Lecture IX: The Conquest of Palestine
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.
"The Conquest of Palestine" introduces us to one
of the most secular portions of the Sacred
history. The very phrase is to some minds an
offence. It suggests the likeness of other conquests.
It compels us to regard the geography, the battles,
the settlement of Israel, as we should consider the
like circumstances in other countries. Such an of-
fence is, to a certain degree, inevitable. but this
stage of the history, secular as it is, presents also a
religious aspect, on which, according to the plan of
these Lectures, it will be my object to lay the chief
stress, though not to the omission of those general
considerations which here, as in other ecclesiastical
history, are necessary to the understanding of the
purely religious incidents intertwined with them.
The period of the Conquest, properly speaking,
commences before the time of Joshua and
extends far beyond it. It began from the passage
of the brook Zered under Moses: it was not finally
closed till the capture of Jerusalem by David. But,
in a more limited sense, it may be confined to the
period during which the territory, afterwards known
by the name of Palestine, was definitively occupied as
their own by the Israelis. This divides itself into
two stages: the first, including the occupation of the
district east of the Jordan; the second, and most im-
portant, including the occupation of Western Pales-
tine in its three great divisions, the valley of the
Jordan, the southern and central mountains after-
wards known as Judæa and Samaria, and the north-
ern mountains afterwards known as Galilee.
The Israelite conquest of Palestine, although it
stands above all other like events from its intrinsic
grandeur, yet is in itself but one among a succes-
sion of waves which have swept over the country,
and each of which may be used as an illustration of
those that have gone before and after. The Egyp-
tians, the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Ara-
bians, Turks, Crusaders, French, English, have fol-
lowed in their wake.; the Philistines, the Canaanites,
the aboriginal inhabitants, accompanied or preceded
them.
It is of these earlier conquests alone that we need
here speak. The aboriginal inhabitants have
already been briefly described. They be-
longed so entirely to the dim distance, that
their name, "Rephaim," was used in after-times to
designate the huge guardians or the shadowy ghosts
of the world below. But we can just discern their
forms before they vanish, and some remnants of them
lingered till later times. Their lofty stature is often
noticed. It is possible that this impression may be
partly derived from the contrast between them and
the diminutive Hebrews, in like manner as a similar
description, from the like contrast between the north-
ern races of Europe and the small limbs and features
of the Italians, is given, by the Roman historians and
poets, of the gigantic Gauls. On the west of the
Jordan this race appears chiefly under two names:
the "Anakim" in the southern mountains, and the
"Avites" on the maritime plain. The centre of the
race of Anak was, as we have seen, Hebron or Kir-
jath-Arba. The Avites, it would seem, were still com-
paratively secure in their western corner. Their con-
querors, the Philistines, had not yet appeared; at
least not in any overwhelming force. But in all the
rest of Palestine, already in the Patriarchal
age the "ancient solitary reign" of these abo-
riginal tribes had been disturbed by the appearance
here and there of powerful chiefs belonging to the
Phœnician or Canaanite branch of the Semitic race.
The variations in the usage of the words, sometimes
the variations of the text, prevent us from accurately
fixing the mutual relations of the several Canaanite
tribes to each other. Thus much, however, is clear.
The Canaanites, or "Lowlanders," properly so-called,
occupied the sea-coast as far south as Dor, a consider-
able portion of the plain of Esdraelon, and some spots
in the valley of the Jordan. The Amorites, or moun-
taineers, occupied the central and southern hills with
the Hittites and Hivites. Of these intruders, the Amo-
rites seem to have been the most ancient and the most
warlike, perhaps allied to the old gigantic race with
which from time to time they appear in connection.
The Hittites belong to the more peaceful occupants
and their name is that by which Palestine in these
early ages was chiefly known in foreign countries.
The Hivites, like the Phœnicians of the north, in-
clined to a more regular form of political organization.
Of the lesser subdivisions, the Jebusites are attached
to the Amorites, the Perizzites to the Hittites, and the
Girgashites to the Hivites.
