aspect which this great people presented to the Western world; or, at least, not till the wider prophetic view of Isaiah and Ezekiel comprehended within the sympathy of the Jewish Church the grander elements of Sidonian power and Tyrian splendour. But, on the other hand, the Gentile accounts are insensible to the cruel, debasing, and nameless sins which turned the heart of the Israelite sick, in the worship of Baal, Astarte, and Moloch. It is true that these are but the same divinities, whom we regard leniently, if not indulgently, when we find them in the forms of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, Hercules, Adonis. But the other phase is not to be forgotten; and when Milton took these names of Syrian idols to represent the evil spirits of Pandemonium, and thus renewed, as it were, to them a lease of existence which seemed long since to have died out, he did not place us, though but for a moment, in the condition of the soldiers of the first conquest of Palestine, to whom Beelzebub and Moloch were living powers of evil, as hateful as though they actually personified the principles with which he has identified them. The bright side of Polytheism is so familiar to us in the mythology of Greece that it is well to be recalled for a time to its dark side in Palestine. From the general consideration of the Conquest, we turn to the first stage of it in the territory east of the Jordan,—that mysterious eastern frontier of the Holy Land, so beautiful, so romantic, so little known, whether we look at it through the distant glimpses and hasty surveys of it obtained by modern travellers, or the scanty notices of its first conquest in the Book of Numbers. Conquest of On the Eastern side of the Jordan valley two fragments of the aboriginal race had existed under the name of 'Emim,' and 'Zamzummim' or 'Zuzim.' 2 These old inhabitants had been expelled by the kindred tribes of Moab and Ammon. But they in turn had, just before the point of the history at which we have now arrived, been dispossessed by two Canaanite ''Before Milton, if Moloch, Belial, Mammon, &c., were not absolutely unknown to history, they had no proper ' and distinct poetic existence.'-Milman's chiefs of a considerable portion of the territory which they had themselves acquired. On this motley ground the Israelites appeared in the double light of conquerors and deliverers. The story is briefly told; but its main features are discernible, and it illustrates in many points the greater conquest for which it prepared the way. The attack on the two Canaanite kings was assisted by a strange visitation which had just befallen the Trans-Jordanic territory. Immense swarms of hornets, always common in Palestine,2 burst upon the country with unusual force. The chiefs were thus probably driven out of their fastnesses, and forced into the plain where the final conflict took place. The first onslaught was upon Sihon. He occupied the whole district between the Arnon and Jabbok, through which Sihon, King the approach to the Jordan lay. He had wrested it of Heshbon. from the predecessor of Balak, and had established himself, not in the ancient capital of Moab-Ar, but in the city still conspicuous to the modern traveller from its wide prospect and its cluster of stone pines-Heshbon. The recollection of his victory survived in a savage war-song,3 which passed into a kind of proverb in after times :— Come home to Heshbon; Let the city of Sihon be built and prepared, A flame from the city of Sihon. It hath consumed Ar of Moab, And the lords of the high places of Arnon : Woe to thee, Moab: thou art undone, thou people of Chemosh! He hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity To the King of the Amorites, Sihon. The decisive battle between Sihon and his new foes took place at Jahaz, probably on the confines of the rich pastures 1 Deut. i. 44; Ps. cxviii. 12; and the name of Zoreah (=hornet), Josh. xv. 33. These passages make a literal acceptation of the texts above cited the most natural. See Mr. Cyril Graham's 'Ancient Bashan,' in Cambridge Essays, p. 147. 2 Ex. xxiii. 28; Deut. vii. 20; Josh. xxiv. 12; Wisd. xii. 8. 3 Num. xxi. 27-29, repeated, as if well known, in Jer. xlviii. 45, 46. Battle of of Moab and the desert whence the Israelites emerged. It was the first engagement in which they were confronted with the future enemies of their nation. The slingers and archers of Israel, afterwards so renowned, now first showed their skill. Sihon fell; the army fled1 (so ran the later tradition), and, devoured by thirst, like the Athenians in the Assinarus on their flight from Syracuse, were slaughtered in the bed of one of the mountain streams. The memory of this battle was cherished in triumphant strains, in which, after reciting, in bitter irony, the song just quoted of the Amorites' triumph, they broke out into an exulting contrast of the past greatness of the defeated chief and his present fall : Midian, We have shot at them: Heshbon is perished: We have laid them waste: even unto Nophah : Subject to Sihon, as vassals,3 were