Smith's Bible Dictionary

as being nearer the arid desert and farther removed from the drainage of the mountains, is drier
and less productive than the north. The tract below Hebron, which forms the link between the hills
of Judah and the desert, was known to the ancient Hebrews by a term originally derived from its
dryness—Negeb. This was the south country. As the traveller advances north of this tract there
is an improvement; but perhaps no country equally cultivated is more monotonous, bare or
uninviting in its aspect than a great part of the highlands of Judah and Benjamin during the larger
portion of the year. The spring covers even those bald gray rocks with verdure and color, and fills
the ravines with torrents of rushing water; but in summer and autumn the look of the country from
Hebron up to Bethel is very dreary and desolate. At Jerusalem this reaches its climax. To the west
and northwest of the highlands, where the sea-breezes are felt, there is considerably more vegetation,
Hitherto we have spoken of the central and northern portions of Judea. Its eastern portion—a tract
some nine or ten miles in width by about thirty-five in length, which intervenes between the centre
and the abrupt descent to the Dead Sea—is far more wild and desolate, and that not for a portion
of the year only, but throughout it. This must have been always what it is now—an uninhabited
desert, because uninhabitable. No descriptive sketch of this part of the country can be complete
which does not allude to the caverns, characteristic of all limestone districts, but here existing in
astonishing numbers. Every hill and ravine is pierced with them, some very large and of curious
formation—perhaps partly natural, partly artificial—others mere grottos. Many of them are
connected with most important and interesting events of the ancient history of the country.
Especially is this true of the district now under consideration. Machpelah, Makkedah, Adullam
En-gedi, names inseparably connected with the lives, adventures and deaths of Abraham, Joshua,
David and other Old-Testament worthies, are all within the small circle of the territory of Judea.
The bareness and dryness which prevail more or less in Judea are owing partly to the absence of
wood, partly to its proximity to the desert, sad partly to a scarcity of water arising from its distance
from the Lebanon. But to this discouraging aspect there are some important exceptions. The valley
of Urtas, south of Bethlehem contains springs which in abundance and excellence rival even those
of Nablus the huge “Pools of Solomon” are enough to supply a district for many miles round them;
and the cultivation now going on in that Neighborhood shows whet might be done with a soil
which required only irrigation and a moderate amount of labor to evoke a boundless produce. It
is obvious that in the ancient days of the nation, when Judah and Benjamin possessed the teeming
population indicated in the Bible, the condition and aspect of the country must have been very
different. Of this there are not wanting sure evidences. There is no country in which the ruined
towns bear so large a proportion to those still existing. Hardly a hill-top of the many within sight
that is not covered with vestiges of some fortress or city. But, besides this, forests appear to have
stood in many parts of Judea until the repeated invasions and sieges caused their fall; and all this
vegetation must have reacted on the moisture of the climate, and, by preserving the water in many
a ravine and natural reservoir where now it is rapidly dried by the fierce sun of the early summer,
must have influenced materially the look and the resources of the country. Advancing northward
from Judea, the country (Samaria) becomes gradually more open and pleasant. Plains of good soil
occur between the hills, at first small but afterward comparatively large. The hills assume here a
more varied aspect than in the southern districts, springs are more abundant and more permanent
until at last, when the district of Jebel Nablus is reached—the ancient Mount Ephraim-the traveller
encounters an atmosphere and an amount of vegetation and water which are greatly superior to
anything he has met with in Judea and even sufficient to recall much of the scenery of the West.