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travelers, increasing fertility,cultivation, and civilization must have met the host as it
advanced into the Negeb. The Israelites werein fact nearing what they must have felt
home-ground - sacred to them by association with Abrahamand Isaac. For a little to
the north of Hormah are the wells of Rehoboth, Sitnah, and Beersheba,which
Abraham and Isaac had dug, the memory of which is to this day preserved in the
modernnames of Ruheibeh, Shutneh, and Bir Seba. Abraham himself had "journeyed
toward the Negeb,and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur," (Genesis 20:1) and Isaac
had followed closely in hisfootsteps. (Genesis 26:17-end) And of the next occupants
of the land, the Amorites, we find almostconstantly recurring mementoes, and
nowhere more distinctly than in the immediate neighborhood ofHormah. From Judges
1:17, we know that that city, or probably rather the fort commanding it, hadoriginally
borne the name of Zephath, which simply means "watch-tower." The name Hormah,
or"banning," was probably given it on a later occasion, when, after the attack of the
king of Arad,Israel had "vowed the vow" utterly to destroy the cities of the Canaanites
(Numbers 21:1-3). But, asDr. Rowlands and Canon Williams have shown, the name
Zephath has been preserved in the ruins ofSebaita, while Professor Palmer has
discovered, close by, the ancient "watch-tower," which was astrong fort on the top of a
hill commanding Sebaita. It is intensely interesting, amid the ruins of
laterfortifications, to come upon these primeval remains, which mark not only the
ancient site of Zephath,but may represent the very fort behind which the Amorites and
Canaanites defended themselvesagainst Israel, and whence they issued to this war. As
if to make it impossible to mistake this"mountain of the Amorites," the valley north of
Sebaita bears to this day the name Dheigat el'Amerin, or Ravine of the Amorites, and
the chain of mountains to the south-west of the fort that ofRas Amir, "head" or top "of
the Amorites."
Israel had presumed to go up into this mountain-top without the presence of Jehovah,
without theArk of the Covenant, and without Moses. Yesterday they had been taught
the lesson that theirseeming weakness would be real strength, if Jehovah were among
them. To-day they had in bitterexperience to find out this other and equally painful
truth - that their seeming strength was realweakness. Smitten and discomfited by their
enemies, they fled "even unto Hormah."
(^)