If, from the bare enumeration of names and geo-
graphical situations, we pass to the outward appear-
ance, or the moral and social condition of the inhabi-
tants of Syria, when the Israelites broke in upon them,
the task is far more difficult. They seem to rise be-
fore us only to vanish away. Hardly a dying word
escapes. The Sacred historian turns away as if in
silent aversion. Yet the picture, which from the
Israelite point of view is so dark and shadowy, receives
a sudden light from a quarter then unknown
and unthought of. It is startling tobe remind-
ed that "Canaanite" is but another name for "Phœ-
nician;' that the detested and accursed race, as it
appears in the Books of Joshua and Judges, is the
same as that to which from Greece we look back as
the parent of letters, of commerce, of civilization. The
Septuagint translators wavered between preserving the
original Hebrew word, or adopting the name of
"Phœnician," as already recognized by the Greek lan-
guage. Had they chosen in all cases, as they have
in some, the latter of these two alternatives, it is
curious to reflect how essentially our ideas of the an-
cient inhabitants of Palestine might have been modi-
fied. Yet, in fact, the illustrations of the Phœnician
or Canaanite history from Gentle sources coincide
substantially with what we learn from the Jewish an-
nals. In both, we see the same dusky complexion
of the race, distinguished alike from the western
Greeks and the eastern Israelites. In both, we track
them advancing into Palestine from the extreme south.
In both, the coexistence, side by side, of monarchical,
federal, and aristocratic institutions can be traced. In
both, their general equality, if not superiority, in social
arts to the surrounding nations and to the Israelites
themselves, is acknowledged. They are in possession
of fortified towns, treasures of brass, iron, gold, and
foreign merchandise. They, no less than the Egyp-
tians and Israelites, retain the mark of an ancient
sacred civilization in the rite of circumcision. And
in both accounts, their religious rites are described in
the same terms, — human sacrifices, licentious orgies,
the worship of a host of divinities. But the differ-
ence between the two representations, which has, in
fact, almost blinded us to the fact of the identity of
the nation described by the two authorities, is more
instructive than their likeness. The Israelite version,
on the one hand, we must freely grant, takes no heed
of the nobler aspect which this great people present-
ed to the western world; or, at least, not till the
wider prophetic view of Isaiah and Ezekiel compre-
hended within the sympathy of the Jewish Church
the grander elements of Sidonian power and Tyrian
splendor. But, on the one hand, the Gentile ac-
counts are insensible to the cruel, debasing, and name-
less sins which turned the heart of the Israelite sick,
in the worship of Baal, Astarte, and Moloch. It is
true that these are but the same divinities, whom
we regard leniently, if not indulgently, when we find
them in the forms of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, Hercules,
Adonis. But the other phase is not to be forgotten;
and when Milton took these names of Syrian idols
to represent the evil spirits of Pandemonium, and
thus renewed, as it were, to them a lease of exist-
ence which seemed long since to have died out, he
did but place us, though but for a moment, in the
condition of the soldiers of the first conquest of Pales-
tine, to which Beelzebub and Moloch were living
powers of evil, as hateful as though they actually
personified the principles with which he has identified
them. The bright side of Polytheism is so familiar
to us in the mythology of Greece, that it is well
to be recalled for a time to its dark side in Pales-
tine.
From the general consideration of the Conquest, we
turn to the first stage of it in the territory
east of the Jordan, — that mysterious eastern
frontier of the Holy Land, so beautiful, so romantic,
so little known, whether we look at it through the
distant glimpses and hasty surveys of it obtained by
modern travellers, or the scanty notices of its first
conquest in the Book of Numbers.
On the eastern side of the Jordan valley two frag-
ments of the aboriginal race had existed under the
name of "Emim," and "Zamzummim" or "Zuzim."
These old inhabitants had been expelled by the kin-
dred tribes of Moab and Ammon. But they in turn
had, just before the point of the history at which we
have now arrived, been dispossessed by two Canaanite
chiefs of a considerable portion of the territory which
they had themselves acquired.
On this motley ground the Israelites appeared in
the double light of conquerors and deliverers. The
story is briefly told; but its main features are dis-
cernible, and it illustrates in many points the greater
conquest for which it prepared the way.
The attack on the two Canaanite kings was assist-
ed by a strategic visitation which had just befallen the
Transjordanic territory. Immense swarms of hornets,
always common in Palestine, burst upon the country
with unusual force. The chiefs were thus probably
driven out of their fastnesses, and forced into the
plain, where the final conflict took place.
The first onslaught was upon Sihon. He occupied
the whole district between Arnon and
Jabbok, through which the approach to the
Jordan lay. He had wrested it from the predecessor
of Balak, and had established himself, not in the an-
cient capital of Moab — Ar, but in the city, still con-
spicuous to the modern traveller from its wide pros-
pect and its cluster of stone-pines — Heshbon. The
recollection of his victory survived in a savage war-
song, which passed into a kind of proverb in after-
times: —
"Come home to Heshbon;
Let the city of Sihon be built and prepared,
For there is gone out a fire from Heshbon,
A flame from the city of Sihon.
