The Land of Israel, according to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob

Front matter

THE LAND OF ISRAEL ACCORDING TO THE COVENANT WITH ABRAHAM, WITH ISAAC, AND WITH JACOB. By ALEXANDER KEITH, D.D., AUTHOR OF "THE EVIDENCE OF PROPHECY j" " SIGNS OF THE TIMES ;" "DEMONSTRATION OF THE TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION." EDINBURGH: WILLIAM WHYTE AND CO., BOOKSELLERS TO THE QDEEN DOWAGER ; LONGMAN AND CO., SIMPKIN AND CO., HAMILTON AND CO., WHITTAKER AND CO., DUNCAN AND MALCOLM, HATCHARD AND SON, AND NISBF.T AND CO., LONDON; W. CURRY, JUN., AND CO., DUBLIN; AND W. COLLINS, GLASGOW. 1843. BALFOUR AND JACK, PRINTERS. TO JOHN ABERCROMBIE, M.D., THE FOLLOWING TREATISE IS INSCRIBED, IN TOKEN OF CHRISTIAN ESTEEM, BY THE AUTHOR.

Preface

. The following Treatise was commenced with the intention, on the part of the Author, of drawing out a few retrospective and prospective sketches of Judea and Judaism. On his return from Palestine, he was urged by the esteemed friend to whom it is inscribed, to publish the substance of an even ing's conversation in his hospitable house. He naturally reverted to the covenant with Abraham, as the ground-work of such an essay. That sub ject alone, in connection with kindred themes, called for a more full illustration than he at first anticipated. And as the subsequent essay, which Mhus originated, may be considered as, in part, a sequel to his Treatise on the Evidence of Prophecy, it may also form the introduction to other Scriptural topics, of momentous import to Gentiles as well as Jews.

PREFACE.

VI The writer has thankfully to express his obli gations to Colonel Chesney, for the use of his map constructed for his forthcoming work on the Euphrates Expedition, with many of the proof sheets of which he kindly furnished him ; to Colonel M'Niven, for the Views of Cæsarea, and the convent at Zahli; to Mr Buckingham, for liberty to use several plates from his Travels among the Arab Tribes; to Mr Ainsworth, and to the publisher of his Researches in Assyria, for the view of Mount Casius; and to Messrs Fisher, for permission to insert the first and largest plates, taken from their splendid work, " Views of Syria." November 1843. LIST OF THE STEEL ENGRAVINGS. DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER. Map of the Land of Israel according to the Covenant, to face Title Page. Map showing the entrance into Hamath, . . .102 Remains of the Port of Seleucia, . . . . 122 Junction of a Tributary Stream with the Orontes, . . 124 Roman Ruin at Gunnawat, ) . . . . 316 Castle and Ruins of Salghud, ) Castle aud Plain of Emeza, ) ... 332 Caravan on the Plains of the Haouran, ) Scene in the Mountains east of the Haouran, ) [ . . 348 Passage of the Zerka in Bashan, I View of Tiberias, ...... 369 Gate at Antioch, . . . . . .402 Portico of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, . . 408 Temple at Baalbec, . . . . . .411 Grand Gallery at Palmyra, ..... 424 Jerusalem from the South, . . . . .441 Jerusalem from the North, ..... ib.

Gardens of Solomon, . . . . . .ib. Convent of Zahle, . . . . . 446 The Kadischa of Lebanon, . . . . .453 Mount Tabor, ...... 458 Cedars of Lebanon, ......

Introduction

. True in all their emphatic meaning have been the words of the prophet for many ages past, Who shall have pity upon thee, 0 Jerusalem? or who shall bemoan thee? or who shall turn aside to ask how thou doest?1 Yet the time cometh when the truth of other words of more propitious omen shall be as clearly seen, " For the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold his reward is with him, and his work before him, and they shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord : and thou shall be called, sought out, a city not forsaken."2 .^While the Jews have been scattered among all na tions under heaven, the land of Israel, — except in his tory and in the associations pertaining to ancient times, which suffer it not to be dissevered from the minds or memories of Christians or Jews, — was long almost for gotten as an existing country, and its actual condition in a great measure unknown. After the age of the crusades it ceased to exercise any influence on the world 1 Jer. xv. 5. 2 Isa. brii. 11, 12.

