The Prophet Jeremiah was of the sacerdotal race, being, as he
records himself, one of the priests that dwelt at Anathoth, in the land
of Benjamin, a city appropriated out of that tribe to the use of the
priests, the sons of Aaron, Joshua xxi, 18, and situate, as we learn
from St. Jerom, about three miles north of Jerusalem. Some have supposed
his father to have been that Hilkah, the high priest, by whom the book
of the law was found in the temple in the reign of Josiah: but for this
there is no better ground than his having borne the same name, which was
no uncommon one among the Jews; whereas, had he been in reality the high
priest, he would doubtless have been mentioned by that distinguishing
title, and not put upon a level with priests of an ordinary and inferior
class. Jeremiah appears to have been very young when he was called to
the exercise of the prophetical office, from which he modestly
endeavoured to excuse himself by pleading his youth and incapacity; but
being overruled by the divine authority, he set himself to discharge the
duties of his function with unremitted diligence and fidelity during a
period of at least forty-two years, reckoned from the thirteenth year of
Josiah’s reign. In the course of his ministry he met with great
difficulties and opposition from his countrymen of all degrees, whose
persecution and ill usage sometimes wrought so far upon his mind, as to
draw from him expressions, in the bitterness of his soul, which many
have thought hard to reconcile with his religious principles; but which,
when duly considered, may be found to demand our pity for his unremitted
sufferings, rather than our censure for any want of piety and reverence
toward God. He was, in truth, a man of unblemished piety and
conscientious integrity; a warm lover of his country, whose misery he
pathetically deplores; and so affectionately attached to his countrymen,
notwithstanding their injurious treatment of him, that he chose rather
to abide with them, and undergo all hardships in their company, than
separately to enjoy a state of ease and plenty, which the favour of the
king of Babylon would have secured to him. At length, after the
destruction of Jerusalem, being carried with the remnant of the Jews
into Egypt, whither they had resolved to retire, though contrary to his
advice, upon the murder of Gedaliah, whom the Chaldeans had left
governor in Judea, he there continued warmly to remonstrate against
their idolatrous practices, foretelling the consequences that would
inevitably follow. But his freedom and zeal are said to have cost him
his life; for the Jews at Tahpanhes, according to tradition, took such
offence at him that they stoned him to death. This account of the manner
of his end, though not absolutely certain, is at least very probable,
considering the temper and disposition of the parties concerned. Their
wickedness, however, did not long pass without its reward; for, in a few
years after, they were miserably destroyed by the Babylonian armies
which invaded Egypt according to the prophet’s prediction, Jer. xliv,
27, 28.
The idolatrous apostasy, and other criminal enormities of the people of
Judah, and the severe judgments which God was prepared to inflict upon
them, but not without a distant prospect of future restoration and
deliverance, are the principal subject matters of the prophecies of
Jeremiah; excepting only the forty-fifth chapter, which relates
personally to Baruch, and the six succeeding chapters, which respect the
fortunes of some particular Heathen nations. It is observable, however,
that though many of these prophecies have their particular dates annexed
to them, and other dates may be tolerably well conjectured from certain
internal marks and circumstances, there appears much disorder in the
arrangement, not easy to be accounted for on any principle of regular
design, but probably the result of some accident or other, which has
disturbed the original order. The best arrangement of the chapters
appears to be according to the list which will be subjoined; the
different reigns in which the prophecies were delivered were most
probably as follows: The first twelve chapters seem to contain all the
prophecies delivered in the reign of the good King Josiah. During the
short reign of Shallum, or Jehoahaz, his second son, who succeeded him,
Jeremiah does not appear to have had any revelation. Jehoiakim, the
eldest son of Josiah, succeeded. The prophecies of this reign are
continued on from the thirteenth to the twentieth chapter inclusively;
to which we must add the twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fifth,
twenty-sixth, thirty-fifth, and thirty-sixth chapters, together with the
forty-fifth, forty-sixth, forty-seventh, and most probably the
forty-eighth, and as far as the thirty-fourth verse of the forty-ninth
chapter. Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, succeeded. We read of no
prophecy that Jeremiah actually delivered in this king’s reign; but the
fate of Jeconiah, his being carried into captivity, and continuing an
exile till the time of his death, were foretold early in his father’s
reign, as may be particularly seen in the twenty-second chapter. The
last king of Judah was Zedekiah, the youngest son of Josiah. The
prophecies delivered in his reign are contained in the twenty-first and
twenty-fourth chapters, the twenty-seventh to the thirty-fourth, and the
thirty-seventh to the thirty-ninth inclusively, together with the last
six verses of the forty-ninth chapter, and the fiftieth and fifty-first
chapters concerning the fall of Babylon. The siege of Jerusalem, in the
reign of Zedekiah, and the capture of the city, are circumstantially
related in the fifty-second chapter; and a particular account of the
subsequent transactions is given in the fortieth to the forty-fourth
inclusively. The arrangement of the chapters, alluded to above, is here
subjoined: i-xx, xxii, xxiii, xxv, xxvi, xxxv, xxxvi, xlv, xxiv,
xxix-xxxi, xxvii, xxviii, xxi, xxxiv, xxxvii, xxxii, xxxiii, xxxviii,
xxxix, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth verse, xxxix, from the first
to the fourteenth verse, xl-xliv, xlvi, and so on.
