There shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof. A PASTURE of flocks. There shall the LAMBS feed after their manner, and the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat. Josephus describes Galilee, of which he was the governor, as "full of plantations of trees of all sorts, the soil universally rich and fruitful, and all, without the exception of a single part, cultivated by the inhabitants. Moreover," he adds, "the cities lie here very thick, and there are very many villages, which are so full of people, by the richness of their soil, that the very least of them contained above fifteen thousand inhabitants."* Such was Galilee, at the commencement of the Christian era, several centuries after the prophecy was delivered; but now "the plain of Esdraelon, and all the other parts of Galilee which afford pasture, are occupied by Arab tribes, around whose brown tents the sheep and lambs gambol to the sound of the reed, which at nightfall calls them home." The calf feeds and lies down amid the ruins of the cities, and consumes, without hinderance, the branches of the trees; and, however changed may be the condition of the inhabitants, the lambs feed after their manner, and, while the land mourns, and the merry-hearted sigh, they gambol to the sound of the reed. The precise and complete contrast between the ancient and existing state of Palestine, as separately described by Jewish and Roman historians and by modern travellers, is so strikingly exemplified in their opposite descriptions, that, in reference to whatever constituted the beauty and the glory of the country, or the happiness of the people, an entire change is manifest, even in minute circumstances. The universal richness and fruitfulness of the soil of Galilee, together with its being "full of plantations of all sorts of trees," are represented by Josephus as "inviting the most slothful to take pains in its cultivation." And the other provinces of the Holy Land are also described by him as "having abundance of trees, full of autumnal fruit, both that which grows wild, and that which is the effect of cultivation." Tacitus relates, that, besides all the fruits of Italy, the palm and balsam-tree flourished in the fertile soil of Judea. And he records the great carefulness with which, when *Josephus' Wars, book iii. chap. 3, sect. 2. the circulation of the juices seemed to call for it, they gently made an incision in the branches of the balsam, with a shell, or pointed stone, not venturing to apply a knife. No sign of such art or care is now to be seen throughout the land. The balm-tree has disappeared where long it flourished: and hardier plants have perished from other causes than the want of due care in their cultivation. And instead of relating how the growth of a delicate tree is promoted, and the medicinal liquor at the same time extracted from its branches, by a nicety or perfectibility of art worthy of the notice of a Tacitus, a different task has fallen to the lot of the traveller from a far land, who describes the customs of those who now dwell where such arts were practised. "The olivetrees (near Arimathea) are daily perishing through age, the ravages of contending factions, and even from secret mischief. The Mamelouks having cut down all the olivetrees, for the pleasure they take in destroying, or to make fires, Yafa has lost its greatest convenience."* Instead of "abundance of trees" being still the effect of cultivation, such, on the other hand, has been the effect of these ravages, that many places in Palestine are now "absolutely destitute of fuel." Yet in this devastation, and in all its progress, may be read the literal fulfilment of the prophecy, which not only described the desolate cities of Judea as a pasture of flocks, and as places for the calf to feed and lie down, and consume the branches thereof; but which, with equal truth, also declared, when the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off; the women come and set them on fire. "The most For it is a people of No understanding. simple arts are in a state of barbarism. The sciences are totally unknown."+ Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers. "The earth produces (only) briers and wormwood." A thorny shrub (merar), and others of a similar kind, abound throughout the desolated plains and hills of Palestine. Some of the latter are so closely beset in many places with thorns, that they can be ascended only with great difficulty; and "the whole district of Tiberias is covered with a thorny shrub."§ Your highways shall be desolate. * Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 332, 333. The highways lie ↑ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 442. Lev. xxvi. 22. waste; the wayfaring man ceaseth. So great must have been the intercourse, in ancient times, between the populous and numerous cities of Judea, and so much must that intercourse have been increased by the frequent and regular journeyings from every quarter of multitudes going up to Jerusalem to worship, in observance of the rites, and in obedience to the precepts of their law, that scarcely any country ever possessed such means of crowded highways, or any similar reason for abounding so much in wayfaring men. In the days of Isaiah, who uttered the latest of these predictions, "the land was full of horses, neither was there any end of their chariots."