Further on we had Bait Ziz, or Jiz, on the right, with Dejâjeh, or Edjâjeh, and Na’ana, or Ra’ana, on the left; Khulda in the distance at N.W.; a vast expanse of growing grain in every direction.
The population hereabouts are a fine race for stature, and paler in complexion than our peasantry on the hills; and it ought to be the reverse, unless, as is certainly the case, they are a distinct people.
We traversed the plain to ’Akir, which is Ekron of Scripture, one of the five principal cities of the Philistines, and chief place of the worship of Baal-zebub, (2 Kings i. 3.) All our inquiries had been in vain for any name that could possibly have been Gath. The utter extinction of that city is remarkable—the very name disappearing from the Bible after Micah, B.C. 730. Amos, B.C. 787, and Zephaniah, B.C. 630, mention the four other cities of the Philistines, omitting Gath. The name never occurs in the Apocrypha or the New Testament.
’Akir is now a very miserable village of unburnt brick; indeed, all the villages of this district are of that material, owing to the extreme rarity of stone. We saw women cutting bricks out of the viscous alluvial soil, and boys swimming luxuriously in the pool of rain water settled during winter in the
excavation for bricks—quarry we might style it, if the material were stone. There was plenty of ploughing in progress for the summer crops of sesame, durrah, etc., and the people seemed rich in horned cattle.
This last feature constitutes another difference between them and the hill country. In the mountains, where the Bedaween forays are almost unknown, the cattle bred are principally sheep and goats. On the plains, flocks of sheep might be easily swept off by those marauders, oxen not so easily; the people, therefore, principally breed this species of cattle, and instead of idle shepherd boys amusing themselves with little flutes, and guiding the sheep by throwing stones at them, the herds here are driven by mounted horsemen with long poles. The flatness of the country and the frequency of oxen will serve to illustrate the exactness of Bible narratives, particularly in the matter of the wheeled carriage and the kine used for conveying the ark of God from this place, Ekron, to Bethshemesh (I Sam. vi.)
Forward we went to Yabneh, (Jabneel of Josh. xv. II, and Jabneh of 2 Chron. xxvi. 6,) where it is mentioned in connexion with Gath and Ashkelon. It was a border city of Judah, where the Wadi Surâr, (called here the river Rubin,) forms the boundary between Judah and Dan. I think we may identify it as the “Me-Jarkon and the border that is over against Japho,” of Josh. xix. 46. It is the
Jamnia, where, for a long time after the Roman overthrow of Jerusalem, was a celebrated college of the Talmudists, before, however, the traditions and speculations of the rabbis were collected into volumes of Mishna and Gemara. It is believed that the truly great and venerable Gamaliel is buried here.
Yabneh stands on a rising ground, and although a village of sun-baked bricks, it has remains of a Christian church, now used as a mosque, with a tower of stone.