INTRODUCTION.

. X at large, or any peculiar general interest in Asia or Europe. Its political importance was gone. And by the discovery of a new passage to India, the line of com munication between these two quarters of the world was turned far from its shores. Its coast, though the cradle of commerce, was desolate, lone, and unvisited, the prey of barbarism, and the resort of wild beasts. And it was only towards the close of the last, and the commencement of the present century, that Syria began to be enquired after, and to re-assert its claim to the notice of the world. ~ Bereaving the nations of men, as foretold, and partly fulfilled, it became during the crusades the common grave of Europe, of Asia, and of Africa, yet it could not be rescued from the hands of infidel but not idolatrous Moslems, but was left to the unmarked pro gress of decay and desolation, till its once vine-clad mountains are bare, and its cities waste, and its plains desolate, and nothing but the scantling of a population left in the land, for the possession of which many myriads had contended, and which in times more ancient had been thickly studded with cities.

Yet these, when re duced to desolation, had ruins sufficient in an inquiring age, to attract the traveller, and to command admira tion. They were .successively searched out, visited, and pourtrayed, till, strange to say, Tadmor or Palmyra, Baalath or Baalbec — built by Solomon — Petra and Ge rasa became in succession novelties to the world. New causes speedily conspired to attach a higher interest than that of curiosity to Syria.. Lying at the extremity of the Mediterranean, between Britain and India, its locality in a commercial view raised it, by the inven tion of steam navigation, into a new importance ; and the traffic, or at least communication between Asia and Europe, pointed after the lapse of ages towards its direct and original channels. And as the contest between

INTRODUCTION.

. XI these quarters of the globe for its possession had rivetted on it in former ages the attention of the world, so all eyes were fixed on it again in the course of the last few years, when the question of its subserviency to the pasha of Egypt, or the sultan of Turkey, was a question of the integrity or existence of the Ottoman empire, and con sequently of peace or war throughout Europe or the world. But the heritage of Jacob, however desolate it may lie, or by whatever hordes of Gentiles it may be trodden down, has far higher interest attached to it than that of being a field for the inspection of ruins, and a higher destiny to fulfil than that of a bond of peace, or a cause of war, or any apportioning of earthly kingdoms. Of that land, even as of the people whose it is by the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, we can speak as of no other.

Though it had passed as an existing state into oblivion, and men, in familiar phrase, had lost sight of it, and no one bemoaned it, yet the eyes of the Lord are always upon it, even as he hath declared of Zion, / have graven thee upon the palms of my hands ,* thy walls are continually before me; thy destroyers and they that made thee desolate shall go forth of thee.*\Not to re gard the peculiarity of the land, as well as of the people Israel, in respect to the threatened curses and the pro mised blessings, is to miss the proper character, and to omit the chief discriminating feature of the one and of the other. It would be as unwise as wicked to qualify a historical statement, or wrest a geographical fact in accordance with a fancy, whether to show that all the history and all the facts pertaining to their land, may be explained without a miracle, or whether, more philoso phically we think, it be indubitably held, in illustrating the prophecies concerning both, as miraculous through out, the hand of the Lord being revealed in it all. The

INTRODUCTION.

. XII facts are the same, and have to be stated with the same precision and truth, whether predicted or not. The additional fact, that they were foretold, adds a new import \o them all, and solves a problem otherwise inexplicable. A mystery, in the marvellous transition it has under gone, seems to hang over the land as over the people; and the desolation of the one is analogous in character, and coincident in time, with the dispersion of the other. But the szire word of prophecy, to which we do well to take heed, unfolds the future, as it revealed the past, and lays open to the believers view the declared, but yet unac complished purpose of the Lord, which can never be disannulled. The everlasting covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, concerning the land as the everlasting possession of their seed, was made with these faithful fathers of the Hebrew race, before that covenant was made with the Israelites under Moses and Joshua, the curses of which, not heard of till then, have come upon the land.

