CHAPTER V.
The Physical Geography of Palestine.
It is essential that the student of Hebrew history understand the topography of Palestine, wherein the nation developed. Names of rivers, mountains, cities, in this historic land grow familiar from frequent repetition in the Bible, but where each was located, and what was its position relative to other oft-mentioned spots, are queries left unsettled by the average reader. Still more necessary is a general idea of the country as a whole, because the very formation of the land determined in a large measure the destiny of those who dwelt within it.
Palestine is bounded on the north by the base of the Lebanons, on the east by the Arabian desert, on the south by the Wilderness of Judah—an extension of this desert—, and on the west by the Mediterranean Sea below Mount Carmel, while north of this mighty mountain the Phœnicians held the coast, although the Hebrews occupied the province of Galilee, east of the Phœnician shore.
This celebrated land is scarcely more than 150 miles in length, and approximates 100 miles in breadth, yet every known variety of climate may be found within its confines. From regions lying 1300 feet below sea-level, with heat of the tropics, mountains rise to 9000 feet above the sea, with Alpine snows and cold.
Palestine, like Greece or Switzerland, falls naturally into many small divisions, each shut off in a measure from the rest. This explains how it was possible for the Hebrews to occupy a considerable portion of the land while the Canaanites, earlier inhabitants of the country, remained undisturbed in other localities. It also explains the fact that for many years some of the Hebrews dwelt in tents and clung to their nomadic customs while no great distance away others of their kinsmen cultivated the vine and tilled the soil.
While the shore of the Mediterranean was broken by several harbors along the Phœnician coast, south of Mount Carmel the shore reaches in a nearly straight line to Egypt. No havens invite ships to safety; no islands dot the rocky shore. To the Hebrew the sea was a frontier rather than a means for outside communication. So inhospitable was this coast that invasions of Palestine were made by land rather than sea. A rocky line of cliffs varying from thirty to one hundred feet makes landing impossible save at two or three artificially constructed modern ports.
Six distinct land features are to be found in Palestine and deeply affected the people who dwelt there in antiquity. First of these is the Coast Plain, varying in width from two hundred yards to thirty miles. The northern portion of it was known as the Plain of Sharon; the southern portion, as the Plain of Philistia. The word Sharon signifies "forest," and in an early day a dense wood of oaks covered the region and gave it this name. Only in the north has the forest been perpetuated to our day. The plain was formerly, and is still, productive. It contains gardens, orchards, and grain fields. Lacking the inspiring beauty of the high tablelands, it possesses a quiet charm of its own. Farther south, the Plain of Philistia stretches off in the direction of Egypt.
This Coast Plain, falling for the most part into these two smaller plains, has been a continuation of the great highway between Egypt and Syria, and a famous war-path. For Egypt particularly, it was a simple matter to dispatch troops along the shore, to strike terror to less inaccessible inland districts. Today it lies in peaceful cultivation or in woodlands of low undergrowth.
"The whole Maritime Plain possesses a quiet but rich beauty. If the contours are gentle the colors are strong and varied. Along almost the whole seaboard runs a strip of links and downs, sometimes of pure drifting sand, sometimes of grass and sand together. Outside this border of broken gold there is the blue sea, with its fringe of foam. Landward the soil is a chocolate brown, with breaks and gullies, now bare to their dirty white shingle and stagnant puddles, and now full of rich green reeds and rushes that tell of ample water beneath. Over corn and moorland a million flowers are scattered—poppies, pimpernels, anemones, the convolvulus and the mallow, the narcissus and blue iris—roses of Sharon and lilies of the valley. Lizards haunt all the sunny banks. The shimmering air is filled with bees and butterflies, and with the twittering of small birds, hushed now and then as the shadow of a great hawk blots the haze. The soft night is sprinkled thick with glittering fireflies."[1]
Passing the sea and the Coast Plain, the Central Range rises high and extends throughout the entire length of Palestine, with some variations. In this great tableland lay the famous kingdom of the Hebrews—Judaea and Samaria. Judaea lay farther to the south and was separated from the Coast Plain by the Shephelah—a series of low foot-hills. The Hebrews built their western cities on these low hills rather than along the shore. In fact the frequent attacks of the Philistines left the Coast Plain only now and then in the hands of the Hebrews.
The word Shephelah has been thought to signify lowlands, and may have been applied in contrast to the highlands farther east. Ranging from five to fifteen miles in width, this elevated strip was the scene of constant warfare between the Hebrews and Philistines. Numerous valleys led across it, Ajalon being perhaps most famous.
