IN THE HOLY
LAND
CHAPTER XIII.
Sychar.
Sabbath morning— Worship in the Arab church — The
reading of ike curses and blessings from Ebal and Gerizim [Josh. ix. 30-35]
— Rationalist objections disproved by experiment— The great
congregation imagined— Engraving on pillars— Whatl— A storm
— Unexpected refuge — Sufferings of those who remained in their tents
— ( Pictorial effects of the humidity of the region — Biblical
associations connected with Sychar — [Gen. xxxiii. 19; xxxvii. 12; Josh.
xxiv. i; x Kings xii. 1-25; John iv.] — A walk in it — Its streets
and bazaars — Its manufactures — Olive-farmers — Caravans
—Population — Jothans parable [Judges ix. 7-20)— Modern parables
in the East — The Samaritan synagogue — The Samaritan Pentateuch
— Estimates of its value — The Samaritan creed- — Visit to the
Samaritan high priest— Early marriage—The Levitical law in full force
— Ascent of Gerizim— Keeping of the Passover — View from the
mountain — Morning salutations — Striking the tents — Con-fiuton
— Departure.
EARLY on the Sabbath morning, the missionary El Karey was
at our tents, ready to conduct us down to Sychar ; it having been arranged that
we should hold a religious service in the little chapel belonging to the Jewish
and Arab Christians, of which he was minister. It was a clean, airy, cheerful
little place, with cushioned divans all round its walls, on which the native
worshippers sat after their own Oriental fashion. Worship was conducted by an
English clergyman who was one of our party ; and this was followed by a sermon
of much evangelical distinctness and fervour. It would be difficult to say how
many denominations of Christians were represented in that little company of
eleven; but both the circumstances and the character of the worship made us
much more alive to our unity than to our differences. The consciousness of
being surrounded by really hostile faiths, brings out in great force the
sentiment of brotherhood. We remained for some hours conversing with the
missionary about his many difficulties and discouragements in this stronghold
of Mohammedan fanaticism and nest of Jewish bigotry, with its veil apparently
as thick as ever. By-and-by it was proposed that a portion of us should walk
down to the entrance of the gorge, and spend an hour or two in reading and
meditation at Jacob's Well. But the morning had been cloudy, and we were not
far on our way when the descending rain and the increasing wind brought us to a
halt. We were arrested on a spot of great historic interest; for, in all
likelihood, we were in that very part of the valley where, according to the
charge left behind him by Moses, Joshua, with the ark of the Lord before him,
and having six of the tribes stationed on the slopes of Ebal, and six
stretching up the sides of Gerizim, read aloud in the hearing of the immense
congregation the words of the law with its curses and blessings, and the many
myriad voices responded at each awful pause with their loud " Amen."
The
two mountains approach nearer at this part of the valley than at any other,
being little more than fifteen hundred feet apart at the base, though the
distance rapidly increases as you ascend. It was very remarkable how much their
shape and contour corresponded to each other, almost forcing upon one the
conjecture that they had once been united, and that some tremendous convulsion
of nature, the throes of " a young earthquake's birth," had riven them in
sunder. Nothing that we had ever seen before in the natural world, so vividly
reminded us of Coleridge's well-worn lines :—
"They stood aloof, the
scars remaining,
Like rocks that had been rent asunder:
A hollow sea
now rolls between ;
Yet neither frost, nor rain, nor thunder,
Shall
wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once had been."
It
is a stale objection, a good many centuries old, that the sides of the two
mountains on which the tribes were stationed were much too far apart for the
voice of Joshua and the Levites to be audible by either half of the multitude;
and modern Rationalists have not been slow to assert that Joshua's narrative of
this sublime transaction is clearly chargeable with exaggeration and invention.
But the rashness and invention are all on the side of the objectors. It might
have been sufficient to satisfy a fairly candid mind, that the elastic
atmosphere of an Eastern climate transmits sound with a celerity and
distinctness that are sometimes astonishing. And, moreover, that the acoustic
qualities of some places, arising from their natural formation, have been known
to produce effects in hearing that, beforehand, were almost incredible. So that
the wisdom of the witty Fuller did not desert him when he remarked that " the
make and fashion of these mountains, picked out by God's providence for that
purpose, might advantage much the articulate audibility of the Levites'
voices."
