[332] Gen. xiv. 5; 1 Macc. v. In the days of Eusebius and Jerome (4th century) there were two places of the name: one of them doubtless the present Tell Ashtara south of El-Merkez, the other distant from that fourteen Roman miles.
[333] Along this ridge ran, and still runs, one of the most important highways to the East, that from Beth-Shan by Gadera to Edrei. About seven miles east from Gadera lies a village, Ibdar, "with a good spring and some ancient remains" (Schumacher, _N. Ajlun_, 101). Lo-Debar is mentioned in 2 Sam. ix. 45; xvii. 27; and doubtless the Lidebir of Josh. xiii. 26 on the north border of Gilead is the same.
[334] With the article, an unusual form of the title. LXX. here κύριος τῶν δυνάμεων.
[335] 2 Kings xiv. 25. The Torrent of the 'Arabah can scarcely be the Torrent of the 'Arabim of Isa. xv. 7 for the latter was outside Israel's territory, and the border between Moab and Edom. The LXX. render _Torrent of the West_, τῶν δυσμῶν.
[336] Here there is evidently a gap in the text. The LXX. insert καὶ ὑπολειφθήσονται ὁι κατάλοιποι; perhaps therefore the text originally ran _and the survivors die_.
[337] Or _uncle_--that is, a distant relative, presumably because all the near ones are dead.
[338] Literally _bones_.
[339] LXX. τοῖς προεστηκόσι: evidently in ignorance of the reading or the meaning.
[340] The burning of a body was regarded, as we have seen (Amos ii. 1), as a great sacrilege; and was practised, outside times of pestilence only in cases of great criminals: Lev. xx. 14; xxi. 9; Josh. vii. 25. Doughty (_Arabia Deserta_, 68) mentions a case in which, in Medina, a Persian pilgrim was burned to death by an angry crowd for defiling Mohammed's tomb.
[341] The Assyrian inscriptions record at least three--in 803, 765, 759.
[342] As in Psalm lxxviii. 50. הִסְגִּיר, to give up, is so seldom used absolutely (Deut. xxxii. 30 is poetry and elliptic) that we may well believe it was followed by words signifying to what the city was to be given up.
[343] Pp. 141 f.