One more note must suffice for this brief account of His connexion with Nature as Palestine showed
302
PALESTINE
PALESTINE
it to Him. We have already referred in passing to some of His parables. It is very noteworthy that in so many of them He saw and used the symbol- ism of Nature. It would seem as if for Him every process of tlie field, the life of trees, the springs of ' living water,' the softness of sand and the stability of rocks, the saltness of salt, the shining and the quencliing of lights, were constantly suggesting symbols of that spiritual life of which He was at once the creator and the exponent. The earth was interesting to Him in its own right, but it was doubly interesting on account of its analogy with the Kingdom of heaven. Seeds of the earth, birds of the air, wind and flowing water and burning fire, were all unceasingly rehearsing under His eyes the operations of the Kingdom.
Nor did the analysis stop there. When the busy and thoughtful work of man had touched the natural world, new symbols sprang forth for His use on every hand. We shall understand better such a saying as ' I am the way,' when we remem- ber how through His childhood He had watched tlie life of the great world passing along a Roman road and a caravan route in the north. We are reminded of more than one of His sayings (Jn 15^ etc. ) when we find that in vine-growing parts of Syria to-day the vine-plants are dug round and exposed to the depth of more than a foot, and all rootlets are cut off from the main root to that depth. If this were not done, the sun would scorch the roots near the surface, or the passing plough would bleed them. It is the deep roots only that are safe. At Hebron, a few years ago, a traveller noticing the fact that the sheepfolds were circles of stone wall broken by a gap in which there was never any door, asked a shepherd for the reason, and was answered, ' I am the door.' The shepherd lies down in the open space, and no wolf can enter nor can any sheep stray except across his body. That was a symbol worthy of the use of Jesus !
4. Towns and Yillages. — For the understanding of anything connected with the life and history of a Semitic nation, nothing is of such importance as to study the growth and character of toA\Tis, and the changes which they jDroduce upon those who exchange a nomad for a settled existence. To realize the times of Jesus, and still more those of the OT, we have to disabuse our minds of all that the modern world means by a city when we meet the word in the ancient writings. It is not without a feeling of amused surprise that one comes to iden- tify those grotesque hamlets with the ' cities ' of the Bible, and to recall the fact that their ' kings ' must have often occupied a humbler station in the body politic of their times than the chairman of a parish council may occupy in ours. Of course, there have been incalculably great changes in a land which has been under the ploughshares of war for so many centuries, yet the sites remain, and it is often pos- sible to rebuild the jiast. The very forces that have consigned so many of them to ruins have kept the rest alive through everything. The want of good roads, the uncertainties of government, the ancient feuds and avoidances, have preserved vil- lage communities apart and with little alteration.
Of cities in the Western sense, there were none in Syria. Yet Damascus, Beyrout, and Jerusalem stand out from the towns of Syria as places worthy of the name. Jerusalem we shall consider at a later stage. There is no record of any visit of Jesus to Berytus or Damascus, but Tyre and Sidon must liave rivalled if not surpassed them in His time. G. A. Smith has suggested that in the story of the Prodigal Son we may have a reference to the fast city life where boys from country homes might be seen then, as in Beyrout they may be seen now, ' wasting their substance with riotous living ' (Lk IS^^). It was in Beyrout, only a year
or tAvo ago, that an American, trying to persuade a lad to come to America, received the answer, ' Suffer me first to bury my father ' — the father standing by and acquiescing in the filial senti- ment.
With several of the towns Jesus was familiar. They have changed more than the villages, and yet there is much in them still which enables us to re- construct the life He saw. There are about a dozen of them, and they shine from far, white splashes on the hill-tops, like Jaffa, perched with a conscious pose above the rocks of its seashore ; or Jenin, gleaming like a white bird from its nest of palm- trees. The streets are usually aggressively irregu- lar, at once ancient and unfinished in their appear- ance. The wider spaces, where tents are pitched and camels and liorses tethered, are full of noise and colour, a patchwork of brilliant and croAvded human life. There are narrower streets, Avhich often become tunnels, in which laden asses brush tlie wares of shopkeepers with their burdens, and the shrill talk of men and women intensifies the disagreeableness of the smells. Closely huddled together from the first, and kept from lateral ex- pansion by their walls and gates, and the dangers of the open country outside, the houses are forced upwards for expansion, and the sky of townsfolk is a narrow strip seen between lofty precipices of stone.