But we were able to test the matter by experiment, as other
travellers had done before us. Stationing two of our number in the centre of
the valley and in the middle of a field of corn, one of our brethren ascended
some distance up the sides of Ebal, while we clambered up among the rocks of
Gerizim; it having been agreed that the one should repeat a few of the curses,
and the other a few of the blessings, without mentioning which of them he would
select And though a drizzling rain was falling, and the wind blowing so hard
that we could scarcely keep our Bibles open, we were not only heard distinctly
by the brethren in the valley, but by each other from the respective mountains;
so that, as we remember, we were able to name the first of the curses that our
friend had spoken from Ebal, as if he had intended a sly reference to some of
those Rationalists whose assertions we were reducing to experiment - "Cursed be
he that removeth his neighbour's landmark." How many other of the historical
objections of unbelief would shrivel into ashes were they similarly put to the
proof!
But what a congregation must that have been! Perhaps half a
million of people standing on either mountain, especially if we include "the
women, the little ones, and the strangers;" each curse and blessing answered by
a million voices, with their consenting "Amens" which rolled up the gorge like
thunder, and awakened the echoes far and near. If we except some of the scenes
connected with the giving of the law from Sinai, nothing ever witnessed on
earth can have exceeded this in sublimity.
Another direction was left
behind by Moses to Joshua: that, in addition to this solemn proclamation of the
law with its associated curses and blessings, he should erect pillars somewhere
on Mount Ebal, on which the words of the law should be inscribed ; as if to
teach us that the hearing of the law was to be followed by the permanent and
practical recollection of it What wasted ingenuity and conjecture some learned
men have expended on this simple fact! They have imagined tall marble columns
on which the law was chiselled out, and have expressed the hope that these
indestructible pillars, graven deep and covered all over with their Hebrew
characters, might one day yet be dug up from beneath the soil of the dark
mountain, after the burial of so many thousand years - truth thus literally
"springing out of the earth." While the sacred story distinctly tells us that
the pillars were covered over with plaster or cement, on which it is natural to
suppose the law was written while it was yet soft; and then drying and
hardening, the writing would continue for ages, though not likely to survive
the action of climate, or to escape the Vandalism of man for so many thousand
years.
When this difficulty has been laid to rest, the same class of men
have been ready with another. What an incredible labour and length of time,
they say, it must have cost to write the whole of Deuteronomy on tablets of
stone, or even on walls of cement! "Where," says an old writer, " shall they
find, and how shall they fetch, stones in folio for so voluminous a work?" A
While nothing more seems meant than the thirteen cursings with their opposite
blessings were inscribed on the cement; and perhaps, along with these, the ten
commandments, which the same quaint writer has happily termed "the breviate and
abstract of the whole law." How often do we mine too deep, as well as dig too
near the surface, for the golden nugget of truth!
On returning to our
encampment up among the olives, hoping that we should at length command some
solitude and Sabbath peace, we found ourselves introduced into discomfort and
vexation. The drizzling rain of the forenoon had not abated, and the breeze had
increased to a gale. The canvas of our tent turned out to be less waterproof
than a common umbrella, and not only the grassy floor beneath us, but even our
beds, began to be soaked with rain. Heavy drops were every moment falling upon
us from above, and we were sitting with our feet in water. So thick had the
gloom become, that the dark summits of the two mountains, though so very near
us, could not be seen. What were we to do? To have remained in the tent
overnight would have been perilous to health, and even to life. And yet there
was no certainty of accommodation in Sychar. A dry and sheltered cave on the
sides of Ebal, had it been offered us at that moment, would have been gladly
hailed. At length, when it was within an hour of evening, the welcome
countenance of the missionary once more appeared. We eagerly inquired, Was
there no inn, or khan, or lodging-house, in which we could obtain refuge for
the night? Nothing of the kind. Two persons might with difficulty be sheltered
in the missionary's own house. This accommodation we at once yielded up to a
physician and his wife, who were of our company; throwing out at the same time
the timid question whether, in our straits, some of us might not be allowed to
sleep overnight on the divans in the little chapel in which we had worshipped
in the morning. Yes; those of us who chose, might Along with the friend who
occupied the same tent with us, we gratefully accepted the asylum; the others
remained behind, either expecting the storm to abate, or that, with better
tents and more sheltered positions than our own, they would be able to brave it
out. The watchmen were just proceeding to shut the gate of Sychar when we
entered it. A broad and rapid stream was flowing down its principal street; by
no means an unmixed evil, for it would be a most efficient scavenger, sweeping
away before it the filth and offal of many weeks. Sheltered in that little
house of prayer, we did not hear the faintest whisper of the storm; and in a
short time we were locked in one of the most refreshing sleeps we enjoyed in
Palestine. We returned to our encampment early on the following morning, to
learn how much suffering we had escaped. Canvas had been torn to shreds,
tent-poles had been broken, lights and fires had been extinguished. Some had
sat for hours in thick darkness up to their ankles in water, and longing for
the break of day. In some, the seeds of maladies were sown that night, from
which they are suffering to this hour.
