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Alap of the half-tribe of Manasseh — East.
nable tract of Argob, which derives its modem name of Lejah from the secure " asylum" it affords to those who take refuge within its natural fortilications. Had they not remained in these wild and inaccessible districts, but gone forward and taken their lot with the rest, who. shall say what changes might not have occurre^l in the history of the nation, through the presence of such en- ergetic and warlike spirits V The few personages of eminence whom we can with certainty identify as Ma- nassites, such as Gideon and .Jephthah — for Elijah and others may with equal probability have belonged to the neighboring tribe of Gad — were among the most re- markable characters that Israel produced. Gideon was, in fact, " the greatest of the judges, and liis children all but established hereditary monarchy in their own line" (Stanley, S. and P. p. 230). But, with the one excep- tion of Gideon, the warlike tendencies of Manasseh seem to have been confined to the east of the .Jordan. There they throve exceedingly, pushing their way northward over the rich plains of Jaulan and Jedur — the Gaula- nitis and Iturtea of the Roman period — to the foot of Mount Hermon (1 Chron. v, 23). At the time of the coronation of David at Hebron, while the western IMa- nasseh sent 18,000, and Ephraim itself 20,800, the east- ern Manasseh, with Gad and Reuben, mustered to the number of 120,000, thoroughly armed — a remarkable demonstration of strength, still more remarkable when we remember the fact that Saul's house, with tlie great Abner at its head, was then residuig at Mahanaim, on the border of jNIanasseh and Gad. But, though thus outwardly prosperous, a similar fate awaited them in the end to that which befel Gad and Reuben; they gradually assimilated themselves to the old inhabitants of the country — they " transgressed against the God of their fathers, and went a-whoring after the gods of the people of the land whom God destroyed before them"' (ver. 25). They relinquished, too, the settled mode of life and the definite limits which befitted the members of a federal nation, and gradually became Bedouins of the wilderness, spreading themselves over the vast des- erts which lay between the allotted possessions of their tribe and the Euphrates, and which had from time im- memorial been the hunting-grounds and pastures of the wild Hagarites, of Jetur, Nephish, and Nodab (1 Chron. v, 19, 22). On them first descended the punishment which was ordamed to be the inevitable consequence of such misdoing. They, first of all Israel, were carried away by Pul and Tiglath-Pileser, and settled in the As- syrian territories (ver. 26). The connection, however, between east and west had been kept up to a certain de- gree. In Bethshean, the most easterly city of the cis- Jordanic Manasseh, the two portions all but joined. Da- vid had judges or officers there for all matters sacred and secular (1 Chron. xxvi, 32) ; and Solomon's commis- sariat officer, Ben-Geber, ruled over the towns of Jair and the whole district of Argob (1 Kings iv, 13), and transmitted their productions, doubtless not without their people, to the court of Jerusalem.
The genealogies of the tribe are preser\'ed in Numb. xxvi, 28-34; Josh, xvii, 1, etc.; and 1 Chron vii, 14-19. But it seems impossible to unravel these so as to ascer- tain, for instance, which of the families remained east of Jordan, and which advanced to the west. From the fact that Alii-czer (the family of Gideon '^. Hepher (pos- sibly Ophrah, the native place of the same hero), and Shechem (the well-known city of the Bene-Joseph) all occur among the names of the sons of Gilead, the son of Machir, it seems probable that Gilead, whose name is so intimately connected with the eastern, was also the immediate progenitor of the western half of the tribe.
Nor is it less difficult to fix the exact position of the territory allotted to the western half. In Josh, xvii, 14-18. a passage usually regarded by critics as an ex- ceedingly ancient document, we find the two tribes of Joseph complaining that only one portion had been al- lotted to them, viz. Mount Ephraim (ver. 15), and that they could not extend into the plains of Jordan or Es-
MANASSEH
691
MANASSEH
draelon, because those districts were still in the posses- sion of the Canaanites, and scoured by their chariots. In reply Joshua advises them to go up into the forest (ver. If), A.V. "wood") — into the mountain which is a forest (ver. 18). This mountain clothed with forest can surely be nothing but the various spurs and oifshoots of Carmel, the " mountain'" closel)^ adjoining the portion of Kphraim whose richness of wood was t^o proverbial. It is in accordance with this view that the majority of the towns of Manasseh — which, as the weaker portion of the tribe, would naturally be pushed to seek its for- tunes outside the limits originally bestowed — were actu- allv on the slopes either of Carmel itself or of the con- tiguous ranges. Thus Taanach and Megiddo were on tlie northern spurs of Carmel; Ibleam appears to have been on the eastern continuation of the range, some- where near the present Jenin. En-Dor was on the slopes of the so-called " Little Hermon." The two re- maining towns mentioned as belonging to Manasseh formed the extreme eastern and western limits of the tribe: the one, Bethshean (Josh, xvii, 11), was in the hollow of the Ghor, or Jordan Valley; the other. Dor (ibid.), was on the coast of the Mediterranean, sheltered beliind the range of Carmel, and immediately opposite the bluff or shoulder which forms its highest point. The whole of these cities are specially mentioned as stand- ing in the allotments of other tribes, though inhabited liy Manasseh ; and this, with the absence of any attempt to detine a limit to the possessions of the tribe on the north, looks as if no boundary-line had existed on that side, but as if the territory faded off gradually into those of the two contiguous tribes from whom it had borrowed its fairest cities. On the south side the boundary be- tween Manasseh and Ephraim is more definitely de- scribed, and may generally be traced with tolerable cer- tainty. Their joint possessions were bounded by the territory of Asher on the north and Issachar on the north-east (xvii, 10), but the division line between the