cua, the city of f Amos the prophet; and to this place adjoining is the city of Bethzacaria, in the way between Bethsura and Jerusalem, on whose hills adjoining the glorious gilt shields of Antiochus shined like lamps of fire in the eyes of the Jews. The city of 8 Bezek was also near unto Bethlehem, which Adoni-bezek commanded; who had, during his reign, tortured seventy kings, by cutting off the joints of their fingers and toes, and made them gather bread under his table; but at length the same end befell himself by the sons of h Juda, after they had taken him prisoner.

The rest of the cities in this part (most of them of no great estimation) we may pass by, until we come to the magnificent castle of Herodium, which Herod erected on a hill, mounting thereunto with 200 marble steps, exceeding beautiful and strong. And towards the Dead sea, and adjoining to the desert of Jeruel, between it and Tekoa, is that Clivus floridus, where in the time of Jehosaphat the Jews stood and looked on the Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites, massacring one another, when they had purposed to join against Juda; near which place is the valley of blessing, where the Jews, the fourth day after, solemnly came and blessed God for so strange deliverance.

Now the cities of Juda which border the Dead sea are these; Aduran, beautified by Roboam, and Tsohar, which the Vulgar calleth m Segor; so called, because Lot in his prayer for it urged that it was but a little one; whence it was called Tsohar, which signifieth a little one; when as the old name was Belah, as it is Gen. xiv. 2. In the Romans' times it had a garrison, and was called, as they say, Pannier; in Jerome's time Balezona. The Engaddi, or Hen-gaddi, first Asasenthamar; near unto which are the gardens of Balsamum, the best that the world had, called Opobalsamum; the most part of all which trees, Cleopatra,

f Amos i. I. 1 Macc. vi. 32. Joseph. Ant. 12. 14. 1 Macc. vi. 36. See in Manass. c. 7. sect. 7. §. 1. h Judg. i. 6, 7.

i Joseph. 14. Ant. 22. k 2 Chron. xx. 16, 26.

1 2 Chron. xi.

m Some call it Balsalisa and Vitula consternans. See in Gad. 10. §. 5. post principium in Haroher. Gen. xix. 20. Hieron. in Ose. Heb. Chatsatson-thamar. 2 Chron. xx. 2.

queen of Egypt, sent for out of Judæa; and Herod, who either feared or loved Anthony her husband, caused them to be rooted up, and presented unto her; which she replanted near Heliopolis in Egypt. This city was first taken by n Chedorlaomer, and the Amorites thence expelled. It was one of the most remarkable cities of Judæa, and one of the presidencies thereof.

The rest of the cities are many in the inland, and among them Jesrael; not that which was the city of Naboth, of which already; but another of the same name, the city of Achinoan, the wife of David, the mother of that Ammon whom Absalom slew: also, as some think, the city of P Amasa, Absalom's lieutenant, and the commander of his army. But this seemeth to be an error, grounded upon the nearness of the words Israel and Jesrael; and because 2 Sam. xvii. 25. Amasa's father is called a Jisraelite, who 1 Chron. ii. 17. is called an Ismaelite: indeed the Hebrew orthography sheweth, that Amasa's father is not said to be of the city Jesrael, but an Israelite in religion, though otherwise an Ismaelite.

In this tribe there were many high hills or mountains, as those of Engaddi upon the Dead sea, and the mountains of Juda, which begin to rise by Emaus, and end near Taphna; and these part Juda from Dan and Simeon. Of others which stand single, there is that of Hebron; at the foot whereof was that oak of Mamre, where the three angels appeared to Abraham, which 9 St. Jerome calleth a fir-tree; and saith, that it stood till the time of Constantine the younger. There is also that mountain, called Collis Achillæ, on the south side of Ziph; on the top whereof the great Herod, enclosing the old castle, erected by Jonathan Maccabæus, and called Massada, garnished it with seven and twenty high and strong towers; and therein left armour and furniture for an hundred thousand men, being, as it seemeth, a place unaccessible, and of incomparable strength.

n Gen. xiv. 7.

• 1 Reg. xxi.

P 2 Sam. xvii. 25.

a Hieron. in Loc. Heb. et Quæst. Heb. Joseph. 14. Ant. c. 20.

In the valley afterward called the Dead sea, or the lake Asphaltitis, this country had four cities, Adama, Sodom, Seboim, and Gomorrah, destroyed with fire from heaven for their unnatural sins.

SECT. IV.

The tribe of Reuben, and his borderers.

§. I.

The seats and bounds of Midian, Moab, and Ammon, part whereof the Reubenites won from Sehon, king of Hesbon.