As it preceded, it is destined to survive them all. Coming history must therefore bear its part, like all the past, in the actual and finally palpable de velopment, in the sight of all men, of the counsels of the Holy One of Israel, the God of the zohole earth, as He yet shall be called. And all the idol-devotees of a more worldly policy shall be brought to see, as time advances and momentous events ensue with a closeness and velo city hitherto unparalleled, that all their schemes which accord not with the faith that He is the Ruler among the nations, shall lie as low as the once mighty Baby lon, of which nothing is left, and which has crumbled into dust before His word. The full accomplishment of the judgments that were to come upon the land, is the harbinger of the comple tion, in the latter days, of the covenant of promise. Expatriated for nearly eighteen centuries as the Jews

INTRODUCTION.

. XIII have been, all connection between them and the land of their fathers, were they a people numbered among the nations, might well have seemed ere now, so far as human foresight could discern, to have ceased for ever. And yet the separate, though similar fates of the land and of the people, are in fact so closely linked together and interwoven in the unerring word of the unchangeable Jehovah, that clearly as the long-continued blindness and dispersion of the Jews were foretold, so clearly does the very degree of desolation to which their father-land should finally be reduced, rank among the measures of the time of their return.^ The Lord said to Isaiah, when he beheld his glory, " Go, and tell this people, Hear ye, indeed, but under stand not; and see ye, indeed, but perceive not. 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, 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. 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, so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof."1 The land of Israel, as possessed and peopled of old by the seed of Jacob, and also the neighbouring regions, which, as shown in the following pages, were included within the promised inheritance, are so full of literal illustrations of literal predictions, that, as the author has been enabled to show in successive editions of the 1 Isa. vi. 9-13.

INTRODUCTION.

. XIV Evidence of Prophecy, the truth of more than two hun dred texts, or upwards of a hundred distinct prophecies, may be read in the history and existing state of the land, and of its desolate cities.1 The curses of the cove nant which the Israelites brake, are there as legible, word for word, as in the oracles of the living God, whose covenant it was, and who made it with the Israelites when they first entered into Canaan. They have taken effect till nothing more than the predicted tenth is left. The hope expressed in the preface to the first edition of that treatise, of bringing the subject of the literal fulfilment of prophecy into view, especially as illustrated by the discoveries of recent travellers, has been amply realized ; and many prophetic topics that needed illustration are now familiar to thousands.

It is therefore needless to repeat the proofs of the existing desolation, or to trace anew the discriminating features of the ruined cities, as drawn of old by the prophets. But the hope is cherished of presenting many of them to the Christian public, and of setting them before unbelievers, without the aid either of the pen or of the pencil.2 Yet as one reason, among many others, for exciting interest in another theme, and for regarding other words of the Lord that have to be accomplished in another way, the degree of desolation marked in the preceding words uttered by the Lord in the hearing of the prophet, as he looked upon his glory, may here prove a befitting in troduction to a covenant without a curse. No man hath seen the Father at any time ; but centuries before his incarnation, the Lord of hosts, the eternal Word, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, spake to the prophet of the long-continued blindness and impenitence 1 Evidence of Prophecy, pp. 97-263. ? By a process which may be said to be natural, the calyotype, or daguerreotype.

INTRODUCTION.

. XV of Israel, and answered his question, How long? by an appeal to what the land should finally become, ere that blindness should cease. But the Lord did not appear in his glory to Isaiah, amid the halleluiahs of the cheru bim, and send an angel to touch his lips with a live coal from off the altar, to enable him to ask the question, in order that He himself might return to it an unmeaning or indefinite answer. It becomes man, who is a worm, to regard with reverence, and to hear with faith, the words which the Lord hath spoken. " My days are like a shadow, that declineth," saith the Psalmist ; " and I am withered like grass. But thou, O Lord, shalt en dure for ever, and thy remembrance unto all genera tions. 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 fa vour the dust thereof; so the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. When the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in his glory. He will 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 shall praise the Lord." As thus it is written for a generation to come, so the Lord appeared in his glory to Isaiah, when He made known to him the time of the final termination of the blindness of Israel. \ Earthly sovereigns are the executioners of the judgments of the heavenly King; and do, even when it is not in their heart to think so, all His pleasure. Often, as unconsciously, have sceptical writers, like Gibbon or Volney, recorded the things by which His word is illustrated.

But it is worthy of remark, as if official evi dence were needed here, that the British Government, a few years ago, sent forth a commissioner to make in quiry, and to report on the state of Syria, whose report,

INTRODUCTION.

