Meroe. See Seba.
Me'rom (Heb. Merom', Cil^, height; Sept. Mf- pwjii), a lake (C'^'p, " waters") among the hills (hence the name, Burckhardt, Trav. ii, 553) of northern Pal- estine, whose shores were the scene of the great victory of the Hebrews over the northern Canaanites (Josh. xi, 5-7) ; doubtless the same with that through which the Jordan flows three miles from its source, called by Josephus tSaiiicchdiii/is (i'rt/.iox'wi'Trf*; or Sf/ie^^wi^irtc, Ant. v, 5, 1 ; War, iii, 10, 7 ; iv, 1, 1). In his account of the battle (Ant. v, 1. 18), the confederate kings en- camp "near Beroth, a city of upper Galilee, not far from Kedes ;" nor is there any mention of water. In the OnomasticoH of Eusebius the name is given as "Mer- ran" (Mtppin'), and it is stated to be "a village twelve miles distant from Sebaste (Samaria), and near Dothaim." Abulfeda (Tah. Syr. p. 155) calls it the Sea of Banias, but its usual modern name is Bakrat el-Hule'h (Burck-
hardt, Trav. i, 87). It was visited by Lieut. Lynch (£"3;- pedition, p. 471), and is most fully described by Thomson (in the Bibliotheca Sacra, 1846, p". 185'; see also 1843, p. 12, and map ; 1854, p. 56 ; Robinson's Res. new ed. p. 395 ; comp. Keland, Palcest. p. 2G1 sq. ; Hamelsveld, i, 482 sq. ; Schwarz, Palest, p. 47). As regards the modern name of Hideh, by which the native inhabitants of the district commonly designate the lake, there are some grounds for tracing it also to a very ancient source. Josephus {Ant. XV, 10, 3) speaks of Herod as having obtained from Cis- sar the territory of a troublesome prince named Zenodo- rus — a territory that lay between Trachon and GaUlee, and which "contained Ulatha (OiXa^av) and Paneas." The country so described is the very region in which Lake Merom is situated; and OvXa^a has every appear- ance of being the Greek form of Huleh. It is also con- jectured that this Ulatha of Josephus and Huleh of modern times may derive their common origin from a period so remote as that oi IJul, the son of Aram, men- tioned in the book of Genesis '(x, 23), a personage whom Josephus calls "Ov\oq {Ant. i, 6, 4). Hence, not improbably, the name (see Hitter, Palest, und Syr. ii, 234 ; Stanley, Sin. and Pal. p. 283). The word, both in Hebreiv and Arabic, seems to have the force of depres- sion— the low land (see Michaelis, Siippl. Nos. 687, 720); and Michaelis most ingeniously suggests that it is the root of the name KoiAr/trnpia, although in its pres- ent form it may have been sufficiently modified to trans- form it into an intelligible Greek word {Sjncilegium, ii, 137, 138). The name Samechonitis maj' perhaps be de- rived from the Arabic root samak, " to be high," and would thus be identical in meaning with the Hebrew Merom (Gesenius, Thesaur. p. 1276 ; Reland, Palcest. p. 262). Perhaps the phrase 0^3 i?3 might be rendered " the upper waters ;" that is, the upper lake or collection of waters formed by the river Jordan (see Reland, p. 262). Several other explanations of the Greek name as found in Josephus have been given : 1. It is derived from the Chaldee p^O, " red," because of the ruddy color of its water. 2. From ~iD, "a thorn," because its shores abound with thorn-bushes (Lightfoot, O^rp, ii, 172). 3. From the Arabic samJc, " a fish" (Reland, p. 262). These explanations appear to be all too fanciful (Stanley, Sin^ and Pal. p. 383, note). Josephus mentions a city called Meroth (Mi]qw^ or mrjpi'o, Life, p. 37; War, ii, 20, 6), which Ritter connects with the Heb. name of the lake {Pal. mid Si/r. ii. 235).
This interesting lake — Merom, Samechonitis, or Hu- leh— lies embedded in the midst of one of the finest scenes in Palestine. The Ard el-Huleh, the centre of which the lake occupies, is a nearly level plain of six- teen miles in length, from north to south ; and its breadth, from east to west, is from seven to eight miles. On the west it is walled in by the steep and lofty range of the hills of Kedesh-Naphtali ; on the east it is bounded by the lower and more gradually ascending slopes of Bashan ; on the north it is shut in by a line of hills hummockj' and irregular in shape, and of na great height, and stretching across from the mountains of Naphtali to the roots of Mount Hermon, which tow- ers up, at the north-eastern angle of the plain, to a height of 10,000 feet. At its southern extremity the plain is similarly traversed by elevated and broken ground, through which, by deep and narrow clefts, flie Jordan, after passing through Lake Huleh, makes its rapid descent to the Sea of Galilee, the level of which is from 600 to 700 feet lower than that of the waters of jMerom (Van de Velde, Memoir, p. 181). This noble landscape, when seen, for the first time and suddenly, from the lofty brow of the mountains of Naphtali, can never fail to excite the liveliest admiration : the in- tense greenness, so unusual in Palestine, of the abun- dantly-watered plain — the bright blue lake reflecting from its bosom the yet brighter and bluer sky— the sin- gularly-picturesque ranges of the surrounding hiUs; and, rising far above them all, the Jebel esh- Sheikh, the