an equal temperature (about 94°); and it rushes, in a southerly direction, with extreme velocity into the Dead Sea. The valley itself, in which, during the summer, an oppressive temperature prevails, is densely covered with canes, aspens, and palm-trees. III. THE SHEMITES. VERS. 21-31. Our list passes, lastly, over to those branches of the human family, which form the chief interest of the Biblical narrative, and for whose sake principally this elaborate pedigree has been inserted. That this was the clearly defined end of the author, is obvious from the introductory remark, that Shem was "the father of all the children of Eber"; he now hastens, with an almost impatient step, to the glorious ancestors of the Hebrews, after having assigned to them their accurate position among the other nations of the earth. Shem is significantly called the elder brother of Japheth, not of Ham, because he should not even be compared with the curse-laden and frivolous man; and although it was a historical fact, too generally adopted to be concealed, that the southern regions of the globe were peopled before the northern and western parts, and that the Hamites were more primitive than the Japhethites: the highest antiquity was, with universal consent and great probability, ascribed to the central districts inhabited by Shem. 1. ELAM not improperly occupies the first place among the Shemites. He represents the vast district of Elymais, which long maintained a respectable position by the side of Assyria and Media, though it temporarily obeyed the former, and Babylonia; it was governed by its own kings, and formed a most powerful commonwealth; it was the only nation which, far from being subdued by the Parthians, imposed a tribute upon them; it is, both by Biblical and profane writers, celebrated for its prowess in battle and its skill in archery, though it was neither deficient in the ability nor the perseverance for husbandry; and it was even in the time of the Persian empire so powerful, that the whole country bore the name of Elam, and the capital, Susa, belonged to its territory. It is difficult to fix its exact boundaries, especially as the various classical writers differ widely in their statements; no doubt, because the extent of the district changed in different times, according to the success of their arms, or the invasions of mightier conquerors. In our passage, where it is distinguished from Assyria as well as from Media (ver. 2), it most probably embraces the countries in the south and east of these two empires, down to and along the Persian Gulf, and, no doubt, comprising the territory of the later kingdom of Persia, which name is not mentioned in our list, and which Elam here represents. That it, however, does not include Babylonia, needs scarcely to be remarked. II. About ASSHUR see pp. 178 and 174; from the remarks at the latter place, it will be understood with what justice or propriety Asshur was included among the Shemites, whilst its principal towns were peopled by Hamites (vers. 11, 12). III. ARPHAXAD is here evidently also intended as the representative of a nation, not as a mere mythic person, denoting some abstract historical fact, as, for instance, the "point of separation of the languages." In connection with Elam and Asshur, nothing is more natural than to point to the northern district of Assyria, Arrhaphachitis, which adjoins Media, and extends chiefly on the southern side of the Gordyæan moun tains. The direct descendants of Arphaxad are the children of Eber, or the Hebrews, who is the father of Peleg, but between the two former intervenes Salah as the connecting link. We have here the only instance of a genealogical descent to the fourth generation; but it is enough to trace the apparent course of the progeny of Arphaxad. From the boundaries of Armenia, his immediate descendants, the Salahites, spread along the eastern side of the Tigris, and in the mountains of the Median highlands; a part of their population gradually wandered and settled beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, whilst the chief stock of the latter, in their turn, no doubt urged on, and accompanied by, a general commotion of nations, was the origin of extensive and distant colonies in the wide tracts of Arabia, to the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Mediterranean Sea in the west. This progress of nations is so natural, that we feel no hesitation whatever to declare the names of our verses as those of authentic historical tribes, in the sense, however, explained in the introductory remarks to this chapter; they were intended, and, at least, believed as such by the author of our list. The name, "the children of Eber," is here attributed to all those who crossed the rivers of Mesopotamia, and thence proceeded westward or southward; it was, therefore, originally not limited to the Israelites, who were, indeed, in their intercourse with foreign nations, invariably called Hebrews, that is, those who came from the other side of the river Euphrates, but who properly bore this name only as members of a larger family of nations; whilst they applied to themselves the distinctive, or theocratic, appellation of Israelites. However, the usage of