United States or Afghanistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This is as old as Naaman, who was jealous for Abana and Pharpar; it is confined to no race nor country, for I know one of Scottish blood but a child of Suffolk, whose fancy still lingers about the lilied lowland waters of that shire. But the streams of Scotland are incomparable in themselves or I am only the more Scottish to suppose so and their sound and colour dwell for ever in the memory.
His voice was still like the rollings of Abana and Pharpar, when he came on this next evening to discourse up-to-date wisdom in his father's ears; not a hair of his well-groomed head showed the ruffling of perturbed thoughts within, nor were his self-confidence and easy satisfaction in the moral and mental liberties wherein he ranged at large in any way diminished or disturbed.
There is an honored old tradition that the immense garden which Damascus stands in was the Garden of Eden, and modern writers have gathered up many chapters of evidence tending to show that it really was the Garden of Eden, and that the rivers Pharpar and Abana are the "two rivers" that watered Adam's Paradise.
But Naaman went away in a rage, saying, "I expected that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of Jehovah his God and wave his hand over the place, and so cure the leper. Are not Amana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and went away in a rage.
"We all caught it in our time." "But I got it worse than any one," said Beetle. "If you want an authority on bullyin', Padre, come to me. Corkscrews brush-drill keys head-knucklin' arm-twistin' rockin' Ag Ags and all the rest of it." "Yes. I do want you as an authority, or rather I want your authority to stop it all of you." "What about Abana and Pharpar, Padre Harrison and Craye? They are Mr.
Damascus! A city surviving an age-long struggle with the encroaching desert a struggle that must go on through ages to come; but, as long as the Abana and Pharpar continue to flow, the sands that would bury her forever in oblivion will be changed into a soil of life-giving and life-sustaining fertility sufficient to support her thousands of inhabitants. Damascus!
In 2 Kings, chapter v., Naaman boasts extravagantly about them. That was three thousand years ago. He says: "Are not Abana and Pharpar rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean?" But some of my readers have forgotten who Naaman was, long ago. Naaman was the commander of the Syrian armies. He was the favorite of the king and lived in great state.
"I have used the Tractors with success in several other cases in my own family, and although, like Naaman the Syrian, I cannot tell why the waters of Jordan should be better than Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus; yet since experience has proved them so, no reasoning can change the opinion.
Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters in Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean?" saith he. This was because he remembered not that the name of God was in the command.
In the adjacent meadow, a numerous encampment was formed of priests and laymen, of soldiers and citizens, of women and children: they collected, with haste and terror, their most precious movables; and abandoned, with loud lamentations, or silent anguish, their native homes, and the pleasant banks of the Pharpar.
Word Of The Day