It hath consumed Ar of Moab,
And the lords of the high places of Arnon:
Woe to thee, Moab: thou art undone, thou people of Chemosh!
He hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity
To the King of the Amorites, Sihon."
The decisive battle between Sihon and his new foes
took place at Jahaz, probably on the confines
of the rich pastures of Moab and the desert
whence the Israelites emerged. It was the first en-
gagement in which they were confronted with the
future enemies of their nation. The slingers and
archers of Israel, afterwards so renowned, now first
showed their skill. Sihon fell; the army fled (so ran
the later tradition), and, devoured by thirst, like the
Athenians in the Assinarus, on their flight from Syra-
cuse, was slaughtered in the bed of one of the moun-
tain streams. The memory of this battle was cherished
in triumphant strains, in which, after reciting, in bitter
irony, the song, just quoted, of the Amorites' triumph,
they broke out into an exulting contrast of the past
greatness of the defeated chief and his present fall: –
"We have shot at them: Heshbon is perished:
We have laid them waste: even unto Nophah:
With fire: even unto Medeba.
Subject to Sihon, as vassals, were five Arabian
chiefs, of the great tribe of Midian. Their names
are preserved to us, — Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur,
and Reba. It was hey who, doubtless ter-
rified at the fall of their sovereign, persuaded the
King of Moab to rid himself of the dangerous, though
at first welcome intruders, by the curse of Balaam.
When this failed, and when the more sure and fatal
ruin of the contagion of the licentious rites of Midian
provoked the religious and moral feeling of the better
spirits of the nation to that terrible retribution of
which the later conquest was one long exemplification,
a sacred war was proclaimed. It was headed, not by
the soldier Joshua, but by the priest Phinehas. The
Ark went with the host. The sacred trumpets were
blown. The chiefs of Midian were slain: the great
prophet of the east fell with them. Their stone
enclosures were taken. Their pastoral wealth fell to
their conquerors, as in the case of the second great
defeat of their tribe achieved by Gideon, — ornaments
of gold, and thousands of oxen, sheep, and asses.
And then took place the first wholesale extermination
of a conquered tribe.
The way was now clear to the Jordan. But the
career of conquest opened on its eastern bank
was not easily closed. It is possible that the
thought of pushing forward in this direction was sug-
gested to them by the neighboring and kindred tribe
of Ammon, "too strong" to be subdued, and even
more interested than themselves in the expulsion of
the second Canaanite chief, who had occupied the
territory north of Ammon, apparently at the same
time that Sihon had occupied the territory east of
Moab.
This was Og, king of the district which, under the
name of Bashan, extended from the Jabbok up to the
base of Hermon. There is no direct notice, as in the
case of Sihon, of his having invaded the country, and
this omission, combined with the mention of his gigan-
tic stature, warrants the conjecture that he was one
of the leaders of the aboriginal race, for which Bashan
had always been renowned.
In this joint expedition of Israel and Ammon, the
commanders were two heroes of the tribe of Manas-
seh, Jair and Nobah.
The fastness of Og was the remarkable circular dis-
trict formerly known by the name of Argob,
or the "stony," rendered by the Greeks
"Trachonitis;" or Chebel, "rope," as if from the
marked character of its boundary, rendered by the
corresponding Arabic word "Leja." It is described as
suddenly rising from the fertile plain, an island of
basalt: its rocky desolation, its vast fissures, more re-
sembling the features of some portions of the moon,
than any formation on the earth. At the entrance
of this fastness, as if in the Thermopylæ of the king-
dom, is Esdrei. Here Og met the invaders. The bat-
tle was lost, and Bashan fell. Ashtaroth-Karnaim, the
sanctuary of the Horned Astarte, and perhaps the
same as the capital of Kenath, surrendered. It has
been already the scene of a signal defeat in still
more primitive times, when the aboriginal inhabi-
tants were attacked by the Assyrian invaders from
the East.