It was a lovely morning, and all
nature seemed refreshed and cheerful, after the universal baptism of yesterday.
We could see, far down beneath us, the glancing of the full bright streams, as
they rushed through the gardens of walnut and mulberry, of orange and fig, and
pomegranate. The mingled fragrance of those many trees came up upon us like a
heavenly incense; and the songs of innumerable birds, in which that of the
bulbul predominated, seemed to express in that early morning the earth's glad
worship. We now became fully alive to the truth of what had been noticed
regarding this Sychar region by Van de Velde and other travellers - that the
extraordinary humidity which is the effect of so many rills and water-courses,
produces more of those beautiful atmospheric tints in which painters so much
delight, than we meet with in any other part of Palestine. This forms one of
the great charms of the scenery of our own mountain-land, as any one must have
noticed for himself who has lived for a week in the neighbourhood of Ben Ledi
or of Ben Macdhui, or amid the exquisite lake-scenery of Cumberland. The
vapoury atmosphere when sunlit, softens and glorifies everything, and gives us
ten different pictures out of one object. The want of this is one chief defect
of hot and tropical regions, and it is this which we generally miss in the Holy
Land. "Fiery tints," it is remarked, "are to be seen both in the morning and
the evening, and glittering violet or purple coloured hues where the light
falls next to the long deep shadows; but there is an absence of colouring, and
of that charming dusky haze in which objects assume such softly-blended forms,
and in which also the transition in colour from the foreground to the furthest
distance loses the hardness of outline peculiar to the perfect transparency of
an Eastern sky." But this charming valley reserves an exhaustless beauty for
the painter's eye, and presents all the softly-blending hues of a picture in
our Scottish Highlands or in Switzerland.
And now, as we look down upon
Sychar, more than half concealed amid its blossoming gardens, how many Biblical
memories cluster around it! No town in Palestine exceeds it in this respect,
except Jerusalem. Its original name of Shechem, passing into Sychar in the New
Testament, runs through the whole period of the four thousand years included in
the inspired narratives. It was here that Abraham first pitched his tent before
the oaks of Moreh. It became the favourite pasture-ground of Jacob, a "right of
common" having been acquired by the purchase of that parcel of land for a
sepulchre, in which the bones of Joseph, so many centuries afterwards, found
their last resting-place. When the Israelites had crossed the Jordan, and begun
that course of conquest in which Jehovah Himself was their invincible Leader,
the neighbouring mountains of Ebal and Gerizim became a second Sinai, where the
law was solemnly republished to the assembled tribes. Here Abimelech, during
the turbulent period of the Judges, after having slain his seventy brethren,
set up an independent sovereignty ; and from the neighbouring height, the young
and nimble Jotham spoke to the fickle people the most picturesque of Old
Testament parables - that of the trees choosing a king, which cast ridicule
upon Abimelech's unfitness, and foretold the people's punishment through the
vile object of their choice. This was the spot where the foolish Rehoboam was
proclaimed and crowned King of Israel, after the death of Solomon; and where,
soon after, when the kingdom was dismembered through his infatuated rashness,
Jeroboam was made king of the ten revolted tribes, and chose this as his
capital, though the honour was soon shared by Tirzah, and not long after
absorbed by Samaria. Centuries intervened, and at length the greater part of
the inhabitants of the northern kingdom were carried away by the Assyrians into
hopeless captivity. Colonists sent from Assyria came and filled their places,
and intermixing with the gleanings of the Israelitish population that had been
allowed to linger in the land, formed a mongrel race with a mongrel religion,
partly idolatrous and partly Jewish.
