name, and it stops not short of a navigable frontier every where, and on every side. The longitude of the Nile is 30° 2',-that of the Euphrates, as it flows through the Persian Gulf, 48° 26', or a difference of nearly eighteen degrees and a half, or more than eleven hundred miles. So large is the space comprehended, along the southern frontier, from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates, from the east side to the west side, or in the same latitude. On the northern extremity of the land, the range of Amanus, from the river Euphrates, to the uttermost sea, or extremity of the Mediterranean, scarcely exceeds one hundred miles. In round numbers the average breadth of the promised land would thus be six hundred miles, which multiplied by its length, five hundred, gives an area of 300,000 square miles, or more than that of any kingdom or empire of Europe, Russia alone excepted. The jesting Frenchman is brought down from his boasting, when it is seen that a region half the extent of France would need to be added to its size, before the land of "the great nation" would equal, in superficial extent, that land which the Lord gave to the seed of Israel. It exceeds, in the aggregate amount of square miles, the territories of ten kingdoms of Europe, Prussia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Wirtemberg, Denmark, Sardinia, and Greece, and its relative proportion to Great Britain and Ireland is 300 to 118, or more than two and a half to one. Were the average breadth to be reckoned at 500, instead of the medium 600 miles, which, from the inequality of the sides, may be nearer the truth, the superficial extent of the promised land alone would still exceed that of the largest kingdom of Europe. But Israel, extensive as are its bounds, is not destined to stand alone. Its mightiest adversaries of old shall " be its servants. No prince but of Israel shall rule in Egypt or Assyria. The former country will add to Israel's dominion, or subservient domain, an area of 150,000 square miles. The latter, including Mesopotamia, and stretching beyond the Tigris as far as the mountains of Media," and from the mountains of Armenia to the Persian Gulf, leaves no region that shall not own immediate fealty to the kingdom of Israel, from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the borders of Persia, and the vicinity of the Caspian. Such is the power of the word of the living God; such the liberality of his gifts to the people whom He chose, were they his own by another covenant than that which they have broken; and such, in topographical relations alone, is the provision that is made, as thus revealed, for the completion of the promise, that Israel shall finally be a blessing in the midst of the earth. Thus saith the Lord, "It shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honour before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them; and they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all the prosperity that I procure unto it." There is a striking analogy between the word and the works of God, ever traceable by those who search the Scriptures, and regard the operation of his hands. But the one and the other seem here strikingly to cohere. The Lord hath given the earth to the sons of men, as He hath set the bounds of their habitation. But He formed Israel for his glory, and chose them as his peculiar people; and peculiar too is the land which He assigned them, even as respects its borders. The Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, form on the west, the south, and the east, borders of a land which, but for 1 Gibbon's Hist. vol. iv. p. 166. Jer. xxxiii. 9. these inland seas, would be wholly encircled by Asia, Africa, and Europe, and shut out from all direct communication with the Pacific and Atlantic, and the lesser oceans of the globe. The river of Egypt to the Mediterranean, and that sea from the mouth of the Nile to the estuary of the Orontes, and the Euphrates from the foot of Amanus to the Persian Gulf, leave not the smallest portion of the west side, or of the east side, that is not actually or virtually a navigable coast to the extent on both sides of two thousand miles; while, on the north, the intermediate barrier of Amanus, at the breadth of less than one hundred, renders the land a garden enclosed. The hand of the Lord, who hath laid the foundations of the earth, and made the sea, and the dry land, is in all this; and here, though not here alone, He has magnified his word above all his name. The first glance at the borders of Israel, when they are looked at in the latitude assigned them by a divine and irrepealable decree, may show that they were set in subserviency to the final end, as declared, from the beginning, to be accomplished by the Lord, for which Israel was set apart from the nations, and not numbered among them, so that, as assuredly as their covenanted land shall be their everlasting possession, all the families of the earth shall be blessed in the seed of Jacob. Separated as Israel is from other lands, such are its borders, that it has unequalled freedom of access to all. But, without here entering on such a theme, it behoves us first to consider how the land is goodly as well as large; and how, notwithstanding all the curses that have come upon it, it is still fitted for becoming, as described in Scripture, a pleasant, delightsome, goodly, and glorious land, "the glory of all lands," the heritage of a people greatly blessed of the Lord. CHAPTER III. NATURAL FERTILITY AND ANCIENT POPULOUSNESS OF THE LAND Ere ever the Israelites had entered on the possession of any portion of their inheritance, Moses declared unto them, The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land; a land of brooks of water, of fountains, and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil-olive and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. The land whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven; a land which the Lord thy God careth for the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.? And it is otherwise described as a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oilolive and of honey. I chose Israel; I lifted up mine hand unto them, to bring them forth of the land of Egypt into a land that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands.* When the Israelites first entered into their promised possession, before passing the Jordan, numerous were the cities and vast the spoil that fell at once into their hands, in the day when the Lord began to put the dread of them upon the nations that are under the whole hea 1 Deut. viii. 7-9. 32 Kings xviii. 32. 2 Ibid. xi. 11, 12. • Ezek. xx. 6. ven, who should hear the report of them, and tremble and be in anguish because of them. When the iniquity of the Amorites was full, and all in Israel, above twenty years old, who had come out of Egypt, and had trespassed in the wilderness, had been buried there, it was given them to know that the Lord, though he would not clear the guilty, remembered his covenant with their fathers; the promise that had seemed to linger was about to be fulfilled, the word came from the Lord that they had compassed Mount Seir long enough, and they were commanded to turn northward and to begin to possess, that they might inherit the land. They entered it not like a colony taking possession of an uncultivated, unpeopled, and defenceless region. But the Lord gave them a land for which they did not labour, and cities which they built not they dwelt in; of the vineyards and oliveyards which they planted not, did they eat.' Sihon, king of the Amorites, and all his people came out against them to fight at Jahaz. But the Lord delivered him unto them; and they took all his cities, and dispeopled his kingdom of its former inhabitants, and took the cattle and all the spoil of the cities for a prey. Og, king of Bashan, came out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei, and shared the fate of the other Amoritish king. They took all his cities at that time: there was not a city which they took not from them, threescore cities, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. All these cities were fenced with high walls, gates, and bars; beside unwalled towns a great many. All the cities were taken at that time from the river of Arnon unto Mount Hermon, all the cities of the plain, and all Gilead, and all Bashan, unto Salach, and Edrei, cities of the king 1 Deut. vi. 11; Josh. xxiv. 13. 2 Numb. xxi. 23-26. |