The Ammonites carried off their trophy the
"iron bedstead" (perhaps the basaltic coffin,
like that of Esmmunazar recently found at Sidon)
of the gigantic Og. The Israelites occupied the whole
country, remarkable even then for its sixty cities,
strongly walled and fortified. Here, as throughout
the Transjordanic territory, the native names were
altered, and new titles imposed by the Israelites, as
if at once determined on making a permanent settle-
ment. The basaltic character of the country lent
itself to these cities, as naturally as the limestone of
Palestine and sandstone of Edom opened into habita-
tions in holes and caves. The country which thus
fell into their hands was that known by the name of
Gilead, — a name which it never lost, and which out-
lived and superseded the divisions of the three con-
quering tribes. The two Israelite chiefs took, as it
would seem, different portions. Jair occupied the
more pastoral part, and founded thirty nomadic vil-
lages, called after his name, "the villages of Jair."
Nobah took possession of Kenath, the capital, of which
he must have been the captor, and to this he also
gave his name, though the old one, as so often in
Syria, returned.
Of these two chiefs we know but little more. It
is possible that Jair is the same as the stately
head of a vast family mentioned amongst the Judges.
His name lingered down to the time of the Chris-
tian era; when, in the same region as that which
he conquered, we find "a ruler of the synagogue
name Jair," "whose daughter was at the point of
death."
Nobah occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Scrip-
tures. But a certain grandeur must have
attached to his career to cause his selection as the
representative of the Transjordanic tribes in the Sa-
maritan Book of Joshua. There, under the name of
Nabih, he receives from Joshua the solemn investiture
of royalty over the Eastern tribes, and sits in state,
clothed in green, on his throne of judgment. The
portion of the Manassite tribe which he represented,
and which lay beyond the limits of Gilead, must have
furnished the more civilized and settled part of the
Transjordanic population, which dwelt in the walled
cities left by the expelled Canaanites.
Whether the settlement of the Eastern territory of
Palestine was accomplished, as the Book of
Numbers would lead us to infer, within a few
months, or, as the Books of Joshua and Judges would
imply, in a period extending over many years, must
be left uncertain. But the causes which led to it
are natural in themselves, and are expressly pointed
out in the Biblical narrative. The Transjordanic terri-
tory was the forest-land, the pasture-land of Palestine.
The smooth downs received a special name,
"Mishor," expressive of their contrast with
the rough and rocky soil of the west. The
"oaks" of Bashan, which still fill the traveller with
admiration, were to the prophets and psalmists of
Israel the chief glory of the vegetation of their com-
mon country. The vast herds of wild cattle which
then wandered trough the woods, as those of Scot-
land through its ancient forests, were, in like manner,
at once the terror and the pride of the Israelite, — "the
fat bulls of Bashan." The King of Moab was but a
great "sheep-master," and rendered for trbute "an
hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand
"rams with the wool." And still countless herds
and flocks may be seen, droves of cattle moving on
like troops of soldiers, descending at sunset to drink
of the springs, — literally, in the language of the
Prophet, "rams and lambs, goats, and bullocks,
"all the fatlings of Bashan."
In the encampment of Israel, two tribes, Reuben
and Gad, were preëminently nomadic. They had "a
very great multitude of cattle." For this they de-
sired the land, and for this it was given to them,
"that they might build cities for their little ones,
"and folds for their sheep." In no other case is the
relation between the territory and its occupiers so ex-
pressly laid down, and such it continued to be to the
end. From first to last they alone of the tribes
never emerged from the state of their Patriarchal an-
cestors. Gad and Reuben accordingly divided the
Kingdom of Sihon between them, that is, the terri-
tory between the Arnon and the Jabbok, and the
eastern side of the Jordan valley up to the Lake of
Chinnereth, or Gennesareth.
Reuben was the more purely pastoral of the two,
and therefore the more transitory. "Unstable
as water," he vanishes away into a mere Arabian
"tribe; his men are few;" it is all that he can do "to
live and not die." The only events of their subse-
quent history are the multiplication of "their cattle
in the land of Gilead;" their "wars" with the Bedouin
"sons of Hagar;" their spoils of "camels fifty thou-
sand, and of sheep two hundred and fifty thousand,
and of asses two thousand." In the chief struggles
of the nation Reuben never took part. The complaint
against him in the Song of Deborah is the summary
of his whole history, "By the 'streams' of Reuben,"
that is, by the fresh streams which descend from the
eastern hills into the Jordan and the Dead Sea, on
whose banks the Bedouin chiefs then, as now, met to
debate. "By the 'streams' of Reuben great were
the 'debates.' Why dwellest thou among the sheep
" 'troughs' to hear the 'pipings' of the flocks? By
the 'streams' of Reuben great were the searchings
of heart."