their idiom gradually restricted the word Hebrews also to their tribes alone, a change easily explained by their isolation from kindred nations; and hence the name of Hebrews is, in the Old Testament, applied to no other people. The younger brother of Eber is Joktan, the reputed ancestor of Arabic tribes occupying large districts. Although the extent of the territory peopled by his descendants is stated with some accuracy (ver. 20), it is only to the attention of modern travellers that we owe the information, that, about a three days' journey north of Nedsheran, are a province and a town of Kachtan, which is the ancient Arabic name for Joktan. It is no matter of surprise, that the zeal of the Arabians was busy to fix and to enlarge the traditions concerning the ancestor of their chief tribes. They assert, with confidence, that Kachtan is the father of all the pure and genuine Arabians of Yemen, through his eldest son Jareb, whose grandson, Saba, gave birth to the future founders of the various noble communities, whilst they derive from Adnan the origin of the mixed, or later tribes. 1. About the eldest son of Joktan, Almodad, it is impossible to give any decided opinion, although the word itself betrays its origin by the Arabic article. 2. Sheleph represents, perhaps, the Salapeni, mentioned by Ptolemy as an inland tribe of Arabia Felix, in the south-east of the present Medina. 3 and 5. Hazarmaveth and Hadoram, appear to belong to the same district; the former is the ancestor of those Chatramotitae, who settled in the south of Arabia, near the Arabian Gulf; here incense and myrrh grow in luxurious abundance; and the capital, Sabotah, was the general market for these precious products. The inhabitants gradually acquired considerable wealth, and they were reckoned among the four most important nations of Arabia. There is still a fertile district, the extent of which is differently stated, of the name of Hadramaut. The inhabitants, who are of a very active disposition, carry on a lively commerce in frankincense, myrrh, gum, and other products; their language is a dialect materially different from that spoken in Yemen. The Adramitae, or descendants of Hadoram, inhabited a part of the same province, especially on the coast, and participated in the same lucrative spice-trade. 4. As Jerah is mentioned between the two last territories, it must undoubtedly be situated in their vicinity; and we, therefore, readily adopt the opinion that Jerah (signifying the Moon) is the coast and mountain of the Moon, in the neighbourhood of Hadramaut. If the Hebrew word is a translation of the Arabic name, or if, perhaps, the reverse is the case, this is no more than almost all languages have done in similar instances. 6. The name Uzal, as Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, was originally called — and, perhaps, still traceable in its present suburb Oseir, chiefly occupied by about 2,000 Jews-was in use till at least the sixth century of the present era. It was one of the oldest commercial districts of Arabia, and the natives themselves attribute to Sanaa an almost fabulous antiquity. It stood in lively intercourse with Tyre, and had, perhaps, its own port, Javan. In this case, it is more than probable that they extended their maritime expeditions to India; from whence they exported cinnamon, cassia, and perhaps manufactured iron, although they appear to have excelled themselves in the last named article. Sanaa is situated on a plateau 4,000 feet above the level of the sea; the air is most salubrious, and an almost equal temperature pervades during summer and winter; the rain, which falls within the months from June to August, descends generally during the night; but the district not unfrequently suffers from protracted draughts, and, in consequence, from fearful famines. The inhabitants are still celebrated for the manufacture of certain beautiful stuffs. 7, 8, 9. Diklah, Obal, and Abimael, are no more to be ascertained with any degree of certainty; although Diklah has conjecturally been taken for the Minaei (near Mecca), a region rich in palm-trees, or, with scarcely any probability, for the tribes at the mouth of the Tigris; Obal for the Avalites, on the eastern coast of Africa, near Babel-Mandeb; and Abimael for the Mali, whose very name is doubtful. The frequently shifting tribes of Arabia defy our identification, the more as they seldom leave lasting monuments of their stay, and their earliest written documents which have reached us are considerably later than the beginning of the Christian era. 10. About the Sabæans, see p. 171. 