It was here, in 1880, that Laurence Oliphant, the gifted English traveller and mystic, proposed to establish his fine scheme for the beginning of the
restoration of the Jews to Palestine. A territory extending from the brook of Jabbok on the north to the brook of Arnon on the south, from the Jordan Valley on the west to the Arabian desert on the east; railways running up from the sea at Haifâ, and down from Damascus, and southward to the Gulf of Akabah, and across to Ismailia on the Suez Canal; a government of local autonomy guaranteed and protected by the Sublime Porte; sufficient capital supplied by the Jewish bankers of London and Paris and Berlin and Vienna; and the outcasts of Israel gathered from all the countries where they are oppressed, to dwell together in peace and plenty, tending sheep and cattle, raising fruit and grain, pressing out wine and oil, and supplying the world with the balm of Gilead—such was Oliphant's beautiful dream.
But it did not come true; because Russia did not like it, because Turkey was afraid of it, because the rest of Europe did not care for it,—and perhaps because the Jews themselves were not generally enthusiastic over it. Perhaps the majority of them would rather stay where they are. Perhaps
they do not yearn passionately for Palestine and the simple life.
But it is not of these things that we are thinking, I must confess, as the ruddy sun slowly drops toward the heights of Pennel, and we stroll out in the evening glow, along the edge of the wild ravine into which our little stream plunges, and look down into the deep, grand valley of the Brook Jabbok.
Yonder, on the other side of the great gulf of heliotrope shadow, stretches the long bulk of the Jebel Ajlûn, shaggy with oak-trees. It was somewhere on the slopes of that wooded mountain that one of the most tragic battles of the world was fought. For there the army of Absalom went out to meet the army of his father David. "And the battle was spread over the face of all the country, and the forest devoured more people that day than the sword devoured." It was there that the young man Absalom rode furiously upon his mule, "and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between heaven and earth." And a man came and told Joab, the captain of David's host, "Behold I saw Absalom
hanging in the midst of an oak." Then Joab made haste; "and he took three darts in his hand, and thrust them through the heart of Absalom while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak." And when the news came to David, sitting in the gate of the city of Mahanaim, he went up into the chamber over the gate and wept bitterly, crying, "Would I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son!" (II Samuel xviii.)
To remember a story like that is to feel the pathos with which man has touched the face of nature. But there is another story, more mystical, more beautiful, which belongs to the scene upon which we are looking. Down in the purple valley, where the smooth meadows spread so fair, and the little river curves and gleams through the thickets of oleander, somewhere along that flashing stream is the place where Jacob sent his wives and his children, his servants and his cattle, across the water in the darkness, and there remained all night long alone, for "there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day."
Who was this "man" with whom the patriarch
contended at midnight, and to whom he cried, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me"? On the morrow Jacob was to meet his fierce and powerful brother Esau, whom he had wronged and outwitted, from whom he had stolen the birthright blessing twenty years before. Was it the prospect of this dreaded meeting that brought upon Jacob the night of lonely struggle by the Brook Jabbok? Was it the promise of reconciliation with his brother that made him say at dawn, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is saved"? Was it the unexpected friendliness and gentleness of that brother in the encounter of the morning that inspired Jacob's cry, "I have seen thy face as one seeth the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me"?