pears to have been disregarded by even the earliest commentators and interpreters of the Sacred Books, has within our own times been identified with the deep-sunken valley or trench which forms the most striking among the many striking natural features of Palestine, and which extends with great uniformity of formation from the slopes of Hermon to the Elani- tic Gulf of the Red Sea; the most remarkable depres- sion known to exist on the surface of the globe (Hum- boldt, Cosmos, i, 150, ed. Bohn ; also p. 30l). Through the northern portion of this extraordinary fissure the Jordan rushes through the lakes of Huleh and Gen- nesareth down its tortuous course to the deep chasm of the Dead Sea. This portion, about 150 miles in length, is known among the Arabs by the name of el- Ghor (the depression), an appellation which it has borne certainty since the days of Abulfeda. The southern boundary of the Ghor has been fixed by Rob- inson to be the wall of cliffs which crosses the valley about 10 miles south of the Dead Sea. Down to the foot of these cliffs the Ghor extends ; from their sum- mits, southward to the gulf of Akabah, the valley changes its name, or, it would be more accurate to say, retains its old name of Wady el- Arabah.
Looking to the indications of the Sacred Text, there can be no doubt that in the times of the conquest and the monarchy the name "Arabah" was applied to the valley in the entire length of both its southern and northern portions. Thus in Deut. i, 1, probably, and in Deut. ii, 8, certainly (Auth. Vers, "plain" in both cases), the allusion is to the southern portion, while the other passages in which the name occurs point with certainty — now that the identification has "been suggested — to the northern portion. In Deut. iii, 17 ; iv, 49 ; Josh, iii, 10 ; xi, 2 ; xii, 3 ; and 2 Kings xiv, 25, both the Dead So:1, and the sea of Cinneroth (Gen- nesareth) are named in close connection with the Ara- bah. The allusions in Deut. xi, 30 ; Josh, viii, 14 ; xii, 1 ; xviii, 18 ; 2 Sam. ii, 29 ; iv, 7 ; 2 Kings xxv, 4; Jer. xxxix, 4; Iii, 7, become at once intelligible when the meaning of the Arabah is known, however puzzling they may have been to former commenta- tors. In Josh, xi, 16, and xii, 8, the Arabah takes its place with "the mountain," "the lowland" plains of Philistia and Esdraelon, "the south" and "the valle}'" of Ccele-Syria, as one of the great natural di- visions of the conquered country. See Plain.
3. But farther, the word is found in the plural and without the article (n2*l", Arboth), always in con- nection with either Jericho or Moab, and therefore doubtless denoting the portion of the Arabah near Jericho ; in the former case on the west, and in the latter on the east side of the Jordan ; the Arboth- Moab being always distinguished from the Sedeh-Moab — the bare and burnt-up soil of the sunken valley from the cultivated pasture or corn-fields of the downs on the upper level — with all the precision which would naturally follow from the essential difference of the two spots. (See Num. xxii, 1; xxvi, 3, 63; xxxi, 12; xxxiii, 48-50; xxxv, 1 ; xxxvi, 13; Deut. xxxiv, 1, 8; Josh, iv, 13; v, 10; xiii, 32 ; 2 Sam. xv, 28 ; xvii, 16 ; 2 Kings xxv, 5 ; Jer. xxxix, 5 ; Iii, 8.) See Jericho.
4. The word Arabah does not appear in the Rible until the book of Numbers. In the allusions to the valley of the Jordan in Gen. xiii, 10, etc., the curious term Cicctir is employed. This word and the other words used in reference to the Jordan valley, as well as the peculiarities and topograph}' of that region — in fact, of the whole of the Ghor — will be more appro- priately considered under the word Jordan. At present our attention may be confined to the southern division, to that portion of this singular valley which lias from the most remote date borne, as it still con- tinues to bear, the name of "Arabah." See CHAM- PAIGN. For a ma]i of the region, see Exode.
II. Description. — The direction of the Ghor is nearly
ARABAH
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ARABAH
due north and south. The Arabah, however, slightly changes its direction to about N.N.E. and S.S.W. (Robinson, i, 240). But it preserves the straightness of its course, and the general character of the region is not dissimilar to that of the Ghor (Irby, p. 134) except that the soil is more sandy, and that, from the absence of the central river and the absolutely desert character of the highland on its western side (owing to which the wadys bring down no fertilizing streams in summer, and nothing but raging torrents in winter), there are very few of those lines and "cir- cles'' of verdure which form so great a relief to the torrid climate of the Ghor. The whole length of the Arabah proper, from the cliffs south of the Dead Sea to the head of the gulf of Akabah, appears to be rath- er more than 100 miles (Kiepert's Map). In breadth it varies. North of Petra — that is, about GO miles from the gulf of Akabah — it is at its widest, being per- haps from 10 to 12 miles across ; but it contracts grad- ually to the south till at the gulf the opening to the sea is but 4, or, according to some travellers, 2 miles wide (Robinson, i, 240 ; Martineau, p. 392).