The Least of All Lands: seven chapters on the topography of Palestine in relation to its history

Front matter

SEVEN CHAPTERS ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE IN RELATION TO ITS HISTORY. BY WILLIAM MILLER, C.I.E., LL.D. Principal of the Madras Christian College and Fellow of the University of Madras. LONDON: BLACKIE & SON, 49 & 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C. GLASGOW, EDINBURGH, AND DUBLIN. 1888. When I visited Palestine last year, I had no thought of writing a book about it. I found, somewhat to my sur prise, that for reasons referred to at the beginning of the first chapter, an ordinary visitor who tries to observe for himself can still do something to promote a better under standing of its topography and history. Such was the origin of the present volume. It has, in substance, appeared already in the pages of the Madras Christian College Maga zine. I have to thank the conductors of that periodical for permission to publish my articles in the present form.

A few references to Indian history and Indian localities have been retained. They should, however, be easily intelligible, in the connection in which they stand, to readers unacquainted with India. W. M. October, 18S8. CONTENTS. Page I. The Land and its Power to inspire, - - 9 II. The Land a School of Moral Training, - 32 III. The Home or Freedom, 60 IV. Michmash, 85 ■> V. Elah, 116 VI. Gilboa, 150 VII. Shiloh, 213 MAPS. Battle-field of Michmash, 87 Battle-field of Elah, 127 Country round Gilboa, 151 Battle-field of Gilboa,

Chapter I. The Land And Its Power To Inspire

The Holy Land has been described often, and described well. It may be thought that there is no room for more to be said about it — especially by one who does not profess to have explored it thoroughly, or to be able to speak with authority on any of the chief problems it presents. This, however, is not quite the case. Rather, it seems to me that the reading public has just reached that stage of acquaintance with Palestine in which those who have some little thing to say about special aspects or special parts of it, may most fitly make their modest contribution to the common stock of knowledge. The student of the history of Israel has facilities enough and to spare for obtaining a general acquaint ance with Israel's land, and with such illustrations as the land and its inhabitants still afford of the man ners and customs of ancient times.

But the leading books on Palestine deal with the country as a whole. A Their writers have, therefore, had no room for de tailed accounts of particular scenes, or for setting fully forth the help which such scenes give in understanding particular incidents in the history. And indeed the writers of the best known books have but seldom even aimed at giving their readers an exact idea of individual spots which history has made memorable. Their object seems rather — and very properly — to have been to give a view of the land as a whole, of its general relations to the people who dwelt in it and its general effect on the events transacted in it. Now that this has been done, and well done, the time has come when students of the history may be invited to take the further step of acquainting themselves with the scenes of particular occurrences.

When they do so, they will find that a better acquaintance with the scenes often sets the events in a fresh light, — makes it easier to understand the exact way in which they occurred and their exact bearing on historical developments in after years. In my own case, though I have long been a reader of books on the topography of Palestine, I found that a leisurely visit to certain spots and a little quiet examination of their peculiarities, cleared up difficulties which no book I had read had tried to solve, or even to state, and gave me a vivid idea of the true his torical significance of the events transacted at them. What has been valuable in this way to myself may be of some value to others — to those especially who wish to pierce the veil of glory which hangs between the devout inquirer and events related in sacred story, — who wish to see these events as the plain everyday occurrences which the vast majority of them were to those who played a part in them or witnessed them.

In nearly every case, my attempt to describe certain localities minutely and to correlate them closely with the records, is — so far as I am aware — a first at tempt. It may be accepted as, at all events, preparing the way for something better. It is only when what I have tried to do for a few localities and events is done, and better done, for a hundred others, that the Land as it is to-day will have been made to give all the illustration which it is capable of giving to the long series of occurrences which has made the history of Israel so boundlessly significant for mankind. There is another, though a less important, way in which it seems to me that an ordinary visitor to the Holy Land can help those who have not visited it to vivify and utilize the knowledge they draw from the books which avowedly describe it.

It is by setting down the general impressions which the country has made upon himself. A well-worn saying warns us of the danger of not seeing the wood for the trees. In reading accounts, however accurate and graphic, of region after region and district after district, one is likely to get wrong impressions, if any impression at all, of the country as compared with other countries. From this danger, the reader of a book of description may be partly freed, if he carries with him such general ideas of the country as are more likely to suggest themselves to a mere visitor than to one who knows it well and wishes to describe it fully. Thus my little volume professes to be simply a humble supplement to the well-known books on the topography of Palestine. It aims, on the one hand, at recording a few general impressions which it may be advantageous to readers of such books to bear con stantly in mind.