On the other side of the Dead sea, Reuben the eldest of Jacob's sons inhabited, of whose children there were numbered at mount Sinai 46,000, who dying with the rest in the deserts, there remained to possess the land promised 43,700 bearing arms. But before we speak of these, or the rest that inhabited the east side of Jordan, something of their borderers; to wit, Midian, Moab, and Ammon, whose land in our writers are confusedly described, and not easily distinguished. And first, we are to remember, that out of Abraham's kindred came many mighty families; as, by Isaac and Jacob, the nation called Israel, and afterwards Jews; by Esau, or Edom, the Idumeans; by Ishmael, the eldest son of Abraham, the Ishmaelites; and by Keturah, his last wife, the Midianites. And again, by Lot, Abraham's brother's son, those two valiant nations of the Moabites and Ammonites: all which being but strangers in the land of Canaan, (formerly possessed by the Canaanites, and by the families of them descended,) these issues and alliances of Abraham, all but Jacob, whose children were bred in Egypt, inhabited the frontier places adjoining.

Esau and his sons held Idumæa, which bounded Canaan on the south. Ishmael took from the south-east part of the Dead sea; stretching his possession over all Arabia Petræa, and a part of Arabia the Desert, as far as the river of Tigris, from Sur to Havilah.

Moab took the rest of the coast of the Dead sea, leaving a part to Midian; and passing over Arnon, inhabited the

plains between Jordan and the hills of Abarim, or Arnon, as far north as Essebon, or Chesbon.

non.

r

Ammon sat down on the north-east side of Arnon, and possessed the tract from Rabba, afterwards Philadelphia, both within the mountains of Gilead, and without them as far forth as Aroer, though in Moses's time he had nothing left him in all that valley; for the Amorites had thrust him over the river of Jaboc, as they had done Moab over ArAs these nations encompassed sundry parts of Canaan, so the border between the river of Jaboc and Damascus was held by the Amorites themselves, with other mixed nations; all which territory on the east side of Jordan, and on the east side of the Dead sea, was granted by Moses to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh; whereof that part which Moab had was first possessed by the Emims, a nation of giants, weakened and broken by Chedorlaomer, after expulsed by the Moabites, as before remembered. That which the Ammonites held was the territory and ancient possession of the Zamzummins, or Zurai, who were also beaten at the same time by Chedorlaomer, Amraphel, and the rest; and by them an easy way of conquest was prepared for the Ammonites.

Now where it is written, that Arnon was the border of Moab, the same is to be understood according to the time when Moses wrote. For then had Sehon, or his ancestor,' beaten the Moabites out of the plain countries between Abarim and Jordan, and driven them thence from Hesbon over Arnon; and this happened not long before Moses's arrival upon that border, when Vaheb governed the Moabites. For he that ruled Moab, when Moses passed Arnon, was not the son of Vaheb; but his name was Balac, the son of Zippor. And it may be, that those kings were elective, as the Edumeans anciently were.

Now all that part of Moab between Arnon and Jordan, as far north as Essebon, was inhabited by Reuben. And when Israel arrived there out of Egypt it was in the possession of Sehon, of the race of Canaan, by Amo

r Josh. xiii. • Numb. xxi. 24. RALEGH, HIST. WORLD. VOL. II.

Deut. iii.

reus; and therefore did Jephthah, the judge of Israel, justly defend the regaining of those countries against the claim of the Ammonites; because (as he alleged) Moses found them in the possession of the Amorites, and not in the hands of Moab, or Ammon, who, saith " Jephthah, had three hundred years time to recover them, and did not: whence he inferreth, that they ought not to claim them

now.

u

And lest any should marvel why the Ammonites in Jephthah's time should make claim to these countries; whereas Moses in the place, Numb. xxi. 26. rather accounts them to have been the ancient possession of the Moabites than of ⚫ the Ammonites; it is to be noted, that Deut. iii. 11. when it is said, that the iron bed of Og was to be seen at Rabbath, the chief city of the Ammonites; it is also signified, that much of the land of Og, which the Israelites possessed, was by him, or his ancestors, got from the Ammonites, as much as Sehon's was from the Moabites.

And as the Canaanite nations were seated so confusedly together, that it was hard to distinguish them; so also were the sons of × Moab and Ammon, Midian, Amalek, and Ismael. Yet the reason seemeth plain enough why Ammon commanded in chief in Jephthah's time; for sometimes the one nation, sometimes the other of all those borderers acquired the sovereignty: and again, that one part of the land which Gad held, namely within the mountains of Galaad, or Gilead, and as far south as Aroer, belonged to the Ammonites. And therefore, taking advantage of the time, they then sought to recover it again. Yet at such time as Moses overthrew Sehon at Jahaz, the Ammonites had lost to the Amorites all that part of their possession which lay about Aroer; and between it and Jaboc; Sehon and Og, two kings of the Amorites, having displanted both Moab and Ammon of all within the mountains. For it is

u

Judges xi.

* Josh. xiii. 25. Junius notes, that the one half of the land of Hammon, which in this place of Joshua is said to have been given to the Gadites,

was taken first from the Ammonites by Sehon; but the place Deut. iii. II. proveth, that as well Og as Sehon had gotten lands out of the hands of the Ammonites.