United States or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Idumasa, then, was the tract south and south-west of Palestine from about lat. 31° 10'. It reached westward to the borders of Egypt, which were at this time marked by the Wady-el-Arish, southward to the range of Sinai and the Elanitic Gulf, and eastward to the Great Desert. Its chief town was Petra, in the mountains east of the Arabah valley.
It indicates the completeness of the exploration by giving its extreme southern and northern points, the desert of Zin being probably the present depression called the Arabah, and 'Rehob as men come to Hamath' being probably near the northern Dan, on the way to Hamath, which lay in the valley between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon.
On rode the Syrians in goodly array, their steel glittering in the sunlight, the dust rising like a cloud around the hoofs of their horses. In the centre of the line was a gorgeous arabah, or covered cart with curtains, to which the troop of soldiers appeared to form an escort.
This wonderful depression, which includes the Dead Sea, forty-five miles long, and the valley south of it, one hundred miles in length, is two hundred and fifty miles long and from four to fourteen miles in width, and is called the Arabah. The sources of the Jordan are one hundred and thirty-four miles from the mouth, but the numerous windings of the stream make it two hundred miles long.
The heights of Mount Sinai turned his thoughts backward only for a moment, and he continued his dream of Jesus, continuing without interruption along the shell-strewn shores of the Sea of Arabah, on and on into the peninsula, till he stepped from the lurching camel into the great caravanserai in Alexandria.
This long and deep hollow extends more than 200 miles, from near the site of ancient Dan in the north, to the water-parting at the head of the Wady Arabah in the south; and its deepest part, at the bottom of the basin of the Dead Sea, lies 2500 feet below the surface of the adjacent Mediterranean.
Other through tracks in Palestine ran then as they do to-day, by Beesheba and Hebron, or along the 'Arabah and west of the Dead Sea, or through Edom and east of Jordan by the present Hajj route to Damascus.
An opening was made through the walls, and all the princes of the king of Babylon came and sat in the middle gate. When Zedekiah, the ruler of Judah, and all the warriors saw them, they fled and left the city by night by the way of the royal garden, through the gate between the two walls, and went out toward the Arabah.
We can never be bothered by any internal commotion, except for the twenty-five miles from Haifa to Tiberias, for the waterway of the Canal would be ten miles wide, except in Arabah Valley, where there are on both sides wastes and deserts.
For, except on the frontier of Egypt, desert and sea do not meet. Farther north the Arabian plateau is separated from the Mediterranean by a double mountain chain, which runs south from the Taurus at varying elevations, and encloses in its lower course the remarkable depression of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, and the 'Arabah.
Word Of The Day