A Class-Book of Biblical History and Geography / with numerous maps

by H. S. Osborn

The date of this stone is about 900 B. C. Its inscription is a remarkable corroboration of the history contained in 2 Kings 3.

Discoveries at Sidon, a Phœnician town on the Mediterranean, and at other places, show that a modified Hebrew was very generally the language of all the Canaanites.

14. The pertinacity with which the more devout and learned of the Israelites held to the Hebrew during the captivity in Assyria, and ever since amid all nations and lands, proves that they never forgot the language which Abraham spoke,but cherished it during their residence in the land of Egypt, and it is probable that before their entrance into Canaan they had entirely ceased to speak what little they knew of the Egyptian tongue. They were the more able and ready, therefore, to receive the ten commandments and all the rest of those laws which were written in the Hebrew. And, moreover, there could have been very little if any difficulty in their understanding the language of the inhabitants into whose land they had now come.

THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF CANAAN.

15. The land of Canaan was bounded on the west by the Mediterranean, on the east by the Jordan, on the south by the desert, and on the north by the mountains of Lebanon. This was the land of promise.

At Jericho the valley of the Jordan is a depressed plain about 850 feet below the Mediterranean, and the surface of the Dead Sea on the south is still lower, being 1,293 feet below the Mediterranean, so that from ancient Jericho to the Dead Sea, six miles distant, the valley of the Jordan falls rapidly.

Jerusalem is very nearly due west of the mouth of the Jordan, and is placed on the highest land, with the exception of the Mount of Olives, between the Jordan and the Mediterranean on that line of latitude, being about 2,600 feet higher than the sea.

16. About 60 miles in a straight line duenorth of the Dead Sea the Jordan issues from the Sea of Galilee, the waters of which were called, in our Saviour’s time, the Sea of Tiberias and the Lake of Gennesaret. The shape of the lake is oval, but broader in the northern half, its length north and south being nearly thirteen miles and greatest breadth about seven miles. Its surface is 682 feet below the level of the Mediterranean and the hills on the eastern shore rise to the height of the great eastern plateau of the table-land of ancient Bashan, which is 2,000 feet above the Mediterranean. The waters are fresh and abound with fish.

17. In the times of Joshua and of the early occupation of the land by the Israelites, the lake was called Chinnereth (Num. 34:11) and Chinneroth (Josh. 11:2), [pron. Kin´nereth and Kin´neroth], and a city of the same name existed on its western shore very near the present site of Tiberias. Traces of this ancient city have been recently (1887) discovered just outside the southern walls.

Ten miles north of the Sea of Galilee is a smaller reedy lake four miles long, which is supposed to be the “waters of Merom” (Josh. 11:5), but now known as Huleh by the Arabs. Into the northern end the upper Jordan finds its way as it descends from the lower parts of Mt. Hermon. The surface of this lake is seven feet above the Mediterranean, and extended plains are on the west and for several miles northward, beyond which the land rapidly rises into the mountains.