It aims, on the other, at a more detailed description of a few localities, and a fuller discussion of how the nature of these localities bore upon important historical events than can be given in books of more extended scope. In this chapter and the next, I shall mention the leading impressions made on me by the country as a whole. In the remaining chapters, with reference to a few particular localities, I shall endeavour to show how attentive study of the ground removes many obscurities in the brief narratives that remain to us, and places in their right his torical relation events the significance of which — from misapprehension of the way in which they happened — has been too often largely misunderstood. The chief impression left with me, as is probably the case with most visitors, is referred to in the title I have chosen.

Of all historic lands, Palestine is the smallest. It is the smallest even literally, if individual cities, such as Tyre, or Rome, or Florence, are left out of view. It is the smallest comparatively beyond all doubt — the smallest in proportion to the weight and volume of the influence it has exerted on mankind and the place it has taken in their thoughts. From point after point in journeying through it, one can see right across from the Jordan to the Sea: — that is, more than all the breadth that can be assigned to the Palestine which has any permanent significance in history. The district beyond the Jordan was no doubt in theory a portion of the country; and it did, from time to time, play a part of some importance in its story. But, on the whole, it lay beyond the bounds within which the work of Israel was done.

It was not more intimately connected with the nation's historic life than Macedonia or Epirus with that of classic Greece, or Lithuania with that of Poland in the days of Poland's greatness. And while Palestine had its true boundary in the Jordan on the East, it never really extended so far as the Mediterranean on the West. The great maritime plain was indeed held by David and the stronger kings as its overlords; but only such portions as are half inclosed among the Eastern hills were at any time the fixed abode of men of the race of Israel. It was held, down to the latest times of Israelitish story, — and held securely though tribute might be sometimes paid for it, — by the Phili stines and other races of highly civilised and com mercial lowlanders. The great plain was as little a part of the real land of Israel as Wales was a part of England in the ages when English history was taking shape for all its future.

It was much less a part of Israel than Wales has long ago become of Eng land. Thus a good third has to be cut off from a territory which, from point after point, can be surveyed from side to side, if we wish to form an idea of the breadth of the real land. Its length, it is true, is not so insignificant. Yet even that is small. The heights around Hebron, the capital of the South, can be seen from Jerusalem; and seen not merely as a fringe along the distant sky, but as neighbouring hills which form the most conspicuous feature of the view. From the heights about Jerusalem, Gerizim and Ebal can be similarly seen ; and these last are near and prominent features in the landscape that is spread beneath Mount Tabor, — from which again the most northerly point that was ever included within the historic home of Israel may be seen as plainly.

Thus at two double steps, — if the expression be al lowed, — the eye can survey the utmost length of Palestine. Its length cannot, in any proper way of reckon ing it, be held to exceed one hundred and twenty miles. Its breadth may be set down as averaging less than thirty. The area of the whole country is about equal to that of Cornwall and Devonshire in England, or the counties of Banff, Aberdeen, and Kincardine in Scotland, taken together. Or, — to take Indian illustrations, — the Holy Land is about the size of the Chingle put District, and considerably less than the Collectorate of Salem or the kingdom of Travancore. Assuredly Palestine should be called the smallest among lands. In so calling it, I have not forgotten that other little land which alone can be supposed to rival it in the influence it has exerted on the world.

Greece is a little land as well as Palestine. But even if, in computing the area of Greece, no account be taken of the far-spread colonies in Asia, and Sicily, and Italy, which produced so many of her leading minds, the peninsula alone which we regard as the home-land of the Hellenic race, would cut up into many Palestines. Or, if anyone should insist that little Attica is the real Greece of history, I should still reply that if Greece is to be cut down to Attica, Palestine must in all fair ness be similarly cut down to the territory of the kingdom or the tribe of Judah. For Judah was a much better representative of Palestine than Attica was of Greece. Most of the poets and prophets who tried to train the nation for its work were men of Judah. Most of the deeds that give importance to the nation's history, had some immediate bearing on Judah and its famous capital.