When the people of the southern
kingdom came back from their later and temporary exile, and proceeded to
rebuild their temple at Jerusalem, these Samaritans offered to share with them
in the work; but were rejected, both from suspicion of the purity of their
designs, and also because they did not belong to, the chosen nation. This led
to the erection of a rival temple on the summit of the neighbouring Gerizim,
and to the institution of a rival worship in imitation of that of the Jewish
Temple, inx which disaffected and runaway priests assisted. Hatreds and
animosities between the two communities were the consequence of all this. These
extended and became more embittered with the lapse of ages; so that when Christ
appeared, the Jews refused to the Samaritan schismatics the most common
civilities, and there is evidence from the Gospel narratives that the
Samaritans paid back the bitter grudge with interest. The inspired notices
close with the memorable conversation of our Lord with the woman of Sychar at
the neighbouring Jacob's Well, in which he spoke to her immortal truths which
added largely to those which had been echoed so long ago by the million voices
from Ebal and Gerizim, and sent her up the valley with her newly-kindled torch
to enlighten many other hearts in Sychar: though many think that this same
"city of Samaria" was the true scene of the later religious awakening described
in the Acts of the Apostles of which the evangelist Philip was the ruling
spirit. One thing is certain, that Sychar was extensively Christianized in the
first ages of our religion ; and only eighty years after Christ, it became the
birth-place and chosen home of Justin Martyr, one of the best of the early
Christian fathers. At the same time, the peculiar distinction that clings to
Sychar is, that from the days of Nehemiah downwards it has been the centre and
stronghold of the Samaritan worship; that the Samaritan race and sect, extinct
in every other region and city of the world, continue to have their priesthood,
their ritual, and their synagogue here; and that, in all likelihood, animal
sacrifices have been offered with longer continuance and in more unbroken
succession on the summit of its Mount Gerizim than on any other spot on the
earth.
It was with no little interest that we proceeded to explore this
ancient town; and especially to visit the Samaritan high priest in his own
house, for we were curious to see something of the domestic life of so
remarkable a people. Sychar consists of two long streets, which run in the line
of the valley and these are intersected by a considerable number of
cross-streets. In many places the upper stories, supported on pillars, project
so far on both sides as to form an arcade, which serves to protect the
passengers from the sun's rays, and which is also found useful in times of
turbulence and war. There are bazaars for the sale of provisions and cloth, the
former being open and the latter covered. Two things particularly struck us as
we wandered through the odd-looking streets. One of these was, that while
Sychar is so very ancient, it presents very few remains of antiquity. No doubt
there are plenty of broken pillars built into modern houses, sarcophagi used as
troughs for fountains, and traces here and there of old Saracenic ornaments.
But we saw no entire structure that we could call ancient; at least, according
to the Eastern standard of antiquity. Frequent revolutions and insurrections,
we suspect, have made rough work of the older past. The other circumstance was
that we could see no unoccupied spaces in Sychar, unless we except the rich
gardens which abound within its gates, and whose lovely trees frequently
overtop even its loftiest minarets. The reason is, that it is a busy, growing
place, the chief manufacturing town in Palestine. From its locality, it
flourishes almost in spite of itself. Its soap manufactures are old and
extensive ; its cotton-cloth weaving is not despicable; and, above all, its
manufacture of olive oil employs a large part of its population. This accounts
for the multitude of olive gardens which we had seen around so many of the
villages as we had journeyed northward, and for so many others which we were
yet to pass. The olive berries when ripe are carefully shaken from the trees,
brought to Sychar by the little farmers on nimble donkeys, and sold to the oil
merchants, who have usually a ready market for all that can be brought. Then
this Sychar valley is the gateway by which goods from the ports of Jaffa and
Beyrout pass to the transjordanic regions; and by which, again, travelling
merchants from the East come with their peculiar products to the markets and
sea ports of the West. It was no unlikely thing that at that very moment,
hidden among those trees hard by, there might be a caravan of Ishmaelitish
merchants, with their camels and mules laden with spices and gums, with
ornaments of gold and silver from Damascus, or even with shawls and silks from
the more distant Bagdad, passing on to the land of the Pyramids, who would have
had no objection to buy another Joseph, and to sell him as a slave to the wife
of some modern Potiphar in Egypt.
