[Page 161.]—Balsam shrubs.] Pliny N. H. xii. 25. ii. 672. Hard. “Omnibus odoribus præfertur balsamum, uni terrarum Judæa concessum, quondam in duobus tantum hortis utroque regio, altero jugerum xx non amplius, altero pauciorum. Opes Judæis ex vectigalibus opobalsami crevere, quod in his tantum regionibus gignitur. Est namque vallis quæ continuis montibus velut muro quodam ad instar castrorum clauditur. Spatium loci ducenta jugera nomine Hierichus dicitur. In ea sylva est et ubertate et amœnitate insignis; palmeto et opobalsamo distinguitur. Arbores opobalsami formam similem piceis arboribus habent, nisi quod sunt humiles magis et in vinearum morem excoluntur. Hæ certo anni tempore balsamum sudant” Justin, xxxvi. 4. The balsam tree appears to be a native of Arabia Felix, (see Bruce’s Travels, v. 19-24.) and, according to Josephus, the queen of Sheba brought it into Judæa, Λέγουσι δ’ ὅτι καὶ τὴν τοῦ ὀποβαλσάμου ῥιζαν, ἥν ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἡμῶν ἡ χώρα φέρει, δόυσης ταῦτης τῆς γυναικὸς ἔχομεν. Ant. viii. 6. Various ancient authors describe the shrub. See Dr. T. M. Harris’s Nat. Hist, of the Bible, published at Boston, N. A. Beneath the desolating sway to which Palestine is subject, the balsam has disappeared from the plain of Jericho. Pococke, 32. Volney, Voy. en Syrie, ii. 187. Arabia now supplies what is imported under the name of Balsam of Mecca. Hasselquist, 293.
What is now called the rose of Jericho is a species of thlaspi, according to Pococke. Mariti describes it as a small plant, having a number of stems which diverge from the earth; they are covered with few leaves but loaded with flowers, which appear red in the bud, but turn paler as they expand, and at length become white entirely. The flowers, he says, have a great resemblance to those of the elder, but have no smell. This can hardly be the plant of which Wisdom says, (Eccles. xxiv. 14.) “I was exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and a rose plant in Jericho.”
[Page 162.]—The Dead Sea.] Of the ancient geographers, Strabo has given the fullest account of the Dead Sea, but strangely confounding it with the lake of Sirbonis, (xvi. p. 763. 4.) He particularly mentions the tradition of the country, that the cities had been destroyed by an earthquake and an eruption of sulphur and fire. It is not surprising that where there was so much to astonish, imagination should have exaggerated even the real wonders of the scene. What is mentioned in the text is agreeable to the observations of the latest travellers, except that it does not appear that those dark clouds of smoke rise from the surface, which the author has described, p. 133. What has given rise to the account has probably been the exhalations which often hang in a dense cloud over the stagnant waters. Volney, i. 182. 3. Irby and Mangles, p. 447. By far the most accurate account of the Dead Sea, is that which is given by the authors last referred to, in their unpublished Travels in Syria. Hitherto it had scarcely been explored by an European traveller on the southern side, and consequently its extent, in that direction, had been very much overrated. Including what they call its back-water, a shallow bay forming a prolongation of it on the south, (p. 454) it cannot exceed, they say, thirty miles at the utmost, though the ancients have assigned to it a length of from seventy-five to eighty. Nor is it possible that it should anciently have extended much further than it now does; because at the distance of about eight or ten miles to the south of the present limit of the backwater, a range of cliffs completely closes the valley of the Ghor, (p. 454.) This is therefore the utmost extent that the lake can have had in ancient times.
The saltness and bitterness of the water mentioned in the text does not arise from a mixture of naphtha and asphaltes, but from the large quantities of the muriates of magnesia, soda, and lime, which it contains, amounting to a fourth part of the weight, according to Dr. Marcet’s analysis. Phil. Trans. 1807, p. 296. Hence the great specific gravity of the water, which has been exaggerated as if the human body could not sink in it. Tac. Hist. v. 6.
[Page 162.]—Apples of Sodom.] Wisdom x. 7. (where, however, the land is only described as “bearing fruit that never comes to ripeness.”) Tac. Hist. v. 7. Jos. Bell. Jud. iv. 8. “Poma Sodomitica, are the fruits of the Solanum Melongena, Linnæi; these I found in plenty about Jericho, in the vales near Jordan, not far from the Dead Sea. It is true they are sometimes filled with a dust, yet this is not always the case, but only when the fruit is attacked by an insect (tenthredo) which turns all the inside into dust, leaving the skin only entire, and of a beautiful colour.” Hasselquist, p. 287.
[Page 164.]—Ceremonies of circumcision.] These are described from the practices of the modern Jews; see Buxtorf. cap. ii. p. 79.
[Page 166.]—Every guest found in the fore-court a splendid caftan.] Comp. Matt. xxii. 11. the parable of the wedding garment; it has been reasonably concluded that so severe a punishment would not have been inflicted on the man who was not in a wedding garment, if it had not been offered to all the guests.
[Page 167.]—Mashal.] This name the Hebrews gave to those sententious and figurative maxims of moral wisdom of which the Proverbs of Solomon are a specimen. See Lowth, Prel. 24. Samson’s wedding affords an example of such “wit-trials” as are here described, Judges xiv.
[Page 176.]—Reckoning of the days from the Passover.] See Maimonides, ap. Cren. Fasc. vi. 477.
[Page 179.]—The Galileans.] Josephus (Bell. Jud. iii. 3.) describes the extent and the fertility of Galilee. Lightfoot, Works, vol. ii. p. 78, has collected from the Rabbins several instances of the false pronunciation of the Galileans. Wetstein on Matt. xxvi. 73. The contempt in which they were held by the learned inhabitants of Jerusalem is sufficiently known from the New Testament.