TARSHISH
219
TARSHISH
only concur with other parts of Scripture in showing that the name is to be taken in a wide acceptalion, as denotint;, besides modern Andahisia, iliuse parts of Af- rica wliich lie near and opposite to Spain. Nor is it impossible that a part of tlie trade of Tarshish lay in tliese and in other animals; for we certainly know that Solomon's ships brought that prince apes and peacocks: the lions may have been caught in Africa and convey- ed in ships of Tarshish to Tyre. Sheba and Dedan, however, are mentioned here in connection with Tar- shish, and they were certainly Eastern countries, lying pmbably on the western side of the Persian Gulf in Arabia. But the object of the writer may have been to mention the countries placed at the extremities of the then known world — Tarshisli on the west, Sheba and Dedan on the east. In Isa. xxiii, 1-1-4 we read, as a part of the burden of Tyre, that the ships of Tarshish are called on to howl at her destruction, because Tyre afforded them no longer a commercial port and a ha- ven: words which entirely agree with the hypothesis that makes Tarshish a city on the seaboard of Spain, trading up the Mediterranean to Tyre. Nor are the words found in ver. 6 discordant — "Pass ye over to Tarshish ; howl, ye inhabitants of the isles." Let us now turn to the book of Jonah (i, 1-3; iv, 2). The prophet was commanded to go and prophesy against Nineveh on the Tigris. For this he should, on quitting Jerusalem, have gone in an easterly direction ; but he shunned the duty and fled. Of course he naturally fled in a direction the opposite of that in which the avoided object lay; he proceeded, in fact, to Tarshish. Tarshish, then, must have been to the west, and not to the east, of Jerusalem. In order to reach Tarshish, he went to Joppa and took ship for the place of his desti- nation, thus still keeping in a westerly course and show- ing that Tarshish lay to the west. In Tarshish, in- deed, placed in the extreme north-west, he might well expect to be distant enough from Nineveh. It is also worthy of notice that, when he arrived at .Joppa, on the coast of Palestine, '• he found a ship going to Tarshish ;" which fact we can well mnlerstand if Tarshish lay to the west, but by no means if it lay on the Red Sea. See OiMiiR.
Thus far all the passages cited agree, with more or less evidence, in fixing Tarshish somewhere in or near Spain. But in 2 Chron. xx, 36 it is recorded that .le- lioshaphat, king of Judah, joined himself with Ahazi- ah, king of Israel, " to make ships to go to Tarshish, and they made the ships in Ezion-geber." that is, on the Elanitic gulf on the eastern arm of the Red Sea. If, then, these vessels built at Ezion-geber were to go to Tarshish, that place must lie on the eastern side of Palestine, instead of the western ; for we cannot sup- pose they circumnavigated Africa ; not because such a voj'age was impossible, but because it was long and tedious and not likely to be taken when a nearer and safer way to Tarshish laj' from the ports of the Pales- tinian coast. But in the parallel passage, found in 1 Kings xxii, 49, these vessels are described as '-ships of Tarshish" (merchant vessels), which were intended to go to Ophir, not to Tarshish. This removes the diffi- culty at once, for Ophir was in the East, and accounts for the fact that the tieet was built on the Red Sea, since it was an eastern, not a western, voyage which was intended. Tlie reference appears to be to the same eastern tra<le of which mention is made in x, 22, where we tind Hiram and Solomon importing from the East in ships of Tarshish, or merchantmen, gold and silver, ivory, apes and peacocks. We have not space to en- ter into the critical questions which this contrariety between the books of Kings and Chronicles suggests for consideration ; but we may remark that, in a case in which a diversity appears in the statements of these two authorities, no competently informed theologian could hesitate to give the preference to the former. The alternative of two places by the name of Tarshish, one in Spain and the other in India, was adopted by
Bochart, Phnleg, iii, 7, and has probably been the ordi- nary yew of those who have perceived a difficulty in the i)assages of the Chronicles; but the above recon- ciliation, which was first suggested by Vitringa, has been adopted by the acutest Biblical critics of our own time, such as Ue Wette, Inlrodudion to the Old Testa- ment (Parker's translation, Boston, 1«43), ii, 267 ; Winer, Bihlisches Reulworterbuch, s. v.; Gesenius, Thesaurus LiiKjmv Heh. et Chuld. s. v. ; and Ewakl, Geschivltte des Volkes Israel (1st ed.), iii, 76; and is acknowledged by Movers. Ueber die Chronikebi (1«34), p. 254, and Haver- nick, Spezielk Einleitung in das A lie Testament (1839), ii, 237.