11. The incredible fluctuations which have prevailed, and still exist, concerning the locality of Ophir, are indeed astonishing, if we consider the copious and almost unmistakeable Biblical statements. Our present passage alone is sufficient to decide its general situation. It cannot be sought in any other country but in Arabia; for the tribes of Joktan are, without any exception, Arabians, and the boundaries within which they lived are distinctly stated (in ver. 30); if Tarshish lies beyond Greece, and Babylon beyond Cush, their distant position is sufficiently clear from the context; whereas, both in the notions and the language of the ancients, Joktanites and Arabians were synonymous. Ophir is here mentioned between Sheba and Havilah, the situation of which, in Arabia, is undisputed; all difficulties which have been found in the Arabic position of Ophir are artificial or trifling; the goods which King Solomon, assisted by the Tyrian monarch, Hiram, and his famous mariners, imported from Ophir, and which consisted of gold and silver, of precious stones, ivory, and sandal-wood, of apes and peacocks, were either native products of eastern Arabia, or were, from India, brought to those parts, either by an active caravan or coast trade, to be carried to Egypt or Syria; and Arabians as well as Phoenicians engaged in these remunerative pursuits. If at present these districts do not yield the precious metals, because the mines are either exhausted or neglected, it would be arbitrary and fanciful to oppose a mere denial to the unanimous testimony of profane and sacred writers concerning their former abundance in Arabia; the gold of Ophir was particularly plentiful; it was so much esteemed, that the word Ophir alone gradually assumed the meaning of purest gold; and the prodigious wealth of Solomon was chiefly derived from that source; the name itself is Arabic, and signifies the opulent country; and the existence of peacocks there cannot be disproved; and although ivory and sandal-wood were chiefly, if not exclusively, found in India, they were at least equally accessible from Ophir; the notice in the Books of Kings and of Chronicles, that the ships of Solomon went to Ophir every three years, can by no means be used as an argument against so neighbouring a land as Arabia; for it is not even necessary to point to the extreme slowness of ancient navigation along the coast, especially in the dangerous waters of the Arabic Gulf, or to the incessant winds which, in the northern part of the Red Sea, blow nine months almost constantly downwards, and, in the southern part, as long upwards, whilst they are changeable in the middle; or to suppose, that the ships of Solomon had to wait in Ophir for fresh arrivals of cargo from India: those passages in the historical books state simply, that between one voyage and the other intervened a period of three years; how long the ships remained in the port of Eziongeber to be refitted, and, perhaps, to be filled with export goods, it was unnecessary to add; and we have other notices which seem to prove an annual journey to Ophir and back. It is, therefore, undoubted that Ophir was an Arabian district, either on the southern or south-eastern coast. 12. About Havilah, see p. 170. 13. Jobab is, according to the etymology, a district in Arabia Deserta; but more than this we are unable to ascertain. The Hebrew author is not satisfied with enumerating the brotherly tribes of the Joktanites individually and separately; he cannot dismiss them without describing their abodes as a whole, and as a continuous country; and he does this with an accuracy which is a new proof of his extensive information, as well as his carefulness. The Arabians are said to have dwelt "from Mesha towards Sephar to the mountain of the cast." We are, fortunately, at present enabled to fix these three localities with a probability almost amounting to certainty. Before the Tigris discharges its floods into the Persian Gulf, it divides itself, at the confluence of the Karun (Pasitigris) and the Shat-al-Arab, into two branches, and forms the island Mesene, at once a river- and a sea-island. This is the Mesha of our text. It had its own rulers, and was even, in later times, not without political influence. It was of great importance for the commerce of the Euphrates and of the Persian Gulf, and for the possession of the coastdistricts. The boundaries of Arabia extend, then, from the extreme north-western point of the Persian Gulf towards Sephar. Between the port of Mirbat and cape Sadjir, and belonging to the province of Hadramaut, along the coast of the Indian ocean, and a little inland, are a number of villages called Tsafar, or, by the natives, Isfar; and near one of them, in Belid or Harikam, are the magnificent ruins of the ancient Sephar, once the seat of Himyaritic kings, and boasting primeval antiquity. The line indicated by our text runs, therefore, from north to south and south-west, till it reaches "the mountains of the east," that is, that range of peaks which is known under the name of the mountains of Nedshd, and which intersects central Arabia, in an almost unbroken line, from the vicinity of Mecca and Medinah, to the Persian Gulf. These limits are comprehensive enough to include Sheba and Havilah, Uzal and Ophir. IV. The fourth son of Shem is LUD. The enumeration of the nations of the Shemites is evidently more systematic than that of the other great branches of the human family; the progress from Elam to Asshur and Arphaxad is geographically so continuous, that we must suppose a similar regularity in the advance to Lud and Aram. And yet we can scarcely avoid identifying Lud with the Lydians, who were originally called Ludi. But Lydia lies in the distant west; there is, therefore, a sudden and unprepared step over the whole of Asia west of the Tigris, as far as the