Of the bounds of this half tribe, and of Scythopolis, Salem, Thersa, and others.

THE next tribe which joineth itself to Issachar, towards the south, is the half of Manasseh, on the west side of Jordan. Manasses was the first begotten of Joseph, the eleventh son of Jacob. His mother was an Egyptian, the daughter of Putiphar, priest and prince of Heliopolis; which Manasses, with his brother Ephraim, the grandchildren of Jacob, were by adoption numbered amongst the sons of Jacob, and made up the number of the twelve patriarchs.

Of Manasseh, there were increased in Egypt, as they were numbered at mount Sinai, 32,200 able men; all which being consumed in the deserts, there entered of their issues 52,700 bearing arms. The territory, which fell to this one half of Manasseh, was bounded by Jordan on the east, and Dora upon the Mediterranean sea on the west, Jezrael on the north, and Machmata is the south border.

The first and principal city which stood in this territory was Bethsan, sometime P Nysa, saith Pliny, built by Liber Pater, in honour of his nurse there buried, of the same name, which Solinus confirms. Afterwards, when the Scythians invaded Asia the Less, and pierced into the south to the uttermost of Colesyria, they built this city anew, and very magnificent; and it had thereupon the name of Scythopolis, or the city of Scythians, given it by the Greeks.

These barbarous northern people constrained the Jews to fight against their own nation and kindred, by whose hands when they had obtained victory, they themselves set on the Jews which served them, and slew them all. Stephanus makes it the utmost towards the south of Colesyria, and Strabo joins it to Galilee. It is seated between Jordan and the hills of Gilboa, In Aulone ad montes Acrabitena, saith Ziegler. But I find it in the east part of the valley P. Plin. lib. 5. c. 18.

of Jezrael near Jordan; after that, Jordan straighteneth itself again into a river, leaving the sea or lake Genezareth. Notwithstanding Montanus describes it far to the west, and towards the Mediterranean sea, near Endor, contrary to Stella, Laicstan, Adrichome, and all other the best authors. This city was the greatest of all those of Decapolis; but the children of Manasseh could not expel the inhabitants thereof, and therefore called it Sane, an enemy, or Beth-san, the house of an enemy.

Over the walls of this 9 Beth-san, the Philistines hung the body of Saul and his sons, slain at Gilboa. It had, while the Christian religion flourished in those parts, an archbishop, who had nine other bishops of his diocese numbered by Tyrius, in lib. 14. c. 12. but the same was afterwards translated to Nazareth. The later travellers in those parts affirm, that there is daily taken out among the rubble and the ruins of that city goodly pillars, and other pieces of excellent marble, which witness the stately buildings and magnificence which it had in elder times, but it is now a poor and desolate village.

From Beth-san, keeping the way by Jordan, they find an ancient city called Salem; which city, the ancient rabbins, saith Jerome, do not find to be the same with Jerusalem; there being, in the time of Jerome, and since, a town of that name near Scythopolis before remembered; which, if the place of scripture, Gen. xiii. 18. do not confirm, where the Vulgar readeth Transivitque in Salem urbem Sichemorum, (for which others read, Venit incolumis ad civitatem Sechemûm, making the word Shaelem not to be a proper name, but an adjective,) yet the place, John iii. 23. where it is said, that John was baptizing in Ænon near Saleim, may somewhat strengthen this opinion, and yet it is not unlikely that this Saleim, of which St. John speaketh, is but contracted of Shahalim, of which in the tribe of Benjamin, 1 Sam. ix. 4. This word Junius maketh to be the plural of Shuhal, of which we read, 1 Sam. xiii. 17. for as for that which is 9 Judg. i. Josh. xvii. de Bell. Sac.

Hieron. in Epist. ad Evagr. et in Loc. Hebr.

added out of Cant. vi. 12. of Shulammitis, as if it had been as much as a woman of this Saleim near Ænon, it hath no probability.

Not far from thence, where they place Salem, they find s Bezek, the city of Adonibezek; Josephus calls it Bala: here it was that Saul assembled the strength of Israel and Juda, to the number of 330,000, when he meant to relieve Jabesh-Gilead, against Naash the Ammonite, who would give them no other conditions of peace, than to suffer their right eyes to be thrust out. Near Bezek, is the city of Bethbera, or rather Beth-bara, of which Judg. vii. 24. in the story of Gideon; and then Ephra, or Hophra, wherein Gideon inhabited; in the border whereof stood an altar consecrated to Baal, which he pulled down and defaced; and near it that stone on which Abimelec the bastard slew his seventy brothers, (an heathenish cruelty, practised by the Turks to this day ;) and not far hence, between the village of Asophon and Jordan, Ptolomæus Lathurus overthrew Alexander king of the Jews, and slaughtered, as t Josephus numbereth them, 3000; but according to Timagenes 5,000: after which victory, as Ptolomy passed by the villages of the Jews, he slew all their women, and caused the young children to be sod in great caldrons, that the rest of the Jews might thereby think that the Egyptians were grown to be men-eaters, and strike them with the greater

terror.

