(5.) Few things are a more constant source of surprise to tlie stranger in the Holy Land than the manner in whicli the hill-tops are, tliroughout, selected for habita- tion. A town in a valley is a rare exception. On the other hand, scarcely a single eminence of the multitude always in sight but is crowned with its city or village, inhabited or in ruins, often so ])laced as if not accessibil- ity but inaccessibility had been the object (tf its l)uild- ers. And indeed such was their object. Tliese groups of naked, forlorn structures — piled irregularly one over the other on the curve of the hill-top, tlieir rectangular outline, flat roofs, and blank walls, suggestive to the Western mind rather of fastness than of peaceful habi- tation, surrounded by filthy heaps of the rubbish of centuries, approached only by the narrow winding path.
worn white, on the gray or brown breast of the hill — are the lineal descendants, if indeed they do not sometimes contain the actual remains, of the ''fenced cities, great and walled up to heaven," which are so frequently men- tioned in the records of the Israelitish conquest. They bear witness now, no less surely than they did even in that early age, and as they have done through all the ravages and conquests of thirty centuries, to the inse- curity of the country — to the continual risk of sudden plunder and destruction incurred by those rash enough to take up their dwelling in the plain. Another and hardly less valid reason for the practice is furnished in the terms of our Lord's well-known apologue — namely, the treacherous nature of the loose alluvial " sand" of the plain under the sudden rush of the winter tor- rents from the neighboring hills, as compared with the safety and firm foundation attainable by building on the naked "rock" of the hiUs themselves (Matt, vii, 24-27).
These hill-towns were not what gave the Israelites their main difficulty in the occupation of the country. Wherever strength of arm and fleetness of foot availed, there those hardy warriors, fierce as lions, sudden and swift as eagles, sure-footed and fleet as the wild deer on the hills (i Chron. xii, 8; 2 Sam. i, 23; ii, 18), easily conquered. It was in the plains, where the horses and chariots of the Canaanites and Philistines had space to manoeuvre, that they failed to dislodge the aborigines. Judah "drave out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, be- cause they had chariots of iron ; . . . neither did Ma- nasseh drive out the inhabitants of Bethshean . . . nor Megiddo," in the plain of Esdraelon ; . . . " neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer," on the maritime plain near Ramleh ; . . . " neither did Asher drive out the inhabitants of Accho. . . . And the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountain, for they would not suffer them to come down into the valley" (Judg. i, 19-34). Thus in this case the ordinary conditions of conquest were reversed — the conquerors took the hills, the conquered kept the plains. To a people so exclusive as the Jews there must have been a constant satisfaction in the elevation and inaccessibil- ity of their highland regions. This is evident in every page of their literature, which is tinged throughout with a highland coloring. The "mountains"' were to "bring peace," the "little hiUs justice to the people:" when plenty came, the corn was to flourish on the " top of the mountains" (Psa. Ixxii, 3, 16). In like manner the mountains were to be joyful before Jehovah when he came to judge his people (xcviii, 8). What gave its keenest sting to the Babylonian conquest was the consideration that the " mountains of Israel," the " an- cient high places," had become a "prey and a derision;" while, on the other hand, one of the most joyfid circum- stances of the restoration is that the mountains "shall yield their fruit as before, and be settled after their old estates" (Ezek. xxxvi, 1, 8, 11). But it is needless to multiply instances of this, which pervades the writings of the psalmists and prophets in a trulj' remarkable manner, and must be familiar to every student of the Bible. (See the citations in Stanley's Sinai and Pal. ch. ii, viii.) Nor was it unacknowledged by the sur- rounding heathen. We have their own testimony that in their estimation .lehovah was the " God of the moini- tains" (1 Kings xx, 28), and they showed their appreci- ation of the fact by fighting (as already noticed), when possible, in the lowlands. The contrast is strongly brought out in the repeated expression of the psalmists: "Some," like the Canaanites and Philistines of the low- lands, "put their trust in chariots and some in horses; but we" — we mountaineers, from our "sanctuary" on the heights of " Zion" — " will remember the name of Jehovah our (iod," "the God of Jacob our father," the shepherd-warrior, whose only weapons were sword and bow — the God who is now a higli fortress for us — "at whose command both chariot and horse are fallen," " who
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burneth the chariots in the fire" (Psa. xx, 1, 7 ; xlvi, 7- 11; Ixxvi, 2,0).