Ægean sea. But the history of Asia Minor is here sufficient to remove the difficulty and to decide the dilemma. The tract of land between the rivers Hermus and Mæander, which formed later the chief part of Lydia, was originally peopled by a Tyrrhenian or Pelasgian race, the Maonians, under which name alone its inhabitants are mentioned by Homer. In the eighth century before Christ, however, a tribe which ancient writers describe as wholly different in descent, invaded the land from the east, and subdued the Mæonians. These were the Lydians. For some time after this conquest, both nations are mentioned promiscuously; but the governing race of the Lydians obtained gradually the preponderance so completely, that the land was called Lydia instead of Mæonia, and its original inhabitants either merged in the strangers, or retired to the northern parts of the river Hermus, where, even in later times, they formed distinct communities. The original abode of the Lydians cannot, therefore, on the whole be held to be doubtful; no tradition represents them as invaders from the sea; their language was totally different from that of the Greeks, who called it like that of their kinsmen, the Carians, a barbarous tongue; and the earliest historical reminiscences connect even the first Mæonian dynasty with Assyria. They were, then, from choice or necessity, induced to leave the southern parts of the highlands of Armenia to find new homes by force of arms; for the ancient Lydians were an extremely brave and warlike nation, renowned especially for their excellent cavalry, before the despotic and infamous policy of Cyrus converted a nation of warriors into a tribe of dancers and singers; but even under the Persian dominion they formed the most important satrapy of Asia Minor; and the fertility of their plains, and the excellence of their climate, secured ease to their lives, and cheerfulness to their character. v. The ARAMAEANS, or the descendants of ARAM, as distinguished both from the Babylonians and Assyrians, were supposed to have chiefly inhabited the northern part of Mesopotamia, which was, accordingly, called "Aram of the two rivers," above the Median Wall; further, the districts westward as far as Syria, which, thence, bore the name of "Aram of Damascus," though this appellation was originally only applied to the immediate territory around that town; they spread, also, beyond the Euphrates, in many parts of Arabia Deserta, and we find their traces in Aram-Maachah, in the east of the Jordan, near Bashan; in Aram-Beth-Rechob, near Lachish, or Dan, in northern Palestine; and besides various other towns, in the mighty commonwealth of Aram-Zoba, probably between the Euphrates and Orontes, north-east of Damascus. Aramaa was, therefore, understood to comprise the wide territories between the Tigris and the Syrian coast of the Mediterranean, and from the Taurus, indefinitely southward down to the Arabian tribes. But frequently even the southern districts of Mesopotamia are included in that designation, which, indeed, in accordance with its etymological meaning of high-land, was variously attributed to different mountainous or hilly regions, in opposition either to the low-lands of Canaan, or to the plains or fields of Aram, which were other names for Mesopotamia. In our list, therefore, not the whole of this country is assigned to the Aramæans; for, whilst the southern districts were inhabited by Cushite settlers, the northern parts were peopled by tribes which had probably immigrated from the north, and whose language and notions proved them to be original kinsmen of the Israelites. The Aramaic idioms, the Chaldee and Syriac, belong to the stem of the Shemitic languages, and the variations which they show from the Hebrew, imply dialectic rather than fundamental differences, sufficiently accounted for by the climatical and social conditions, and by the foreign influences to which Aramaa was exposed; at a later period, Hebrew received no inconsiderable Aramaic tincture; the Aramæan language was even spoken by Assyrian officers; and it was used by the Persian kings in public documents. Nor did the political relations between the Hebrews and Arameans show protracted national animosity; for, although David combated against, and defeated the powerful king Hadadeser of Aram-Zoba, his successor entertained friendly connections with the growing commonwealth of Damascus; till both were forced under the Assyrian yoke. The sons of Aram are: 1. Uz. The position of the land of Uz, which is immortalized by the Book of Job, may, with some accuracy, be determined from the following facts. It lies in the vicinity of the nomadic Sabæans, of the marauding Chaldeans, and of the Idumæan town Teman, about five miles from Petra, the birth-place or residence of the chief friend of Job, but yet not belonging to the district of Idumæa, although Edomites later conquered, or, at least, inhabited it. It occupied, therefore, a tract of the Deserted Arabia, between the territories of the Idumæans and the Euphrates. That a country lying so far to the south, should be brought into genealogical connection with Aram, will not surprise those who consider the great, and, to the south, almost indefinite, ex |