. XVI when completed, was presented to both houses of Par liament by command of her Majesty.1 It supplied some striking additional illustrations, seemingly unconsciously given, of literal prophecies concerning the land.2 Among these not the least remarkable, is the very first para graph of the appendix, or the report of Mr Consul Moore, an intelligent observer, who has resided for years in the land. " Syria is a country whose population bears no pro portion to its superficies, and the inhabitants may be considered, on the most moderate calculation, as reduced to a tithe of what the soil could abundantly maintain under a wiser system of administration.'"3 And in the body of the report it is stated, that " the country is capable of producing tenfold the present produce."4 According to the word of the Lord, They that dwell therein are desolate, and few men left?

The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went out by a hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel? Make the hearts of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, zind shztt their eyes, Ssc. And I said, how long? And He answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, &c. ; but yet in it shall be a tenth, &c. Is it not time, then, to look to another covenant than that which bears the curses that have indeed devoured the land, but have also their term assigned them by the Lord? y " The covenant of works, and the covenant of grace have often divided Christian theology between them, as in some respects they rightly may. But there are other ' Report on the Commercial Statistics of Syria. London, 1840. » Evidence of Prophecy, pp. 427-9. 3 Report on Syria, p. 111. * Report on Syria, p. 90. ' Isaiah xxiv. 6. « Amos v. 3.

INTRODUCTION.

. XVII or more defined covenants in the word of God, to which it becomes believers to have respect. That which God made with Abraham, of promise and of grace, is ever lasting, and knows no other termination than that of the heavens and of the earth. In the subsequent pages the perpetuity of that cove nant concerning the land, and its connection with that which was made with the Israelites when the Lord brought them out of Egypt, and with the new and ever lasting covenant which He will make with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, and also with the covenant which the Lord made with David concerning his throne, is, in the first place, brought within the view of the reader. The borders of the land, not as it was anciently possessed, but as set of the Lord, naturally form the immediately succeeding theme, which is treated at so great length as to demand an apology.

But so little was the writer aware, ere he entered on the inves tigation, of the full extent, especially on the north, of the Scriptural boundaries of the promised land, that, when requested at a recent date to mark their limits, for the construction of a map, he drew a line a little to the north of Hamath, conscious that it was included ; but, unobservant then of the precise Scriptural definition of the entrance into Hamath, he drew it regardless of any entrance, or any natural border whatever, across a double chain of mountains. This obvious error led to a closer examination. And now he can plead only the novelty of the topic in excuse for this lengthened illus tration, for which, if he mistake not, a few words may henceforth suffice, without the hazard of a repetition of the error. In the sequel of the volume proof is adduced, from its past history and actual condition, of the goodliness of the land; of its natural fertility, not impaired but in-

INTRODUCTION.

. XVIII creased ; and also of the facility with which its fallen cities may be raised from their foundation, and forsaken cities, though not fallen, even cities still existing, though without inhabitants, and hoztses still standing, though without man, may be repaired or restored to dwell in. <^ The land of promise, rightly bearing that title still, when looked at as it is, appears indeed like an oak which the storms of winter have stripped of its leaves. But in taking up the covenant with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, it is not in that aspect that we would view it here ; but rather would we look to what it has been, and to the substance that is in it still, in order to show what, in accordance with the Abrahamic covenant, and many precious promises of Scripture, it yet shall be, when that substance which is in it shall put forth its fullest foliage anew, even richer and more beauteous than ever; and the bare and naked land be covered and clothed again, like an oak of Bashan in summer.

The desolation of many cities, as illustrative of pro phecy, might be told in a word; but the practicability of their restoration demands a closer inspection. Nay, the ruins would all need to be disclosed to view, as has been of late partially the case with some, before a com plete idea could be formed of the amplitude of the ma terials ready for reconstruction. The ruins of Syria are not like those of many other lands ; not like those of Egypt, for instance, often buried beneath the sand ; nor like those of other countries, where broken fragments of once connected walls encumber the ground, incapable of being built zip again. But better promises than Israel, or any other nation ever yet inherited, have in these pages to be kept ultimately in view. And we would here draw from the past, or describe the present, to show how, in respect to the land, all things are ready, or ripening fast for the completion — it may be at no

INTRODUCTION.

