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OBSERVATION L.

Hollow Rocks and Caves, Places of Defence.

WHEN the Grand Signior ordered the Bashaw of Damascus to make the Emir Faccardine a prisoner; Faccardine shut himself up in the hollow of a great rock, with a small number of his officers, where the Bashaw besieged him some months, who was on the point of blowing up the rock, when the Emir surrendered on some conditions, Nov. 12, 1634. A lively comment, I have always thought this, on Sampson's retiring, after various exploits against the Philistines, to the top of the rock Etam; and on his surrendering himself afterwards into the hands of the men of Judah, sent by the Philistines to take him.

Nor is this to be supposed a kind of defence which Sampson and Faccardine made use of, merely from their being unable, on the accout of a surprise, to recover some place of great safety; they were considered as very strong places, and made use of frequently in that country in the time of the Croisades, by those Christians who went from the West, and were perfectly well acquainted with the manner of fortifying places in Europe in that age. One of those places, which the history of the Croisades mentions, was in the territory of Sidon :

P Vide Gesta Dei per Francos, p. 944, 946, 962, 1026.

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but in the days of the Prophets, Edom seems to have been distinguished from the other Eastern nations by this sort of fastnesses, Obad. v. 3, 4. Jer. xlix, 16.

The caves, the rocks, the high places, and the dens, which we read of 1 Samuel xiii. 6, and Judges vi. 2, seem to have been at least some of them, places of much less strength, answerable to those places to which people retired in the time of the Croisades for a little shelter, but out of which they were soon forced safety in them being rather to be hoped for from their secrecy than their strength.

One of the writers in the Gesta Dei per Francos speaks of the inhabitants of the region called Traconitis, as usually living in caves;' but I do not remember that the Scriptures any where directly refer to such habitations, at least I presume that is not the meaning of the Edomites making their nests on high, which the Prophets Obadiah and Jeremiah speak of.

Remarks of this kind, in general, have been frequently made, I am very sensible; all that I pretend to in this article, is the illustrating some passages a little more particularly than has been done before me.

P. 405, 734, 781.

P. 895.

OBSERVATION LI.

Tents usually pitched near Fountains.

THE Archbishop of Tyre tells us, that the Christian kings of Jerusalem used to assemble their forces at a fountain between Nazareth and Sepphoris, which was greatly celebrated on that account. This being looked upon to be nearly the centre of their kingdom, they could from thence, consequently, march most commodiously to any place where their presence was wanted. He mentions also another fountain near a town called little Gerinum, which, he says, was the ancient Jezreel; near this Saladine pitched his camp, for the benefit of its waters," while Baldwin king of Jerusalem had, as usual, assembled his army at the first mentioned place.

This solicitude in the princes of these sultry climates to pitch near fountains: this mention that is made of one by Jezreel; this custom of assembling their armies in the centre of their kingdom; all serve to illustrate the 1 Sam. xxix. 1, which speaks of the encampment of Israel at a fountain considerably distant from the proper country of the Philistines, just before the fatal battle which concluded the reign of Saul. If the Philistines had extended their territories at this time to Mount Carmel;" if

Gesta Dei, &c. p. 991, 1027, 1036, 1037.

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they were wont to make their irruptions into the land of Israel that way, in that age; or if Saul had received intelligence of such a design at this time; these circumstances, or any of them, would farther explain the propriety of this pitching by the fountain of Jezreel: but what William of Tyre says about the managements of the Christian kings of Jerusalem of his days, and of their predecessors, is alone a more clear illustration of this passage than commentators have furnished us with.

ממקור

And perhaps this may serve to explain Psalm lxviii. 26, Bless ye God in the congregations, even the LORD, from the fountain of Israel, from the vein of Israel, mimmekor yisrael. The exact word of the original, which is translated congregations no makehaloth, occurs no where else, I think, in the Scripture ;* but a word derived from the same root, and consequently near akin to it, means the assembly of Israel gathered together for war, Judges xx. 2, Ch. xxi. 8, 1 Sam. xvii. 47, Gen. xlix. 6. Water must have been as necessary for those ancient armies of Israel, as for the less numerous ones of the Christian kings of Jerusalem; it is natural therefore to suppose they used to assemble near some plentiful fountain, and as natural to suppose they generally made use of one and the same fountain, as that the princes

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Though the feminine plural form of the noun ap kahal occurs no where else in the Bible, yet the noun and all forms of the verb occur in many scores of places, and is the usual word by which assemblies religious and civil are designated in the Bible. EDIT.

of the cross should; whether that between Sepphoris and Nazareth, or that by Jezreel, or any other, it nothing concerns us here to determine. That place must have been well known in those days, and might, in the language of poetry, be as well called the fountain of Israel, as to be marked out by its particular name, Bless GoD in your warlike assemblies, even the LORD from the fountain of Israel, the stated place of your rendezvous; for the LORD shall bless you in your consultations there, and you may march from thence with songs of praise, and confident hopes of success."

There are other places in the Gesta Dei per Francos, and other places in the Scripture," which speak of the pitching near fountains: might not an exact account of the fountains of this country serve to settle many points of geography, relating to the places where the armies of the Old Testament times encamped?

OBSERVATION LII.

The great Necessity of Fountains, and Reservoirs of Water in the East,

As a plentiful fountain was very necessary, in that country, in those places in which they were wont to rendezvous; so the want of water must have been very terrible in any after-enSee 2 Chron. xx. 21. * P. 982, 993, 1027. So the army of Ish-bosheth sat down by the pool of Gibeon, 2 Sam. ii. 12, 13.

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