Towards the west, and on the border of Issachar, they place the cities of "Aner of the Levites, and Abel-Mehola, which Junius, Judg. vii. 22. placeth in Ephraim; it was the habitation of Helisæus the prophet, numbered among those places, 1 Reg. iv. 12. which were given in charge to Baana by Solomon; to whose charge also Tahanac belonged, a place of great strength, which at the first resisted

Joshua, though their king was afterwards hanged, and their city given to the Levites.

In the body of this territory of Manasseh, but somewhat nearer to Jordan than to the Mediterranean sea, were three great cities, to wit, Thersa, whose king was one of those that Joshua slew, which the kings of Israel used for their regal seat, till such time as Samaria was built. From hence the wife of Jeroboam went to Achia to inquire of her son's health; who knowing her, though she were disguised, told her of her son's death.

The second was Thebes, near Samaria, of which name there are both in Egypt and Greece, of great fame; in the assault of the tower of this town, whereinto the citizens retired, the bastard Abimelech was wounded by a weighty stone, thrown by a woman over the wall; who, despairing of his recovery, commanded his page to slay him outright, because it should not be said that he perished by the stroke of a woman. But others set this city in Ephraim, near Sichem or Neapolis.

The third is Acrabata, of which the territory adjoining is called Acrabatena, (one of the ten toparchies or governments in Judæa,) for which Jerome, 1 Macc. v. reads Arabathena, but in the Greek it is Acrabatine; Isidore calls it Agrabat. This city had one of the largest territories of all Palestine belonging to the governor thereof. Josephus remembereth it often, as in his second book of the Jews' wars, c. 11, 25, 28. and elsewhere.

The difference between a tetrarchy and a toparchy was, that the first was taken for a province, and the other for a city, with some lesser territory adjoining; and a tetrarch is the same with præses in Latin, and president in English, being commonly the fourth part of a kingdom, and thereof so called. y Pliny nameth seventeen tetrarchies in Syria; the Holy Land had four, and so hath the kingdom of Ireland to this day, Lempster, Ulster, Connath, and Munster. To the south-west of Acrabata, they place the cities of y Plin. 1. 5.

* Judg. ix. 54.

z Euseb. in Chron.

Balaam, or Bilham, and Gethremmon of the Levites; but Junius out of Josh. xxi. 25. and 1 Chron. vi. 70. gathers, that these two are but one, and that Jibleham, Josh. xvi. 11. is another name of the same city.

Then is Jezrael a regal city, set at the foot of the mountains of Gilboa, towards the south-west; herein Jezabel, by a false accusation, caused Naboth to be stoned, to the end she might possess his vineyard adjoining to the city, which Naboth refused to sell, because it was his inheritance from his father.

Joram also was cast unburied into the same field, for which his mother a Jezabel murdered Naboth.

Towards the sea from Jezrael is the city which they call Gaber; in whose ascent, as Ahaziah king of Juda fled from Jehu, when he had slain Joram, he was wounded with the shot of an arrow, of which wound he died at Mageddo adjoining. The scripture calls this city of Gaber, b Gur.

Then Adadremmon, near unto which the good king Josias was slain by Necho king of Egypt, in a war unadvisedly undertaken. For Necho marched towards Assyria against the king thereof, by the commandment of God, whom Josias thought to resist in his passage; it was afterwards called Maximianopolis.

C

A neighbour city to Adadremmon was Maggeddo, often remembered in the scriptures, whose king was slain among the rest by Joshua; yet they defended their city for a long time against Manasseh. The river which passeth by the town may perhaps be the same which Ptolomy calleth Chorseus; and not that of which we have spoken in Zabulon. For because this name is not found in the scriptures, many of those that have described the Holy Land delineate no such river. Moore only sets it down in his Geography of the twelve Tribes; but the river, which passeth by Maggeddo, he understandeth to be but a branch falling thereinto. Laicstan and Schrot make a great confluence of waters in this place, agreeable to this scripture in the fifth of Judges, Then fought the kings of Canaan in Tanaac,

a 2 Kings ix. 25. b 2 Kings ix. 27. • Judg. i. 5. d Josh. xii. 17.