Now Judah is less than Attica if Attica is less than Palestine. But the true comparison, — the only one I will consent to institute, — is between Greece with its many cantons or loosely confederated groups of cities, Attica, Bœotia, Achaia, Laconia and the rest upon the one hand, and Israel with its twelve or thirteen tribes upon the other. Thus, even when Greece is called to mind, Palestine stands conspicuous above all other lands for the amazing disproportion between the importance of its history and the smallness of the theatre on which that history was transacted. And as it may be fitly termed the least of all lands, so the further saying of the parable from which that phrase is drawn, may fitly be applied to it. For, whether men approve of the fact or disapprove of it, a fact it certainly is that in the moral and spiritual sphere it has become the greatest among lands, so that the nations of the earth have come and lodged beneath its branches and eaten of its fruit.

Another impression that I brought away with me is, that important though the country has been in history it will never be important in history again. I merely mention the impression. I do not wish to raise, and still less to discuss, the question whether the impression is a just one. But I can hardly believe that anyone familiar with the facts of bygone history and of present social life, can traverse the country without feeling that it belongs to an order of things that has wholly and for ever passed away. To the man of the modern world, however deeply he may feel that here is the source of all his holiest feelings and highest hopes, a visit to Palestine must resemble that of a worker in the full activities of life to "The schoolboy spot We ne'er forget, though we are there forgot." That spot may awaken the most interesting memories to its visitor.

It may have a charm for him which no other spot, however beautiful, can possess. Yet he feels that it has passed out of his life for ever, and that nothing done in it can have much significance for him again. Similarly, the man who speculates about the future story of the world in Palestine, is sure to feel that no influence will again go out from it to change that story's course. It is not simply that it is a land of ruins. Certainly it is that: — a land not merely of buildings that have fallen into decay, but of undecipherable heaps of stones. The inhabited villages themselves have the appear ance of ruinous heaps. They have even more of the appearance than of the reality. The thick unplastered walls and flat mud roof which are nearly universal, make the dwellings, which doubtless convey some idea of home to their inhabitants, appear a shapeless and incoherent mass to an eye accustomed to different structures.

One's first impression about an ordinary country village in Palestine is not so much that its stones have been piled together to make human habi tations, as that holes for shelter have been dug amongst stones that have been strewed abroad by the fall of some mighty tower. And the impression is not always wholly incorrect. But it is not only the heaps of ruins upon all sides which suggest that the land has done its work and is cast aside from influence on the future of the world. In part, that impression comes from the character of the infrequent cultivation. Nearly all the cornfields are thickly bespread with stones, over which waves a stunted and a scanty crop. The few vineyards and oliveyards are covered with stones as plentifully; and nearly every landscape gives an all pervading sense of stony poverty and barrenness.

No doubt there are oases in the desert. There are few richer spots on earth than the vale of Shechem, even as it is to-day. There are other spots that are richly productive still; and yet others, like the plains by Jericho and the glorious amphitheatre of Gennesaret, which, though mostly uncultivated now, show the clearest signs of a natural fruitfulness that can nowhere be excelled. Nor is there any difficulty in believing that the land was once immensely more pro ductive and populous than it is. The records tell of thousands of fighting men sent out from districts where not so many hundreds, and not so many scores, can be discovered now ; and wherever the beaten track is left, abundant proof may be seen that on this point the records are trustworthy. Almost everywhere there are ruined cisterns, and broken terrace-walls, and old in closures — marks patent at a glance of a once abundant population, — where there is nothing but desolation now.

But while all this is so, the impression is immovable that the productiveness of the land is at an end, and that it will never again be the home of an independent or powerful nation. The small scale of everything serves to deepen the impression. So also does the filth and squalor of the few inhabitants that remain. There are places, like Bethlehem and Nablous, which are as clean and have a population as vigorous and active as one expects to see in an oriental town. There are a few, like Nazareth, that rise decidedly above this standard. But, on the whole, such absence of energy, such contented burrowing amid filth, such utter de jectedness of spirit, can be met with nowhere else — certainly not in India or even Egypt — as seem to the passing traveller to be characteristic of the remaining inhabitants everywhere in Palestine. ■20 THE LEAST OF ALL LANDS.