. XIX distant day, though other judgments yet intervene — of the covenant with faithful Abraham, to which no curses are annexed; and also how the past and still visible judgments which have come upon the land may be viewed as pointing to, and preparing for the time, when mercy shall rejoice over them, and the world, with all its fami lies, blessed in the seed of Jacob, be a witness that the God of Israel is a covenant-keeping God, who will not suffer his faithfulness to fail, but overrules all things for the final accomplishment of his word, and for the ulti mate manifestation of his glory. \ .W COVENANT WILL I NOT BREAK, NOR ALTER THE THING THAT IS GONE OUT OF MY MOUTH.— PSALM LXXXIX. 34.

Chapter I. The Covenant With Abraham Respecting The Land

— ITS PERPETUITY The name of " the land of Canaan" is nearly co-eval with the deluge. And the names of ancient cities, still attached to the same localities, serve at once to fix the site of the territory possessed by the Canaanites, when " the nations were divided after the flood." Sidon, the father of the Sidonians, was the eldest son of Canaan, the grandson of Noah. " The border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar unto Gaza,"1 &c. " The families of the Canaanites were spread abroad," and they speedily occupied extensive regions in Syria. The dwelling of the families of Shem, of whom came the Hebrew race, was in the east.2 Abram dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees, beyond the Euphrates. 1 Gen. x. 19. » Ibid. 30. 3 Ibid. xv. 7. B From the time that God blessed Noah, after the deluge, there is no record that his voice was heard by man, till He appeared unto Abram, when he was in Mesopotamia.1 Four hundred years subsequent to the establishment of the covenant with Noah and his seed, the word of the Lord came unto the son of Terah, a descendant of Shem, " Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee ; and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great ,* and thou shalt be a blessing : and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran ; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan ; and into the land of Canaan they came. And Abram passed through the land unto the plain of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land : and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him."2 A grievous famine prevailing afterwards in Canaan. Abram went down into Egypt, to sojourn for a season. After his return, as on his first entrance into Canaan. the promise was confirmed and renewed more amply than before : — " And the Lord said unto Abram, after Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward ; for all the land which thou seest, to thee icill I give it, and to thy 1 Acts vii. 2. ' Gen. xii. 1-6. seed for ever.

Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it and in the breadth of it : for I will give it unto thee."1 Again, after Abram had long sojourned in the land, the repeated promises of the Lord assumed the form of a covenant, confirmed by visible signs, by which, as it were, the Lord pledged himself to their fulfilment; and He set the bounds of the destined inheritance of his seed. " The Word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram ; I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward."2 Already had he shown his faith by his works ; he had left his own country at the divine command, not knowing whither he was to go, but as the Lord would show him ; and when the aged and childless pilgrim was told that his own son, and no other, should be his heir, and that his seed should be numerous as the stars of heaven, he believed in the Lord, and He counted it lo him for righteousness.

A Chaldean, dwelling in the midst of idolaters, had been called by the Lord, and had left his country, his kindred, and his father's house, at his com mand ; he had gone childless for many a year, till hoary hairs were upon him, a wandering pilgrim in a land of strangers ; and the steward of his house was Eliezer of Damascus. Had not the Almighty otherwise decreed, his name, in a few short years at the farthest, would have been blotted out from under heaven. But when the word of the Lord came to him, saying, " This shall not be thine heir ; but he that shall come forth of thine own bowels shall be thine heir," he believed. And when " the Lord brought him forth abroad and said, Look now towards heaven and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them," the childless man lifted up his aged head, and, in a pure and cloudless atmosphere unknown in 1 Gen. xiii 14, 15, 17. 'Ibid. xv. 1. gloomy regions, he looked upon the untold and numberless stars that thickly studded the whole firmament of heaven; and when the Word of the Lord said unto him, so shall thy seed be, he believed in the Lord ; and He counted it to him for righteousness.

And He said unto him, I am the Lord, that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.1 It was enough for Abram that the Lord had spoken. It was counted enough by the Lord that Abram believed. And the time was come when the Lord made a covenant be tween himself and Abram. Believing the promise, and not distrusting the power of God, but knowing that all things were possible unto him, " Abram said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it ?" He was commanded to take a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon; and he took them and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece over against the other. All that Abram could farther do, was to drive away the fowls from the carcases till the going down of the sun. Then a great horror of darkness fell upon him.