"The prevailing scenery of the region is of short, steep hillsides and narrow glens, with a very few great trees, and thickly covered by brushwood and oak-scrub—crags and scalps of limestone breaking through, and a rough grey torrent-bed at the bottom of each glen.... Caves, of course, abound—near the villages, gaping black dens for men and cattle, but up the unfrequented glens they are hidden by hanging bush, behind which you disturb only the wild pigeon. Bees murmur everywhere, larks are singing; and although in the maze of hills you may wander for hours without meeting a man, or seeing a house, you are seldom out of sound of the human voice, shepherds and ploughmen calling to their cattle and to each other across the glens. Higher up you rise to moorlands, with rich grass if there is a spring, but otherwise, heath, thorns, and rough herbs that scent the wind. Bees abound here, too, and dragon-flies, kites and crows; sometimes an eagle floats over the cliffs of Judaea. The sun beats strong, but you see and feel the sea; the high mountains are behind, at night they breathe upon these ridges gentle breezes, and the dews are very heavy.
"Altogether it is a rough, happy land, with its glens and moors, its mingled brushwood and barley-fields; frequently under cultivation, but for the most part broken and thirsty, with few wells and many hiding places; just the home for strong border-men, like Samson, and just the theatre for that guerilla warfare, varied occasionally by pitched battles, which Israel and Philistia, the Maccabees and the Syrians, waged with each other."[2]
At last the foot-hills merge into lofty mountains and series of plateaus, or table-lands, surrounded by high peaks, appear. Here was Judaea, the true home of the Hebrews. Farther north, and rising directly from the Coast Plain, without the intervening foot-hills, was Samaria. The physical outlines of this long, narrow range determined in advance that it would not permanently be politically united.
Judaea was quite secure in her mountain heights. On the east her mountains descend abruptly to the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea; on the south lies the desert; on the east the low foot-hills, and on the north the table-land ends in ten miles of wild, waste land. "A desolate, fatiguing extent of rocky platforms and ridges, or moorland strewn with boulders, and fields of shallow soil thickly mixed with stone, they are a true border—more fit for the building of barriers than for the cultivation of food."
Some parts of this stony plateau were fit for cultivation, but for the most part, Judaea was a pastoral land—a country of shepherds and herdsmen. Flocks of sheep fed on the moorlands in ancient times, as they do today. Water has always been scanty and is preserved in wells and cisterns for the cattle during months of drouth.
Samaria possesses softer outlines and is a land beautified by nature. As Judaea was isolated and secure in her natural boundaries, so was Samaria open to approach. The "openness" of the land is constantly dwelt upon by those who picture its location. It was difficult to resist invasion and Samaria was attacked much more often than her sister to the south. Samaria was a fruitful land, yielding to cultivation; she lay open to influences on every hand, and was the first to receive fresh impulses and ideas. "Today, amid the peaceful beauty of the scene—the secluded vale covered with corn fields, through which the winding streams flash and glisten into the hazy distance, and the gentle hill rises without a scarp to the olives waving on its summit—it is possible to appreciate Isaiah's name for Samaria, the crown of pride of Ephraim, the flower of his glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley."[3]
East of both countries and the Central Range which contained them, flows the Jordan. Geological ages ago it is supposed that a great sea occupied the valley of the Jordan and the regions on either side. Beneath its deep waters, layers of limestone accumulated. In course of time, mighty convulsions within the earth hurled these layers of rock in twain and threw them up on both sides, until the present mountain ranges were formed. At the same time a series of rocks were cast up diagonally across this region to the south, thus enclosing a portion of the salt waters within the basin so formed. Ages of rain and of glaciers followed and when these abated, the new surface was left to develop its system of drainage. The situation at present is almost identical with that in early Bible times. In the northern part of Palestine, at the base of the Lebanons, a series of streams, mountain-born, take a southernly direction and empty into a marshy pool known as Lake Huleh; from the southern part of this lake the river Jordan flows on to the Lake of Galilee, whence the stream once again issues forth, this time down a steep incline, giving it rapid impetus of motion, from whence comes its name: Jordan—the Down-comer. At last its valley widens and by several estuaries the river finally empties into the Dead Sea.
The beauty attending many rivers of the earth is lacking in the Jordan. Cutting down its channels in a rift left already deep by eruption, this valley lies deep below the sea-level and is exceedingly hot. Malaria lurks in the jungles that border the river-sides, and at no time has the region been thickly populated. The river is not suited to irrigation, but certain portions of the valley are watered by its tributaries sufficiently to make gardens possible.
