The new district is one of considerable interest from a Biblical point of view. It is called the ’Arkûb, or “ridge,” and consists of a long spur, about 2000 feet above the sea, with numerous smaller ridges branching off, and two important valleys to the north and south—the first the Valley of Sorek, the second that of Elah. Our camp was a place of considerable interest, if I am correct in identifying it with the Rock Etam, in which Samson took refuge from the Philistines. West of us were Sorek, Zoreah, Eshtaol, and Bethshemesh; and east of us Bether, the scene of the great destruction of the partisans of Barcocheba, and Beth Zacharias, the theatre of the battle in which Eleazar, the Hasmonean, perished under the elephant.
Another site of yet greater interest was also perhaps recovered during this campaign, namely, the Emmaus of St Luke’s Gospel, sixty stadia from Jerusalem. This village has been variously identified with Kolonia, or with Kuriet el ’Anab; with ’Amwâs (in the fourth century) and with el Kubeibeh (since the 15th); but its name has never been found as yet at any site sixty stadia from Jerusalem—a distance which Josephus mentions, as well as the Evangelist, as that of the village Emmaus. (Luke xxiv. 13; B. J. vii. 6, 6.)
South-west of Beit ’Atâb will be found marked on the Survey the ruin of Khamasa, at a distance of about sixty stadia from the Holy City. The site is close to the village of Wâd Fukîn (Pekiin of the Talmud), with rock-cut tombs and other indications of antiquity.
The name Khamasa seems a natural corruption of Khammath, “a hot bath,” whence Emmaus is derived. The valley, with its abundant springs and gardens shady with dark orange foliage, seems an appropriate scene for the meeting of the unrecognised Master with His sad disciples; and one of the ancient Roman highways from Jerusalem passes close to the ruin. Here also a delightful retreat would have been found for the colony of Roman pensioners settled at Emmaus.
The reading of the Sinaitic MS. (160 stadia), mentioned in the first chapter of this volume, is abandoned, it may be noted, by most scholars as not agreeing with the words of Josephus, and as making the distance from Jerusalem to Emmaus too great to have been twice traversed by the disciples within the time specified in the Gospel.
Three places called Etam are noticed in the Old Testament. One a town of the south country (1 Chron. iv. 32), probably the place which we discovered in 1874, called ’Aitûn; the second, a city fortified by Rehoboam (2 Chron. xi. 6), near Bethlehem and Tekoa, and which has probably left its name in the spring called ’Ain ’Atân, near the so-called Solomon’s Pools. The third Etam does not seem to have been a town at all, but “a strong rock,” as Josephus calls it, in the territory of Judah, and is to be sought in that part of the country to which most of Samson’s exploits are confined. (Judg. xv. 8.)
About two miles west of Beit ’Atâb, a valley, running north and south, separates the high rugged mountains of the ’Arkûb from the low rolling hills of the Shephelah district, beyond which is the Philistine plain. This valley joins the great gorge which bounded Judah on the north, and forms a broad vale, half a mile across, filled with luxuriant corn, with a pebbly torrent-bed in the middle, and low white hills on either side. The vale is called Wâdy Sŭrâr (a Hebrew word, meaning “pebbles”), and is the ancient Valley of Sorek. The ruins of Bethshemesh lie on a knoll surrounded by olive-groves, near the junction of the two valleys above mentioned. On the south is Timnah, where Samson slew the lion; and on the north are the little mud villages, Sŭr’a and Eshû’a—the ancient Zoreah and Eshtaol—the hero’s home. The scene, looking up the great corn valley to the high and rugged hills above, is extremely picturesque, and is that which was spread before the eyes of the five lords of the Philistines, as they followed the lowing oxen, which bore the ark on the “straight way” from Ekron to Bethshemesh.
Here also, at the edge of the mountains, is the village of Deir Abân, supposed, by the early Christians, to mark the site of Ebenezer, the boundary of Samuel’s pursuit of the Philistines, and of the land held by the Jews at that period. On the north brink of the Vale of Sorek (in which also Delilah lived) there is a conspicuous white chapel on the hill, dedicated to Neby Samit, and close to the village of Zoreah. Confused traditions—which are, however, probably of Christian origin—connect this prophet with Samson, whose name is recognisable in other parts of this district Under the forms Shemshûn, Sanasîn, and ’Aly (as at Gaza), and also a little farther south as Shemsîn and Samat. It appears probable that the tomb now shown at Zoreah, is that known, to the Jews, in the fourteenth century as Samson’s; and the tradition, thus traced to other than monkish origin, is very possibly as genuine as that which fixes the tombs of Joseph and Phinehas near Shechem. Here, then, we are in Samson’s country, and close to Zoreah we should naturally look for the Rock Etam.
The substitution of B for M is so common (as in Tibneh for Timnah), that the name “ ’Atâb” may very properly represent the Hebrew Etam (or “eagle’s nest”); and there are other indications of the identity of the site. It is pre-eminently a “rock”—a knoll of hard limestone, without a handful of arable soil, standing, above deep ravines, by three small springs. The place is also one which has long been a hiding-place, and the requirements of the Bible story are met in a remarkable way; for the word rendered “top of the Rock Etam” is in reality “cleft” or “chasm;” and such a chasm exists here—a long, narrow cavern, such as Samson might well have “gone down” into, and which bears the suggestive name Hasûta, meaning “refuge” in Hebrew, but having in modern Arabic no signification at all.
This remarkable “cave of refuge” is two hundred and fifty feet long, eighteen feet wide, and five to eight feet high; its south-west end is under the centre of the modern village; its north-east extremity, where is a rock shaft, ten feet deep, leading down from the surface of the hill, is within sixty yards of the principal spring.