Shechem, or Nablus, is one of the oldest towns in history. It was founded long before Jerusalem was built and even before Jacob’s time. It is within about six miles of the city of Samaria, where Ahab had his ivory palace and where Herod the Great owned a royal mansion. Here, so it is said, he gave that birthday party at which his stepdaughter Salome danced. You remember the story. Her dancing, which I doubt not was that of the nautch girl, so delighted King Herod that he told her she should have whatever she asked, even to the half of his kingdom. She thereupon, as her mother insisted, demanded the head of John the Baptist, who was lying in prison near by, and this bloody gift was brought in on a great plate or charger.
There is a Spanish legend that Salome, as divine punishment for causing the murder of John the Baptist, was herself beheaded some years later. According to the story, she married a Roman general and went to live in Spain. While skating on a river there she fell in, and her body is said to have struck the edge of the ice with such force as to sever her neck, and her head went skidding over the frozen surface.
The old town of Samaria has long since fallen to ruin. Its site is a mound with some broken pillars and other débris lying near it and an olive orchard not far away in which more of the columns are still to be seen.
As for Nablus, it thrives, and is one of the liveliest towns in the Holy Land. It is the chief commercial centre between Damascus and Jerusalem, and its population of thirty thousand is almost entirely Mohammedan. There are some Jewish merchants, but neither Jews nor Christians are much welcomed. I have been told to watch out as I go through its narrow, filthy streets and to take care not to provoke any one. Several times the boys have thrown stones at our party, and men spit as we pass them. People yell out “Nazarenes” at us, and my guide refuses to let me photograph them, saying picture-taking would surely get us into trouble. The city is so fanatical that even the Christian women go about with veils over their faces. The English nurse who is working here in the Charity Hospital is veiled like a Mohammedan when she goes out on the street. Otherwise she would cause much comment, and her reputation and work would be ruined.
CHAPTER XX
FARMING IN THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY
I give you to-day some bits of Palestine out of doors. Within the past few weeks, keeping away from the cities and towns, I have watched the shepherds and farmers. I have seen the real Palestine, with the same sky, the same rocks and hills, and the same carpet of wild flowers as in the days of our Lord. I have talked with the farmers in the fields, have ridden side by side with the modern Balaam as he climbed the hills on his ass, and have even put my hand to ploughs such as were used in the times of the Scriptures, and with a goad have pricked on the bullocks and donkeys as they turned up the sod.
The Palestine of the Bible was a land of the farmer. The Children of Israel and their leaders were brought up or worked on the farm. Abraham had numerous sheep and so had Isaac and Jacob. Saul was the son of old Farmer Kish, and he was hunting his father’s asses when he was met by Samuel, the prophet, who gave him a kingdom. David was watching the sheep when Farmer Jesse, his father, sent him to the battle, where with his sling he killed the mighty Goliath. Lot was one of the richest farmers the Jordan Valley has known, and as for Job, who lived in old Uz, he was the cattle king of his time, owning seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses. It was in one farm village, Bethlehem, that our Saviour was born, and in another farming settlement, Nazareth, that He grew up to manhood. A great part of His life was spent in going about among the shepherds and farmers, and in His preaching most of the examples and figures in His parables were drawn from things of the soil.
The most common sight out of doors in the Holy Land is the sheep. They are everywhere. You find them on the rich plains where the Philistines lived; they feed among the rocks on the slopes of the Judean mountains, and spot the wilderness all the way down to Jericho; they graze on every part of Samaria and Galilee and almost everywhere on the plain of Esdraelon. They are always watched over by shepherds who often drive them to new feeding grounds. The greater part of this country is mountainous. Limestone rocks cover the soil, which is so thin that if you could pare it off for a depth of eight inches there would be nothing but stone. It is different in the plains and the valleys, but the hills are terraces of rock covered with boulders and sprinkled here and there with patches of earth. Yet the least bit of soil will grow luxuriant grass, and the sheep seem to grow fat on the stones.