The prophecies of Jeremiah, of which the circumstantial accomplishment
is often specified in the Old and New Testament, are of a very
distinguished and illustrious character. He foretold the fate of
Zedekiah, Jer. xxxiv, 2–5; 2 Chron. xxxvi, 11–21; 2 Kings xxv, 5; Jer.
lii, 11; the Babylonish captivity, the precise time of its duration, and
the return of the Jews. He describes the destruction of Babylon, and the
downfall of many nations, Jer. xxv, 12; ix, 26; xxv, 19–25; xlii, 10–18;
xlvi, and the following chapters, in predictions, of which the gradual
and successive completion kept up the confidence of the Jews for the
accomplishment of those prophecies, which he delivered relative to the
Messiah and his period, Jer. xxiii, 5, 6; xxx, 9; xxxi, 15; xxxii,
14–18; xxxiii, 9–26. He foreshowed the miraculous conception of Christ,
Jer. xxxi, 22, the virtue of his atonement, the spiritual character of
his covenant, and the inward efficacy of his laws, Jer. xxxi, 31–36;
xxxiii, 8. Jeremiah, contemplating those calamities which impended over
his country, represented, in the most descriptive terms, and under the
most impressive images, the destruction that the invading enemy should
produce. He bewailed, in pathetic expostulation, the shameless
adulteries which had provoked the Almighty, after long forbearance, to
threaten Judah with inevitable punishment, at the time that false
prophets deluded the nation with the promises of “assured peace,” and
when the people, in impious contempt of “the Lord’s word,” defied its
accomplishment. Jeremiah intermingles with his prophecies some
historical relations relative to his own conduct, and to the completion
of those predictions which he had delivered. The reputation of Jeremiah
had spread among foreign nations, and his prophecies were deservedly
celebrated in other countries. Many Heathen writers also have
undesignedly borne testimony to the truth and accuracy of his prophetic
and historical descriptions.
As to the style of Jeremiah, says Bishop Lowth, this prophet is by no
means wanting either in elegance or sublimity, although, generally
speaking, inferior to Isaiah in both. His thoughts, indeed, are somewhat
less elevated, and he is commonly more large and diffuse in his
sentences; but the reason of this may be, that he is mostly taken up
with the gentler passions of grief and pity, for the expression of which
he has a peculiar talent. This is most evident in the Lamentations,
where those passions altogether predominate; but it is often visible
also in his prophecies, in the former part of the book more especially,
which is principally poetical; the middle parts are chiefly historical;
but the last part, consisting of six chapters, is entirely poetical, and
contains several oracles distinctly marked, in which this prophet falls
very little short of the lofty style of Isaiah. But of the whole book of
Jeremiah it is hardly the one half which I look upon as poetical.
Jeremiah survived to behold the sad accomplishment of all his darkest
predictions. He witnessed all the horrors of the famine, and, when that
had done its work, the triumph of the enemy. He saw the strong holds of
the city cast down, the palace of Solomon, the temple of God, with all
its courts, its roofs of cedar and of gold, levelled to the earth, or
committed to the flames; the sacred vessels, the ark of the covenant
itself, with the cherubim, pillaged by profane hands. What were the
feelings of a patriotic and religious Jew at this tremendous crisis, he
has left on record in his unrivalled elegies. Never did city suffer a
more miserable fate, never was ruined city lamented in language so
exquisitely pathetic. Jerusalem is, as it were, personified, and
bewailed with the passionate sorrow of private and domestic attachment;
while the more general pictures of the famine, the common misery of
every rank, and age, and sex, all the desolation, the carnage, the
violation, the dragging away into captivity, the remembrance of former
glories, of the gorgeous ceremonies and the glad festivals, the awful
sense of the divine wrath heightening the present calamities, are
successively drawn with all the life and reality of an eye-witness. They
combine the truth of history with the deepest pathos of poetry.