I speak merely of the impression left, of the feeling irresistibly awakened, by what one sees. I am not concerned to argue that the course of history will conform to this impression. One who loves the land for the sake of its wondrous memories may, if he pleases, indulge the hope that some such restoration is still in store for it as the last generation saw in Greece, or as, on a larger and more hopeful scale, has fallen in our own day to the lot of Italy and Rome. And one who tries, need not find it impossible to imagine ways in which some restoration of the kind may be brought about naturally enough. Nor do I contend in this place with those whose faith it is that the restoration which in some moods one can hardly help desiring, will yet be effected by super natural instrumentality. Certainly I do not expect anything of this kind myself.

I think the words on which this faith is based have a far worthier and deeper reference than a reference to the literal land of Israel would be. Perhaps these prophecies may some day be fulfilled in a sense uncommonly like the literal one. But even should it be so, that sense is not the one to which the words of the prophets and poets of Israel will be regarded as mainly pointing by those who understand and sympathize with the purposes of God. All I wish to say at present is that the general impression made by the whole appearance of the country is, that it will never again become significant in history, and that it is destined to remain very much as it is, so long as the world runs on in its career. And I think it is best that it should be so. There have always been inhabitants enough to hand down the names of places by tradition.

Most of the im portant sites have been satisfactorily determined, though it is not yet half a century since anything worthy to be called research began. With no great amount of pains and patience, nearly every point in which the geography bears upon the history may be settled, and settled far more easily and with far greater certainty than if the land were thronged with busy multitudes and a centre of the world's affairs. Of this there is a signal instance within the bounds of Palestine itself. The one place in it that has hardly ever ceased to be of some political importance is its capital. And the natural consequence has followed. While solid results have been attained with but little trouble in investigating the other historic sites, every feature of Jerusalem is still the subject of envenomed antiquarian debate.

Nothing can be regarded as ascertained about its topography except the ineffaceable valleys that surround it; and this, in spite of labour and thought many times exceeding what has been spent on the whole of the country outside its walls. What would not students of its topography give if Jerusalem had been left as desolate as Shiloh and Samaria have been through all these centuries? And would it be loss or gain to the student of classical antiquity if Athens had been surrendered to final decay since the time of Demosthenes, or Rome since it was sacked by Alaric? The opinion is, to say the least of it, defensible, that it is best that Palestine should remain comparatively a waste, since thus it will attest the truth and explain the meaning of that history which the world, as it ad vances, will always become more eager to understand far better than if its landmarks were obliterated in the turmoil of modern life, and its old associations replaced by new ones.

Another feature of the country by which a visitor is struck is its remarkably varied character. Nearly every variety of climate is exemplified somewhere within its bounds. The maritime plain and the western slopes of the central hills have the climate appropriate to the latitude. The broad summit of the ridge which forms the backbone of the country, — along which lie Hebron and Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Gibeah and Bethel, and most of those other sites which the world never will forget, — is high enough to afford a climate like that of lands much nearer to the poles. The deep cleft of the Jordan, descending in its southern extremity nearly fourteen hundred feet below sea-level, is cast in the mould and brings forth many of the products of lands that are neighbours of the equator. One day, at Jaffa, I enjoyed a balmy freshness and a sooth ing warmth like that of an early summer on the shores of Italy.

The next, I was shivering at Jerusalem in damp raw cold like that of a Scottish April. Two days thereafter, by the Dead Sea, I found myself in the midst of sweltering heat like that of Malabar, and exposed to an unclouded sun almost rivalling in fierce ness the sun of Madras in May. What is true of the climate is equally true of the landscape. There are few types of scenery of which an example cannot be found in Palestine. Of course there is not room for broad fat plains like those of Egypt or Tanjore; but on a small scale there are places still, and once there were many more, that must have had the same effect as these on the character of their inhabitants. Of winding valleys, and cultivated slopes, and all the varied picturesqueness of hill and dale, — of hill and dale both bare and clothed with forest — there can have been no lack in ancient days; while ravines and crags, unrivalled in their ruggedness, are never very distant along the whole of the eastern boundary.

And, small although the country be, there must always have been enough of waste land in it to bring the majority of its inhabitants occasionally in contact with Nature in her solitary majesty. The upland pastures in the wilderness of Judah, the eastern slopes of Mount Ephraim and Gilboa, must have always been pretty much the lonely tracts that they are at present; while few regions present such a scene of grand and savage desolation as the valley of the Kelt and the heights of Quarantana, which rise right above the fertility of Jericho. Now, it is not difficult to see how important the part was which this variety in the scenery played in the training of the people. It is a fact not regarded as doubtful by any inquirer, that the character of a community, and especially those feelings which naturally find utterance in their poetry, are largely dependent on the scenery of their abode.