five Arabian chiefs, of the great tribe of Midian. Their names are preserved to us,1 4 Defeat of -Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba. It was they who, doubtless terrified at the fall of their sovereign, persuaded the King of Moab to rid himself of the dangerous, though at first welcome intruders, by the curse of Balaam. When this failed, and when the more sure and fatal ruin of the contagion of the licentious rites of Midian provoked the religious and moral feeling of the better spirits of the nation to that terrible retribution of which the later conquest was one long exemplification, a sacred war was proclaimed. It was headed, not by the soldier Joshua, but by the priest Phinehas. The ark went with the host. The sacred trumpets were blown. The chiefs of Midian were slain : 5 the great prophet of the East fell with them.6 Their stone enclosures 7 were taken. Their " Ibid. 6, 7, 8. 1 Jos. Ant. iv. 5, § 2. 2 Num. xxi. 30 (LXX.). 3 The word translated 'dukes,' Josh. xiii. 21. Comp. Ps. lxxxiii. 11, where the same word is used of the Midianite chiefs Oreb and Zeeb. They are called 'kings,' Num. xxxi. 8; 'princes,' Josh. xiii. 21; 'elders,' Num. xxii. 4. * Num. xxxi. 8. 8 In the Samaritan Joshua (ch. 8), he is dragged out of the temple by Joshua, who wishes to spare him; but the fierce Simeonites insist on his being put to death, lest he should fascinate them by his spells. 7 Translated 'castles' in Gen. xxv. 16. 6 Num. xxxi. 10. pastoral wealth fell to their conquerors, as in the case of the second great defeat of their tribe achieved by Gideon 1—ornaments of gold, and thousands of oxen, sheep, and asses. And then took place the first wholesale extermination of a conquered tribe.2 Bashan. The way was now clear to the Jordan. But the career of conquest opened on its eastern bank was not easily closed. It Og, King of is possible that the thought of pushing forward in this direction was suggested to them by the neighbouring and kindred tribe of Ammon, 'too strong' to be subdued, and even more interested than themselves in the expulsion of the second Canaanite chief who had occupied the territory north of Ammon, apparently at the same time that Sihon had occupied the territory east of Moab. This was Og, king of the district which, under the name of Bashan, extended from the Jabbok up to the base of Hermon. There is no direct notice, as in the case of Sihon, of his having invaded the country, and this omission, combined with the mention of his gigantic stature, warrants the conjecture that he was one of the leaders of the aboriginal race, for which Bashan had always been renowned. In this joint expedition of Israel and Ammon the commanders were two heroes of the tribe of Manasseh, Jair and Nobah.3 Edrei. The fastness of Og was the remarkable circular district formerly known by the name of Argob, or 'the stony,' rendered Battle of by the Greeks 'Trachonitis ;' or Chebel, 'rope,' as if from the marked character of its boundary, rendered by the corresponding Arabic word 'Leja.' It is described as suddenly rising from the fertile plain, an island of basalt: its rocky desolation, its vast fissures, more resembling the features of some portions of the moon than any formation on the earth. At the entrance of this fastness, as if in the Thermopyle of the kingdom, is Edrei. Here Og met the invaders. The battle was lost, and Bashan fell. Ashtaroth-Karnaim, the sanctuary of the Horned Astarte,2 and perhaps the same as the capital Kenath, surrendered. It had been already the scene of a signal defeat in still more primitive times, when the aboriginal inhabitants were attacked by the Assyrian invaders from the East.3 of Bashan. The Ammonites carried off as their trophy the 'iron bed'stead' (perhaps the basaltic coffin, like that of Esmunazar Settlement recently found at Sidon) of the gigantic Og. The Israelites occupied the whole country, remarkable even then for its sixty cities,5 strongly walled and fortified. Here, as throughout the Trans-Jordanic territory, the native names were altered, and new titles imposed by the Israelites as if at once determined on making a permanent settlement. The basaltic character of the country lent itself to these cities, as naturally as the limestone of Palestine and sandstone of Edom opened into habitations in holes and caves. The country which thus fell into their hands was that known by the name of Gilead—a name which is never lost, and which outlived and superseded the divisions of the three conquering tribes. The two Israelite chiefs took, as it would seem, different portions. Jair occupied the more pastoral part, and founded thirty nomadic villages, called after his name, 'the villages of Jair.' 7 Nobah took possession of Kenath, the capital, of which he must have been the captor, and to this he also gave his name, though the old one, as so often in Syria, returned. 8 Of these two chiefs we know but little more. It is possible that Jair is the same as the stately head of a vast family mentioned amongst the Judges. His name lingered down to the |