Patriarchal Palestine

by A. H. Sayce

It is true that the distance of Jerusalem from Beer-sheba would agree well with the three days' journey of Abraham. But it is difficult to reconcile the description of the scene of Abraham's sacrifice with the future temple-mount. Where Isaac was bound to the altar was a solitary spot, the patriarch and his son were alone there, and it was overgrown with brushwood so thickly that a ram had been caught in it by his horns. The temple-mount, on the contrary, was either within the walls of a city or just outside them, and the city was already a capital famous for its worship of "the most High God." Had the Moriah of Jerusalem really been the site of Abraham's altar it is strange that no allusion is made to the fact by the writers of the Old Testament, or that tradition should have been silent on the matter. We must be content with the knowledge that it was to one of the mountains "in the land of Moriah" that Abraham was led, and that "Moriah" was a "land," not a single mountain-peak. (We should not forget that the Septuagint reads "the highlands," that is, Moreh instead of Moriah, while the Syriac version boldly changes the word into the name of the "Amorites." For arguments on the other side, see p. [79].)

Abraham returned to Beer-sheba, and from thence went to Hebron, where Sarah died. Hebron—or Kirjath-Arba as it was then called—was occupied by a Hittite tribe, in contradistinction to the country round about it, which was in the possession of the Amorites. As at Jerusalem, or at Kadesh on the Orontes, the Hittites had intruded into Amoritish territory and established themselves in the fortress-town. But while the Hittite city was known as Kirjath-Arba, "the city of Arba," the Amoritish district was named Mamre: the union of Kirjath-Arba and Mamre created the Hebron of a later day.

Kirjath-Arba seems to have been built in the valley, close to the pools which still provide water for its modern inhabitants. On the eastern side the slope of the hill is honeycombed with tombs cut in the rock, and, if ancient tradition is to be believed, it was in one of these that Abraham desired to lay the body of his wife. The "double cave" of Machpelah—for so the Septuagint renders the phrase—was in the field of Ephron the Hittite, and from Ephron, accordingly, the Hebrew patriarch purchased the land for 400 shekels of silver, or about £47. The cave, we are told, lay opposite Mamre, which goes to show that the oak under which Abraham once pitched his tent may not have been very far distant from that still pointed out as the oak of Mamre in the grounds of the Russian hospice. The traditional tomb of Machpelah has been venerated alike by Jew, Christian, and Mohammedan. The church built over it in Byzantine days and restored by the Crusaders to Christian worship has been transformed into a mosque, but its sanctity has remained unchanged. It stands in the middle of a court, enclosed by a solid wall of massive stones, the lower courses of which were cut and laid in their places in the age of Herod. The fanatical Moslem is unwilling that any but himself should enter the sacred precincts, but by climbing the cliff behind the town it is possible to look down upon the mosque and its sacred enclosure, and see the whole building spread out like a map below the feet.

More than one English traveller has been permitted to enter the mosque, and we are now well acquainted with the details of its architecture. But the rock-cut tomb in which the bodies of the patriarchs are supposed to have lain has never been examined by the explorer. It is probable, however, that were he to penetrate into it he would find nothing to reward his pains. During the long period that Hebron was in Christian hands the cave was more than once visited by the pilgrim. But we look in vain in the records which have come down to us for an account of the relics it has been supposed to contain. Had the mummified corpses of the patriarchs been preserved in it, the fact would have been known to the travellers of the Crusading age. (See the Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 1895.)

Like the other tombs in its neighbourhood, the cave of Machpelah has doubtless been opened and despoiled at an early epoch. We know that tombs were violated in Egypt long before the days of Abraham, in spite of the penalties with which such acts of sacrilege were visited, and the cupidity of the Canaanite was no less great than that of the Egyptian. The treasures buried with the dead were too potent an attraction, and the robber of the tomb braved for their sake the terrors of both this world and the next.

Abraham now sent his servant to Mesopotamia, to seek there for a wife for his son Isaac from among his kinsfolk at Harran. Rebekah, the sister of Laban, accordingly, was brought to Canaan and wedded to her cousin. Isaac was at the time in the southern desert, encamped at the well of Lahai-roi, near Kadesh. So "Isaac was comforted after his mother's death."

"Then again," we are told, "Abraham took a wife," whose name was Keturah, and by whom he was the forefather of a number of Arabian tribes. They occupied the northern and central parts of the Arabian peninsula, by the side of the Ishmaelites, and colonized the land of Midian. It is the last we hear of the great patriarch. He died soon afterwards "in a good old age," and was buried at Machpelah along with his wife.

Isaac still dwell at Lahai-roi, and there the twins, Esau and Jacob, were born to him. There, too, he still was when a famine fell upon the land, like "the first famine that was in the days of Abraham." The story of Abraham's dealings with Abimelech of Gerar is repeated in the case of Isaac. Again we hear of Phichol, the captain of Abimelech's army; again the wife of the patriarch is described as his sister; and again his herdsmen strive with those of the king of Gerar over the wells they have dug, and the well of Beer-sheba is made to derive its name from the oaths sworn mutually by Isaac and the king. It is hardly conceivable that history could have so closely repeated itself, that the lives of the king and commander-in-chief of Gerar could have extended over so many years, or that the origin of the name of Beer-sheba would have been so quickly forgotten. Rather we must believe that two narratives have been mingled together, and that the earlier visit of Abraham to Gerar has coloured the story of Isaac's sojourn in the territory of Abimelech. We need not refuse to believe that the servants of Isaac dug wells and wrangled over them with the native herdsmen; that Beer-sheba should twice have received its name from a repetition of the same event is a different matter. One of the wells—that of Rehoboth—made by Isaac's servants is probably referred to in the Egyptian Travels of a Mohar, where it is called Rehoburta.

Isaac was not a wanderer like his father. Lahai-roi in the desert, "the valley of Gerar," Beer-sheba and Hebron, were the places round which his life revolved, and they were all close to one another. There is no trace of his presence in the north of Palestine, and when the prophet Amos (vii. 16) makes Isaac synonymous with the northern kingdom of Israel, there can be no geographical reference in his words. Isaac died eventually at Hebron, and was buried in the family tomb of Machpelah.

But long before this happened Jacob had fled from the well-deserved wrath of his brother to his uncle Laban at Harran. On his way he had slept on the rocky ridge of Bethel, and had beheld in vision the angels of God ascending and descending the steps of a staircase that led to heaven. The nature of the ground itself must have suggested the dream. The limestone rock is fissured into steplike terraces, which seem formed of blocks of stone piled one upon the other, and rising upwards like a gigantic staircase towards the sky. On the hill that towers above the ruins of Beth-el, we may still fancy that we see before us the "ladder" of Jacob.