Smith's Bible Dictionary.pdf - Online Christian Library

Smith's Bible Dictionary
which alone Egypt could get to Assyria and Assyria to lay along the broad hat strip of coast which
formed the maritime portion of the holy land, and thence by the plain of the Lebanon to the
Euphrates. (c) After this the holy land became (like the Netherlands in Europe) the convenient
arena on which in successive ages the hostile powers who contended for the empire of the East
fought their battles.
•Physical features.—Palestine is essentially a mountainous country. Not that if contains independent
mountain chains, as in Greece for example but that every part of the highland is in greater or less
undulation. But it is not only a mountainous country. The mass of hills which occupies the centre
of the country is bordered or framed on both sides, east and west, by a broad belt of lowland, sunk
deep below its own level. The slopes or cliffs which form, as if it were, the retaining walls of this
depression are furrowed and cleft by the torrent beds which discharge the waters of the hills and
form the means of communication between the upper and lower level. On the west this lowland
interposes between the mountains and the sea, and is the plain of Philistia and of Sharon. On the
east it is the broad bottom of the Jordan valley, deep down in which rushed the one river of Palestine
to its grave in, the Dead Sea. Such is the first general impression of the physiognomy of the land.
It is a physiognomy compounded of the three main features already named—the plains the highland
hills, and the torrent beds features which are marked in the words of its earliest describers, (Numbers
13:29; Joshua 11:16; 12:8) and which must be comprehended by every one who wishes to
understand the country and the intimate connection existing between its structure and its history.
About halfway up the coast the maritime plain is suddenly interrupted by a long ridge thrown out
from the central mass, rising considerably shove the general level and terminating in a bold
promontory on the very edge of the Mediterranean. This ridge is Mount Carmel. On its upper side
the plain, as if to compensate for its temporary displacement, invades the centre of the country,
and forms an undulating hollow right across it from the Mediterranean to the Jordan valley. This
central lowland, which divides with its broad depression the mountains of Ephraim from the
mountains of Galilee is the plain of Esdraelon or Jezreel the great battle-field of Palestine. North
of Carmel the lowland resumes its position by the seaside till it is again interrupted and finally
put an end to by the northern mountains, which push their way out of the sea, ending in the white
promontory of the Ras Nakhura . Above this is the ancient Phoenicia. The country thus roughly
portrayed is to all intents and purposes the whole land of israel. The northern portion is Galilee;
the centre, Samaria; the south, Judea. This is the land of Canaan which was bestowed on
Abraham,—the covenanted home of his descendants. The highland district, surrounded and
intersected by its broad lowland plains, preserves from north to south a remarkably even and
horizontal profile. Its average height may betaken as 1600 to 1800 feet above the Mediterranean.
It can hardly be denominated a plateau; yet so evenly is the general level preserved and so thickly
do the hills stand behind and between one another, that, when seen from the coast or the western
part of the maritime plain, it has quite the appearance of a wall. This general monotony of profile
is however, relieved at intervals by certain centers of elevation. Between these elevated points
runs the watershed of the country, sending off on either hand—to the Jordan valley on the east
and the Mediterranean on the west—the long, tortuous arms of ifs many torrent beds. The valleys
on the two sides of the watershed differ considerably in character. Those on the east are extremely
steep and rugged the western valleys are more gradual in their slope.
•Fertility .—When the highlands of the country are more closely examined, a considerable difference
will be found to exist in the natural condition and appearance of their different portions. The south,
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William Smith