Gad has a more distinctive character. In the forest
region south of the Jabbok, "he dwelt as a
lion." Out of his tribe came eleven valiant chiefs
who crossed the fords of the Jordan in flood-time to
join the outlawed David, "whose faces were like the
faces of lion, and were as swift as the 'gazelles,'
upon the mountains." These heroes also were the
Bedouins of their own time. The very name of Gad
expressed the wild aspect which he presented to the
wild tribes of the East. "Gad is 'a troop of plun-
derers;' a troop of plunderers shall 'plunder' him,
but he shall 'plunder' at the last."
The northern outposts of the eastern tribes were
intrusted to that portion of Manasseh which
had originally attacked and expelled the Amorite in-
habitants from Gilead. The same martial spirit which
fitted the western Manasseh to defend the passes of
Esdraelon, fitted "Machir, the first-born of Manasseh,
the father of Gilead," to defend the passes of Haurân
and Anti-Libanus; "because he was a man of war,
therefore he had Gilead and Bashan." The pastoral
character common to Gad and Reuben was shared,
but in a much less degree, by these descendants of
the ruling tribe of Joseph.
It is evident that with a country so congenial, and
a geographical separation so complete, a disruption
might be at once anticipated between these pastoral
tribes and their western brethren, similar to that
which some centuries later, from other causes, dis-
membered the monarchy of David.
One of the most famous texts in the Bible is
founded on the apprehension of this probable calamity,
when Moses warned the Transjordanic tribes that they
were bound to follow their brethren to assist in the
conquest of Western Palestine. "If ye do not do so,
behold, ye have sinned against the Lord: and be sure
your sin will find you out." How it would have found
them out, we can see from the fate of Reuben. The
nearest actual approach to a breach was on the re-
turn of the Eastern tribes after the western
conquest, when their simple pastoral monu-
ment of stones was mistaken by the other
tribes for an altar. It was put up, apparently,
by Bohan, the Reubenite, and called after his name,
between the fords and the mouth of the Jordan.
They were pursued by Phinehas, ready for another
sacred war, like that in which he had destroyed the
Midianites. The whole transaction is an instance of
what has often occurred afterwards in ecclesiastical
history. What was meant innocently, though, perhaps,
without due regard for the consequences, is taken for
a conspiracy, a rebellion, an attempt to overthrow the
faith. There are always theologians keen-sighted to
see heresy in the simplest orthodoxy, and superstition
in the most harmless ceremony. There have been
places, where it has been impossible, without incur-
ring dangerous suspicions of idolatry, to mention the
Cross of Christ. There have been those, from the
first ages of the Church downwards, before whom it
has been impossible, without incurring dangerous sus-
picions of Atheism, even to profess the Christian re-
ligion. The solution of the controversy between the
two pastoral eastern tribes and their western brethren
in the Jewish Church, is one which might have saved
the schism of the Eastern Church from the Western,
and have prevented many bitter controversies and
persecutions in all Churches.
On the one hand, the Reubenites and their com-
panions said: "The Lord God of Gods, the Lord God
of Gods, He knoweth, and Israel shall know. If
it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the
Lord, save us not this day." It is a text invested
with a mournful interest — for it is that on which
Welsh, the minister of the army of the Covenanters,
preached before the battle of Bothwell Bridge.
Whether or not it was sincerely used in that latter
application, on this, its first occasion, it truly ex-
presses the absence of any sinister intention, and it
was accepted as such even by the fierce, un-
compromising Phinehas. "This day we per-
ceive that the Lord is among us, because ye have
not committed this trespass against the Lord: now
ye have delivered the children of Israel out of the
hand of the Lord." He did not push matters to
extremities — he was thankful to have been spared the
great crime of attacking as a moral sin what was only
an error (if so be) of judgment. Alas! how seldom in
the history of religious divisions have thanks been re-
turned for a deliverance from a crime which many re-
ligious leaders have regarded as a duty and a blessing.
The Eastern tribes returned to their distant homes.
Their reward was that, in after-ages, slight as the
connection might be with the rest of the nation, it
was never entirely broken.