The estimates we received of the
population of Sychar were exceedingly varied; but could an accurate census be
taken, we should not be surprised to find that it exceeded 10,000. Of these,
the Jews are probably not above 50; the Greek and other Christians, 100; and
the Samaritans, 150: the rest are Mohammedans. These are a fierce and fanatical
race, insolent and overbearing to every sect but their own; usually on the
verge of insurrection, often in actual conflict with the weak and vacillating
Turkish power that rules them, and only peaceful when they feel the strong grip
of such an iron hand as that of Ibrahim Pasha. As we looked up from the open
streets and saw portions of the town creeping up into quiet and shady nooks of
the mountain, we could mark the exceeding accuracy of the description by
Josephus that "Gerizim hangeth over Shechem." It must have been from such an
overhanging eminence as that before us, that Jotham delivered his memorable
parable of the trees meeting together to elect a king, and at length choosing
the useless and prickly bramble - emblem of the usurping Abimelech, who
affected honours for which he was not qualified, and became a source of misery
and ruin to those who had raised so vile a person to his pride of place. It is
said that Jotham, when he uttered his parable to the eagerly listening
multitudes in the city beneath, " lifted up his voice and cried." And did any
one doubt the possibility of a person speaking with a loud and distinct voice,
being heard from such an eminence by those beneath, the problem has been solved
by the well-authenticated fact that from that very height, soldiers, on one
occasion in later times, addressed the people in the city, and succeeded in
instigating them to insurrection. The place was very skilfully chosen by
Jotham; for while his parable could be heard by the citizens, those who were
irritated by it when its drift and meaning came at last to be seen, would need
to make a long circuit before they could reach the spot where he was, and he
would have abundance of time to flee and escape, as we know he did.
It
deserves to be noticed that all the trees introduced by Jotham into his parable
abound in this region at the present hour, as we found on climbing Mount
Gerizim at a later part of the day: the olive, the fig, the vine, and the
bramble also in troublesome abundance; so that another Jotham speaking in these
days would not need to alter a single image in his picture. And the further
fact is surely not without interest, that at the present day parables and
apologues drawn from trees, are among the favourite methods of conveying moral
lessons, or of insinuating unpleasant truths in the least offensive manner,
over many parts of the East. We select two from a considerable number that are
mentioned by Mr. Roberts. Does a man in low station wish to unite his son in
marriage to the daughter of one who is of higher parentage, an Oriental gossip,
reporting the fact will say "Have you heard that the pumpkin wants to be
married to the plantain?" Or has a man given his daughter in marriage to one
who treats her unkindly, he will say, "I have planted the sugar-cane by the
side of the margossa, bitter tree."