JERICHO was a city of Benjamin, about seven leagues from Jerusalem, and
two from the Jordan, Joshua xviii, 21. Moses calls it the city of palm
trees, Deut. xxxiv, 3, because of palm trees growing in the plain of
Jericho. Josephus says, that in the territory of this city were not only
many palm trees, but also the balsam tree. The valley of Jericho was
watered by a rivulet which had been formerly salt and bitter, but was
sweetened by the Prophet Elisha, 2 Kings ii, 19. Jericho was the first
city in Canaan taken by Joshua, ii, 1, 2, &c. He sent thither spies, who
were received by Rahab, lodged in her house, and preserved from the king
of Jericho. Joshua received orders to besiege Jericho, soon after his
passage over Jordan, Joshua vi, 1–3, &c. God commanded the Hebrews to
march round the city once a day for seven days together. The soldiers
marched first, probably out of the reach of the enemies’ arrows, and
after them the priests, the ark, &c. On the seventh day, they marched
seven times round the city; and at the seventh, while the trumpets were
sounding, and all the people shouting, the walls fell down. The rabbins
say, that the first day was our Sunday, and the seventh the Sabbath day.
During the first six days, the people continued in profound silence; but
on the seventh Joshua commanded them to shout. Accordingly they all
exerted their voices, and the walls being overthrown, they entered the
city, every man in the place opposite to him. Jericho being devoted by
God, they set fire to the city, and consecrated all the gold, silver,
and brass. Then Joshua said, “Cursed be the man before the Lord who
shall rebuild Jericho.” About five hundred and thirty years after this,
Hiel, of Bethel, undertook to rebuild it; but he lost his eldest son,
Abiram, at laying the foundations, and his youngest son, Segub, when he
hung up the gates. However, we are not to imagine that there was no city
of Jericho till the time of Hiel. There was a city of palm trees,
probably the same as Jericho, under the Judges, Judges iii, 13. David’s
ambassadors, who had been insulted by the Ammonites, resided at Jericho
till their beards were grown, 2 Sam. x, 4. There was, therefore, a city
of Jericho which stood in the neighbourhood of the original Jericho.
These two places are distinguished by Josephus. After Hiel of Bethel had
rebuilt old Jericho, no one scrupled to dwell there. Our Saviour wrought
miracles at Jericho.
According to Pococke, the mountains to which the absurd name of
Quarantania has been arbitrarily given, are the highest in all Judea;
and he is probably correct; they form part of a chain extending from
Scythopolis into Idumea. The fountain of Elisha he states to be a soft
water, rather warm; he found in it some small shell fish of the
turbinated kind. Close by the ruined aqueduct are the remains of a fine
paved way, with a fallen column, supposed to be a Roman milestone. The
hills nearest to Jerusalem consist, according to Hasselquist, of a very
hard limestone; and different sorts of plants are found on them, in
particular the myrtle, the carob tree, and the turpentine tree; but
farther toward Jericho they are bare and barren, the hard limestone
giving way to a looser kind, sometimes white and sometimes grayish, with
interjacent layers of a reddish micaceous stone, _saxum purum micaceum_.
The vales, though now bare and uncultivated, and full of pebbles,
contain good red mould, which would amply reward the husbandman’s toil.
Nothing can be more savage than the present aspect of these wild and
gloomy solitudes, through which runs the very road where is laid the
scene of that exquisite parable, the good Samaritan, and from that time
to the present, it has been the haunt of the most desperate bandits,
being one of the most dangerous in Palestine. Sometimes the track leads
along the edges of cliffs and precipices, which threaten destruction on
the slightest false step; at other times it winds through craggy passes,
overshadowed by projecting or perpendicular rocks. At one place the road
has been cut through the very apex of a hill, the rocks overhanging it
on either side. Here, in 1820, an English traveller, Sir Frederick
Henniker, was attacked by the Arabs with fire-arms, who stripped him
naked, and left him severely wounded: “It was past mid-day, and burning
hot,” says Sir Frederick; “I bled profusely; and two vultures, whose
business it is to consume corpses, were hovering over me. I should
scarcely have had strength to resist, had they chosen to attack me.”
