellings, 333-335; description, 336;
wild animals, 349-356; E 45, 46, 56.
Phaalek, the, 175.
Philadelphia, 522.
Philadelphia (Ammon), 261, 270.
Philistia, 365-384; R. 37.
Philopoppolis COrman), 136.
Phoenicia, R. 37
Phoenicians, 424
Phogor, 116.
Phrygia, 412, 413, 424.
Pi-beseth (Pelusium), 504, 505.
Rabba (Rabbath-Moab), 281.
Rabbah-Ammon, 265, 270; R. 12, 14.
Ram, er, 116.
Rama)], 116.
Ramath-mispeh, R. 26.
Ramlah, 115, 117, 122.
Ras, 115, 117.
Regaba (Argob), 181.
Rephaim, cities of the, in the Hauran, 137; R. 33.
Rieha, 122.
Euhaibeh, 117.
Sabata, 455.
Sacians, the, 424.
Safed, 115, 117 ; fortress of ; destroyed by an
earthquake, 146; 223.
Salcah (Szalkhat), 132; (Sulkhad), 135; the
castle of, 143, 288; country around, 292 ; E.
23, 33.
Salim, 122.
Samarah, 403.
Samaria, 51, 122, 194; fulfilment of predictions
concerning, 242—253.
'Sandiaueh, 181, 217.
San (Zoan), 505.
Sardis, 412, 522.
Schuweikeh, esh, 116.
Scythopolis, 122.
Sebaste, 122, 243.
Seberet el Khudr, 136.
Sebustiel), 122.
Seir, Mount, 309; E. 56.
Selah, or Petra, 304; origin of name, 313.
Seleucia, 402, 433, 436, 444 ; site of, 455.
Sendia, 455.
Shaara, 133.
Shakour, 282.
Sharon, the plain a wilderness, 173; 217; R. 53.
Shehreban, 4-57.
Shemakh, 309.
Shera, Djebal (Mount Seir), 363.
Shiloh, 117.
Shinar, Plain of, 404, 437.
Shobak, 363.
Shohba, Its walls, eight gates, theatre, and
paved streets, still in good preservation, 138.
Shophan, E. 26.

Shubeibeh (Paneas), Castle of, 145.
Shutta, 122.
Sibmah, 292 ; R. 24.
Sidon, 514; R. 36, 37, 53.
Sitace, 455.
Sitacene, 403,
Smyrna, 520.
Socoh, 116.
Soueida, 139.
Subbeigeh, 287.
Subhah, 287.
Succoth, R. 26.
Sulkhad (Salcah), 134; country around, 293.
Susa, 442.
Sychem or Sychar (Nabulus), 215.
Syk, 309.
Syria, its fertility and populousness, 108, 109,
115; R. 54.
Szalkhat (Salcah), 132.
Szyr, 282.
Taanach, 117.
Tabaria (Tiberias), 145 ; destroyed by an earth.
quake, 145, 173.
Tabor, 118, 187.
Tadmor (Palmyra), 193,
Tanis (Zoan), 504. *
Tannak, 117; Tannuk, 147
Tartous, 194
Tekoa, 116, 117
Tekua, 116.
Tel, R. 18, 19.
Tel-el-Kady, 218.
Tell-Hum (Capernaum), 158.
Teman (Maan), 363.
Thebez, 117.
Thoana, 309.
Thyatira, 521.
Tiberias, 117, 145, 183.
Tishbe, E. Sl.
Tubas, 117.
Turkmen (Turkomans), 170.
Tyre, 487-496, 514; R. 14 Tyrus) R. 36,
37-45, 53.
Um el Jemal, 285.
Um el Kotein, 287.
Um-er-Ruman, 136.
Um es-Semak, 287.
Um es-SenSneh, 287
Um es-Shab, 287.
Yamnia, 201.
Yoppa, 201.
Zaan (Zoan), 505.
Zabulon, Plain of, 218.
Zaele, 139.
Zaphan, R. 26.
Zareth-shahar, R. 24
Zavara (Ezra), 133.
Zidon, R. 36, 53. (See Sidon.)
Zif, 116.
Zion, Mount, Rl 55.
Ziph, 116.
Zoan (Tanis), 504, 605

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