The Dead Sea occupies the lowest portion of the valley. Soundings have shown it to be very deep. Not only are its waters heavily charged with salt, but other chemicals make yet more uninhabitable its basin. No fish or other form of life lives in its waters, which possess remarkable clearness and are intensely blue. Having no outlets save evaporation, and lying where heat is great, the sea is like a mighty caldron, above which a column of steam rises constantly. 6,000,000 tons of water are estimated to rise from it daily in the form of vapor.
From its very nature, the Jordan was not a river to which a nation might become devoted—as, for example, the Egyptians were to their Nile. Nevertheless, no other stream has become so embodied into literature, or so endeared to a great religious world. The Hebrews regarded the Jordan as a boundary—a frontier. Significant is the fact that when it is mentioned in the Bible it is generally accompanied by some word meaning over or across. Over Jordan, beyond the stream which because of its fever-breeding, lion-populated jungles and its strange sea, signified death, destruction, calamity, rather than life. Beyond the Jordan, then, lay the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey.
East of the Jordan valley, the Eastern Range rises similarly to the Central Range on the west side. The plateaus of Moab and Gilead seem higher than the others, for whereas the Central Range rises gradually from a series of foothills to its exalted height, the Eastern Range rises abruptly from the extremely low river-valley.
The Eastern Range is blessed with a temperate climate. Heat is always moderated by breezes which bring health and prosperity with them. The soil is fertile, sufficiently watered and very productive. It is a region where agriculture and grazing are followed, and natural conditions are favorable to both occupations. In spite of these advantages, the region lies exposed to the south and east. Desert tribes make life and fortune uncertain for the inhabitants. Even today, when conditions have been somewhat improved, those who grow crops in this region must pay tribute to wandering tribes who demand it, or lose their all. How much more precarious must life have been in those days when even among the most enlightened nations the hand of the plunderer was scarcely restrained at all. The Hebrew tribes which settled this plateau were in the beginning as strong as those that located farther east, but they could not maintain their individuality against the conditions that beset them. Sooner or later, they drifted with the restless hordes and lost their identity.
One more natural division remains to be considered—the Plain of Esdraelon. Triangular in shape, one point lies north of Mt. Carmel, while the two long lines extend south-easterly, and meet the third near the river Jordan. It was this famous plain that gave access to the Central Range from the west—from the Coast Plain, approach to Samaria was not difficult by this means.
The region is rather made up of a series of plains, broken by scattered mountains, yet permitting free passage from the sea to the river Jordan. An ancient route lay along this way. It has been called the key to Palestine, and over it came the enemies of Israel. Especially interesting is the following description, with the added explanation of a bit of ancient Hebrew poetry characterizing the region:
"As you stand upon that last headland of Gilboa, 200 feet above the plain, ... the great triangle is spread before you. Along the north of it the steep brown wall of the Galilean hills, about 1000 feet high, runs almost due west, till it breaks out and down to the feet of Carmel, in the forest slopes just high enough to hide the Plain of Acre and sea. But over and past these slopes Carmel's steady ridge, deepening in blue the while, carries the eye out to its dark promontory above the Mediterranean. From this end of Carmel the lower Samarian hills, green with bush and dotted by white villages, run southeast to the main Samarian range, and on their edge, due south, seven miles across the bay, Jenin stands out with its minarets and palms.... But the rest of the plain is before you—a great expanse of loam, red and black, which in a more peaceful land would be one sea of waving wheat with island villages; but here is what its modern name implies, a free, wild prairie, upon which but one or two hamlets have ventured forth from the cover of the hills and a timid and tardy cultivation is only now seeking to overtake the waste of coarse grass and the thistly herbs that camels love. There is no water visible. The Kishon itself flows in a muddy trench, unseen five yards away. But here and there a clump of trees shows where a deep well is worked to keep a little orchard green through summer.... The roads have no limit to their breadth, but sprawl, as if at most seasons one caravan could not follow for mud on the path of another. But these details sink in a great sense of space, and of a level made almost absolute by the rise of hills on every side of it. It is a vast inland basin, and from it there breaks just at your feet, between Jezreel and Shunem, the valley Jordanwards,—breaks as visibly as river from lake, with a slope and almost the look of a current upon it.... From Jezreel you can appreciate everything in the literature and in the history of Esdraelon.
"To begin with, you can enjoy that happiest sketch of a landscape and its history that was ever drawn in half a dozen lines, Issachar—to which the most of Esdraelon fell—
"Issachar is a large-limbed ass,
Stretching himself between the sheepfolds:
For he saw a resting-place that it was good,
And the land that it was pleasant."
