best described-the gentle Isaac. His truly was a spirit easy to be entreated, open to forgiveness, shut against malice, incapable of revenge; showing much of the temper inculcated by Him of whom on Mount Moriah he was the type; persecuted at one well, fleeing to another; compelled to go one mile, going before his compellers twain; the meekest, most placable, most patient, most peace-loving, most home-loving of the patriarchs. Between the lives of Abraham and Jacob that of Isaac lies, as the quiet Highland loch lies between the towering mountain whose streams feed it at the one end, and the river which at the other it sends forth on its long and winding and often troubled course. There is little around that loch's sides to attract or arrest the eye; but its waters are pure, and clear, and tranquil; its surface often so calm as perfectly and beautifully to mirror-by day the mountain of its birth, and by night the lights of heaven.

NOTE ON THE SITE OF GERAR.

On the destruction of the cities of the plain Abraham removed from Mamre, which had been his home for twenty years, and "journeyed toward the south country (negeb), and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar." The late Mr. Wilton1 was one of the first to call the attention of Biblical scholars to the fact that the word negeb, or "south," is uniformly employed throughout the Bible, as indicating not a direction of the compass, but that distinct and definite locality which Mr. Palmer has so lately explored, and which he thus describes :-"The mountain plateau in the north-east (of the desert) is full of interest, both to the geographer and to the Biblical student. This plateau is called Jebel el Magráh, and is about seventy miles in length, and from forty to fifty broad, commencing at Jebel 'Araif, and extending northward by a series of steps or terraces to within a short distance of Beer-sheba, from which it is separated by Wády er Raknuth from the mountains of the same name. It projects into the Tih (the desert) much in the same way as the Tih projects into Sinai, and, like it also, terminates in steep escarpments towards the south, falling away to a lower level on the south-eastern side."

"2

It was through this tract of country that the ordinary caravan route from Central Canaan down into Egypt lay.

1 The Negeb or South Country of Scripture. By Edward Wilton, M.A. 1863.

2 The Desert of the Exodus. By E. H. Palmer, M.A. 1871.

This route ran in a south-westerly direction from Hebron through Beer-sheba to Cala'at Wakhl, where it joined the Haj route onwards to Suez. It was along this route that Abraham "journeyed, going on still (from Bethel) toward the south (the negeb), and went down into Egypt (Gen. xii. 9, 10). It was by the same route that he returned (Gen. xiii. 1, 3). It was along this route that Hagar fled, seeking so naturally her way back to Egypt, "when the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water, by the fountain in the way to Shur." About thirty years ago Dr. Rowlands was travelling along the same route, when he discovered the well of Hagar, and thus announced his discovery to his friend Mr. Williams :

"About ten hours beyond Rehibeh on our road is a place called Moilahi (Moilâhhi), a grand resting-place of the caravans, there being water here, as the name implies. It lies in one of two or three passages or openings in the very southernmost hills, or southern border of the Land of Promise, which form the grand entrance from Palestine into the desert, or the grand entrance from the desert into Palestine, by which the great caravan roads from Akaba, Mount Sinai, and Suez pass to Hebron and to Gaza. Shall I not please you when I tell you, that we found here Bir Lahai-roi ? I have no doubt about it whatever. Now for my proofs. 1. Moilâhhi lies on the great road from Beer-sheba to Shur or Jebel-es-Sur, which is its present name—a grand chain of mountains running north and south, a little east of the longitude of Suez, lying, as Shur did, before Egypt (Gen. xvi. 7). 2. It is probable, from Gen. xvi. 14, that Bir Lahai-roi was not far from Kadesh: Moilâhhi is about twelve miles from Kadesh. But (3) the grand settling point is its present name. well has disappeared, and the Bir (well) very naturally has been changed into Moi (water); and, what is very remark

The

able, the Arabs of the country call it Moilâhhi Hadgar (Hagar). . . . And to confirm this statement of theirs they conducted us to the house of Hagar (Beit Hajar), where they said such a person lived."

This discovery of Dr. Rowlands was in the first instance distrusted, owing, perhaps, somewhat to the confidence with which it was announced. Later investigations have confirmed it. The well lay, we are told, between Kadesh and Bered. Till recently the site of the ancient Kadesh was unknown or uncertain. Dr. Robinson's unfortunate error in fixing on Ain el-Webeh, on the border of the Arabah, as its site, prevented his identifying the places said to be in its. neighbourhood. After the Biblical investigations of Wilton, Tuch, and Kurz, confirmed so amply by the explorations of Mr. Palmer, we may now regard this question as settled, and accept the Ain-Gadis, which lies twelve miles south of Muweilih (the Moilâhhi of Dr. Rowlands), lying at the southern frontier of the Negeb, as the Kadesh of the Bible. The settlement of this point, so important in the history of the Exodus, serves also to throw a clear light upon the movements of the patriarchs. When it is said of Abraham that he dwelled "between Kadesh and Shur," he was in the very district in which Bir Lahai-roi was situated. It is said in the same verse that he "sojourned in Gerar." The kingdom or country of Gerar may have embraced the district of Bir Lahai-roi, as we know it did that of Wady Jerur, lying a few miles south; but the Gerar of Abimelech's residence is not to be confounded with either of these. The statement in Gen. xx. I is to be taken as implying that Abraham, coming down from Hebron, located himself first

1 William's Holy City, vol. i., pp, 465, 466.

• See Tuch's remarks on Gen. xiv. in the Journal of Sacred Literature, vol. i., pp. 80-100; Kurz's History of the Old Covenant, vol. iii., pp. 217, 241

for a time in the neighbourhood of Bir Lahai-roi, and afterwards went to reside for a season in or near Gerar, the chief town of the Philistines. As Isaac was born in the course of the year in which his father migrated from Hebron, his birthplace must have been somewhere near Bir Lahai-roi, a circumstance which goes far to account for the singular attachment he showed to that part of the country. Mr. Wilton has ingeniously suggested Eltolad, a few miles south of Bir Lahai-roi, as the actual place of Isaac's birth. In the valley of Gerar Isaac "digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them " (Gen. xxvi. 18). "Among the spots thus named by Abraham, I believe Eltolad to have been one; and to this, of all others, Isaac must have felt a pious pleasure in asserting his claims; for, if I am not greatly mistaken, it was here that he himself, 'the child of promise,' first gladdened the eyes of his aged parents. How else can we account for the remarkable import of the word Eltolad, which may be rendered 'born of God,' or 'a supernatural birth?'" The ground seems too slender for the conclusion based on it. Whatever was the precise place of Isaac's birth, however, it seems almost certain that a large part of the 137 years which preceded the flight of Jacob was spent by Isaac in this favourite region. He may have gone up with his father in his youth to Beer-sheba, from which the journey to Mount Moriah was taken. But soon as ever he was in position to occupy a station away from his father, we find him at Bir Lahai-roi. He was there when Rebekah came from Haran (Gen. xxiv. 62). He had been living there some time before. He continued to live there till his father's death, when, in company with 1 The Negeb or South Country of Scripture; pp. 179, 180.