* And there not only subsist to this day in the land of Judea numerous remains of paved ways formed by the Romans at a much later period, and "others evidently not Roman;" but among the precious literary remains of antiquity which have come down to our times, three Roman itineraries are to be numbered, that can here be confidently appealed to. From these, and from the testimony of Arrian and Diodorus Siculus, as well as of Josephus and Eusebius, it appears, as Reland has clearly shown, that in Palestine, long after it came under the power of the Romans, and after it was greatly debased from its ancient glory, there were forty-two different highways (viæ publicæ), all being distinctly specified, which intersected it in various directions; and the number of miles exceeding eight hundred and eighty. Yet the prophecy is literally true. "In the interior part of the country there are neither great roads, nor canals, nor even bridges over the greatest part of the rivers and torrents, however necessary they may be in winter. Between town and town there are neither post nor public conveyances. Nobody travels alone, from the insecurity of the roads. One must wait for several travellers who are going to the same place, or take advantage of the passage of some great man, who assumes the office of protector, but is more frequently the oppressor, of the caravan. The roads in the mountains are extremely bad; and the inhabitants are so far from levelling them, that they endeavour to make them more rugged, in order, as they say, to cure the Turks of their desire to introduce their cavalry. It is * Isaiah xxxiii. 8. † General Straton's MS. Relandi Palestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata. Tom. i. lib. ii. cap. 3, 4, 5. p. 405, 425. 66 66 remarkable that there is not a wagon nor a cart in all Syria." "There are," continues Volney, no inns anywhere. The lodgings in the khans (or places of reception for travellers) are cells where you find nothing but bare walls, dust, and sometimes scorpions. The keeper of the khan gives the traveller the key and the mat, and he provides himself the rest. He must therefore carry with him his bed, his kitchen utensils, and even his provisions; for frequently not even bread is to be found in the villages."+ "There are no carriages in the country," says another traveller, "under any denomination." Among the hills of Palestine," according to a third witness, "the road is impassable; and the traveller finds himself among a set of infamous and ignorant thieves, who would cut his throat for a farthing, and rob him of his money for the mere pleasure of doing it."§ In a country where there is a total want of wheel carriages of every description, the highways, however excellent and numerous they once might have been, must lie waste; and where such dangers have to be encountered at every step, and such privations at every stage, it is not now to be wondered that the wayfaring man ceaseth. But let the disciples of Volney tell by what dictates of human wisdom the whole of his description of these existing facts was summed up, in a brief sentence, by Moses and Isaiah; by the former thirty-three, and by the latter twenty-five centuries past. The spoilers shall come upon all high places through the wilderness. "These precautions are above all necessary in the countries exposed to the Arabs, such as Palestine, and the whole frontier of the desert."|| The inhabitants of Jerusalem and of the land of Israel shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein. "In the great cities" (in Syria, none of which are in the Holy Land) “the people have much of that dissipated and careless air which they usually have with us, because there, as well as here," says Volney, alluding to France, "inured to suffering from habit, and devoid of reflection from ignorance, they enjoy a kind of security. Having nothing to lose, they are in no dread of being *Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 417, 419. † Ibid. vol. ii. p. 417, 418, 419. plundered. The merchant, on the contrary, lives in a state of perpetual alarm, under the double apprehension of acquiring no more, and losing what he possesses. He trembles lest he should attract the attention of rapacious authority, which would consider an air of satisfaction as a proof of opulence and the signal for extortion. The same dread prevails throughout the villages, where every peasant is afraid of exciting the envy of his equals, and the avarice of the aga and his soldiers. In such a country, where the subject is perpetually watched by a despoiling government, he must assume a serious countenance for the same reason that he wears ragged clothes;"* or, as the description might appropriately have been concluded, in the very words of the prophet, because of the violence of them that dwell therein. They shall be ashamed of your revenues. "From the state of the contributions of each pachalic, it appears that the annual sum paid by Syria into the kasna, or treasury of the sultar amounts to 2345 purses, viz. 800 purses, 50 •For Aleppo 2345 purses: which are equal to 2,931,250 livres, or 122,1357. sterling." After the specification of some identical sources of revenue, it is added, "we cannot be far from the truth, if we compute the total of the sultan's revenue from Syria to be 7,500,000 livres" (312,5007. sterling),† or less than the third part of one million sterling, and less than a seventh part of what it yielded, in tribute, unto Egypt, long after the prophecies were sealed. This is the whole amount that a government which has reached the acme of despotism, and which accounts pillage a right, and all property its own, can extort from impoverished Syria. But insignificant as this sum is, as the revenues of those extensive territories, which included in ancient times several opulent and powerful states, the greater part must be deducted from it, before estimating the pitiful pittance, which, under the name of revenue, its oppressive masters can now drain from the land of † Ibid. vol. ii. p. 360. .. Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 477, 478. |