"Such exactly is Esdraelon—a land relaxed and sprawling up among the hills to north, south and east, as you will see a loosened ass roll and stretch his limbs any day in the sunshine of a Syrian village yard. To the highlander looking down upon it, Esdraelon is room to stretch in and lie happy. Yet the figure of the ass goes further—the room must be paid for—
'So he bowed his shoulder to bear
And became a servant under task-work.'
"The inheritors of this plain never enjoyed the highland independent of Manasseh or Naphtali. Open to east and west, Esdraelon was at distant intervals the war-path or battle-field of great empires.... Even when there has been no invasion to fear, Esdraelon has still suffered: when she has not been the camp of the foreigner she has served as the estate of her neighbors."[4]
Climate and Productivity of Palestine.
As we might expect in a land possessing such a varied topography, nearly every known climate is represented in Palestine. Along the seashore the salt breezes of ocean blow; the climate of the Coast Plain is mild and pleasant, and favorable to the growth of gardens and orchards; within the Central Range itself several varieties of climate prevail, and in the low valley of the Jordan and in the region of the Dead Sea, the heat of the tropics obtains. The plateaus of the Eastern Range are visited by health-giving breezes, which moderate the atmosphere. Farther east and south extends the desert, with its parched sands and sultry air, yet in the very sight of these desert wastes rise snowy mountain peaks.
"There are palms in Jericho and pine forests in Lebanon. In the Ghor, in summer, you are under a temperature of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and yet you see glistening the snow-fields of Hermon. All the intermediate steps between these extremes the eye can see at one sweep from Carmel—the sands and palms of the coast; the wheat-fields of Esdraelon, the oaks and sycamores of Galilee; the pines, the peaks, the snows of Anti-Lebanon. How closely these differences lie to each other! Take a section of the country across Judaea. With its palms and shadoofs the Philistine Plain might be a part of the Egyptian Delta; but on the hills of the Shephelah which overlook it, you are in the scenery of Southern Europe; the Judaean moors which overlook them are like the barer uplands of Central Germany; the shepherds wear sheep-skin cloaks and live under stone roofs—sometimes the snow lies deep; a few miles farther east and you are down on the desert among the Bedouin, with their tents of hair and their cotton clothing; a few miles farther still, and you drop to torrid heat in the Jordan Valley; a few miles beyond that and you rise to the plateau of the Belka, where the Arabs say 'the cold is always at home.' Yet from Philistia to the Belka is scarcely seventy miles."[5]
The year is divided into a wet and a dry season. The rains begin the last of October and are over by the last of March. These are called the "early" rains in the Old Testament. Showers which fall in the late spring are called the "latter" rains. From May until October the summer is dry. The vegetation is sustained in many places by the heavy dews. Water is not abundant and the rain-water which falls during the winter months is stored in wells and cisterns for use in the dry months.
Flowers of many varieties are found through the land and range from those common to tropical and desert lands to those native to high altitudes. As in Egypt the fertile land borders upon the shifting desert sands, so in Palestine the strong contrasts between the productive and waste lands is the more marked because of their proximity.
Palestine is not a land of heavy forests. To be sure, ages upon ages of habitation have divested many slopes of native timber, but evidences go to show that at no time since records began has the country been heavily forested. Today the woodlands are frequently mere undergrowth. Orchards are plentiful. The olive is most widely cultivated; apricots, figs, oranges, almond and walnut trees are grown, and the vine is grown extensively. Grain fields wave on the plains, in the valleys and lowlands, wheat, barley and millet being most abundant. Vegetables of many varieties are commonly raised. Beans, tomatoes, onions and melons are produced in large quantities. Grass is grown only on small areas, pasturage being for the most part found on the public land. During the summer months pasturage exists only near the large fountains or the carefully built cisterns. These are jealously guarded by their owners. In earlier times and now, to some extent, wells and pools are provided to preserve water falling during the winter, and these are for the use of all who come to them with their flocks and herds.
We find no such condition here as in Egypt, where crops grow abundantly if the seeds be but once dropped into the ground. On the contrary, while grains, fruits and garden produce are generally grown, care and constant industry are required to bring forth good yields. Certain portions of the country are adapted to the art of husbandry, while others have always been better suited to cattle and sheep raising. So much of the tablelands is rocky and stony and unsuited for cultivation that no arable spots are allowed to go untended.
[1] George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 149.
[2] George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 208.
[3] George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 349.
[4] George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 381.
[5] George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 56.