The modern village of Jericho is described by Mr. Buckingham as a
settlement of about fifty dwellings, all very mean in their appearance,
and fenced in front with thorny bushes, while a barrier of the same
kind, the most effectual that could be raised against mounted Arabs,
encircles the town. A fine brook flows by it, which empties itself into
the Jordan; the nearest point of that river is about three miles
distant. The grounds in the immediate vicinity of the village, being
fertilized by this stream, bear crops of dourra, Indian corn, rice, and
onions. The population is entirely Mohammedan, and is governed by a
sheikh: their habits are those of Bedouins, and robbery and plunder form
their chief and most gainful occupation. The whole of the road from
Jerusalem to the Jordan, is held to be the most dangerous in Palestine;
and indeed, in this portion of it, the very aspect of the scenery is
sufficient, on the one hand, to tempt to robbery and murder, and, on the
other, to occasion a dread of it in those who pass that way. One must be
amid these wild and gloomy solitudes, surrounded by an armed band, and
feel the impatience of the traveller who rushes on to catch a new view
at every pass and turn; one must be alarmed at the very tramp of the
horses’ hoofs rebounding through the caverned rocks, and at the savage
shouts of the footmen, scarcely less loud than the echoing thunder
produced by the discharge of their pieces in the valleys; one must
witness all this upon the spot, before the full force and beauty of the
admirable story of the good Samaritan can be perceived. Here, pillage,
wounds, and death would be accompanied with double terror, from the
frightful aspect of every thing around. Here, the unfeeling act of
passing by a fellow creature in distress, as the priest and Levite are
said to have done, strikes one with horror, as an act almost more than
inhuman. And here, too, the compassion of the good Samaritan is doubly
virtuous, from the purity of the motive which must have led to it, in a
spot where no eyes were fixed on him to draw forth the performance of
any duty, and from the bravery which was necessary to admit of a man’s
exposing himself, by such delay, to the risk of a similar fate to that
from which he was endeavouring to rescue his fellow creature.
records himself, one of the priests that dwelt at Anathoth, in the land
of Benjamin, a city appropriated out of that tribe to the use of the
priests, the sons of Aaron, Joshua xxi, 18, and situate, as we learn
from St. Jerom, about three miles north of Jerusalem. Some have supposed
his father to have been that Hilkah, the high priest, by whom the book
of the law was found in the temple in the reign of Josiah: but for this
there is no better ground than his having borne the same name, which was
no uncommon one among the Jews; whereas, had he been in reality the high
priest, he would doubtless have been mentioned by that distinguishing
title, and not put upon a level with priests of an ordinary and inferior
class. Jeremiah appears to have been very young when he was called to
the exercise of the prophetical office, from which he modestly
endeavoured to excuse himself by pleading his youth and incapacity; but
being overruled by the divine authority, he set himself to discharge the
duties of his function with unremitted diligence and fidelity during a
period of at least forty-two years, reckoned from the thirteenth year of
Josiah’s reign. In the course of his ministry he met with great
difficulties and opposition from his countrymen of all degrees, whose
persecution and ill usage sometimes wrought so far upon his mind, as to
draw from him expressions, in the bitterness of his soul, which many
have thought hard to reconcile with his religious principles; but which,
when duly considered, may be found to demand our pity for his unremitted
sufferings, rather than our censure for any want of piety and reverence
toward God. He was, in truth, a man of unblemished piety and
conscientious integrity; a warm lover of his country, whose misery he
pathetically deplores; and so affectionately attached to his countrymen,
notwithstanding their injurious treatment of him, that he chose rather
to abide with them, and undergo all hardships in their company, than
separately to enjoy a state of ease and plenty, which the favour of the
king of Babylon would have secured to him. At length, after the
destruction of Jerusalem, being carried with the remnant of the Jews
into Egypt, whither they had resolved to retire, though contrary to his
advice, upon the murder of Gedaliah, whom the Chaldeans had left
governor in Judea, he there continued warmly to remonstrate against
their idolatrous practices, foretelling the consequences that would
inevitably follow. But his freedom and zeal are said to have cost him
his life; for the Jews at Tahpanhes, according to tradition, took such
offence at him that they stoned him to death. This account of the manner
of his end, though not absolutely certain, is at least very probable,
considering the temper and disposition of the parties concerned. Their
wickedness, however, did not long pass without its reward; for, in a few
years after, they were miserably destroyed by the Babylonian armies
which invaded Egypt according to the prophet’s prediction, Jer. xliv,
27, 28.
