The Pulpit Commentary — Joshua — Section 332

pl1tce of the prophet Jonah. Now el-MeBh- "David's wars were fought with the Philis- hed, where the tomb of Jona.his still shown. tines," he continues, ''while the invaei0ns The Rabbinico.l writers o.nd the Onomo.sticon of the Syrians were directed to the neigh- mention this tro.dition. bourhood of Samaria." But here, again, he Ver. 14.-Compaeeeth It. The verb :i.oJ would aeem to have forgotten 1 Sam. xxix. ie hero used tro.neitively. The meo.ning is 1, 1 Kings xx. 26, 2 Kings xiii.17, 2ii, while tho.t the border makes o. curve round the he expressly admits that the great battles city of Ne1th. Neo.h seems to ho.ve been the of Gilboa and Megiddo, in which Saul and extreme eastern border. Methoar is sup• Josiah were defeated and met their deaths, posed to be the Pual participle, and has were fought here. And we have already been freely tro.nslated, " which is marked seen that twice did the Egyptians im-ade out," or, "which belongs to," Neo.h. But Syria by this plain. One of these invasions the passage is obscure. Knobel would alter took place while Moses was in Egypt, under the reading, in view of the grammatical Thothmes III. The other was the famous difficulty. Yet this, perhaps, ie not in- expedition of Rameses II. agitinst Syria, superable in view of eh. iii. 14 (see Gesen, a.bout the time of Deborah and Barak. If • Grammar,' sec. 108, 2. c.). Valley. '.i we add to these the victory of Gideon over (see note on eh. viii. 13 ; xv. 8). So in the Midianites and the overthrow of Sisera., ver. 27. we shall have reason to think that the epithet " the battle-field of Palestine " Ver. 16.-Beth-lehem. This na.me, sig- applied to this plain is not altogether mis- nifying the " house of brnad," would natu- placed, especially if, with a large number of rally enough be given to a place in a fertile critics, we regard the Book of Judith as situELtion. We are not to suppose that it founded on fact, but relating to events of was "Bethlehem. Ephratah, among the some other time than that of Nebuchad- thousands of Judah" (Micah v. 2). It is nezzar. "Well may it be fertile," exclaims now Beit-lELhm, about eight miles in a Mr. Bartlett (' From Egypt to Palestine; westei-ly direction from Nazareth. p. 478), "for it has drunk the blood of the Ver. 16.-The lnhertta.nce of the chlldren Midianite, the Philistine, the Jew, t be of Zebulun. It is strange that the beautiful Roman, the Babylonian, the Egyptian, the and fertile land occupied by the tribe of Frenchman, the Englishman, the Saracen, Zebulun does not appear to have brought and the Turk. It is a singular group to prosperity with it. Possibly the foct that summon up to the imagination, Gideon, the "lines " of this tribe had " fallen in Saul, and Jonathan, Deborah, Barak, and pleasant places," had tended to induce Sisera, Ahab, Jezebel, Jehu, Josiah, Omri, sloth. Certain it is that we hear but little and Azariah, Holofernes and Judith, Vespa- of this tribe in the after history of Israel. sian and Josephus, SeJac!in and the Knighta They were not, like Reuben, absent from Templa.r, Bonaparte and Kleber." The list the groat battle of Tabor, for there we read is a striking one. But certrun it is that the that, like Issachar, they "jeope.1·ded their plains of Jezreel have been noted as the lives unto the death " for their homes and highway of every conqueror who wished to liberties. Yet though they seem thence- make the fertile fields of PeJestine his own. forth to have slackened in their zeeJ, theirs The Ismelitish invasion eJone seems to have was a fair portion. It bordered on the slopes been decided elsewhere than on that plain, of Tabor, and seems (though the fact is not stretching as it does from the foot of Carmel mentioned here) to have extended to the in a south-easterly direction, and divided in Sea of GeJilee, as we may gather from the direction of Jordan by Mount Gilboa and Iso.. ix. 1. Little Hermon into three ,listinct branches, Ver. 18.-Jezreel The veJley (i'~V.) of in the midst of the southernmost and Jezreel, known in later Greek as the· plain most extensive of which sto.nds tLe famous of Esdraela or Esdraelon (Judith i. 8; vii. city of Jezreel- God's acre, or sowing- 2 ; 2 Mace. xii. 49) wo.s " the pe1·ennieJ ground as the name indicates. Here Barak battle-field of Po.Jestine from that time to and D~borah fell upon the hosts of J abin the present" (Cooper, • Egyptian Obelisks,' (Judg. iv. 14), descending suddenly from the p. 33). Lieut. Conder (' Quart. Pa.per, PeJ. heights of Tabor with l~,000_ men upon the Exp!. Fund,' Jan., 1673), however, takes vast and evidently und1sc1plined host that exception to this eto.tement. " The great lay in the plain. Here Gideon encountered bo.ttlcs of Joshua,'' he ee.ys, "were fought the vo.st host of the Midianites (Judg. vii. for to the south." We presume he would 12) who after laying waste the south ffi(lke o.n exception on behalf of the nation coa'ntry, finally encamped _in this ~ert_ile by the wo,ters of Merom, o.nd that he docs plo.in (accurately called i'~V m Judg. n. 33), not wish us to forget tho.t the majority and with their leaders Oreb and Zeeb, and of J oshuo.'s other " battles " wore sieges. thei.I- princes Zebllh and Zalmtmna, were 280 THE BOOK OF JOSHUA. [en. XIX, 1-51,