SITE OF ANCIENT JERICHO, WITH MONS QUARANTANIA.
About half an hour after leaving Er Riha, we reach some mounds of crumbling debris at the foot of a range of barren precipitous mountains, which form the western boundary of the Jordan valley. It is the site of Jericho. The soil around it is fertile as ever. Its fountains still pour forth streams over the “well watered” plain. Nowhere has the primæval curse fallen more lightly. With the slightest effort on the part of man, the whole region would become a garden. But alas! it is a desolate waste. The Bedouin lead their flocks across the plain as did the patriarchs of old. But there is no other sign of human life. The groves of palm trees which once stretched for miles around the city and gave it its name,[[114]] have disappeared. One solitary survivor lingered up to the year 1835, but this, too, has now perished. Nothing is left to break the depressing sense of solitude and desolation. The curse pronounced upon the doomed city still seems to linger amongst its ruins: “Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city of Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates thereof.”[[115]]
Standing upon the mounds which mark the site of the ancient city, and looking eastward, we have immediately behind us the range of mountains and table-land, which stretching westward, as far as the plains of Sharon, formed the territory of Judah and Benjamin. Before us is the plain of the Jordan here at its widest. The long wall-like chain of the mountains of Moab bounds the view on the east. Numerous ravines, each of which is memorable in the wars of the Israelites, intersect the range. The vast plains which stretch northward and eastward afford splendid grazing ground, now as of yore, when the flocks and herds of the Midianites wandered over them, when “Gilead was a place for cattle” and the “oaks,” “the rams,” and “the bulls of Bashan” were symbols of agricultural and pastoral wealth.[[116]]
Looking across the valley, attention is arrested by the numerous conical hills rising from the flat table-land which is supported by the mountain chain. Many of these attain considerable height, not only from the plain below, but from the plateau on which they rest. Of these, one holds a conspicuous place in early Hebrew history. Balak, king of Moab, alarmed at the rapid and irresistible progress of the children of Israel, and despairing of checking their advance, sends across the Euphrates to bring thence the seer whose incantations may seduce or overcome the mighty God who had given them the victory. He knew not that—
“God is not a man that He should lie;
Neither the son of man that He should repent:
Hath He said, and shall He not do it?
Or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good ...
Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob,
Neither is there any divination against Israel.”