The idolatrous apostasy, and other criminal enormities of the people of
Judah, and the severe judgments which God was prepared to inflict upon
them, but not without a distant prospect of future restoration and
deliverance, are the principal subject matters of the prophecies of
Jeremiah; excepting only the forty-fifth chapter, which relates
personally to Baruch, and the six succeeding chapters, which respect the
fortunes of some particular Heathen nations. It is observable, however,
that though many of these prophecies have their particular dates annexed
to them, and other dates may be tolerably well conjectured from certain
internal marks and circumstances, there appears much disorder in the
arrangement, not easy to be accounted for on any principle of regular
design, but probably the result of some accident or other, which has
disturbed the original order. The best arrangement of the chapters
appears to be according to the list which will be subjoined; the
different reigns in which the prophecies were delivered were most
probably as follows: The first twelve chapters seem to contain all the
prophecies delivered in the reign of the good King Josiah. During the
short reign of Shallum, or Jehoahaz, his second son, who succeeded him,
Jeremiah does not appear to have had any revelation. Jehoiakim, the
eldest son of Josiah, succeeded. The prophecies of this reign are
continued on from the thirteenth to the twentieth chapter inclusively;
to which we must add the twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fifth,
twenty-sixth, thirty-fifth, and thirty-sixth chapters, together with the
forty-fifth, forty-sixth, forty-seventh, and most probably the
forty-eighth, and as far as the thirty-fourth verse of the forty-ninth
chapter. Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, succeeded. We read of no
prophecy that Jeremiah actually delivered in this king’s reign; but the
fate of Jeconiah, his being carried into captivity, and continuing an
exile till the time of his death, were foretold early in his father’s
reign, as may be particularly seen in the twenty-second chapter. The
last king of Judah was Zedekiah, the youngest son of Josiah. The
prophecies delivered in his reign are contained in the twenty-first and
twenty-fourth chapters, the twenty-seventh to the thirty-fourth, and the
thirty-seventh to the thirty-ninth inclusively, together with the last
six verses of the forty-ninth chapter, and the fiftieth and fifty-first
chapters concerning the fall of Babylon. The siege of Jerusalem, in the
reign of Zedekiah, and the capture of the city, are circumstantially
related in the fifty-second chapter; and a particular account of the
subsequent transactions is given in the fortieth to the forty-fourth
inclusively. The arrangement of the chapters, alluded to above, is here
subjoined: i-xx, xxii, xxiii, xxv, xxvi, xxxv, xxxvi, xlv, xxiv,
xxix-xxxi, xxvii, xxviii, xxi, xxxiv, xxxvii, xxxii, xxxiii, xxxviii,
xxxix, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth verse, xxxix, from the first
to the fourteenth verse, xl-xliv, xlvi, and so on.
The prophecies of Jeremiah, of which the circumstantial accomplishment
is often specified in the Old and New Testament, are of a very
distinguished and illustrious character. He foretold the fate of
Zedekiah, Jer. xxxiv, 2–5; 2 Chron. xxxvi, 11–21; 2 Kings xxv, 5; Jer.
lii, 11; the Babylonish captivity, the precise time of its duration, and
the return of the Jews. He describes the destruction of Babylon, and the
downfall of many nations, Jer. xxv, 12; ix, 26; xxv, 19–25; xlii, 10–18;
xlvi, and the following chapters, in predictions, of which the gradual
and successive completion kept up the confidence of the Jews for the
accomplishment of those prophecies, which he delivered relative to the
Messiah and his period, Jer. xxiii, 5, 6; xxx, 9; xxxi, 15; xxxii,
14–18; xxxiii, 9–26. He foreshowed the miraculous conception of Christ,
Jer. xxxi, 22, the virtue of his atonement, the spiritual character of
his covenant, and the inward efficacy of his laws, Jer. xxxi, 31–36;
xxxiii, 8. Jeremiah, contemplating those calamities which impended over
his country, represented, in the most descriptive terms, and under the
most impressive images, the destruction that the invading enemy should
produce. He bewailed, in pathetic expostulation, the shameless
adulteries which had provoked the Almighty, after long forbearance, to
threaten Judah with inevitable punishment, at the time that false
prophets deluded the nation with the promises of “assured peace,” and
when the people, in impious contempt of “the Lord’s word,” defied its
accomplishment. Jeremiah intermingles with his prophecies some
historical relations relative to his own conduct, and to the completion
of those predictions which he had delivered. The reputation of Jeremiah
had spread among foreign nations, and his prophecies were deservedly
celebrated in other countries. Many Heathen writers also have
undesignedly borne testimony to the truth and accuracy of his prophetic
and historical descriptions.
