Here amongst cliffs and precipices dwelt the Kenites when Balaam, looking across the valley from a height on the opposite side, uttered his impassioned prophecy, and said:
“Strong is thy dwellingplace
And thou puttest thy nest in a rock.
Nevertheless the Kenite shall be wasted,
Until Asshur shall carry thee away captive.”[[94]]
Here, too, David retired when hard pressed by Saul. He had to leave the neighbourhood of Ziph and Maon, just as many an Arab sheikh is accustomed to do at the present day, to escape from the tyranny, or the justice, of the government. In these inaccessible fastnesses he was safe from pursuit, almost from discovery. Behind him was the wilderness of Judea. Before him were the mountains of Moab in case further retreat should seem expedient. And here it was that heroic chief mercifully spared the life of his pitiless foe when the “Lord had delivered him into his hand.”[[95]]
In more modern times the shores of the Dead Sea have been associated with two tragic events which add to the gloomy memories which enshroud it. Among the mountains on the eastern side, looking down upon the gorge of the Callirhoe, is Makaur, the ancient Machærus, in which John the Baptist took his place among “the noble army of martyrs.” Dr. Tristram, the first European known to have visited it since the time of the Romans, says that he found amongst the ruins “two dungeons, one of them very deep, and its sides scarcely broken in. That these were dungeons, not cisterns, is evident from there being no traces of cement, which never perishes from the walls of ancient reservoirs, and from the small holes, still visible in the masonry, where staples of wood and iron had once been fixed. One of these must surely have been the prison-house of John the Baptist.” On the western shore stood Masada, the palace-fortress of Herod, in which was enacted the last awful tragedy in the Jewish war of independence. Jerusalem had fallen. One fortress after another had surrendered to the Romans. This impregnable stronghold alone remained, held by a band of men who, with the courage of despair, determined to die rather than to yield. The fatal moment at length arrived at which further resistance was impossible. Eleazar, son of Judas the Galilean, called the garrison together and urged upon them that death was to be preferred to dishonour. Each man thereupon stabbed his wife and children to the heart, and lying down beside those whom he loved, bared his neck to the ten who were chosen by lot to consummate the slaughter. One of these last survivors then slew the other nine and, having set fire to the building, stabbed himself. When the Romans entered the breach on the morning of Easter Day A.D. 73, they found nothing but corpses and smouldering ruins. Two women and five children, who had hidden themselves in the vaults, alone survived to tell the tale, nearly a thousand persons having perished.
MAKAUR, THE SITE OF ANCIENT MACHÆRUS.
But all other historical associations with this district shrink into insignificance in comparison with that fearful catastrophe, when the Lord overwhelmed and destroyed the guilty cities with fire from heaven. When “Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord,”[[96]] he not only failed to take account of the licentiousness and “filthy conversation of the wicked,”[[97]] choosing temporal wealth at the peril of his soul’s welfare; but he knew not or cared not that the soil was one vast arsenal filled with instruments of destruction. The cities rested upon a bed of sulphur and bitumen. They were built and cemented from “the slime-pits of Siddim.”[[98]] When the longsuffering of God was exhausted and “the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah was very great and their sin very grievous,” the hour of judgment came. The destruction may have been altogether miraculous. Or it may have been brought about by miracle working through natural agencies. The whole region is volcanic. Lightnings flashing from heaven, and the bursting forth of the subterranean fires, may have turned the whole plain into “a burning fiery furnace,” in which not the cities only but the very soil on which they stood were turned into one vast sea of flame. Imagination shudders at the awful spectacle when “the smoke of the country went up like the smoke of a furnace.”