*** We will conclude this part of our subject with one or two errors of a different sort.
Deut. i., 1.
The writer says—“These are the words which Moses spake to all Israel on this side Jordan, in the plain over against the Red Sea.”
At the time he was as near Jordan, and about as far from the Red Sea as he well could be. The expression “On this side Jordan” means in this verse east of the river, but after the Israelites had come into the lot of their inheritance, “this side Jordan” meant west of the river, and east of it was called “beyond Jordan” [Joshua, ix., 1, 10].
Judges, vii., 3.
This is another geographical error. It is stated that Gideon ordered it to be proclaimed throughout his host that all who had no stomach for the pending fight with the Midianites were at liberty to depart early from Mount Gilead.
Now, the encampment of Gideon was in the valley of Jezreel, west of the Jordan; whereas Mount Gilead is beyond Jordan, far away from the site of the battle.
2 Chron. xx., 35–37.
This is a third example of geographical confusion, similar to those marvellous blunders of old Homer. The chronicler says that Jehoshaphat built ships in “Ezion-gaber to go to Tarshish.” Ezion-gaber was a harbour in the Red Sea, and Tarshish is generally supposed to be Tartessus, the famous Phœnician emporium near the mouth of the Guadalquiver, and not far from the modern Cadiz. It was far more than the navigators of Jewry could have accomplished to sail from the Red Sea to Spain, and certainly Jehoshaphat would not have chosen that harbour for building ships for the Mediterranean.