The guide told us of a vast cavern in the Wadi Sûaineet capable of holding many hundred men, near to the above-mentioned karoobah-trees, and therefore just the suitable refuge for the Israelites, (I Sam. xiv. 11,) besides the Bozez and Seneh; and he told us that half-way down the precipice there is a course of water running towards the Ghôr.
Few incidents in the Bible are so real to the eye and feelings as the narrative of Jonathan and his office-bearers when read upon the spot of the occurrence, or near it at Jeba’.
We passed Jeba’ at about a quarter of a mile to
our right, and in another quarter of an hour were at the strange old stone parallelograms under Hhizmeh, which had been often before visited in afternoon rides from Jerusalem.
These are piles of large squared stones of great antiquity, carefully built into long parallel forms, and now deeply weather-eaten. No use of them can be imagined. I have visited them at all seasons of the year, and at different hours of the day, but they still remain unintelligible. They are disposed in different directions, as will be seen in the following drawing of them, carefully taken by measurement in my presence, and given me by a friend now in England, the Rev. G. W. Dalton of Wolverhampton.
On one face of No. 4 is a kind of entrance, and on the top surface a round hole about two feet in depth, but they lead to nothing, and are probably the work of modern peasantry, removing stones from the entire block; in the former case for the mere object of shade from the sun, and the latter for the charitable purpose common among
Moslems, who often cut basins into solid rocks, to collect rain or dew for birds of the air or beasts of the field.
Corroded monuments like these, in so pure and dry an atmosphere, bespeak a far more hoary antiquity than the same amount of decay would do in an English climate.
I know of a spot on the side of a wild hill upon the way between Ai (as I believe the place called the Tell to be) and Mukhmâs, where there are several huge slabs of stone, rather exceeding human size, laid upon the ground side by side exactly parallel. These can be nothing else than gravestones of early Israelitish period, but of which the memorial is now gone for ever.