We paid a short visit to the
Samaritan synagogue. It is a plain oblong building, with three recesses, and is
roofed by two domes supported on pillars. Our chief wish was to see the famous
MS. of the Samaritan Pentateuch, which is more precious than the fabled apples
of gold to its custodiers. A copy of a rather juvenile appearance was first
shown to us, which did not correspond with the descriptions we had read of the
original; but a seasonable use of the money argument prevailed in drawing forth
the genuine article, with its crimson scarf and its other beautiful and costly
adornments. We were not allowed to lay our profane fingers on an object so
venerable. But the portions we saw appeared dim, blotted, and weather-stained -
the explanation probably being that it is that part which is usually shown to
visitors, and which is exposed on one of the days of their great annual
festivals. We were willing to believe that it was very old; but its claim to an
antiquity of between three and four thousand years, and to have been written by
Abishua the grandson of Aaron the high priest, has no one to credit it except
the Samaritans. Every scholar knows how unduly this version was estimated and
extolled by learned men for a long period, even above the Hebrew original of
the books of Moses. But the arguments of Walton did much to reduce the estimate
to its proper level; and the laborious investigations of Gesenius have placed
the opinion beyond doubt, that, with few exceptions, it is much less pure than
the Masoretic text. There are exceptions, however, of a chronological kind,
which have an important bearing on some modern discussions. No one has given
the history of the fierce and long-waged controversy on this subject with more
candour and clearness than our learned fellow-traveller, Mr. Deutsch. Fuller
has written about it with his characteristic quaintness and wit: " For three
things, saith Solomon, the earth is disquieted, and the fourth it cannot bear,
namely, a handmaid that is heir to her mistress. How much more intolerable then
is it when a translation which is, or ought to be, the dutiful servant of the
original, shall presume (her mistress being extant and in presence) to take the
place and precedency of her, as here apographum doth of the autographum, when
the Samaritan transcript is by some advanced above the canonical copy in the
Hebrew !"
The chief points in the faith of the Samaritans, as stated by
themselves, are easily enumerated. They believe that there is one God, but deny
the plurality of persons in the one Godhead, and they have even been accused by
some of tampering with passages in the Pentateuch which appear to give
pre-intimations of a Trinity. They accept the five books of Moses as their only
canonical books. They hold every part of the Levitical law to be still in
force, and profess to conform themselves in all things to its ceremonial
requirements. They therefore practise circumcision, and keep the Sabbath on the
seventh day of the week with most rigid literality. They observe the Passover,
the Pentecost, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Great Day of Atonement; on
which day they offer a sacrifice of six lambs on that part of Mount Gerizim
where they suppose the altar of their temple to have stood. They expect the
advent of the Messiah; but they conceive of him as a mere man, a lawgiver and a
prophet inferior to Moses - and somehow they have come to mingle with this the
notion that he will appear when their numbers have been reduced to seventy.
They also believe in the resurrection of the dead, and in a future state of
rewards and punishments. They have been accused by some of certain idolatrous
practices, such as the worship of Venus under the form of a dove; but this is a
charge which has never been proved, and probably those who have made it have
mistaken some mystic emblem for an idol.
We confess to our having been
curious to obtain a glimpse into the domestic life of those Samaritans; and
though their customs and traditions were against our admission into their
household, we succeeded in receiving a welcome, after a good deal of diplomacy.
Our physician with his wife found in his profession a charm that threw open all
doors to him. Three generations were living under the same roof, and were even
gathered into the same apartment, so that it was quite a sample of patriarchal
life. The high priest himself, with his long snowy beard, had a venerable,
melancholy look, not without intelligence. His son, the heir-apparent to the
high priesthood, was tall, sharp-featured, and watchful. He wanted the native
dignity of his father; and his bare legs and unsandalled feet certainly did not
contribute to his venerableness. The high priest's eldest grandson, a youth of
twelve years of age, was the most beautiful lad we ever looked upon. What a
noble expanse of brow! How those features had been chiselled with a more than
Grecian gracefulness! How the ruddy glow of youth beamed and blushed through
that bronzed skin! Such a youth we can imagine David to have been when he first
came down from his Bethlehem mountains and stood before Saul. We do not wonder
that Holman Hunt has transferred that boy's features to one of his grandest
pictures of the East. Beside this lad of twelve, there stood a young
Samaritaness of the same age, who had already been betrothed to him for years.
Let not our reader be offended when we mention that the two young creatures
were to be married in a few months, for twelve is the statutory age for
marrying all over Palestine and Syria.