As to the style of Jeremiah, says Bishop Lowth, this prophet is by no
means wanting either in elegance or sublimity, although, generally
speaking, inferior to Isaiah in both. His thoughts, indeed, are somewhat
less elevated, and he is commonly more large and diffuse in his
sentences; but the reason of this may be, that he is mostly taken up
with the gentler passions of grief and pity, for the expression of which
he has a peculiar talent. This is most evident in the Lamentations,
where those passions altogether predominate; but it is often visible
also in his prophecies, in the former part of the book more especially,
which is principally poetical; the middle parts are chiefly historical;
but the last part, consisting of six chapters, is entirely poetical, and
contains several oracles distinctly marked, in which this prophet falls
very little short of the lofty style of Isaiah. But of the whole book of
Jeremiah it is hardly the one half which I look upon as poetical.
Jeremiah survived to behold the sad accomplishment of all his darkest
predictions. He witnessed all the horrors of the famine, and, when that
had done its work, the triumph of the enemy. He saw the strong holds of
the city cast down, the palace of Solomon, the temple of God, with all
its courts, its roofs of cedar and of gold, levelled to the earth, or
committed to the flames; the sacred vessels, the ark of the covenant
itself, with the cherubim, pillaged by profane hands. What were the
feelings of a patriotic and religious Jew at this tremendous crisis, he
has left on record in his unrivalled elegies. Never did city suffer a
more miserable fate, never was ruined city lamented in language so
exquisitely pathetic. Jerusalem is, as it were, personified, and
bewailed with the passionate sorrow of private and domestic attachment;
while the more general pictures of the famine, the common misery of
every rank, and age, and sex, all the desolation, the carnage, the
violation, the dragging away into captivity, the remembrance of former
glories, of the gorgeous ceremonies and the glad festivals, the awful
sense of the divine wrath heightening the present calamities, are
successively drawn with all the life and reality of an eye-witness. They
combine the truth of history with the deepest pathos of poetry.
JERICHO was a city of Benjamin, about seven leagues from Jerusalem, and
two from the Jordan, Joshua xviii, 21. Moses calls it the city of palm
trees, Deut. xxxiv, 3, because of palm trees growing in the plain of
Jericho. Josephus says, that in the territory of this city were not only
many palm trees, but also the balsam tree. The valley of Jericho was
watered by a rivulet which had been formerly salt and bitter, but was
sweetened by the Prophet Elisha, 2 Kings ii, 19. Jericho was the first
city in Canaan taken by Joshua, ii, 1, 2, &c. He sent thither spies, who
were received by Rahab, lodged in her house, and preserved from the king
of Jericho. Joshua received orders to besiege Jericho, soon after his
passage over Jordan, Joshua vi, 1–3, &c. God commanded the Hebrews to
march round the city once a day for seven days together. The soldiers
marched first, probably out of the reach of the enemies’ arrows, and
after them the priests, the ark, &c. On the seventh day, they marched
seven times round the city; and at the seventh, while the trumpets were
sounding, and all the people shouting, the walls fell down. The rabbins
say, that the first day was our Sunday, and the seventh the Sabbath day.
During the first six days, the people continued in profound silence; but
on the seventh Joshua commanded them to shout. Accordingly they all
exerted their voices, and the walls being overthrown, they entered the
city, every man in the place opposite to him. Jericho being devoted by
God, they set fire to the city, and consecrated all the gold, silver,
and brass. Then Joshua said, “Cursed be the man before the Lord who
shall rebuild Jericho.” About five hundred and thirty years after this,
Hiel, of Bethel, undertook to rebuild it; but he lost his eldest son,
Abiram, at laying the foundations, and his youngest son, Segub, when he
hung up the gates. However, we are not to imagine that there was no city
of Jericho till the time of Hiel. There was a city of palm trees,
probably the same as Jericho, under the Judges, Judges iii, 13. David’s
ambassadors, who had been insulted by the Ammonites, resided at Jericho
till their beards were grown, 2 Sam. x, 4. There was, therefore, a city
of Jericho which stood in the neighbourhood of the original Jericho.
