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To the right, a little below us, lay the ugly railway station; before us, rising gently southward, extended the elevated Plain of Rephaïm where David smote the host of the Philistines after he had heard "the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry-trees." The red soil was cultivated in little farms and gardens.
As they came up out of Hinnom, on the plain of Rephaim, a light appeared, at first wide-spread and faint. Their pulses fluttered fast. The light intensified rapidly; they closed their eyes against its burning brilliance: when they dared look again, lo! the star, perfect as any in the heavens, but low down and moving slowly before them.
In the north they were known as Hivites, at Hebron they were called Anakim, at Jerusalem they were Jebusites. The Amorite kings of Bashan are described as Rephaim, a word which the Authorised Version translates "giants." It was only on the northern frontier of Palestine and in the kingdom of Sihon that the name of "Amorite" alone was used.
When the Philistines came and spread out over the Valley of Rephaim, David asked of Jehovah: "Shall I go out against the Philistines? Wilt thou give them into my hand?" Jehovah said to David, "Go; for I will certainly give the Philistines into your hand."
The mountains of Judah roll away north and south and east and west the clean-cut pinnacle of Mizpah, the lofty plain of Rephaïm, the dark hills toward Hebron, the rounded top of Scopus where Titus camped with his Roman legions, the flattened peak of Frank Mountain.
Did these Rephaim belong to the same race as the Emim and the Anakim, or were the latter called Rephaim or "Giants" merely because they represented the tall prehistoric population of Canaan? The question can be more easily asked than answered. The Anakim may therefore have been an Amorite tribe.
And the Philistines came up yet again, and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. And when David enquired of the LORD, he said, Thou shalt not go up; but fetch a compass behind them, and come upon them over against the mulberry trees.
Slowly they passed the Lower Pool of Gihon, out of which the sun was fast driving the lessening shadow of the royal hill; slowly they proceeded, keeping parallel with the aqueduct from the Pools of Solomon, until near the site of the country-house on what is now called the Hill of Evil Counsel; there they began to ascend to the plain of Rephaim.
Three of David's thirty warriors went down to him to the top of the rock, to the fortress of Adullam, while a force of the Philistines was camped in the Valley of Rephaim. David was at that time in the fortress, and a company of the Philistines was in Bethlehem. And David said, longingly, "O that some one would bring me a drink of water from the well of Bethlehem which is near the gate!"
They too were classed among the Rephaim or "giants," by the side of whom the Israelite invaders were but as "grasshoppers." This, again, is in accordance with their European affinities. They flourished best in the colder and more bracing climate of the mountains, as do the Berber tribes of Northern Africa to-day. The blond, blue-eyed race is better adapted to endure the cold than the heat.
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