It is equally undenied that the character and sentiment thus de veloped in a community affect, less or more, the tendencies and thoughts of each individual that be longs to it, and of those gifted ones most of all who become its leaders and its teachers. True, it is difficult to point out with scientific accuracy what effect one kind of scenery has and what another. It is difficult to determine in detail the relations between the features of a country and the aspirations and tendencies of its inhabitants. But no one questions that there are such relations, or that they are a powerful agency in mould ing the destinies of men. Now, if the features of their abode thus leave an impress on a people, it is a plain inference that a people whose abode is peculiarly varied, will be varied in emotion and aspiration, — will have many thoughts and many feelings instead of the few that are awakened in men whose country is alike in all its regions and in all its features.

The objection may perhaps be urged that each man, and each family or clan, can only live in one place after all, and therefore that though a nation whose territory is varied in point of scenery, may have citizens remarkably different from each other in char acter and feeling, yet the common national character is not affected by this variety of landscape. Each leader of thought, it may be said, each poet or other teacher, if affected by scenery at all, will reflect only those scenes with which he is familiar in his own abode. But to this objection, there is a twofold answer. All influences that affect character and feel ing and tendencies of thought, spread with wonderful rapidity through any mass of men of the same descent and living under the same general conditions. There is a contagiousness about thoughts and sentiments, so that when thoroughly awakened in one, or in a few, they are communicated, no man can tell precisely how, to the whole mass among which these men dwell.

In our own day, what may be called the scientific spirit, the desire to question and understand everything, the reluctance to take anything on trust, has spread through every European country, till it is all-powerful with i; millions upon millions who never opened a scientific book or set themselves to deal with a scientific ques tion. The thing, as is often said, is in the air. It is the Zeit-geist, the spirit of the Age. So it is with those influences of scenery which are undoubtedly far more powerful in earlier stages of society than we have any experience of their being. Whatever effect the precipices of Beth-Arbel, the fat valleys of Ephraim, or the vine-clad hills of Judah, had on those who felt their influence first, would spread in the ordinary course of things quickly through the nation.

But, besides this, there were special reasons why such influences should be rapidly transmitted and thoroughly received in the case of Israel. The whole people were instructed to meet, and in the prosperous periods of their history large numbers of them did meet, on festive occasions at sacred shrines. Such meetings were far more numerous, and, in point of theory at all events, far more regularly attended than was the custom in any other land. A special channel was thus prepared along which the current of feeling set in motion by each particular aspect of nature in the country might flow easily abroad to all its inhabitants. Thus the varied scenery of Palestine has been a powerful reason why the literature of the Israelites, — the expression of the spirit formed by the peculiarly varied aspects of nature in their dwelling-place — has found a home so readily in the hearts of every people it has come to.

Read in distant lands, under all the disadvantages of translation into a foreign tongue, it has yet spoken to men's hearts in every region of the globe, and been adopted, we all know how widely, as the one befitting vehicle of what is deepest in their feelings and most aspiring in their thoughts. Of course there are other and deeper reasons for the universal acceptability of the literature that has been gathered together in the collection of works which we term the Bible; but the form and spirit of its poetry is one reason amongst others for this. Now, that form and spirit arose largely from the varied scenery of the land which was the birth-place of the literature ; and this is the only aspect of the question with which I am concerned at present. But while my impression was strong that for pur poses of poetry Palestine is an epitome of the world, I must record the impression also that much even in Hebrew literature cannot be read aright without a sight, or a full understanding, of the scenes amidst which it sprang.

Passage after passage of it occurred to me, while I wandered among its native hills and valleys, which it seemed to me that I had never grasped the meaning of before. A reference to a single one of these may fitly close this chapter. There are few even among Hebrew songs in which natural scenery is more grandly made the vehicle of eternal truth than one of those included in " The chorus intoned When the Levites went up to the altar in glory enthroned." It was sung by the processions as they wound upwards with slow and stately step to the summit of the Temple hill, and its key-note is: — "As the moun tains are round about Jerusalem, so Jehovah is round about his people from henceforth even for ever."1 The man to whom this strain occurs when he stands on the broad platform which hides whatever relics of the Temple remain, is struck with sudden wonder.