These two places are distinguished by Josephus. After Hiel of Bethel had
rebuilt old Jericho, no one scrupled to dwell there. Our Saviour wrought
miracles at Jericho.
According to Pococke, the mountains to which the absurd name of
Quarantania has been arbitrarily given, are the highest in all Judea;
and he is probably correct; they form part of a chain extending from
Scythopolis into Idumea. The fountain of Elisha he states to be a soft
water, rather warm; he found in it some small shell fish of the
turbinated kind. Close by the ruined aqueduct are the remains of a fine
paved way, with a fallen column, supposed to be a Roman milestone. The
hills nearest to Jerusalem consist, according to Hasselquist, of a very
hard limestone; and different sorts of plants are found on them, in
particular the myrtle, the carob tree, and the turpentine tree; but
farther toward Jericho they are bare and barren, the hard limestone
giving way to a looser kind, sometimes white and sometimes grayish, with
interjacent layers of a reddish micaceous stone, _saxum purum micaceum_.
The vales, though now bare and uncultivated, and full of pebbles,
contain good red mould, which would amply reward the husbandman’s toil.
Nothing can be more savage than the present aspect of these wild and
gloomy solitudes, through which runs the very road where is laid the
scene of that exquisite parable, the good Samaritan, and from that time
to the present, it has been the haunt of the most desperate bandits,
being one of the most dangerous in Palestine. Sometimes the track leads
along the edges of cliffs and precipices, which threaten destruction on
the slightest false step; at other times it winds through craggy passes,
overshadowed by projecting or perpendicular rocks. At one place the road
has been cut through the very apex of a hill, the rocks overhanging it
on either side. Here, in 1820, an English traveller, Sir Frederick
Henniker, was attacked by the Arabs with fire-arms, who stripped him
naked, and left him severely wounded: “It was past mid-day, and burning
hot,” says Sir Frederick; “I bled profusely; and two vultures, whose
business it is to consume corpses, were hovering over me. I should
scarcely have had strength to resist, had they chosen to attack me.”
The modern village of Jericho is described by Mr. Buckingham as a
settlement of about fifty dwellings, all very mean in their appearance,
and fenced in front with thorny bushes, while a barrier of the same
kind, the most effectual that could be raised against mounted Arabs,
encircles the town. A fine brook flows by it, which empties itself into
the Jordan; the nearest point of that river is about three miles
distant. The grounds in the immediate vicinity of the village, being
fertilized by this stream, bear crops of dourra, Indian corn, rice, and
onions. The population is entirely Mohammedan, and is governed by a
sheikh: their habits are those of Bedouins, and robbery and plunder form
their chief and most gainful occupation. The whole of the road from
Jerusalem to the Jordan, is held to be the most dangerous in Palestine;
and indeed, in this portion of it, the very aspect of the scenery is
sufficient, on the one hand, to tempt to robbery and murder, and, on the
other, to occasion a dread of it in those who pass that way. One must be
amid these wild and gloomy solitudes, surrounded by an armed band, and
feel the impatience of the traveller who rushes on to catch a new view
at every pass and turn; one must be alarmed at the very tramp of the
horses’ hoofs rebounding through the caverned rocks, and at the savage
shouts of the footmen, scarcely less loud than the echoing thunder
produced by the discharge of their pieces in the valleys; one must
witness all this upon the spot, before the full force and beauty of the
admirable story of the good Samaritan can be perceived. Here, pillage,
wounds, and death would be accompanied with double terror, from the
frightful aspect of every thing around. Here, the unfeeling act of
passing by a fellow creature in distress, as the priest and Levite are
said to have done, strikes one with horror, as an act almost more than
inhuman. And here, too, the compassion of the good Samaritan is doubly
virtuous, from the purity of the motive which must have led to it, in a
spot where no eyes were fixed on him to draw forth the performance of
any duty, and from the bravery which was necessary to admit of a man’s
exposing himself, by such delay, to the risk of a similar fate to that
from which he was endeavouring to rescue his fellow creature.