It was striking to find the old
Levitical law in full force in this apartment. In one corner, the wife of the
high priest's eldest son was separated by a regular fence of stones from all
around her. She had become a mother three weeks before; and it required another
week to exhaust the prescribed period of her separation. Her infant lay in a
little cot outside the fence. It was lifted out and placed in our arms - a very
tiny Samaritan. Its. little nails were already reddened with henna; and its
bright eyes were made to look brighter by artificial appliances, which had been
begun almost from the day of its birth. While we were endeavouring through El
Karey to keep up a conversation with the old high priest, our physician's wife
was quietly occupied in a corner in transferring his features to her
drawing-book. When her work was far advanced, one of the elder children,
stealing behind her; at once recognized her grandfather's features. This struck
an unexpected chord. The second commandment had been broken ! " Woe, woe be
unto thee!" she exclaimed; " for behold thine image." The drawing-book was
abruptly closed. We suspect that in some transactions into which those
ecclesiastics sought to drag our learned friend from the British Museum, there
was not the same fastidious care about some other parts of the decalogue. Those
men have often been accused of greed. But we should be tender in judging them.
Three generations are dependent on fifty pounds a year, and on such occasional
presents as may be given to them by travellers like ourselves. Theirs is the
avarice of want and not of morbid acquisitiveness. When the wolf is often at
the door, we are in some danger of becoming ourselves wolfish.
In the
afternoon we climbed to the top of Gerizim, eager to look on the site of the
old Samaritan temple. We wound our way up a rich valley, gorgeous with a
splendidly varied foliage, and musical with the voice of bright streams and
with the songs of innumerable birds. Patches of corn fields succeeded as the
road grew steeper; and in less than an hour we were on the broad plateau on the
summit. The foundations of the old schismatic structure which was destroyed a
century and a halt before Christ, can still be so distinctly traced as to give
us the ground plan of the whole building. Indeed, there are parts of the walls
which at this day are a good many feet above the surface. We were shown the
place where the six lambs are slain on the great day of the Passover, and the
oven of stone in which their carcasses are roasted whole : the calcined bones
and ashes of last year's sacrifice lay in a little heap before us. To those
travellers who have been so fortunate as to be present at the Samaritan
Passover, the spectacle must have gratified a sentiment much deeper than that
of mere curiosity. It must have given a clear and accurate impression of the
sacrifices of the old Jewish ritual. The slaying of the lambs at sunset, the
touching of the worshippers on the forehead with their warm blood, the roasting
of the entire bodies, the subsequent feast, until everything was consumed; and
all this in haste with their loins girt, and with staves in their hands, were a
vivid re- enacting of the far and remote past. What a conspicuous object the
Samaritan temple must have been when it shone from the lofty summit of this
mountain! To the travellers coming north from Bethel, to the dwellers on the
far-stretching plain of Muckhna, to watchers looking down from the hills of
Ephraim, and from the more northerly mountains of Samaria, it must have been an
object of mighty fascination. The view from this commanding summit was
glorious. We could see across the Jordan to the mountain walls of Gilead in the
far east; we could look down into many a valley, and upon many a. village
embosomed in its gardens of olive; we could see shepherds tending their flocks
as they may have done in Jacob's days; and now and then far-off Hermon would
look through his veil of clouds and show us his sparkling diadem of snow. How
soon will this Samaritan Church, on whose fading glories we were now treading,
be a mere thing of history? It will not be absorbed into another and purer
faith, but it will dry up and die out. With a wondrous tenacity of life, it
clings to its ancient birthplace as its last refuge; but another century will
probably see this ecclesiastical Dodo in its sepulchre.
By five o'clock
on the following morning we were roused by one of our Arab servants. The poor
lad had a very scanty stock of English vocables; and having put himself under
the training of other servants who knew better, they sometimes played upon his
simplicity by giving him wrong words. His regular morning salutation to us was,
"Good afternoon, my dears," an achievement in our language of which he was
evidently proud; and we did not disturb his self-complacency. It is necessary
to obey the morning summons promptly, and to avoid all folding of the arms to
rest; for those unceremonious fellows very soon begin to take down your tents;
and if you do not rise at once, you will have to make your toilet in the open
air. An exciting hour follows: the rapidly snatched breakfast; the packing of
portmanteaus and boxes ; the loading of mules with monstrous unwieldy bags,
tent poles, cooking utensils, and provisions; loud cries for lost things; the
scolding of servants; the howls of stricken Arabs, and the mounting of restive
steeds. But.a little after six we were in motion northward. We had a long ride
before us; for that night we were to sleep on the borders of the plain of
Jezreel.
Go To Chapter Fourteen
Home | Links | Literature | Biography