00.2-Introduction - Section 1

Introduction - Section 1 SKETCH OF PALESTINE The history of no other country on earth affords so great an amount of interest and instruction as that of Palestine; and with no other are there connected so many important events as with that of Jerusalem. In Scripture Palestine is usually called Canaan. It derived its name from Canaan, the grandson of Noah, whose posterity settled the country after the flood. The inhabitants of the land gradually forsook the worship of Jehovah, and became sinners of the worst kind. They offered human victims on the altars of their idol gods, causing “their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Moloch.” God therefore promised their land to the Israelites, and to them he gave it after forbearing with the Canaanites till “the cup of their iniquities was full.”

Palestine was a country admirably situated.. It lay on the east of the Mediterranean Sea, formerly the great highway of nations, and on whose shores arts, sciences, and wealth were congregated. On the south, below the Mediterranean, was the fertile vale of Egypt. On the east lay the fertile plain between the Euphrates and Tigris; and still farther Media, Persia, India, and China. On the north was the vast empire of Syria, and the opulent territory of Asia Minor. No country could be better situated to become wealthy by commerce. In the days of David and Solomon the ships of the Mediterranean, and the rich caravans from India, poured their treasures into Palestine, until the country became surfeited with riches. The temple of Solomon contained more treasures than any other edifice the world ever saw; and the country generally abounded in wealth. As its geographical position was admirable, so its internal aspect was delightful. It was beautifully diversified with hills and plains— hills now barren and gloomy, but once cultivated to their summits, and smiling in the variety of their produce. Plains over which the Bedouin Arab now roves to collect a scanty herbage for his cattle, once yielded an abundance, of which the inhabitants of a more northern clime can scarcely form an idea. The description of Moses was both beautiful and accurate: “The Lord bringeth thee into a good land—a land of brooks, of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive and honey.” Rich in its soil, smiling in the sunshine of an almost perpetual summer, and abounding in scenery of the grandest as well as the most picturesque and beautiful kind, this happy country was indeed a land which the Lord had blessed. But Mohammedan sloth and despotism, as the instruments employed to execute the curse of Heaven, have converted a great part of it into a waste of rock and desert. There are, however, still remaining spots of verdure sufficient to attest the accounts formerly given of it; and when properly cultivated its most rocky, and, to appearance, insuperably sterile parts are made to yield abundantly. Dr. Clarke gives us the following account of what he saw on the road from Naploitse to Jerusalem: “The road was rocky, mountainous, and full of loose stones, yet the cultivation was everywhere marvellous: it afforded one of the most striking pictures of human industry which it is possible to behold. The limestone rocks and stony valleys of Judea were entirely covered with plantations of figs, vines, and olive-trees: not a single spot seemed to be neglected. The hills, from their bases to their uppermost summits, were entirely covered with gardens; all of these were free from weeds, and in the highest state of agricultural perfection. Even the sides of the most barren mountains had been rendered fertile by being divided into terraces like steps, rising one above another, whereon soil had been accumulated with astonishing labor. Among the standing crops we noticed millet, cotton, linseed, (or flax,) and tobacco, and occasionally small fields of barley. A sight of this territory can alone convey any adequate idea of its surprising produce. It is truly the Eden of the east, rejoicing in the abundance of its wealth. Under a wise and beneficent government the produce of the Holy Land would exceed all calculation. Its perennial harvests, the salubrity of its air, its limpid springs, its rivers, lakes, and matchless plains, its hills and dales, all these, added to the serenity of its climate, prove this land to be indeed ‘a field which the Lord hath blessed. God hath given it of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine.’”

It should be remembered that eastern impressions of fertility differ from ours. To an oriental, plantations of figs, vines, and olives, with which the limestone rocks of Judea were once covered, would suggest the same associations of plenty and opulence that are called up to the mind of an American by rich tracts of arable land. The land of Canaan is spoken of as flowing with milk and honey, and it still answers to this description. For it contains extensive pasture lands of the richest quality; and the rocky country is covered with aromatic plants and flowers, yielding to the wild bees, which hive in the hollows of the rocks, abundance of honey. Mr. Buckingham says he scarcely ever sat down to a meal, or saw a table spread in Palestine, but that honey formed a part of the repast. The lofty palm-tree also flourished here. “The extensive importance of this tree,” says Dr. E. D. Clarke, “is one of the most curious subjects to which the traveler can turn his attention. A considerable part of the inhabitants of Egypt, of Arabia, and Persia subsist almost entirely upon its fruit. They boast of its medicinal virtues. Their camels feed upon the date stone. From the leaves they make couches, baskets, bags, mats, and brushes: from the branches, cages for their poultry and fences for their gardens; from fibers of the boughs, thread, ropes, rigging from the sap is prepared a spirituous liquor, and the body of the tree furnishes fuel.”

“The diligent natives,” says Gibbon, “celebrated either in prose or verse the three hundred and sixty uses to which the trunk, the branches, the leaves, the juice, and the fruit were skillfully applied.” Such was ancient Palestine, its situation, its climate, its soil, and productions. Its limits were not extensive, but such were its advantages of soil, and climate, and for commerce, that in the happiest periods of the Jewish nation it sustained an immense population.

Jerusalem, its capital, was situated a little south of the center of Palestine, about half way between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. It stood in the midst of a rocky region, surrounded with hills, and was itself built upon hills. The territory and places adjacent were well watered, having the fountains of Gihon and Siloam and the brook Kedron at the foot of its walls.

Besides these there were in its later days the waters of Ethan, which Pilate had conveyed through aqueducts into the city. It was celebrated for its extent, being, according to Strabo, sixty furlongs in length; for the strength of its walls and bulwarks; but above all, for its magnificent temple, and for the divine manifestations which it so richly enjoyed. Here flourished those singular and excellent men, the Hebrew prophets. Here they unveiled the future, predicting the fate of kingdoms, the rise and fall of empires, and the coming of the great Messiah.

Here also almost the entire nation congregated at their great religious celebrations; and finally, here the Savior of the world performed some of his most glorious miracles, uttered some of his most striking predictions, manifested some of his most tender sympathies, and finally accomplished the grand work of human redemption. No city was ever so highly exalted as Jerusalem; no city ever abused its privileges more wickedly, and none ever witnessed more fearful judgments or experienced more dreadful sufferings.