One reminiscence of the connection is preserved in
a splendid legend of the Samaritans. It re-
cords how, at the close of his campaigns, when
Joshua was beset not merely with the armies, but with
the enchantments, of the Canaanites and Persians, and
imprisoned within a sevenfold wall of iron, a carrier
pigeon conveyed the tidings of his situation to Nobah,
who sprang from his judgment-seat, and, with a shout
that rang to the ends of the universe, summoned his
Transjordanic troops around him. They came in thou-
sands. One band, clothed in white, rode on red horses.
Another, clothed in red, rode on white horses; a third,
in green, on black horses, a fourth, in black, on spot-
ted horses. Nobah himself rode at their head on a
steed, beautiful as a panther, fleet as the winds. He
approaches, under cover of a hurricane, which drives
the birds to their nests, and the wild beasts to their
lairs, and enters the plain of Esdraelon. The mother
of the Canaanite king, like the mother of Sisera, or
like the watchmen on the walls of Jezreel, goes up
to the tower to worship the sun. She sees the ad-
vancing splendors, and she rushes down to announce
to her son that "the moon and the stars are rising
from the East: woe to us, if they be enemies! bless-
ed are we, if they are friends!" A single combat
takes place between Nobah and the Canaanite king,
each armed with his mighty bow. At last the king
falls — by the spring that gushed forth, "known even
to this day as the Spring of the Arrow." At Joshua's
bidding, the priests within the seven iron walls blow
their trumpets — the walls fall — the sun stands still,
and the winds fly to his aid, and the horses of the
conquerors p[lunge up to their nostrils in the blood
of the enemy.
This wild story points no doubt to the bond of
union which in the great extremities of war has kept
up between the two banks of the Jordan. The battle-
cry of the eastern portion of Manasseh seems to have
extended to the whole tribe — "Whosoever is fearful
and afraid, let him depart from Mount Gilead." But
their usual relations belong to a more touching class
of recollections and anticipations.
Those Eastern hills were to the Western Israelites
the land of exile, — the refuge of exiles. One
place there was in its beautiful uplands con-
secrated by the presence of God in primeval
times. Mahanaim marked the spot where Jacob
had divided his people into "two hosts," and seen the
"Two Hosts" of the angelic vision. To this scene of
the great crisis in their ancestor's life the thoughts of
his descendants returned in after-years, whenever for-
eign conquest or civil discord drove them from their
native hills on the west of Jordan, — when Abner fled
from the Philistines, when David fled from Absalom,
when the Israelite captives lingered there on the way
to Babylon, when David's greater Son found there a
refuge from the busy world which filled Jerusalem and
the Sea of Galilee, when the infant Christian Church
of Palestine escaped to Pella from the armies of Titus.
From these heights, one and all of these exiles must
have caught the last glimpse of their familiar moun-
tains. There is one plaintive strain which sums up
all those feelings, — the 42d Psalm. Its date and au-
thorship are uncertain, but the place is beyond doubt
the Transjordanic hills, which always behold, as they
are always beheld from, Western Palestine. As, before
the eyes of the exile, the "gazelle" of the forest of
Gilead panted after the fresh streams of water which
thence descend to the Jordan, so his soul panted after
God, from whose outward presence he was shut out.
The river, with its winding rapids, "deep calling to
deep," lay between him and his home. All that he
could now do was to remember the past, as he stood
"in the land of Jordan," as he saw the peaks of "Her-
mon," as he found himself in the eastern heights of
Mizar, which reminded him of his banishment and sol-
itude. The Peræan hills are the "Pisgah" of the ear-
lier history. To the later history they occupy the
patgetic relation that has been immortalized in the
name of the long ridge from which the first and the
last view of Granada is obtained; they are "the Last
Sigh" of the Israelite exile. In our own time, per-
haps in all times of their history, they have furnished
to the familiar scenes of Western Palestine a shadowy
background, which imparts to the tamest features of
the landscape a mysterious and romantic charm, a
sense as of another world, to the dweller on this side
of the dividing chasm almost inaccessible, yet always
overhanging the distant view with a presence not to
be put by. And with this thought there must have
been blended, in large periods of the Jewish history,
a feeling which has now long since died away, — that
from these Eastern mountains, and from the desert
beyond them, would be the great Return of the scat-
tered members of the race. "Mine own I will bring
again from Bashan." "How beautiful on the moun-
tains [of the east] are the feet of him that bringeth
good tidings." — "Make straight in the desert [be-
yond the Jordan] a highway for our God."
from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. I : Abraham to Samuel,
Lecture IX: The Conquest Palestine.
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1879, pp. 229-248
Posted May 11, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC · edited
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