Smith's Bible Dictionary.pdf - Online Christian Library

Smith's Bible Dictionary
Perhaps the springs are the only objects which In themselves, and apart from their associations,
really strike an English traveller with astonishment and admiration. Such glorious fountains as
those of Ain-jalud or the Ras el-Mukatta—where a great body of the dearest water wells silently
but swiftly out from deep blue recesses worn in the foot of a low cliff of limestone rock and at
once forms a considerable stream—are rarely to be met with out of irregular, rocky, mountainous
countries, and being such unusual sights can hardly be looked on by the traveler without surprise
and emotion. The valleys which lead down from the upper level in this district to the valley of the
Jordan are less precipitous than in Judea. The eastern district of the Jebel Nablus contains some
of the most fertile end valuable spots in the holy land. Hardly less rich is the extensive region
which lies northwest of the city of Shechem (Nablus), between it and Carmel, in which the
mountains gradually break down into the plain of Sharon. Put with all its richness and all its
advance on the southern part of the country there is a strange dearth of natural wood about this
central district. It is this which makes the wooded sides of Carmel and the park-like scenery of
the adjacent slopes and plains so remarkable. No sooner however, is the plain of Eadraelon passed
than a considerable improvement Is perceptible. The low hills which spread down from the
mountains of Galilee, and form the barrier between the plains of Akka and Esdraelon, are covered
with timber, of moderate size it is true, but of thick, vigorous growth, and pleasant to the eye.
Eastward of these hills rises the round mass of Tabor dark with its copses of oak, and set on by
contrast with the bare slopes of Jebel ed-Duhy (the so called “Little Hermon”) and the white hills
of Nazareth. A few words must be said in general description of the maritime lowland, which
intervenes between the sea and the highlands. This region, only slightly elevated above the level
of the Mediterranean, extends without interruption from el-Arish, south of Gaza, to Mount Carmel.
It naturally divides itself into two portions each of about half its length; the lower one the wider
the upper one the narrower. The lower half is the plain of the Philistines-Philistia, or, as the Hebrews
called it, the Shefelah or Lowland. The upper half is the Sharon or Saron of the Old and New
Testaments. The Philistine plain is on an average 15 or 16 miles in width from the coast to the
beginning of the belt of hills which forms the gradual approach to the high land of the mountains
of Judah. The larger towns, as Gaza and Ashdod, which stand near the shore, are surrounded with
huge groves of olive, sycamore and, as in the days King David. (1 Chronicles 27:28) The whole
plain appears to consist of brown loamy soil, light but rich and almost without a stone. It is now,
as it was when the Philistines possessed it, one enormous cornfield; an ocean of wheat covers the
wide expense between the hills and the sand dunes of the seashore, without interruption of any
kind—no break or hedge, hardly even a single olive tree. Its fertility is marvellous; for the
prodigious crops which if raises are produced, and probably have been produced almost year by
year for the last forty centuries, without any of the appliances which we find necessary for success.
The plain of Sharon is much narrower then Philistia. It is about 10 miles wide from the sea to the
foot of the mountains, which are here of a more abrupt character than those of Philistia, and without
the intermediate hilly region there occurring. The one ancient port of the Jews, the “beautiful”,
city of Joppa, occupied a position central between the Shefelah and Sharon. Roads led from these
various cities to each other to Jerusalem, Neapolis and Sebaste in the interior, and to Ptolemais
and Gaza on the north and south. The commerce of Damascus, and beyond Damascus, of Persia
and India, passed this way to Egypt, Rome and the infant colonies of the West; and that traffic
and the constant movement of troops backward and forward must have made this plain, at the time
of Christ, one of the busiest and most populous regions of Syria.
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William Smith