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. 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. S 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 t 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 Zuræi, 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. Y * 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 x 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. 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, For it is was taken first from the Ammonites by Sehon; but the place Deut. iii. 11. proveth, that as well Og as Sehon had gotten lands out of the hands of the Ammonites. written, Numb. xxi. 24. that Israel conquered the land of Sehon from Arnon unto Jaboc, even unto the children of Ammon; so as at this time the river of Jaboc was the south bound of Ammon, within the mountains; when as anciently they had also possessions over Jaboc, which at length the Gadites possessed; as in the 13th chapter of Joshua, ver. 25. it appears. §. 2. Of the memorable places of the Reubenites. THE chief cities belonging to Reuben were these; Kademoth, for which the Vulgar, without any show of warrant, readeth Jethsony. The Vulgar, or Jerome, followed the Septuagint; those two verses, 36 and 37, of Joshua xxi. being wanting in the old Hebrew copies, and the Septuagint read Kedson for Kedmoth, which Kedson by writing slipt into Jethson. This city, which they gave to the Levites, imparts her name to the desert adjoining; from whence Moses sent his embassage to Sehon. In the same place of Joshua, where this Kedemoth is mentioned, the Vulgar, for Betser et villa ejus, reads Bosor in solitudine Misor, without any ground from the Hebrew; whence Adrichomius makes a town called a Misor, in the border between Reuben and Gad. Further from Kedemoth, near the Dead sea, (for the country between being mountainous hath few cities,) they place two towns of note, Lasa, or Leshah, of which Genesis x. 19. the b Greeks call it Callirrhoe; near which there is a hill, from whence there floweth springs both of hot and cold, bitter and sweet water, all which, soon after their rising, being joined in one stream, do make a very wholesome bath, especially for all contractions of sinews; to which Herod the elder, when he was desperate of all other help, repaired, but in vain. c Others say, that these springs arise out of the hills of Machærus in this tribe. The like foun y Josh. xxi. 37. z Deut. ii. 26. a It was a marginal note out of Deut. iii. where the Seventy kept the word Misor, signifying a plain, which after crept into the text. b Joseph. 17. Ant. c. 9. et Hieron. in Quæst. Heb. in Gen. Acosta, 1. 3. tains are found in the Pyrenees and in Peru, called, the baths of the ingas, or kings. The other town is Macharus, the next between Lasa and Jordan, of all that part of the world the strongest inland city and castle, standing upon a mountain, every way unaccessible. It was first fortified by Alexander Jannæus, who made it a frontier against the Arabians; but it was demolished by Gabinius in the war with Aristobulus, saith d Josephus. It was thither, saith Josephus, that Herod sent John Baptist, and wherein he was slain; his army soon after being utterly overthrown by Aretas king of Arabia, and himself after this murder never prospering. Not far from Macharus was e Bosor, or Bozra, a town of refuge, and belonging to the Levites, and near it f Livias upon Jordan, which Herod built in honour of Livia, the mother of Tiberius Cæsar. To the north of Livias is Setim, or Sittim, where the children of Israel embraced the daughters of Midian and Moab, and where Phinehas pierced the body of Zimri and Cosbi with his spear, bringing due vengeance upon them, when they were in the midst of their sin and from hence Joshua sent the discoverers to view Jericho, staying here until he went over Jordan. As for the torrent h Setim, which in this place Adrichomius dreams of, reading Joel iii. 18. irrigabit torrentem Setim: the Vulgar hath torrentem spinarum; and Junius vallem cedrorum; expounding it, not for any particular place in Canaan, but for the church, in which the just being placed, grow as the cedars, as it is Psalm xcii. 13. The plain country hereabout, by i Moses called the plains of Moab, where he expounded the book of Deuteronomy to the people a little before his death, is in the beginning of the same book precisely bounded by Moses. On the south, it had the great desert of Paran, where they had long wandered. On the east, it had Chatseroth and Dizahab, (of Joseph. 13. Ant. c. 24. et 14. Ant. c. 10. et alibi. Joseph. Bell. Jud. 1. 7. c. 25. Deut. iv. 43. Josh. xx. 8. f Euseb. in Chron. Hier. in loc. Heb. 8 Numb. XXV. I. i Deut. xxxiv. 1. |
